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I understand why Cloudflare wants this (marketing, as well as being able to serve their customer’s content through restrictions, thus making them more valuable

I understand why Cloudflare wants this (marketing, as well as being able to serve their customer’s content through restrictions, thus making them more valuable to those customers), but why does Apple want this? My knee-jerk is that they want to further hide/make unstoppable things like the Gatekeeper network checks, but there has to be more right?

PartiallyTyped 6y ago
It is part of their marketing. The fact that others sell or actively use your data, e.g. google, facebook, microsoft, apple was handed the opportunity to charge a premium for the absence of such tracking and data usage. If you watch the presentations, they branded/poised themselves as the privacy centric approach.
- joshspankit 6y ago
  I see your point about how they (will) position it, but I’m still curious about their actual motives.
  - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
    Exactly that. It strengthens their image amidst the whole ordeal with app signatures. It is equivalent to investing for an ad.
  - Kalium 6y ago
    As a preface, I am about to describe something I personally view as absolutely horrific. Please, dear reader, in no way interpret these comments as approving. Privacy is a luxury. It's something rich people buy and poor people can't afford to concern themselves with. Apple sells a luxury product, and has no particular stake in invading customer privacy at the moment (iAd was never successful enough to change that). So they add a feature to their status symbol to address the concerns of their customer base and work with a partner company that can actually deploy it.
simonh 6y ago
Why would Apple care about hiding Gatekeeper traffic from internet providers?
- joshspankit 6y ago
  I’m guessing they want to hide it more from users. The recent bypassing of local firewalls shows this, for example.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Wouldn't it still show up in netstat?
    - joshspankit 6y ago
      https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/1318465421796782082 https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/1318465421796782082
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    The bypassing has nothing to do with wanting to hide it from users Even if they did care about hiding it, they know how trivial it would be to discover it, as we already saw only hours after the release. And those lookups have nothing to do with DNS, so this wouldn’t help nor hurt anything related to that.
    - joshspankit 6y ago
      The bypassing has to do with exerting their control despite user wishes. Hiding “complexity” from users is one method that is at the core of Apple’s brand. Yes, very smart people uncover this kind of thing regularly, but the trend feels like Apple is just trying to refine the process until they have a “perfectly secure” device by virtue of the fact that not even legitimate owners are able to enforce their wishes when those wishes are counter to Apple’s mandates.
      - 6y ago
ChrisRR 6y ago
2 reasons I can think of. Firstly, Apple loves to act like they are always taking your privacy very seriously (of course that's not always true), so for the cost of a few engineers, they get a massive marketing point. "We take your privacy so seriously that we developed a new protocol to do so" Secondly, Apple has an awful case of NIH syndrome. If they didn't develop it themselves, they would rather develop it from scratch themselves
- alwillis 6y ago
  Secondly, Apple has an awful case of NIH syndrome. If they didn't develop it themselves, they would rather develop it from scratch themselves Not when it comes to security and privacy. They knew DoH and DoT were good, but not good enough when it comes to privacy, which explains why they didn't just implement it like Google and Firefox did. Instead, the worked with Cloudflare to standardize something that's better.

PartiallyTyped 6y ago

It is part of their marketing. The fact that others sell or actively use your data, e.g. google, facebook, microsoft, apple was handed the opportunity to charge a premium for the absence of such tracking and data usage. If you watch the presentations, they branded/poised themselves as the privacy centric approach.

joshspankit 6y ago
I see your point about how they (will) position it, but I’m still curious about their actual motives.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  Exactly that. It strengthens their image amidst the whole ordeal with app signatures. It is equivalent to investing for an ad.
- Kalium 6y ago
  As a preface, I am about to describe something I personally view as absolutely horrific. Please, dear reader, in no way interpret these comments as approving. Privacy is a luxury. It's something rich people buy and poor people can't afford to concern themselves with. Apple sells a luxury product, and has no particular stake in invading customer privacy at the moment (iAd was never successful enough to change that). So they add a feature to their status symbol to address the concerns of their customer base and work with a partner company that can actually deploy it.

simonh 6y ago

Why would Apple care about hiding Gatekeeper traffic from internet providers?

joshspankit 6y ago
I’m guessing they want to hide it more from users. The recent bypassing of local firewalls shows this, for example.
- simonh 6y ago
  Wouldn't it still show up in netstat?
  - joshspankit 6y ago
    https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/1318465421796782082 https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/1318465421796782082
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  The bypassing has nothing to do with wanting to hide it from users Even if they did care about hiding it, they know how trivial it would be to discover it, as we already saw only hours after the release. And those lookups have nothing to do with DNS, so this wouldn’t help nor hurt anything related to that.
  - joshspankit 6y ago
    The bypassing has to do with exerting their control despite user wishes. Hiding “complexity” from users is one method that is at the core of Apple’s brand. Yes, very smart people uncover this kind of thing regularly, but the trend feels like Apple is just trying to refine the process until they have a “perfectly secure” device by virtue of the fact that not even legitimate owners are able to enforce their wishes when those wishes are counter to Apple’s mandates.
    - 6y ago

ChrisRR 6y ago

2 reasons I can think of. Firstly, Apple loves to act like they are always taking your privacy very seriously (of course that's not always true), so for the cost of a few engineers, they get a massive marketing point. "We take your privacy so seriously that we developed a new protocol to do so" Secondly, Apple has an awful case of NIH syndrome. If they didn't develop it themselves, they would rather develop it from scratch themselves

alwillis 6y ago
Secondly, Apple has an awful case of NIH syndrome. If they didn't develop it themselves, they would rather develop it from scratch themselves Not when it comes to security and privacy. They knew DoH and DoT were good, but not good enough when it comes to privacy, which explains why they didn't just implement it like Google and Firefox did. Instead, the worked with Cloudflare to standardize something that's better.