4 ms·

As a clueless person who knows nothing about iOS (besides being a user) and has heard many an iOS developer make similar statements, I've always wondered how pe

by ggsp 8y ago

As a clueless person who knows nothing about iOS (besides being a user) and has heard many an iOS developer make similar statements, I've always wondered how people are so sure about this or that data not leaving iOS devices. How is this guaranteed? Is some of the software open source?

sjwright 8y ago
Ultimately it's trust. All systems like this rely on trust at some level. Even if you're rocking a fully open-source mobile OS, have you read and understood every line? Can you trust your source of software patches/updates? Can you trust your chipset? Can you trust the baseband? Can you trust your telco? I'm not saying trust Apple, but it's difficult to list many other large companies I'd trust more. And at least with an iPhone I only have to trust Apple. They make the vast bulk of the product and for all the stuff they don't do, I'm confident that they're doing good due diligence on their upstream suppliers. They'll be checking that TSMC has manufactured their chips without changes. They'll know every trivial detail about the supply chain into the Foxconn factories. They know the entirety of the product they're selling better than any other phone maker, unquestionably. Buy a Samsung Galaxy and then you have to trust at least Samsung and Google. But I don't necessarily trust them to do due diligence on upstream suppliers, so I suppose you have to add Qualcomm to that list. And if your phone has been shipped with third party software, you have to add all of those third party software companies...
- dwighttk 8y ago
  Apple isn't perfect, but the alternatives are varying degrees of worse.
- hyperpape 8y ago
  It's trust, with aligned incentives. Apple currently doesn't have any method of making money off this information that we know about, and has a lot of goodwill for protecting people's privacy.[0] In contrast, companies like Google and Amazon have well established ways of making money off similar information, and less than stellar reputations. So they'll constantly have a balancing act of "how creepy can we be?" They're trading off marginal losses (the occasional quitter) vs revenue. Apple is the guy who doesn't drink. Google, Amazon and Facebook are the ones at the bar saying "I can probably handle one more". [0] To be clear, I'm sure they could ink a deal to make money from this info very quickly. It's just that they don't have anything outstanding.
  - sjwright 8y ago
    They could ink a deal to make money from our data, but I'm sufficiently confident they stand to lose more by doing so than they could possibly gain.
    - dwighttk 8y ago
      It'd be interesting to know how much they would lose if they did. There aren't a whole lot of alternatives. Some people currently on iOS would definitely buy Android if they were convinced Apple and Google were equivalent when it comes to selling their data. But how many?
    - hyperpape 8y ago
      Yes, I agree. At a minimum, I think it would be a big business model change. If they just exploited this particular bit of information, it would be a small financial gain with a big loss of trust. To make it worthwhile, they'd have to find ways to monetize tons of user data, at the expense of a lot of trust.
threeseed 8y ago
Because you can tell from many of their products e.g. Siri, iAds, Apple News that they don’t sell their data to third parties. It’s been a major complaint from advertisers and media organisations that Apple doesn’t share data with them that Google et al do.

by ggsp 8y ago

sjwright 8y ago

Ultimately it's trust. All systems like this rely on trust at some level. Even if you're rocking a fully open-source mobile OS, have you read and understood every line? Can you trust your source of software patches/updates? Can you trust your chipset? Can you trust the baseband? Can you trust your telco? I'm not saying trust Apple, but it's difficult to list many other large companies I'd trust more. And at least with an iPhone I only have to trust Apple. They make the vast bulk of the product and for all the stuff they don't do, I'm confident that they're doing good due diligence on their upstream suppliers. They'll be checking that TSMC has manufactured their chips without changes. They'll know every trivial detail about the supply chain into the Foxconn factories. They know the entirety of the product they're selling better than any other phone maker, unquestionably. Buy a Samsung Galaxy and then you have to trust at least Samsung and Google. But I don't necessarily trust them to do due diligence on upstream suppliers, so I suppose you have to add Qualcomm to that list. And if your phone has been shipped with third party software, you have to add all of those third party software companies...

dwighttk 8y ago
Apple isn't perfect, but the alternatives are varying degrees of worse.
hyperpape 8y ago
It's trust, with aligned incentives. Apple currently doesn't have any method of making money off this information that we know about, and has a lot of goodwill for protecting people's privacy.[0] In contrast, companies like Google and Amazon have well established ways of making money off similar information, and less than stellar reputations. So they'll constantly have a balancing act of "how creepy can we be?" They're trading off marginal losses (the occasional quitter) vs revenue. Apple is the guy who doesn't drink. Google, Amazon and Facebook are the ones at the bar saying "I can probably handle one more". [0] To be clear, I'm sure they could ink a deal to make money from this info very quickly. It's just that they don't have anything outstanding.
- sjwright 8y ago
  They could ink a deal to make money from our data, but I'm sufficiently confident they stand to lose more by doing so than they could possibly gain.
  - dwighttk 8y ago
    It'd be interesting to know how much they would lose if they did. There aren't a whole lot of alternatives. Some people currently on iOS would definitely buy Android if they were convinced Apple and Google were equivalent when it comes to selling their data. But how many?
  - hyperpape 8y ago
    Yes, I agree. At a minimum, I think it would be a big business model change. If they just exploited this particular bit of information, it would be a small financial gain with a big loss of trust. To make it worthwhile, they'd have to find ways to monetize tons of user data, at the expense of a lot of trust.

threeseed 8y ago

Because you can tell from many of their products e.g. Siri, iAds, Apple News that they don’t sell their data to third parties. It’s been a major complaint from advertisers and media organisations that Apple doesn’t share data with them that Google et al do.