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Apple’s pivot to privacy has more to do with marketing than with actual functionality.

by zozin 5y ago

Bud 5y ago
1) There was no "pivot"; this has been an Apple stance for a very long time. 2) It actually has a lot more to do with functionality than with marketing, as is obvious to even a casual observer. Apple hasn't really even marketed this as a big strength until relatively recently.
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  > Apple hasn't really even marketed this as a big strength until relatively recently. So is that the 'pivot' then? It has been an Apple stance because Apple has no internal need for your personalised data. They have no privacy related business model. But that is the extent to it. I don't think Apple cares one iota about personal privacy and they are happy to throw users to the fickle winds of censors in China and Russia.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    > So is that the 'pivot' then? No, it's highlighting a previously unlooked feature. > They have no privacy related business model. Not directly, but the issue is their only other legit competitor has an advertising business model directly inverse to a privacy model. Since they are selling a product, the product has to be what people want, and people are increasingly wanting more privacy.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      > No, it's highlighting a previously unlooked feature. That would be a marketing pivot... which is precisely what the original commenter suggested.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    > Apple has no internal need for your personalised data Then why is Apple recording and sending itself every single MAC address on your local network even when telemetry is turned off?
    - thealistra 5y ago
      I would assume related to this. https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/location-services/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/location-service... Or potentially to cloud sync this https://cafbit.com/post/rapid_dhcp_or_how_do/ https://cafbit.com/post/rapid_dhcp_or_how_do/
      - shkkmo 5y ago
        There is zero way that sending Apple all MAC addresses on the local network helps with either of those.
        threeseed 5y ago
        Of course it does. Apple has a database of "MAC address <-> GPS location" pairs. By knowing the MAC address and signal strength of devices around you it can triangulate the position of your device without needing an in-built GPS or celluar modem. It's what allows Macs in particular to know their location in a pretty accurate way.
        shkkmo 5y ago
        Reporting the MAC adress of the router and the current GPS location is all that is required for that (Google does this as well). Reporting the MAC address of all other devices on the network does absolutely nothing to help Apple provice location services and is a massive invasion of privacy that gives them the ability to build a conplete social graph and track the location history of people other than the iPhone owner. The paper states that iPhones do this even when "use of location is disabled" so your attempts to defend this practice on those grounds is completely absurd.
  - simonh 5y ago
    Apple has chosen not to have a privacy violating business model. They created a whole mapping service costing billions to avoid selling user data to Google. Back in the early days of the iPhone many analysts projected user data would be a massive business opportunity for Apple. Imagine what the social graph and activity stream of iPhone users must be worth. They walked away from that.
    - pixelgeek 5y ago
      > Apple has chosen not to have a privacy violating business model. Not doing something is not the same as taking a ethical stance against it and not doing it. You're presuming a motive on their part. > The created a whole mapping service costing billions to avoid selling user data to Google. I don't think for a second that they did this for any altruistic reasons. I think it had more to do with Google not shipping concurrent features for Google Maps on iOS. As soon as Apple Maps got better data Google started shipping features like step by step directions for Google Maps on iOS. It was a competitive response to Google.
      - dwaite 5y ago
        > I don't think for a second that they did this for any altruistic reasons. I think it had more to do with Google not shipping concurrent features for Google Maps on iOS. The messaging at the time was that as the Google Maps deal was ending, it turned out that all the features were on the table during renegotiation - but Google wanted accounts and location tracking and advertising in the core maps app. Google's claim is that they had no strategic info that Apple Maps was going to be released. The general feeling of the public is that Apple's QA department also had no info that it was going to be released. However, I suspect Apple knew that convergence of the phone with a GPS was a critical feature and thus they had to build and buy and bite and claw their way to have a competitive offering they controlled. Google's push for user telemetry during that renegotiation cycle may have prompted Apple to accelerate, and to launch before it was really ready. That said, Google was never going to stand still with Maps, so they had to launch with a feature deficit at some time to justify the product investment. Google and Apple have their own data sets and their own teams dedicated to tools as well as manual curation of that data.
- IX-103 5y ago
  If there was no pivot, then there wouldn't have been an API for getting a unique identifier for this device in the first place. Given that they only recently neutered this API, that seems like a pivot. If you consider that this change was only made in response to criticism that the ITP privacy protections added to Safari were forcing content creators to move from the open web to their app store to remain profitable, then the change seems more like it was forced by the PR pivot than something they were doing out of principle.

Apple’s pivot to privacy has more to do with marketing than with actual functionality.

by zozin 5y ago

Apple’s pivot to privacy has more to do with marketing than with actual functionality.

Bud 5y ago

1) There was no "pivot"; this has been an Apple stance for a very long time. 2) It actually has a lot more to do with functionality than with marketing, as is obvious to even a casual observer. Apple hasn't really even marketed this as a big strength until relatively recently.

pixelgeek 5y ago
> Apple hasn't really even marketed this as a big strength until relatively recently. So is that the 'pivot' then? It has been an Apple stance because Apple has no internal need for your personalised data. They have no privacy related business model. But that is the extent to it. I don't think Apple cares one iota about personal privacy and they are happy to throw users to the fickle winds of censors in China and Russia.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  > So is that the 'pivot' then? No, it's highlighting a previously unlooked feature. > They have no privacy related business model. Not directly, but the issue is their only other legit competitor has an advertising business model directly inverse to a privacy model. Since they are selling a product, the product has to be what people want, and people are increasingly wanting more privacy.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    > No, it's highlighting a previously unlooked feature. That would be a marketing pivot... which is precisely what the original commenter suggested.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  > Apple has no internal need for your personalised data Then why is Apple recording and sending itself every single MAC address on your local network even when telemetry is turned off?
  - thealistra 5y ago
    I would assume related to this. https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/location-services/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/location-service... Or potentially to cloud sync this https://cafbit.com/post/rapid_dhcp_or_how_do/ https://cafbit.com/post/rapid_dhcp_or_how_do/
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      There is zero way that sending Apple all MAC addresses on the local network helps with either of those.
      - threeseed 5y ago
        Of course it does. Apple has a database of "MAC address <-> GPS location" pairs. By knowing the MAC address and signal strength of devices around you it can triangulate the position of your device without needing an in-built GPS or celluar modem. It's what allows Macs in particular to know their location in a pretty accurate way.
        shkkmo 5y ago
        Reporting the MAC adress of the router and the current GPS location is all that is required for that (Google does this as well). Reporting the MAC address of all other devices on the network does absolutely nothing to help Apple provice location services and is a massive invasion of privacy that gives them the ability to build a conplete social graph and track the location history of people other than the iPhone owner. The paper states that iPhones do this even when "use of location is disabled" so your attempts to defend this practice on those grounds is completely absurd.
- simonh 5y ago
  Apple has chosen not to have a privacy violating business model. They created a whole mapping service costing billions to avoid selling user data to Google. Back in the early days of the iPhone many analysts projected user data would be a massive business opportunity for Apple. Imagine what the social graph and activity stream of iPhone users must be worth. They walked away from that.
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    > Apple has chosen not to have a privacy violating business model. Not doing something is not the same as taking a ethical stance against it and not doing it. You're presuming a motive on their part. > The created a whole mapping service costing billions to avoid selling user data to Google. I don't think for a second that they did this for any altruistic reasons. I think it had more to do with Google not shipping concurrent features for Google Maps on iOS. As soon as Apple Maps got better data Google started shipping features like step by step directions for Google Maps on iOS. It was a competitive response to Google.
    - dwaite 5y ago
      > I don't think for a second that they did this for any altruistic reasons. I think it had more to do with Google not shipping concurrent features for Google Maps on iOS. The messaging at the time was that as the Google Maps deal was ending, it turned out that all the features were on the table during renegotiation - but Google wanted accounts and location tracking and advertising in the core maps app. Google's claim is that they had no strategic info that Apple Maps was going to be released. The general feeling of the public is that Apple's QA department also had no info that it was going to be released. However, I suspect Apple knew that convergence of the phone with a GPS was a critical feature and thus they had to build and buy and bite and claw their way to have a competitive offering they controlled. Google's push for user telemetry during that renegotiation cycle may have prompted Apple to accelerate, and to launch before it was really ready. That said, Google was never going to stand still with Maps, so they had to launch with a feature deficit at some time to justify the product investment. Google and Apple have their own data sets and their own teams dedicated to tools as well as manual curation of that data.
IX-103 5y ago
If there was no pivot, then there wouldn't have been an API for getting a unique identifier for this device in the first place. Given that they only recently neutered this API, that seems like a pivot. If you consider that this change was only made in response to criticism that the ITP privacy protections added to Safari were forcing content creators to move from the open web to their app store to remain profitable, then the change seems more like it was forced by the PR pivot than something they were doing out of principle.