7 ms·

The biggest problem that I have is that it's privacy built on a closed source platform that works extremely hard to wall users in and create substantial vendor

by tfha 7y ago

The biggest problem that I have is that it's privacy built on a closed source platform that works extremely hard to wall users in and create substantial vendor lock-in. As someone who has tried multiple times to dip their toes into the Apple world, I can tell you that it's highly hostile to users who try to pick and choose how much they want to be an Apple citizen. If you don't agree to sign up for Apple cloud on the latest iOS, it feels like 80% of the basic functions for a smartphone get locked away from you. And they have viral aspects to their lock-in as well. Have a single family member who isn't on iMessage? Looks like they don't get to participate in your family discussions anymore. Their privacy features are a selling point today, but your privacy is 100% in their control. If the executive team made the decision tomorrow to switch Apple into a fully panopticon ecosystem, they'd be able to switch over in a year with little visibility for their users that this transition was happening. If you are in the Apple ecosystem, you under heavy lock-in pressure and you are fully putting your faith in Apple that the directions they go in the future will be directions that you are happy with. That doesn't feel secure to me.

vinay_ys 7y ago
On the surface, compared to Android, iOS is much more secure. It seems they ensure app sandbox is not violated by any app developer. No app can steal another apps data. You can prevent/revoke access to contacts, photos, sms, location, background execution, mobile data to any app from a central place. They allow 3rd-party apps for doing messaging (replaces iMessage), cloud storage (replaces icloud), firefox (replaces safari), 1password (replaces keychain) – all in a clean and easy way – with no ambiguity or confusion. But w.r.t end to end encryption claims, we just take them at their word. There is no formal verifiable proof. Recently we have repeatedly learnt the hard way to not trust corporations at they word. Without open-source and peer-reviewed cryptographic protocols and verifiable trusted execution models, it is not safe to believe it is truly end to end encrypted and nobody is spying.
maxxxxx 7y ago
I agree. They are sitting on more and more data they will be very tempted to use if they can’t hit their growth rates in the future. It would be better if no single entity had that much data.
- ballenf 7y ago
  Isn't Apple one of the few companies going out of their way to keep as much data as possible on-device instead of in the cloud? I agree that shareholders value margins over principles and that could be an issue for companies who do hold a lot of user data.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    With the push to more and more iCloud I would assume they have a lot of data but I am not sure.
    - xenospn 7y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but a core part of their messaging has been that they don't actually know what users are storing inside their cloud, has it not?
      - skewart 7y ago
        Maybe, but they can change that at any time. If they wanted to have visibility into iCloud data going forward they easily could. With Apple products, you're putting your privacy entirely in Apple's hands and assuming that their executives will continue to follow the same branding and product strategy that they've been pursuing for the past few years. That said, Apple is probably the least bad option for phone + cloud for most people. But it's sad that that's the case.
    - babypuncher 7y ago
      Didn't Apple prove to the FBI in court that they literally cannot access a users iCloud data without their password? Obviously that still isn't as trustworthy as open source tools you can verify yourself, but it's a far cry better than any privacy guarantee you're getting from Google.
      - lern_too_spel 7y ago
        > Didn't Apple prove to the FBI in court that they literally cannot access a users iCloud data without their password? No. Apple regularly hands over iCloud data to government investigator. In China, Apple handed over its keys, so the Chinese government does not even need to involve Apple to get iCloud data.
IOT_Apprentice 7y ago
I'm unclear about your iMessage comment, as Android or other platforms can send and receive messages just fine with users on iMessage. As a followup, how is Android, or chromium any better in that regard, given Googles plans to disallow proper adblocking as it interferes with their business model?
- tfha 7y ago
  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204270 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204270 There is a fix but Android users can have trouble being in iMessage groups. As for how is adroid better... well. It's really not. Just like AMD isn't really better than Intel for privacy and security. For many parts of the hardware stack, if you want to be in control of your own privacy, you pretty much have to drop back to 2000s era technology.
- basch 7y ago
  but then the whole family group message is green not blue.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    No, your family will have a thread without you, you will never see those messages. You can create a new thread but unless each of your family members deletes the old iMessage thread they will default to the old thread, which you are blocked from.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  > How is Android, or chromium any better in that regard, given Googles plans to disallow proper adblocking as it interferes with their business model? You can install Firefox on Android with ublock origin.
myself248 7y ago
Furthermore, they're based in a jurisdiction that's subject to warrantless blanket subpoenas with zero oversight. They may not be selling our data explicitly to the lowest bidder, but everything they gather is still accessible to whoever sits in the White House and whatever their minions think would be fun to dig up. What makes Apple different is that since their business model doesn't depend on gathering and selling our data, their infrastructure gathers less data. And it sounds like they've taken active steps to make sure they gather as little as possible and that it's as useless as possible for nefarious purposes. That takes extra effort in software design and testing, and they're hoping to see the return on that investment by explaining to their customers how that translates to value in our hands. If that's a stance they're actively taking, I think any reversal would eviscerate their image, and that's my reason to actually have a little faith. It's not as secure as some alternatives, but it's a lot easier to use, and in the real world where not everybody compiles things from source, that matters.
- tomnipotent 7y ago
  > but everything they gather is still accessible to whoever sits in the White House No it's not, stop spreading FUD. > It's not as secure as some alternatives Like what? Name one platform that offers all the services that Apple offers with the same level of security and privacy.
- babypuncher 7y ago
  Except Apple went to court and proved that they can't hand over this data even if they want to. US law allows law enforcement with a warrant to require Apple to hand over any data they have, but Apple isn't required to help them crack the users password so they can decrypt it.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    > but Apple isn't required to help them crack the users password so they can decrypt it. Apple would have to argue that in court. They would almost certainly lose.
- Asmod4n 7y ago
FabHK 7y ago
There is some lock-in, but that's because the system integration works so well (Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch, etc.) that one is loath to switch, not because they actively lock up your data. Contacts, Calendar, Photos, documents all allow exports to commonly understood formats (and iTunes with some caveats). I would not currently consider alternative OSes because they'd not work as seamlessly for me, but if Apple became as bad as you envision, I'd be out in short order with basically all my data.
- autoexec 7y ago
  It's not that the system integration is so wonderful, it's that they make it extremely difficult to work outside of it for no reason. A few years ago I had a friend who wanted a song put on her iphone. I've never used one but I assumed I could do exactly what I've done with every other phone/MP3 player in the universe and just connect it to my laptop via USB and move the file over to some folder called "music" or something. Nope. Needs Itunes. I fire up a VM and install itunes, she has to log into everything and authorize the phone for that machine (with a warning that she can only do this so many times) and then I was able to get the file on her phone but not before it synced her entire library onto my machine (wtf). A few days later her friend is over and she wants the same song on her phone. I still have the VM with itunes installed so we give it a try and it wipes every song on her phone. The whole thing was 100% obnoxious and unnecessary. Really put me off of Apple when every other product "Just Works" while apple requires you to jump through insane hoops for basic functionality the moment you dare to Think Different and do something in a way other than exactly how they want you do things
  - Asmod4n 7y ago
    Just ask Siri to play that song? Or search for it in the music app? Or was it from some Indy Band which only publishes on its own website? Then yeah, best bet to get it into a iPhone would be a browser with a download manager and Files App support. (iOS 13 will add a download manager to Safari)
    - autoexec 7y ago
dcosson 7y ago
I've been using iPhone and MacOS for years and successfully picking & choosing different parts of the ecosystem. Sure, the defaults are usually set up to opt you into their own products so it takes a bit of fiddling but it's not hard to opt into just the set of services you want to use - i.e. sync only particular services like iCloud Notes and password manager, but use gmail for email and calendars (using open formats to sync these natively to your phone), use dropbox instead if iCloud for file syncing, etc. It's very configurable and I don't feel particularly locked into anything. And iMessage seems like a particularly bad example of lock-in because you can take your identifier (phone number) with you. If you switch from iOS to Android pretty much all that happens from a user experience perspective is your message bubbles are now green instead of blue when you text your friends with iPhones. It's very seamless between SMS and iMessages as far as messaging platforms go. To the extent that group threads with your family become harder, that's because group SMS sucks, not because you're locked in to iMessage. It really seems like most of the time when people talk about lock in, all they mean is that the feature is particularly good. It does what I want and makes things easy, so there would be friction to change. How dare they build features like that!
- babypuncher 7y ago
  You lose a lot more than just message bubble colors when you switch away from iMessage. Multimedia quality takes a nosedive to 2006, reactions don't work, you lose encryption (SMS/MMS is not encrypted at all), and you miss out on all the other little things that make people like iMessage. Of course this isn't really Apple's fault, we can blame the cell carriers for being categorically uninterested in modernizing SMS or making it secure.
  - laughinghan 7y ago
    Is multimedia quality between Android phones using MMS much better than iPhone-without-iMessage? I thought it's the same, which isn't lock-in, that's just iMessage being a superior service to MMS, and in fact the iPhone is going out of its way to not lock you in and allow MMS. On the other hand, if the iPhone is intentionally crippling MMS, that's pretty slimy lock-in.
geofft 7y ago
This is quite at odds with my experience with my iPhone, so I'm confused. I don't have an iCloud account. I'm not sure what "basic functions for a smartphone" I'm unable to use, but, I don't want my photos backed up to iCloud - I'll handle that on my own, for the photos I actually want somewhere other than on my local device. Everything otherwise seems to work. I don't use iMessage. I've ticked the little box that says to use regular SMS and not iMessage. (This was back when there were stories of people getting stuck on iMessage and losing messages when they switched to another OS, and I wasn't sure I wanted to buy into the Apple platform permanently. I could probably switch back now, since I've been a regular iOS user for years and I hear that https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ works.) Multi-party SMS works fine. Multi-party Signal, Hangouts, Slack, etc. chats also work great. Similarly, I don't use FaceTime, but I've got tons of messaging apps that support video calls on their own. Generally things have been fine, so I'm curious what specifically hasn't worked for you.
- behnamoh 7y ago
  I think the GP meant that without an Apple ID, you basically can't install apps to begin with, and most of the OS's apps also require an Apple ID to work to their fullest. However, I don't share the same degree of skepticism as the GP.
  - geofft 7y ago
    I definitely have an Apple ID. But I don't have iCloud enabled, and without it, having an Apple ID doesn't bother me. My Apple ID isn't my normal email address and that hasn't been a problem: people don't contact me through it and Apple doesn't force me to publish it to others.
  - davvolun 7y ago
    In practice, if not in theory, I think Android works the same way. Yes, there are other app stores, and yes you can install untrusted, but in practice, most people just use the Play Store (requiring a Google account) and if they allow untrusted or use another app store, it's not the default. I'm not arguing Apple and Google are the same, far from, but in this area, they seem the same to me for the majority of the population. (Android user)
tzakrajs 7y ago
I’m iOS 13 Siri is now interoperable with other maps and music providers on CarPlay. Apple is changing.
thatoneuser 7y ago
Your argument is "well maybe they won't be secure tomorrow and you're invested". Ok, but they are secure now and that's more than pretty much other major tech company. Yeah there's lock in with Apple, you don't think there is with Google too? Apple is worst I'll grant you but no one's innocent. Hell Microsoft had to pay 10s of billions for that kinda shit on the 90s. And let's not even get started on Google or IOT where they stop running the service and you're just SOL. Apple give me privacy. Find a company that doesn't and doesn't have lock in and I'd switch in a heart beat but based on simple economics I doubt that's gonna happen any time soon
austinshea 7y ago
you're conflating issues. feature lock-in, and not feeling empowered to ignore the cloud services associated with the cellular phone you bought, are concerns. they are not security concerns. it's privacy built on a closed source platform. that's the point you're making.

by tfha 7y ago

vinay_ys 7y ago

On the surface, compared to Android, iOS is much more secure. It seems they ensure app sandbox is not violated by any app developer. No app can steal another apps data. You can prevent/revoke access to contacts, photos, sms, location, background execution, mobile data to any app from a central place. They allow 3rd-party apps for doing messaging (replaces iMessage), cloud storage (replaces icloud), firefox (replaces safari), 1password (replaces keychain) – all in a clean and easy way – with no ambiguity or confusion. But w.r.t end to end encryption claims, we just take them at their word. There is no formal verifiable proof. Recently we have repeatedly learnt the hard way to not trust corporations at they word. Without open-source and peer-reviewed cryptographic protocols and verifiable trusted execution models, it is not safe to believe it is truly end to end encrypted and nobody is spying.

maxxxxx 7y ago

I agree. They are sitting on more and more data they will be very tempted to use if they can’t hit their growth rates in the future. It would be better if no single entity had that much data.

ballenf 7y ago
Isn't Apple one of the few companies going out of their way to keep as much data as possible on-device instead of in the cloud? I agree that shareholders value margins over principles and that could be an issue for companies who do hold a lot of user data.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  With the push to more and more iCloud I would assume they have a lot of data but I am not sure.
  - xenospn 7y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but a core part of their messaging has been that they don't actually know what users are storing inside their cloud, has it not?
    - skewart 7y ago
      Maybe, but they can change that at any time. If they wanted to have visibility into iCloud data going forward they easily could. With Apple products, you're putting your privacy entirely in Apple's hands and assuming that their executives will continue to follow the same branding and product strategy that they've been pursuing for the past few years. That said, Apple is probably the least bad option for phone + cloud for most people. But it's sad that that's the case.
  - babypuncher 7y ago
    Didn't Apple prove to the FBI in court that they literally cannot access a users iCloud data without their password? Obviously that still isn't as trustworthy as open source tools you can verify yourself, but it's a far cry better than any privacy guarantee you're getting from Google.
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      > Didn't Apple prove to the FBI in court that they literally cannot access a users iCloud data without their password? No. Apple regularly hands over iCloud data to government investigator. In China, Apple handed over its keys, so the Chinese government does not even need to involve Apple to get iCloud data.

IOT_Apprentice 7y ago

I'm unclear about your iMessage comment, as Android or other platforms can send and receive messages just fine with users on iMessage. As a followup, how is Android, or chromium any better in that regard, given Googles plans to disallow proper adblocking as it interferes with their business model?

tfha 7y ago
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204270 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204270 There is a fix but Android users can have trouble being in iMessage groups. As for how is adroid better... well. It's really not. Just like AMD isn't really better than Intel for privacy and security. For many parts of the hardware stack, if you want to be in control of your own privacy, you pretty much have to drop back to 2000s era technology.
basch 7y ago
but then the whole family group message is green not blue.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  No, your family will have a thread without you, you will never see those messages. You can create a new thread but unless each of your family members deletes the old iMessage thread they will default to the old thread, which you are blocked from.
lern_too_spel 7y ago
> How is Android, or chromium any better in that regard, given Googles plans to disallow proper adblocking as it interferes with their business model? You can install Firefox on Android with ublock origin.

myself248 7y ago

Furthermore, they're based in a jurisdiction that's subject to warrantless blanket subpoenas with zero oversight. They may not be selling our data explicitly to the lowest bidder, but everything they gather is still accessible to whoever sits in the White House and whatever their minions think would be fun to dig up. What makes Apple different is that since their business model doesn't depend on gathering and selling our data, their infrastructure gathers less data. And it sounds like they've taken active steps to make sure they gather as little as possible and that it's as useless as possible for nefarious purposes. That takes extra effort in software design and testing, and they're hoping to see the return on that investment by explaining to their customers how that translates to value in our hands. If that's a stance they're actively taking, I think any reversal would eviscerate their image, and that's my reason to actually have a little faith. It's not as secure as some alternatives, but it's a lot easier to use, and in the real world where not everybody compiles things from source, that matters.

tomnipotent 7y ago
> but everything they gather is still accessible to whoever sits in the White House No it's not, stop spreading FUD. > It's not as secure as some alternatives Like what? Name one platform that offers all the services that Apple offers with the same level of security and privacy.
babypuncher 7y ago
Except Apple went to court and proved that they can't hand over this data even if they want to. US law allows law enforcement with a warrant to require Apple to hand over any data they have, but Apple isn't required to help them crack the users password so they can decrypt it.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  > but Apple isn't required to help them crack the users password so they can decrypt it. Apple would have to argue that in court. They would almost certainly lose.
Asmod4n 7y ago

FabHK 7y ago

There is some lock-in, but that's because the system integration works so well (Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch, etc.) that one is loath to switch, not because they actively lock up your data. Contacts, Calendar, Photos, documents all allow exports to commonly understood formats (and iTunes with some caveats). I would not currently consider alternative OSes because they'd not work as seamlessly for me, but if Apple became as bad as you envision, I'd be out in short order with basically all my data.

autoexec 7y ago
It's not that the system integration is so wonderful, it's that they make it extremely difficult to work outside of it for no reason. A few years ago I had a friend who wanted a song put on her iphone. I've never used one but I assumed I could do exactly what I've done with every other phone/MP3 player in the universe and just connect it to my laptop via USB and move the file over to some folder called "music" or something. Nope. Needs Itunes. I fire up a VM and install itunes, she has to log into everything and authorize the phone for that machine (with a warning that she can only do this so many times) and then I was able to get the file on her phone but not before it synced her entire library onto my machine (wtf). A few days later her friend is over and she wants the same song on her phone. I still have the VM with itunes installed so we give it a try and it wipes every song on her phone. The whole thing was 100% obnoxious and unnecessary. Really put me off of Apple when every other product "Just Works" while apple requires you to jump through insane hoops for basic functionality the moment you dare to Think Different and do something in a way other than exactly how they want you do things
- Asmod4n 7y ago
  Just ask Siri to play that song? Or search for it in the music app? Or was it from some Indy Band which only publishes on its own website? Then yeah, best bet to get it into a iPhone would be a browser with a download manager and Files App support. (iOS 13 will add a download manager to Safari)
  - autoexec 7y ago

dcosson 7y ago

I've been using iPhone and MacOS for years and successfully picking & choosing different parts of the ecosystem. Sure, the defaults are usually set up to opt you into their own products so it takes a bit of fiddling but it's not hard to opt into just the set of services you want to use - i.e. sync only particular services like iCloud Notes and password manager, but use gmail for email and calendars (using open formats to sync these natively to your phone), use dropbox instead if iCloud for file syncing, etc. It's very configurable and I don't feel particularly locked into anything. And iMessage seems like a particularly bad example of lock-in because you can take your identifier (phone number) with you. If you switch from iOS to Android pretty much all that happens from a user experience perspective is your message bubbles are now green instead of blue when you text your friends with iPhones. It's very seamless between SMS and iMessages as far as messaging platforms go. To the extent that group threads with your family become harder, that's because group SMS sucks, not because you're locked in to iMessage. It really seems like most of the time when people talk about lock in, all they mean is that the feature is particularly good. It does what I want and makes things easy, so there would be friction to change. How dare they build features like that!

babypuncher 7y ago
You lose a lot more than just message bubble colors when you switch away from iMessage. Multimedia quality takes a nosedive to 2006, reactions don't work, you lose encryption (SMS/MMS is not encrypted at all), and you miss out on all the other little things that make people like iMessage. Of course this isn't really Apple's fault, we can blame the cell carriers for being categorically uninterested in modernizing SMS or making it secure.
- laughinghan 7y ago
  Is multimedia quality between Android phones using MMS much better than iPhone-without-iMessage? I thought it's the same, which isn't lock-in, that's just iMessage being a superior service to MMS, and in fact the iPhone is going out of its way to not lock you in and allow MMS. On the other hand, if the iPhone is intentionally crippling MMS, that's pretty slimy lock-in.

geofft 7y ago

This is quite at odds with my experience with my iPhone, so I'm confused. I don't have an iCloud account. I'm not sure what "basic functions for a smartphone" I'm unable to use, but, I don't want my photos backed up to iCloud - I'll handle that on my own, for the photos I actually want somewhere other than on my local device. Everything otherwise seems to work. I don't use iMessage. I've ticked the little box that says to use regular SMS and not iMessage. (This was back when there were stories of people getting stuck on iMessage and losing messages when they switched to another OS, and I wasn't sure I wanted to buy into the Apple platform permanently. I could probably switch back now, since I've been a regular iOS user for years and I hear that https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ works.) Multi-party SMS works fine. Multi-party Signal, Hangouts, Slack, etc. chats also work great. Similarly, I don't use FaceTime, but I've got tons of messaging apps that support video calls on their own. Generally things have been fine, so I'm curious what specifically hasn't worked for you.

behnamoh 7y ago
I think the GP meant that without an Apple ID, you basically can't install apps to begin with, and most of the OS's apps also require an Apple ID to work to their fullest. However, I don't share the same degree of skepticism as the GP.
- geofft 7y ago
  I definitely have an Apple ID. But I don't have iCloud enabled, and without it, having an Apple ID doesn't bother me. My Apple ID isn't my normal email address and that hasn't been a problem: people don't contact me through it and Apple doesn't force me to publish it to others.
- davvolun 7y ago
  In practice, if not in theory, I think Android works the same way. Yes, there are other app stores, and yes you can install untrusted, but in practice, most people just use the Play Store (requiring a Google account) and if they allow untrusted or use another app store, it's not the default. I'm not arguing Apple and Google are the same, far from, but in this area, they seem the same to me for the majority of the population. (Android user)

tzakrajs 7y ago

I’m iOS 13 Siri is now interoperable with other maps and music providers on CarPlay. Apple is changing.

thatoneuser 7y ago

Your argument is "well maybe they won't be secure tomorrow and you're invested". Ok, but they are secure now and that's more than pretty much other major tech company. Yeah there's lock in with Apple, you don't think there is with Google too? Apple is worst I'll grant you but no one's innocent. Hell Microsoft had to pay 10s of billions for that kinda shit on the 90s. And let's not even get started on Google or IOT where they stop running the service and you're just SOL. Apple give me privacy. Find a company that doesn't and doesn't have lock in and I'd switch in a heart beat but based on simple economics I doubt that's gonna happen any time soon

austinshea 7y ago

you're conflating issues. feature lock-in, and not feeling empowered to ignore the cloud services associated with the cellular phone you bought, are concerns. they are not security concerns. it's privacy built on a closed source platform. that's the point you're making.