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It’s one of their weirder decisions. You can’t claim to be privacy king while simultaneously doing something like this. Maybe this is caused by Apple department

by vimy 6y ago

It’s one of their weirder decisions. You can’t claim to be privacy king while simultaneously doing something like this. Maybe this is caused by Apple departments being siloed. The privacy champions are in a different silo?

blauditore 6y ago
I have the impression that Apple's privacy marketing was just an opportunity grab because they noticed they were doing slightly better than competitors. The recent reveal of MacOS calling home and lack of any significant reaction is a strong indicator this was all just lip service.
- webmobdev 6y ago
  Spot-on - it is just a lip-service, and initiated after Jolla launched its Sailfish OS phone. Jolla was started by a bunch of ex-Nokia engineers who were working on the next-gen mobile OS, before Microsoft scuttled it. The Jolla phone outsold the iPhones in some countries in Europe when it was launched ( https://www.gsmarena.com/jolla_outsells_iphone_5c_and_iphone_5s_at_finnish_carrier_dna-news-7464.php https://www.gsmarena.com/jolla_outsells_iphone_5c_and_iphone... ). Unfortunately, they couldn't maintain their momentum and had to get out of the business of making phones. (They still make their mobile OS, and you can buy a license for it and install it on some Sony phones). At that time, Apple even had an ad-network for apps, and had got embroiled in the PRISM scandal (Apple, and other American corporate were selling their users data to US government agencies - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants... ). Jolla was marketed with a focus on privacy. To counter the bad publicity and the threat from a potential startup, they partly shut-down their ad-network ( https://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/15/apple-to-shut-down-iad-app-network-on-june-30 https://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/15/apple-to-shut-dow... ) and started marketing their new found love for privacy. But from the get-go, it was never about user privacy - their goal was to ensure that the users data remained siloed within their eco-system, and their competitors couldn't get access to it. They also used the "privacy" angel as an excuse to further close down their devices, and make it incompatible with anything not approved by them. (Note that it was due to their ad-network and because Apple wants access to users data that iPhones / iPad don't give you the ability to control what app can or cannot connect to the internet. This is still the case, except if you are on cellular data; if you are on Wifi though, an app cannot be blocked. While all the new labeling "transparency" feature and telling the user what data an app will gather from you is good, the feature that would really benefit every one better is the ability to block apps from connecting to the internet itself in the first place!).
  - jchook 6y ago
    A key supporting point to this theory: Apple does not encrypt user iCloud backups end-to-end[1]. 1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
michaelcampbell 6y ago
They typically are in big companies. "If you're able to do your job, [Security/SecOps/IT] isn't doing theirs" and all that. It's a natural outgrowth of a corporate "efficiency" mandate that puts functional groups together vs. cross-functional groups. That pendulum is ever swinging.
webmobdev 6y ago
No, it is a deliberate business decision - they are moving towards converting the macOS into a closed sytem like ios.
legacynl 6y ago
> It’s one of their weirder decisions. You can’t claim to be privacy king while simultaneously doing something like this. Maybe this is caused by Apple departments being siloed. The privacy champions are in a different silo? They never claimed to be the 'privacy king'. They just suggested it, and people took the bait. Apple is a company, and as such are only allowed to care about their bottom line. If privacy aligns with their bottom line, they'll use it for easy advertisement and goodwill, but if it doesn't then they'll forego privacy just as easily.
- FabHK 6y ago
  > Apple is a company, and as such are only allowed to care about their bottom line. That's a myth. It is neither descriptively the case, nor normatively an obligation, that a company maximise profits to the detriment of everything else. There is no such law, legal or economic. (There is shareholder value theory in economics which suggests that shareholder value maximisation is the optimal solution to the principal-agent problem, but that rests on very restrictive and utterly unrealistic conditions. Furthermore, shareholder value optimisation is not the same as short-term profit maximisation, either.)
  - shawnz 6y ago
    Of course they are talking about the fiduciary duty of directors to act in the best interest of the company (which is not a myth). And who says that profit maximization necessarily has to be "short-term"? Clearly, marketing themselves on strong privacy guarantees is a long-term strategy.
dahfizz 6y ago
Maybe its because "privacy champion" is nothing but their marketing. They don't care about their users or their privacy one bit.

by vimy 6y ago

blauditore 6y ago

I have the impression that Apple's privacy marketing was just an opportunity grab because they noticed they were doing slightly better than competitors. The recent reveal of MacOS calling home and lack of any significant reaction is a strong indicator this was all just lip service.

webmobdev 6y ago
Spot-on - it is just a lip-service, and initiated after Jolla launched its Sailfish OS phone. Jolla was started by a bunch of ex-Nokia engineers who were working on the next-gen mobile OS, before Microsoft scuttled it. The Jolla phone outsold the iPhones in some countries in Europe when it was launched ( https://www.gsmarena.com/jolla_outsells_iphone_5c_and_iphone_5s_at_finnish_carrier_dna-news-7464.php https://www.gsmarena.com/jolla_outsells_iphone_5c_and_iphone... ). Unfortunately, they couldn't maintain their momentum and had to get out of the business of making phones. (They still make their mobile OS, and you can buy a license for it and install it on some Sony phones). At that time, Apple even had an ad-network for apps, and had got embroiled in the PRISM scandal (Apple, and other American corporate were selling their users data to US government agencies - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants... ). Jolla was marketed with a focus on privacy. To counter the bad publicity and the threat from a potential startup, they partly shut-down their ad-network ( https://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/15/apple-to-shut-down-iad-app-network-on-june-30 https://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/15/apple-to-shut-dow... ) and started marketing their new found love for privacy. But from the get-go, it was never about user privacy - their goal was to ensure that the users data remained siloed within their eco-system, and their competitors couldn't get access to it. They also used the "privacy" angel as an excuse to further close down their devices, and make it incompatible with anything not approved by them. (Note that it was due to their ad-network and because Apple wants access to users data that iPhones / iPad don't give you the ability to control what app can or cannot connect to the internet. This is still the case, except if you are on cellular data; if you are on Wifi though, an app cannot be blocked. While all the new labeling "transparency" feature and telling the user what data an app will gather from you is good, the feature that would really benefit every one better is the ability to block apps from connecting to the internet itself in the first place!).
- jchook 6y ago
  A key supporting point to this theory: Apple does not encrypt user iCloud backups end-to-end[1]. 1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

michaelcampbell 6y ago

They typically are in big companies. "If you're able to do your job, [Security/SecOps/IT] isn't doing theirs" and all that. It's a natural outgrowth of a corporate "efficiency" mandate that puts functional groups together vs. cross-functional groups. That pendulum is ever swinging.

webmobdev 6y ago

No, it is a deliberate business decision - they are moving towards converting the macOS into a closed sytem like ios.

legacynl 6y ago

> It’s one of their weirder decisions. You can’t claim to be privacy king while simultaneously doing something like this. Maybe this is caused by Apple departments being siloed. The privacy champions are in a different silo? They never claimed to be the 'privacy king'. They just suggested it, and people took the bait. Apple is a company, and as such are only allowed to care about their bottom line. If privacy aligns with their bottom line, they'll use it for easy advertisement and goodwill, but if it doesn't then they'll forego privacy just as easily.

FabHK 6y ago
> Apple is a company, and as such are only allowed to care about their bottom line. That's a myth. It is neither descriptively the case, nor normatively an obligation, that a company maximise profits to the detriment of everything else. There is no such law, legal or economic. (There is shareholder value theory in economics which suggests that shareholder value maximisation is the optimal solution to the principal-agent problem, but that rests on very restrictive and utterly unrealistic conditions. Furthermore, shareholder value optimisation is not the same as short-term profit maximisation, either.)
- shawnz 6y ago
  Of course they are talking about the fiduciary duty of directors to act in the best interest of the company (which is not a myth). And who says that profit maximization necessarily has to be "short-term"? Clearly, marketing themselves on strong privacy guarantees is a long-term strategy.

dahfizz 6y ago

Maybe its because "privacy champion" is nothing but their marketing. They don't care about their users or their privacy one bit.