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I've been coming around to this way of thinking more and more lately. Apple has a clear business model that involves selling high-end phones and other hardware

I've been coming around to this way of thinking more and more lately. Apple has a clear business model that involves selling high-end phones and other hardware and taking a percentage of app sales, not selling me to advertisers. I've found at least 5 different privacy settings buried in various places around the Android menus in a confusing way (instead of just having a single switch in the privacy settings menu), and for years iOS has had a much better security track record. The only real down side I can see is that it's not open source (not that Android is either, but there are Android based alternatives that are), but on balance I'd rather use something where the economic pressure is to do right by their customers, not something where their customers are the product. Apple has serious problems, but on balance it seems to be the better choice. I also tend to agree with the OP that the iPhone SE is a reasonable size, unlike every Android phone on the market. I just really wish there were a decent chat client that supported XMPP-based services, that's really all that's stopped me from moving over (my carrier lets me receive SMS/MMS messages to an XMPP address and receive calls via SIP, so it's rather important to me).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tootie 8y ago
I think you can say that if privacy is important to you, then you are probably more aligned with Apple's business plan. The article says as much. It's not like Apple are being more magnanimous, it's just that they don't profit off of user tracking so they use it as marketing ammo against Google users. As a developer, it constantly burns my biscuits that Apple software only runs on Apple hardware. The fact that I have no choice but to buy expensive Apple devices to develop for their platform is irritating.
- fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago
  To some degree, a company that makes money of devices rather than ads will always charge more for the devices since they can’t really sell the device at or below cost and then make the profit from showing ads to their users.
  - tootie 8y ago
    I think Apple's primary source of revenue is selling dongles to fix all their hardware incompatibility issues.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  The fact that I have no choice but to buy expensive Apple devices to develop for their platform is irritating. I've never understood this line of thinking. Maybe it's because I've been selling programs commercially since the 1980's. Back then, if you wanted to develop a program for a Commodore 64, you bought a Commodore 64. If you wanted to port it to a TRS-80, you bought a TRS-80. If you needed an Atari version, you bought Atari gear. In the mid-80's it was just ordinary business that if you were developing a program, you released it on Commodore, Apple, Texas Instruments, IBM, and a few others. And to achieve that, you bought at least one machine from each of those companies. The concept of "I want to build an iPhone app on a Windows box" is a strange new phenomenon to me.
  - IanCal 8y ago
    >The concept of "I want to build an iPhone app on a Windows box" is a strange new phenomenon to me. To be fair, I can build an android app on a Windows or Mac. Also you're talking about buying a computer to build on that computer. I think the argument was about needing a particular brand laptop to develop apps for a different device.
  - imandride 8y ago
    You have a very 80s way of thinking good sir. There is no longer a need to have these limitations in place anymore.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Yeah like paying for our tools like other professionals do. /s
      - ric2b 8y ago
        Apple already charges to publish to the app store, just raise the price for people that aren't using a Mac and let people develop on the platform they feel comfortable in. Everyone wins. Fighting the customer doesn't usually go well in the long run.
- gregknicholson 8y ago
  To quote Purism (who are in the process of making a competing phone), Apple is right about privacy, but wrong about freedom; real privacy depends on freedom.
- tomp 8y ago
  As a user, I’m really happy that it’s harder for you to ship software without testing it on the actual hardware first.
jeremyjh 8y ago
Something like 20% of Apple's revenue is payments from Google for sending them search traffic from Safari and Siri. edit: This is wrong, I can't find the source for that now but probably it was referring to 20% of services revenue. Its only like 5% of total revenue: http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-engine/ http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng... edit2: This was the source[1], they quoted 24% of services revenue: [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-02/apple-s-business-is-about-services-more-than-new-iphones-now https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-02/apple-...
- 013a 8y ago
  20% is a huge overestimation. Apple's revenue in 2017 was $239B [2]; Google paid them somewhere between $1B and $9B [1]; 0.5% to 3%. [1] http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-engine/ http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/revenue
  - lvalenta 8y ago
    Interesting is though how the number's been growing over the years, even though the amount of sold devices's been rather stagnant. Google pays a lot per customer, while Apple allows to use DuckDuckGo and others. I wonder how long will Google feel it's that valuable for them (and what a percentage of users'd swich to Google even though other search engine would be default instead)
    - prklmn 8y ago
      Apple really has google over a barrel here. You’d have to imagine that google wouldn’t even toy with the thought of not paying the ransom and testing how many people would switch their search engine from the default to google. Also, let’s say DuckDuckGo was the default and users actually liked it and switched their desktop browser search away from google, they’d be really sorry.
agumonkey 8y ago
It's interesting that aiming high and taking profit from app makers kinda push the goal to make high value apps. While on Android, ad money and free apps doesn't really create the right context
josteink 8y ago
> I also tend to agree with the OP that the iPhone SE is a reasonable size, unlike every Android phone on the market. This the single biggest reason I abandoned android for iPhone: A premium phone in a reasonable form factor.
- IronBacon 8y ago
  I like the form factor of my Xperia Compact, sadly with this year model they removed the headphone jack... By the way, Jolla should be installable on it, if I'm not wrong.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    I also like a lot about this phone's hardware (too sad they decided to not continue it), but the stock software on it is quite annoying (glitches, insane loading delays, ads). You can get Sailfish OS on it for 50€: https://forum.xda-developers.com/x-compact/how-to/sailfish-xc-t3758888 https://forum.xda-developers.com/x-compact/how-to/sailfish-x... I currently use an Omni ROM weekly build (Oreo, waiting for Pie). It's so much smoother and less terrible than the stock software. Sure, this is not "It just works" (and I do like a lot about Apple's design), but I'm also glad it's not "fuck you, we decided this for you, take it".
    - IronBacon 8y ago
      Omni ROM isn't LineageOS but a binary built from the Sony AOSP right? Considering I disabled all Sony applications because I have no use for them, with the exception of the keyboard because can't be disabled, Omni ROMs are another option that I hadn't considered. I already dumped the TA partition with the DRM keys many moons ago (I only need to find where I stored it), but I suppose they only work with Android. I'm tempted by Jolla, but I need a banking OTP generator that only exists on Android and iOS (so Android emulator or another phone)...
      - solarkraft 8y ago
        I'm not sure if Omni builds on Lineage, but they don't use any closed source Sony stuff, I think. The open camera drivers bring a great performance increase in shutter response, but a pretty bad decrease in low-light performance. The build I'm using has some annoying issues like a barely working fingerprint scanner and Bluetooth audio, but even with that it is less irritating than Sony's to me. I assume both are fixable fairly easy (I'm waiting for Pie builds). The official Sailfish OS builds come with an Android app runtime (Alien Dalvik), I think, but it may be missing some security features. I'm not sure if it uses the official Sony camera drivers, information about this seems to be conflicting. Maybe both are available, if Sailfish utilizes Android drivers.
flycaliguy 8y ago
Have you considered a Blackberry? I’m using an android BB from maybe the first run, few years old, and it’s got all the privacy I need up front.
- slothtrop 8y ago
  Also recommend this.
- kevq 8y ago
  I actually had a Blackberry Priv before the phone I have now. I could never really gel with it - the physical keyboard was awesome though. Still have it in the drawer actually.
SquishyPanda23 8y ago
> Apple has a clear business model that involves selling high-end phones and other hardware and taking a percentage of app sales, not selling me to advertisers. I would just be a little cautious about this. Apple is currently sticking it to Google by making it easy to block ads and by offering appealing privacy features. But we don't know what Apple will do if everyone switches away from Android. I would guess that the profit stream from selling everyone's data to advertisers when most users are locked into their ecosystem will be very appealing. Similarly to how Google and Facebook both eschewed ads while drawing people away from other services that were swamped with ads.
- B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
  > if everyone switches away from Android Very little risk of that. Our owners also want phones, and for the moment do not mind sharing the brand/models with the 10 or 20% who can afford, and know enough to choose, it.
- Macha 8y ago
  It's also not going to happen. Normal people don't pay for high-end phones, and way outnumber the people who do in most of the world (those parts that are not California). Even the "cheap" iPhone models are outside the price range the average consumer pays.
  - p2t2p 8y ago
    I dunno what average consumer means. Here in Australia almost everybody on train have an iPhone not older that 1 gen back. Some minority has flagship Samsung’s. Some of the geeky people have top notch(no pun intended) pixels or one plus, all flagships, but this is really a minority from my anecdotal experience. Most of the regular people that I see use some version of an iPhone. Apple Stores are being packed compared to the Samsung store across the street. The price is not a problem I think. People just buy it on two year contracts or loans and being just fine with it.
- cronix 8y ago
  Yes, and look at how much $ Apple made from Google by having Google as the default search engine on Apple devices (most people don't ever switch the search provider). I'm wondering how much longer Google will be willing to pay that much while Apple continues to limit the ways the data gets shared back to Google via the browser, basically stabbing Alphabet in the back. That can't last forever from Googles perspective. I keep wondering why Apple doesn't just build their own search engine and provide unfettered results based entirely on popularity/rank (and other "real" metrics) like how google "used" to be in the beginning. Yes, I know search is hard, but it's not as hard as all of the extra steps Google has been doing the last 15 or so years to manipulate their results higher so they get more $ out of it. Certainly it's not as complicated as building a new mapping system from scratch. That would go a great deal further to "increase Apple users privacy" than anything else I can think of. It would also cause a lot of financial harm to Alphabet if all of the sudden all Apple device owners world-wide suddenly didn't have their data going through Google. And, it would provide top-notch results, which Apple consumers would presumably love. What is the downside to this that I'm (obviously) missing?
maufl 8y ago
For XMPP on iOS I recommend Monal. https://monal.im/ https://monal.im/
- SamWhited 8y ago
  I've tried Monal and wasn't impressed. Admittedly, it's been a while and I don't really remember why, so maybe I should give it another shot.
creatornator 8y ago
Actually Android is open source: The full name, AOSP, stands for "Android Open Source Project", and you can download the source here: https://source.android.com/setup/build/requirements https://source.android.com/setup/build/requirements Anyone is free to modify, build, and distribute their own versions of Android. How else would OEMs ship their own skins? This also means you can audit Android source for vulnerabilities, backdoors, etc.
- manquer 8y ago
  Very Disingenuous , AOSP standalone is rarely sold over the counter in a consumer droid phone, you could run it if you are interested, projects use it as a base but AOSP standalone is not the version most consumers run. Every major version ports more functionality from AOSP over to GSF - which is closed source. I cannot audit GSF and I cannot check for backdoors,, GSF phones home as it legitimate functionality, it is next to possible to verify back-doors don't exist. Location APIs could just be for your location, or google/ three letter agencies could be tracking you . All the major OEMs include AOSP + GSF and then their custom layers. The only popular OEM using without GSF I know is Amazon with the kindle platform. To get Google certified OEM / use droid trademarks / use GSF you need to jump through hoops and give Google all kinds of access, not remotely same as open source.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tootie 8y ago

I think you can say that if privacy is important to you, then you are probably more aligned with Apple's business plan. The article says as much. It's not like Apple are being more magnanimous, it's just that they don't profit off of user tracking so they use it as marketing ammo against Google users. As a developer, it constantly burns my biscuits that Apple software only runs on Apple hardware. The fact that I have no choice but to buy expensive Apple devices to develop for their platform is irritating.

fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago
To some degree, a company that makes money of devices rather than ads will always charge more for the devices since they can’t really sell the device at or below cost and then make the profit from showing ads to their users.
- tootie 8y ago
  I think Apple's primary source of revenue is selling dongles to fix all their hardware incompatibility issues.
reaperducer 8y ago
The fact that I have no choice but to buy expensive Apple devices to develop for their platform is irritating. I've never understood this line of thinking. Maybe it's because I've been selling programs commercially since the 1980's. Back then, if you wanted to develop a program for a Commodore 64, you bought a Commodore 64. If you wanted to port it to a TRS-80, you bought a TRS-80. If you needed an Atari version, you bought Atari gear. In the mid-80's it was just ordinary business that if you were developing a program, you released it on Commodore, Apple, Texas Instruments, IBM, and a few others. And to achieve that, you bought at least one machine from each of those companies. The concept of "I want to build an iPhone app on a Windows box" is a strange new phenomenon to me.
- IanCal 8y ago
  >The concept of "I want to build an iPhone app on a Windows box" is a strange new phenomenon to me. To be fair, I can build an android app on a Windows or Mac. Also you're talking about buying a computer to build on that computer. I think the argument was about needing a particular brand laptop to develop apps for a different device.
- imandride 8y ago
  You have a very 80s way of thinking good sir. There is no longer a need to have these limitations in place anymore.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Yeah like paying for our tools like other professionals do. /s
    - ric2b 8y ago
      Apple already charges to publish to the app store, just raise the price for people that aren't using a Mac and let people develop on the platform they feel comfortable in. Everyone wins. Fighting the customer doesn't usually go well in the long run.
gregknicholson 8y ago
To quote Purism (who are in the process of making a competing phone), Apple is right about privacy, but wrong about freedom; real privacy depends on freedom.
tomp 8y ago
As a user, I’m really happy that it’s harder for you to ship software without testing it on the actual hardware first.

jeremyjh 8y ago

Something like 20% of Apple's revenue is payments from Google for sending them search traffic from Safari and Siri. edit: This is wrong, I can't find the source for that now but probably it was referring to 20% of services revenue. Its only like 5% of total revenue: http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-engine/ http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng... edit2: This was the source[1], they quoted 24% of services revenue: [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-02/apple-s-business-is-about-services-more-than-new-iphones-now https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-02/apple-...

013a 8y ago
20% is a huge overestimation. Apple's revenue in 2017 was $239B [2]; Google paid them somewhere between $1B and $9B [1]; 0.5% to 3%. [1] http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-engine/ http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/revenue
- lvalenta 8y ago
  Interesting is though how the number's been growing over the years, even though the amount of sold devices's been rather stagnant. Google pays a lot per customer, while Apple allows to use DuckDuckGo and others. I wonder how long will Google feel it's that valuable for them (and what a percentage of users'd swich to Google even though other search engine would be default instead)
  - prklmn 8y ago
    Apple really has google over a barrel here. You’d have to imagine that google wouldn’t even toy with the thought of not paying the ransom and testing how many people would switch their search engine from the default to google. Also, let’s say DuckDuckGo was the default and users actually liked it and switched their desktop browser search away from google, they’d be really sorry.

agumonkey 8y ago

It's interesting that aiming high and taking profit from app makers kinda push the goal to make high value apps. While on Android, ad money and free apps doesn't really create the right context

josteink 8y ago

> I also tend to agree with the OP that the iPhone SE is a reasonable size, unlike every Android phone on the market. This the single biggest reason I abandoned android for iPhone: A premium phone in a reasonable form factor.

IronBacon 8y ago
I like the form factor of my Xperia Compact, sadly with this year model they removed the headphone jack... By the way, Jolla should be installable on it, if I'm not wrong.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  I also like a lot about this phone's hardware (too sad they decided to not continue it), but the stock software on it is quite annoying (glitches, insane loading delays, ads). You can get Sailfish OS on it for 50€: https://forum.xda-developers.com/x-compact/how-to/sailfish-xc-t3758888 https://forum.xda-developers.com/x-compact/how-to/sailfish-x... I currently use an Omni ROM weekly build (Oreo, waiting for Pie). It's so much smoother and less terrible than the stock software. Sure, this is not "It just works" (and I do like a lot about Apple's design), but I'm also glad it's not "fuck you, we decided this for you, take it".
  - IronBacon 8y ago
    Omni ROM isn't LineageOS but a binary built from the Sony AOSP right? Considering I disabled all Sony applications because I have no use for them, with the exception of the keyboard because can't be disabled, Omni ROMs are another option that I hadn't considered. I already dumped the TA partition with the DRM keys many moons ago (I only need to find where I stored it), but I suppose they only work with Android. I'm tempted by Jolla, but I need a banking OTP generator that only exists on Android and iOS (so Android emulator or another phone)...
    - solarkraft 8y ago
      I'm not sure if Omni builds on Lineage, but they don't use any closed source Sony stuff, I think. The open camera drivers bring a great performance increase in shutter response, but a pretty bad decrease in low-light performance. The build I'm using has some annoying issues like a barely working fingerprint scanner and Bluetooth audio, but even with that it is less irritating than Sony's to me. I assume both are fixable fairly easy (I'm waiting for Pie builds). The official Sailfish OS builds come with an Android app runtime (Alien Dalvik), I think, but it may be missing some security features. I'm not sure if it uses the official Sony camera drivers, information about this seems to be conflicting. Maybe both are available, if Sailfish utilizes Android drivers.

flycaliguy 8y ago

Have you considered a Blackberry? I’m using an android BB from maybe the first run, few years old, and it’s got all the privacy I need up front.

slothtrop 8y ago
Also recommend this.
kevq 8y ago
I actually had a Blackberry Priv before the phone I have now. I could never really gel with it - the physical keyboard was awesome though. Still have it in the drawer actually.

SquishyPanda23 8y ago

> Apple has a clear business model that involves selling high-end phones and other hardware and taking a percentage of app sales, not selling me to advertisers. I would just be a little cautious about this. Apple is currently sticking it to Google by making it easy to block ads and by offering appealing privacy features. But we don't know what Apple will do if everyone switches away from Android. I would guess that the profit stream from selling everyone's data to advertisers when most users are locked into their ecosystem will be very appealing. Similarly to how Google and Facebook both eschewed ads while drawing people away from other services that were swamped with ads.

B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
> if everyone switches away from Android Very little risk of that. Our owners also want phones, and for the moment do not mind sharing the brand/models with the 10 or 20% who can afford, and know enough to choose, it.
Macha 8y ago
It's also not going to happen. Normal people don't pay for high-end phones, and way outnumber the people who do in most of the world (those parts that are not California). Even the "cheap" iPhone models are outside the price range the average consumer pays.
- p2t2p 8y ago
  I dunno what average consumer means. Here in Australia almost everybody on train have an iPhone not older that 1 gen back. Some minority has flagship Samsung’s. Some of the geeky people have top notch(no pun intended) pixels or one plus, all flagships, but this is really a minority from my anecdotal experience. Most of the regular people that I see use some version of an iPhone. Apple Stores are being packed compared to the Samsung store across the street. The price is not a problem I think. People just buy it on two year contracts or loans and being just fine with it.
cronix 8y ago
Yes, and look at how much $ Apple made from Google by having Google as the default search engine on Apple devices (most people don't ever switch the search provider). I'm wondering how much longer Google will be willing to pay that much while Apple continues to limit the ways the data gets shared back to Google via the browser, basically stabbing Alphabet in the back. That can't last forever from Googles perspective. I keep wondering why Apple doesn't just build their own search engine and provide unfettered results based entirely on popularity/rank (and other "real" metrics) like how google "used" to be in the beginning. Yes, I know search is hard, but it's not as hard as all of the extra steps Google has been doing the last 15 or so years to manipulate their results higher so they get more $ out of it. Certainly it's not as complicated as building a new mapping system from scratch. That would go a great deal further to "increase Apple users privacy" than anything else I can think of. It would also cause a lot of financial harm to Alphabet if all of the sudden all Apple device owners world-wide suddenly didn't have their data going through Google. And, it would provide top-notch results, which Apple consumers would presumably love. What is the downside to this that I'm (obviously) missing?

maufl 8y ago

For XMPP on iOS I recommend Monal. https://monal.im/ https://monal.im/

SamWhited 8y ago
I've tried Monal and wasn't impressed. Admittedly, it's been a while and I don't really remember why, so maybe I should give it another shot.

creatornator 8y ago

Actually Android is open source: The full name, AOSP, stands for "Android Open Source Project", and you can download the source here: https://source.android.com/setup/build/requirements https://source.android.com/setup/build/requirements Anyone is free to modify, build, and distribute their own versions of Android. How else would OEMs ship their own skins? This also means you can audit Android source for vulnerabilities, backdoors, etc.

manquer 8y ago
Very Disingenuous , AOSP standalone is rarely sold over the counter in a consumer droid phone, you could run it if you are interested, projects use it as a base but AOSP standalone is not the version most consumers run. Every major version ports more functionality from AOSP over to GSF - which is closed source. I cannot audit GSF and I cannot check for backdoors,, GSF phones home as it legitimate functionality, it is next to possible to verify back-doors don't exist. Location APIs could just be for your location, or google/ three letter agencies could be tracking you . All the major OEMs include AOSP + GSF and then their custom layers. The only popular OEM using without GSF I know is Amazon with the kindle platform. To get Google certified OEM / use droid trademarks / use GSF you need to jump through hoops and give Google all kinds of access, not remotely same as open source.