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It may not work perfectly for all people in all use cases, yet ... but I have to say I appreciate and admire Apple's initiative and the values that this approac

• ricw 4y ago
  It does have an immediate positive effect. People will likely switch to apple and trust it more. This means more service revenue, long term lock in and ultimately more profits. Im moving my to-be-paid-for personal google apps accounts over to iCloud for one. It’s not just a principled approach. Though it just makes sense. Thank god apple has minimal ad income only. Otherwise this wouldn’t happen.
  • bowsamic 4y ago
    The ad thing is why I stick with apple. I just feel much more comfortable paying for software and hardware that isn’t ad supported. I feel like I’m buying a product rather than being the product
    • lapcat 4y ago
      But Apple is ad supported: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-shaking-up-services-business-in-streaming-advertising-push-2022-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-shaking-up-services-bu...
      • bowsamic 4y ago
        Nowhere near to the degree of almost any other tech company I can think of
        • lapcat 4y ago
          True, but it's depressing that Apple has decided to go down that path. They've gone from $0 ad revenue to $billions and are obviously intent on increasing that revenue even more.
          • bowsamic 4y ago
            As long as there aren’t ads in my standard OS features, unlike Windows, I’m very grateful
            • lapcat 4y ago
              There are ads for Apple subscriptions in the Settings app. I've seen them myself.
              • bowsamic 4y ago
                It’s not interfering with my experience yet
      • lelandfe 4y ago
        Yeah, this direction worries me. I'm pretty fine with the search ads, but the moment they start trying to break into broader scopes it's going to be really hard for me to square it with a supposed reputation for privacy.
        • lapcat 4y ago
          > I'm pretty fine with the search ads Why? The cover story for App Store is that it's supposed to protect consumers, but then the consumer searches for an app literally by name, and the first hit is a completely different app that paid for an ad. How is that protecting consumers? Moreover, Apple added App Tracking Transparency, where the cover story is privacy, but coincidentally ATT has at the same time caused people to switch more to Search Ads, because third party ads have become less effective as a result. There's a conflict of interest here.
          • lelandfe 4y ago
            > How is that protecting consumers? Meh. I think the paid results are pretty well demarcated, and are, visually, nearly identical to what they looked like at launch in 2016. Competitors bidding on keywords is definitely lame.
• petesergeant 4y ago
  > It's not obvious that it immediately helps their bottom line In the UK phone operators have complained about it on the basis that: > [it allows Apple] to leverage its considerable market power into many areas of the market and thus being able to further entrench its position ... Network providers would no longer be able to use web traffic data over Safari to develop their own digital products and services that complete directly with Apple. For example, a network provider may no longer have access to information about a user's content viewing habits to develop their own content that competes with Apple TV. Similarly, a network provider may no longer be able to share consumer insight with third parties that provide digital advertizing services in competition with Apple Search Ads... How true that is, who knows, but it's an interesting angle on how it benefits Apple
  • AlexandrB 4y ago
    The entitlement of companies that make money on surveillance is staggering. There is no world where I want my ISP to have access to information about my content viewing habits. Why is this not an opt-in?
  • dlivingston 4y ago
    All that verbiage to effectively say: “we cannot track the user and monetize their data.”
    • headsoup 4y ago
      I guess the question is whether an end-to-end walled garden is a good solution to tracking or not? And whether Apple can only track their own services/apps or other user data/activity. Providing Safari makes it interesting
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • darkerside 4y ago
      It implies that Apple can and will use this data to inform its own products, which does seem anticompetitive. Whether that's true or not, I don't know.
• mindslight 4y ago
  I'm not a huge Apple fan, but I totally agree. Private Relay has its faults, but it seems poised to push back against commercial mass surveillance, in a way that niche usage of VPNs simply cannot dent. Now website operators have to ask themselves "Do I really want to hassle normies using iPhones with CAPTCHAs?". Traditionally, VPN/TOR users just bear that bullshit and pray websites do not alter the deal any further. But the mass market won't stand for that. Long term we've yet to see what the evolution will end up being (Apple could publish a list of their exit nodes for websites to whitelist, causing Mullvad et al to be left out in the cold), but for now I'm cautiously optimistic.
  • donmcronald 4y ago
    It really sucks when someone thinks they may have been phished an you need to review login logs to assess things. VPNs suck too, but it’s easy to tell people not to use them for business connections. Something from Apple will be marketed as being amazing even if it’s a net negative for some users.
  • dwaite 4y ago
    The exit nodes are published, mostly to get incorporated into geo-ip tables.
  • dixie_land 4y ago
    > poised to push back against commercial mass surveillance By consolidating all surveillance to Apple?
    • mindslight 4y ago
      For one, consolidation into just Apple is better than both websites and ISPs getting the surveillance data. People can also voluntarily choose to use Private Relay, whereas they can't generally make that choice for their last mile ISP (oligopoly) nor for the common surveillance systems that are used across websites (eg CAPTCHAs). For two, by hopefully making usage of VPNs more palatable to sites that are currently harassing what they perceive as the small segment of VPN users with blocks and CAPTCHAs. I admit that #2 is hopeful, and that we might just end up with those sites whitelisting Apple while continuing to hassle everyone else that wants to hide their IP. But I'd prefer to hope for now. Obviously the real long term answer is the development and adoption of secure protocols instead of centrally-named and centrally-served HTTPS/DNS, but that's orthogonal.
• latexr 4y ago
  > It's not obvious that it immediately helps their bottom line. Your comment ends with: > I appreciate that and it contributes to my overall respect for the company and its approach. Seems like a straightforward connection: Apple provides the feature → your trust in them increases[1] → you continue to buy from them and recommend them to other people. [1]: Especially relevant at a time where distrust of big tech companies is rising.
  • s3p 4y ago
    This. I don't think people understand that some Apple initiatives are driven by their values and a desire to do something good for the user. Also, this is part of a paid iCloud plan anyway, so it encourages people to pay for iCloud.
• lapcat 4y ago
  > It's not obvious that it immediately helps their bottom line. Besides requiring a paid iCloud+ subscription?
  • KennyBlanken 4y ago
    ...which did not have this feature beforehand (nor the email anonymization) and did not increase in price from a dollar a month. That's what iCloud 50GB cost in 2015, and they introduced these new features in 2021. Likely possible due to falling capex/opex costs for the storage, but still...they added multiple new features and didn't increase the price, even after a fairly substantial amount of inflation over those five to six years.
    • lapcat 4y ago
      I'm not sure what the argument is supposed to be here. Apple adds features to its hardware without raising the price. As a software developer, I add features to my software without raising the price. The point is to make the product more enticing so that more potential customers will buy it. If Apple wasn't trying to sell iCloud+ then it would have made iCloud Private Relay available to all Apple users without iCloud+. Apple is not a charity. This is sales 101.
      • fartcannon 4y ago
        They're the _least_ charitable, I'd say. Apples marketing is trying to push generous, kind, etc because it shifts the overton window about the companies main objective which from the outside appears to be make computers into appliances that you replace every year. Which would be fine if there marketing wasn't so effective. As it stands, they're an existential risk to the freedom we all currently enjoy in computing. And the environmental impact of pure disposable consumption devices is the kind of thing journalists will be talking about in 30 years - like oil and gas. And like oil and gas, they're very powerful and have great marketing.
        • otterley 4y ago
• bradgessler 4y ago
  I too laud Apple for their efforts, but I view them as a benevolent dictator. To me it’s obvious how this helps their bottom line: people are very interested in privacy and willing to pay top dollar for it. Every time I turn on an additional privacy service from Apple, I feel their grip tightening on my digital identity as they push themselves even more between me and the direct relationships I have with other websites. iCloud private relay, email aliases, and “Sign in with Apple” is their final act to completely dominate the relationship between their users and other web applications. I’m not bitter about it, but I do think it’s helpful and healthier to view Apple in this way and not mistake their efforts as altruistic. They’re simply a company trying to develop a profitable, high retention service… and they’re doing a damn good job at it.
  • sunshinerag 4y ago
    Glad that it is not altruistic. Much more better served with other incentives
  • _abox 4y ago
    The lock-in makes it impossible for me to use most of their services though. I need to access all my stuff on Mac but also on Windows and Linux. I wish there was a good privacy-embracing cloud platform that I could just pay for directly instead of via buying hardware as Apple does. iCloud private relay is a great idea but I need it on all my computers and phones. I use Firefox now but their VPN option doesn't hold a candle to what Apple offers with icloud relay. It's really a different thing altogether.
    • vineyardmike 4y ago
      > iCloud private relay is a great idea but I need it on all my computers and phones. Why? Why not just use a different VPN/Proxy service? A lot of apple features are available elsewhere like Sign-in-with-apple.
  • godelski 4y ago
    What's even worse is that a lot of their privacy and security features are designed to interact within the walled garden instead of purely security and privacy by default. Talk to another Apple user? Everything fine. Talk to an Android user, no more privacy and security. And good luck sending a video that doesn't look like it was filmed with a literal potato.
• ignoramous 4y ago
  Despite their take on privacy, I'd not be surprised if Apple also purchased a tonne of user data from brokers, however. At the end of the day, they are a very successful business that serves its own bottom line. The privacy angle for the mobile and browser ecosystem, in my eyes, is nothing but market positioning (as more or less anti-Android and anti-Chrome) even if they are engineering novel solutions such as the Private Relay. If they really cared, they wouldn't be in bed with Google for their search deal, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/technology/apple-google-search-antitrust.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/technology/apple-google-s...
  • kaba0 4y ago
    The average people associates search with Google — they would lose more by not providing it
• overtonwhy 4y ago
  If you’re reliant on their email services you’re less likely to cancel iCloud or switch mobile platforms.