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"Apple provides a black box with iOS, they have full control. Maybe the next iOS update comes with privacy intrusion because it's more lucrative." This is true

"Apple provides a black box with iOS, they have full control. Maybe the next iOS update comes with privacy intrusion because it's more lucrative." This is true, but it's also potentially worthwhile to consider that Apple has positioned themselves as a hardware company (i.e. the majority of their money is based on selling units of hardware), whereas their main competitor here (Google) is an ad company (i.e. the majority of their money comes from selling their users' data). Apple has chosen to highlight their commitment to privacy partially because they feel it helps their market position, whereas for Google, it would hurt it. Certainly it doesn't mean that Apple is infallible, just that I think it makes it easier to accept that Apple is more likely to protect privacy more than Google. I'm pretty biased towards Apple, so obviously this may not work for everyone; if you need source code to feel secure, then by all means, go for it. For people who are looking for less work but some of the benefits, I think that Apple is a decent way to go.

growse 9y ago
> This is true, but it's also potentially worthwhile to consider that Apple has positioned themselves as a hardware company (i.e. the majority of their money is based on selling units of hardware), whereas their main competitor here (Google) is an ad company (i.e. the majority of their money comes from selling their users' data). Apple has chosen to highlight their commitment to privacy partially because they feel it helps their market position, whereas for Google, it would hurt it. But this is all just marketing, whereas the reality is that Apple could also be hoovering up location data and you may never know. You may have good reasons to trust Apple more than Google, which is great. Others may reverse that position of trust (perhaps they had their iCloud account hacked into and photographs leaked on the internet).
- horsecaptin 9y ago
  "But this is all just marketing, whereas the reality is that Apple could also be hoovering up location data and you may never know." It isn't just marketing. This is how the alignment of incentives works. A company's incentives are aligned with the people who pay them. Apple's are aligned with those that buy phones. Google and Facebook's are aligned with those that buy ads.
  - slaman 9y ago
    The parent argument is that without transparency it's difficult to actually know. Apple's true incentive is to provide value for their shareholders. If they can improve the value provided to shareholders by hoovering up information while also maintaining consumer confidence and sales then why would they not? I think that Apple's incentives are better aligned with my desires for privacy, but it's only an assumption.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      It would be a ballsy play of limited utility. For one, you're talking about Apple risking epic legal liability if they got caught. For the other, they'd be doing so for limited upside. They can only sell ads on the premise that they don't have all this inside information on their users.
    - sjwright 9y ago
      > why would they not? Because this sort of thing inevitably leaks? Apple has a formula that demonstrably works, a formula that everyone can directly observe making them an utterly stupid amount of money. It would be the height of stupidity to risk their unparalleled monetary successes to pursue a few dirty little crumbs.
      - aoeusnth1 9y ago
        Exactly - especially when you are employing privacy-conscious developers, it would be nearly impossible to keep it contained. Someone would leak it to the EFF. It's better business strategy for Apple to not defect.
        saiya-jin 9y ago
        Guys, this is all just plain old wishful thinking. Neither you, nor me, nor most people here have any real clue what decisions are being done behind closed doors of Apple, or other companies. All the high profile cases are mostly PR-oriented, see how PRISM was handled (not that they had any choice, but it is what it is). Don't attach these emotions where they are not appropriate. Apple is a for-profit company. If they will be pressed hard by US government behind closed doors, they will bulge and you won't know about it, why should you (maybe in 10 years as part of some leak). If they will decide to change their strategy, they will. They have 0 moral issues hiding gazillions of cash offshore from IRS. Just like any other company out there. Simple fact is, most people don't care about security. I work in IT, and I have numerous friends with iPhones, but exactly 0 of them cares about extra potential security when choosing phones, most have no clue about these issues. Regular people choose Apple because of Apple and how things look and feel, and how they are perceived among others as a status indicator.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  If Apple really is Hoovering up all our data, we'd hear about it. A disgruntled employee would tell all after they got fired or left.
  - zingmars 9y ago
    That's assuming if there is an disgruntled employee with knowledge of this happening and if there is, that there isn't an NDA good enough to make him or her to think twice about leaking anything should they leave on bad terms. That's a large if to place your hopes on.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  > But this is all just marketing Apple has a very strict internal culture of protecting user privacy.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    And you know that exactly how? Or, maybe more relevant, how do I get to know that?
    - MaysonL 9y ago
      Talk and listen to Apple and ex-Apple people.
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        That's not scalable to the entire market of people wanting mobile devices, in case you didn't realise. The question the GP was almost certainly asking was "how can the public confirm that security of their data is high on the agenda of Apple (and by extension any company), what systems are in place". Without third-party review of open systems and practices I can't see it being possible.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
      Be lucky in who you end up friends with.
  - murjinsee 9y ago
    ...and yet they comply with ~80% of government requests for user data? At the end of the day, they still have a way to break their own encryption; they just don't want to set a legal precedent or create tools to allow a third-party to have unfettered access. Everything they say in public releases is just, "face". It's better than the Facebook or AT&T models of charging for access as a subscription service, but nonetheless I do not believe them when they claim their hardware is opaque to themselves. Here is a link to their privacy policy: https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-requests/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-request... It states that they comply with requests by the government for user data, and informs the user unless gagged. They received over 5000 NSL's in 6 months last year, which seems kind of dumb if they're not handing over data. I, for one, do not believe that their "secure enclave" is truly secure, that they have no backdoor.
dleslie 9y ago
Apple is a lifestyle and fashion company moreso than a software or hardware company; yes, Nike makes shoes and Ralph Lauren sells shirts, but they are not best described as shoe or clothing manufacturers first and foremost. Jobs understood this.
- Angostura 9y ago
  if we're going that route, Google is an an advertising company, whose only goal is to harvest your data to maximise advertising revenue.
  - berbec 9y ago
    Yes, that is exactly their goal. Google services, from the Play store to search to Google plus is all designed with exactly this in mind. What most people don't understand is "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. When I use Gmail, I know what I'm signing up for.
    - philipps 9y ago
      I don’t remember where I first heard this, but increasingly “if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the training data.”. (Doesn’t invalidate your point, which I agree with)
  - dleslie 9y ago
    Yes, that is what it is.
astura 9y ago
Apple is more of a lifestyle brand than a hardware company. Edit: I was beat to the punch.
andrepd 9y ago
That's smoke and mirrors. What guarantees you that Apple isn't collecting your location right now? It's proprietary software, so you wouldn't know, and it's perfectly within the terms of their EULA. You're just gonna trust that they don't (even though they are a business and that can potentially make them more money)? Or are you gonna know your phone isn't spying in you by installing free software on your device?
- planb 9y ago
  Did you check and compile every line of code that runs on your phone? If not, than that's also smoke and mirrors. I guess it's easier to get evil patches into any open source component on a "free" phone than to get them into an iOS release.
- p49k 9y ago
  If we only made decisions based on whether we could absolutely be sure of something with 100% certainty, we would all be paralyzed. Until a fully open-source phone is released that is comparable in quality to an iPhone, we can look at all of the available data and make reasonable decisions. Aside from Apple’s strong stance and history of protecting the privacy of users, we also have security researchers MITM’ing the traffic sent from iOS devices to Apple, and every jailbreak gives an opportunity to look deeper; if they were acting badly, someone would find that out soon enough.
  - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
    I agree that asking for 100% guarantees isn't useful. Realistically, the danger with Apple is that its absolute power over what regular users can install on their iOS devices is easily exploited by governments. If some surveillance happy government bans some VPN software then Apple is going to enforce that ban much more thoroughly than Google or Microsoft ever could.
- AlphaSite 9y ago
  OpenSSL proved to me that being open source doesn’t mean anyone actually checks what it’s doing. It could be checked, but it would be trivial to sneak in things.

growse 9y ago

> This is true, but it's also potentially worthwhile to consider that Apple has positioned themselves as a hardware company (i.e. the majority of their money is based on selling units of hardware), whereas their main competitor here (Google) is an ad company (i.e. the majority of their money comes from selling their users' data). Apple has chosen to highlight their commitment to privacy partially because they feel it helps their market position, whereas for Google, it would hurt it. But this is all just marketing, whereas the reality is that Apple could also be hoovering up location data and you may never know. You may have good reasons to trust Apple more than Google, which is great. Others may reverse that position of trust (perhaps they had their iCloud account hacked into and photographs leaked on the internet).

horsecaptin 9y ago
"But this is all just marketing, whereas the reality is that Apple could also be hoovering up location data and you may never know." It isn't just marketing. This is how the alignment of incentives works. A company's incentives are aligned with the people who pay them. Apple's are aligned with those that buy phones. Google and Facebook's are aligned with those that buy ads.
- slaman 9y ago
  The parent argument is that without transparency it's difficult to actually know. Apple's true incentive is to provide value for their shareholders. If they can improve the value provided to shareholders by hoovering up information while also maintaining consumer confidence and sales then why would they not? I think that Apple's incentives are better aligned with my desires for privacy, but it's only an assumption.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    It would be a ballsy play of limited utility. For one, you're talking about Apple risking epic legal liability if they got caught. For the other, they'd be doing so for limited upside. They can only sell ads on the premise that they don't have all this inside information on their users.
  - sjwright 9y ago
    > why would they not? Because this sort of thing inevitably leaks? Apple has a formula that demonstrably works, a formula that everyone can directly observe making them an utterly stupid amount of money. It would be the height of stupidity to risk their unparalleled monetary successes to pursue a few dirty little crumbs.
    - aoeusnth1 9y ago
      Exactly - especially when you are employing privacy-conscious developers, it would be nearly impossible to keep it contained. Someone would leak it to the EFF. It's better business strategy for Apple to not defect.
      - saiya-jin 9y ago
        Guys, this is all just plain old wishful thinking. Neither you, nor me, nor most people here have any real clue what decisions are being done behind closed doors of Apple, or other companies. All the high profile cases are mostly PR-oriented, see how PRISM was handled (not that they had any choice, but it is what it is). Don't attach these emotions where they are not appropriate. Apple is a for-profit company. If they will be pressed hard by US government behind closed doors, they will bulge and you won't know about it, why should you (maybe in 10 years as part of some leak). If they will decide to change their strategy, they will. They have 0 moral issues hiding gazillions of cash offshore from IRS. Just like any other company out there. Simple fact is, most people don't care about security. I work in IT, and I have numerous friends with iPhones, but exactly 0 of them cares about extra potential security when choosing phones, most have no clue about these issues. Regular people choose Apple because of Apple and how things look and feel, and how they are perceived among others as a status indicator.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
If Apple really is Hoovering up all our data, we'd hear about it. A disgruntled employee would tell all after they got fired or left.
- zingmars 9y ago
  That's assuming if there is an disgruntled employee with knowledge of this happening and if there is, that there isn't an NDA good enough to make him or her to think twice about leaking anything should they leave on bad terms. That's a large if to place your hopes on.
TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
> But this is all just marketing Apple has a very strict internal culture of protecting user privacy.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  And you know that exactly how? Or, maybe more relevant, how do I get to know that?
  - MaysonL 9y ago
    Talk and listen to Apple and ex-Apple people.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      That's not scalable to the entire market of people wanting mobile devices, in case you didn't realise. The question the GP was almost certainly asking was "how can the public confirm that security of their data is high on the agenda of Apple (and by extension any company), what systems are in place". Without third-party review of open systems and practices I can't see it being possible.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
    Be lucky in who you end up friends with.
- murjinsee 9y ago
  ...and yet they comply with ~80% of government requests for user data? At the end of the day, they still have a way to break their own encryption; they just don't want to set a legal precedent or create tools to allow a third-party to have unfettered access. Everything they say in public releases is just, "face". It's better than the Facebook or AT&T models of charging for access as a subscription service, but nonetheless I do not believe them when they claim their hardware is opaque to themselves. Here is a link to their privacy policy: https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-requests/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-request... It states that they comply with requests by the government for user data, and informs the user unless gagged. They received over 5000 NSL's in 6 months last year, which seems kind of dumb if they're not handing over data. I, for one, do not believe that their "secure enclave" is truly secure, that they have no backdoor.

dleslie 9y ago

Apple is a lifestyle and fashion company moreso than a software or hardware company; yes, Nike makes shoes and Ralph Lauren sells shirts, but they are not best described as shoe or clothing manufacturers first and foremost. Jobs understood this.

Angostura 9y ago
if we're going that route, Google is an an advertising company, whose only goal is to harvest your data to maximise advertising revenue.
- berbec 9y ago
  Yes, that is exactly their goal. Google services, from the Play store to search to Google plus is all designed with exactly this in mind. What most people don't understand is "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. When I use Gmail, I know what I'm signing up for.
  - philipps 9y ago
    I don’t remember where I first heard this, but increasingly “if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the training data.”. (Doesn’t invalidate your point, which I agree with)
- dleslie 9y ago
  Yes, that is what it is.

astura 9y ago

Apple is more of a lifestyle brand than a hardware company. Edit: I was beat to the punch.

andrepd 9y ago

That's smoke and mirrors. What guarantees you that Apple isn't collecting your location right now? It's proprietary software, so you wouldn't know, and it's perfectly within the terms of their EULA. You're just gonna trust that they don't (even though they are a business and that can potentially make them more money)? Or are you gonna know your phone isn't spying in you by installing free software on your device?

planb 9y ago
Did you check and compile every line of code that runs on your phone? If not, than that's also smoke and mirrors. I guess it's easier to get evil patches into any open source component on a "free" phone than to get them into an iOS release.
p49k 9y ago
If we only made decisions based on whether we could absolutely be sure of something with 100% certainty, we would all be paralyzed. Until a fully open-source phone is released that is comparable in quality to an iPhone, we can look at all of the available data and make reasonable decisions. Aside from Apple’s strong stance and history of protecting the privacy of users, we also have security researchers MITM’ing the traffic sent from iOS devices to Apple, and every jailbreak gives an opportunity to look deeper; if they were acting badly, someone would find that out soon enough.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  I agree that asking for 100% guarantees isn't useful. Realistically, the danger with Apple is that its absolute power over what regular users can install on their iOS devices is easily exploited by governments. If some surveillance happy government bans some VPN software then Apple is going to enforce that ban much more thoroughly than Google or Microsoft ever could.
AlphaSite 9y ago
OpenSSL proved to me that being open source doesn’t mean anyone actually checks what it’s doing. It could be checked, but it would be trivial to sneak in things.