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Can I doubt about the privacy advantages part? I've noticed that Apple really love to talk about such things. But, they are making string-attached proprietary e

by nirui 4y ago

Can I doubt about the privacy advantages part? I've noticed that Apple really love to talk about such things. But, they are making string-attached proprietary equipments behind a closed door, and as far as I know, they don't have a formal declaration on what exactly is the privacy that they've claimed to guard. So how to actually prove that they do care and protects user privacy instead of just use the word to make their ads more appearing?

thomastjeffery 4y ago
Your doubt is absolutely reasonable. I think it's also reasonable to trust Apple to actually implement the security and privacy features they claim to, because those features are a part of their product, which means their incentives are clearly aligned, and there is some professional auditing being done. I think it's even more reasonable to have a relative preference for Apple products, when compared to Google products, because Google's incentives are clearly perversely aligned against user privacy. Even so, the fact that AOSP can be readily audited by literally anyone does create a more provable reason to trust devices running Android. This does, unfortunately, have some serious limitations, like the fact that most Android devices can only run whatever closed-source AOSP fork the manufacturer flashes on it, and Android is considered generally incomplete without the closed-source Google Play store and its associated apps.
theshrike79 4y ago
Apple specifically does things the hard way so they don't need to know anything about you. Siri works mostly on-device and any queries are anonymised. This is one of the reasons why it's not as good as Google's Assistant. Assistant on the other hand is 100% cloud-based, but has been moving more to on-device. Same with Apple Maps, they cut any fetched route to multiple legs and fetch each individually so they won't accidentally know where you are going. All suggestions on possible destinations are based on on-device ML. Google's version just happily uploads every place you've ever been to the cloud and uses that to calculate possible destinations.

by nirui 4y ago

thomastjeffery 4y ago

Your doubt is absolutely reasonable. I think it's also reasonable to trust Apple to actually implement the security and privacy features they claim to, because those features are a part of their product, which means their incentives are clearly aligned, and there is some professional auditing being done. I think it's even more reasonable to have a relative preference for Apple products, when compared to Google products, because Google's incentives are clearly perversely aligned against user privacy. Even so, the fact that AOSP can be readily audited by literally anyone does create a more provable reason to trust devices running Android. This does, unfortunately, have some serious limitations, like the fact that most Android devices can only run whatever closed-source AOSP fork the manufacturer flashes on it, and Android is considered generally incomplete without the closed-source Google Play store and its associated apps.

theshrike79 4y ago

Apple specifically does things the hard way so they don't need to know anything about you. Siri works mostly on-device and any queries are anonymised. This is one of the reasons why it's not as good as Google's Assistant. Assistant on the other hand is 100% cloud-based, but has been moving more to on-device. Same with Apple Maps, they cut any fetched route to multiple legs and fetch each individually so they won't accidentally know where you are going. All suggestions on possible destinations are based on on-device ML. Google's version just happily uploads every place you've ever been to the cloud and uses that to calculate possible destinations.