31 ms·

this announcement is huge in multiple ways: 1) they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music indust

by ir77 4y ago

this announcement is huge in multiple ways: 1) they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry. 2) details of what they backup securely, besides photos (which is top priority for me): iCloud Drive: Includes Pages, Keynote, and Numbers documents, PDFs, Safari downloads, or any other files manually or automatically saved to iCloud Drive. 3)BUT, perhaps the BIGGEST news here is that Apple is making a backup statement to what they've been saying for years and what they've recently gotten negative attention on: They don't want your data. They're not Goodle/FB/Amazon. They're giving you 2TB+ of space and you can encrypt it to the point that you'll lose your data and they don't care -- they don't want to mine your data, they don't want to know what you store on there, the don't care to scan your pictures with AI 20 different ways, they don't want to monetize it, etc, etc., just pay them money for their service and transactionally they give you only thing that you want in return -- reliable, secure, private service. seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river.

account-5 4y ago
> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Count me in amongst the salmon then.
gigel82 4y ago
It's good to be passionate, but blind devotion is dangerous, especially since we already know by now Apple is positioning itself to become a major player in the advertising space and - with a dwindling economy and an increased pressure to sustained growth from shareholders - that's going to continuously encroach on our privacy guarantees for monetization purposes. I'm advocating for an open and interoperable ecosystem of operating systems, services and applications, which is the only way to ensure sustainable customer freedom. Unfortunately that ecosystem doesn't exist yet so we're stuck with the duopoly of evil-doers (and while Google openly admits it is their business model to monetize you and your data, Apple has been caught with their hands in the cookie jar a bunch of times already and they're just developing a sweet tooth, so...). Full disclosure: I've been using only iPhones for 12 years and am still using one today.
- katbyte 4y ago
  outside of appstore ads and ios ads for their services, where is apple doing advertising?
  - falcolas 4y ago
    Throughout their News app for one.
    - sn0wf1re 4y ago
      And "news" in Stocks
      - nomel 4y ago
        Are these ads? If I see a large derivative, I can usually glance down at the relevant news to see why. More often than not, it says "No Recent Stories", which shouldn't be the case for an ad. The news articles in the main view are just top business stories from Apple News. I don't see anything ad like at all, actually.
    - thewebcount 4y ago
      Yeah, this has been so depressing to see. I disliked that there were ads when I signed up, but it was part of a bundle with other things (arcade, music, tv, fitness, etc.), so I gave it a try. But they've been increasing in frequency and they've been added to places they didn't exist before (like when you swipe to see the next article). It's still nowhere near as bad as reading a web page without an ad blocker, but it's definitely past my threshold of pain, and so I'm just using it less. I want the other things in the bundle, so they'll count me as a subscriber, but I'm using it less each day. What's particularly odd is that some articles have no ads at all. Some have the same ad repeated literally 3-5 times in a short 1,000 word article. And the ads are all trash. They seem like those awful chum-boxes you see on web sites. Who in their right mind thought this would be appealing to the typical Apple user? I mean, regardless, I have never intentionally clicked on any ad on the web in 30 years, and I'm not going to start now. It's sad because it's exposed me to regional newspapers from around the world. I live in California and see articles from newspapers in Idaho, Utah, Connecticut, upstate New York, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, etc. and even from other (mostly English-speaking) countries like Canada, England, Ireland, Isreal, and Australia. They even include some (English-language) stuff from China. I don't normally see news sources that diverse on the web because it takes more effort. But the ads just make it not worth it to continue using.
yunwal 4y ago
> anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river Ok, come on. What apple’s done here is great, and I personally use an iPhone, but you couldn’t think of a good reason to use anything else? An open-source OS?
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Any phone that doesn't trust the user to install software shouldn't be called "consumer centric".
- kaba0 4y ago
  The GNU/linux distros (in contrast to android) available for mobile phones are so far from usable, it is not funny. Android is a viable choice, but only if it doesn’t come with all the shit from the vendo/Google, which gives you effectively.. a pixel phone with GrapheneOS? Not too much of a choice, especially if you would like to filter based on hardware as well (where apple is just laughably ahead, iphones are ~2 generations ahead in raw performance)
  - danShumway 4y ago
    I don't bring this up to start an argument, only because someone reading might look at this comment and assume they can't use a DeGoogled ROM for their phone unless it's a mainline Google flagship -- but LineageOS maintains a list of fairly lengthy list of supported devices, so if you want to use something other than your phone's stock ROM, you should definitely check to see if it's supported, it very well might be. I also encourage people to check if their devices are supported by LineageOS when they run past their support period, it can be a good way to keep getting security updates past official support windows. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Good point, though pay very close attention for which device you have, some vendors (e.g. Sony) will wipe their camera’s fancy firmware or pull similar shenanigans. That way the tradeoff may very well not be worth it.
_chu1 4y ago
[flagged]
- iamjake648 4y ago
  Except for the 88 million who do?
- selectodude 4y ago
  That's "quite literally" not true as I use Apple Music. So there you go.
- macshome 4y ago
  If around 80 million subscribers is nobody, then you are correct.
dzikimarian 4y ago
* They have tons of your data anyway, lots of which is more valuable for advertising than backup of your photos. * They are more and more into advertising business https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32520894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32520894 * Their executives admit that they want you and your family locked into their ecosystem (leaked emails). Sorry, but advocating for them seems like very bad idea. Google was cool, pro-customer company once too. Until they had position to not be anymore. Open standards, without any vendor lock are only reasonable way.
richrichardsson 4y ago
> They're giving you 2TB+ of space I think you and I have vastly different ideas about what "giving" means. I get 5GB of iCloud storage, unless I pay them £6.99/month for 2TB. No idea what the rate is over 2TB. Have I missed a trick to getting this 2TB+? (I have 7 Apple devices in my possession and have owned a further 2 that I've passed on to my kids; given the premium I paid for those I almost expect that I should get 5GB PER DEVICE, but of course that's fairly unreasonable in reality)
- jshier 4y ago
  You can't even get over 2TB unless you subscribe to Apple One and even then you only get another 2TB. Pretty useless as a large scale backup service if the maximum you can ever pay them for is 4TB.
  - mvanbaak 4y ago
    Per user. I know you would probably like to backup your linux isos to icloud but besides that the 4tb per account/user is pretty much all one would need. This is for personal use, not business ;)
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - another_story 4y ago
      Been seeing a lot more of these snarky sort of comments on HN as of late, and its not encouraging. Can we keep it civil without making light jabs at others preferences or tech needs?
      - exodust 4y ago
        Oh come on, that's over-sensitive. The person made a lightweight remark, complete with wink at its conclusion. It was on topic and conveyed information. Your reaction is derailment because you grabbed the wheel and steered the topic down a road about you and your expectations of discussion standards. Part of respectable human interaction includes humorous, short and sharp casual responses on occasion. In this case, the post was replying to someone who called Apple's storage limit "pretty useless"... so we're well and truly in the fun zone of casual conversation. Not sure what you're seeking, the equivalent of a formal meeting with diplomats and official representatives?
counttheforks 4y ago
> 1) they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry. This is an excellent point as to why you shouldn't even bother trying to develop software for apple machines. If it's anywhere near successful apple will just destroy you, after having taken a 30% cut from your revenue for years.
- juve1996 4y ago
  Apple will destroy you regardless, they're a megacorp. If the software is good but only on windows they'll just make their own.
- pixl97 4y ago
  - behnamoh 4y ago
    I get this sentiment, but where do we draw the line? Shouldn’t OS makers (Apple, Microsoft) add additional apps just because third party developers have done it already?
    - pixl97 4y ago
      I would state it as this "If you buy a phone or general purpose computing device, you have the legal right to choose your app store and applications installed on it seperate from manufacture demands". The particular problem with Apple is not only duplicate your app, they can underprice it by 30% because they don't self pay their own store tax, and they can kick you out of the only app store for whatever reason they choose to make up that day.
      - Cheezmeister 4y ago
        > If you buy a phone or general purpose computing device Point of clarity, the devices we are discussing are neither telephones, nor are they general purpose. They are smartphones, a sort of miniature computer with a bunch of general-purpose sensors, and actuators viz. a screen and a speaker and some haptic feedback. They don't really do much computing per se; we outsourced most of that to The Cloud some 15-odd years ago. These things are just highly capable I/O devices, or clever terminals if you prefer. And while Android has the PlayStore or whatever they call it this week, one can usually choose to load rogue APKs and one can usually succeed; and things like the Pinephone or Fairphone have been attempted that leave more power (and responsibility) in the hands of the user, but in practice it seems that they simply don't _work_ that well. I agree with you wholeheartedly; I just think the "if" part is a bit out of sync with reality.
WhackyIdeas 4y ago
Yeah but it’s still basically the great philosophical question of the douche or the turd sandwich. With everything that has happened with Apple since Job’s death, my trust has been eroded so much that yeah I still use Apple but they are the turd sandwich at the end of the day. I trust Google a percent or two less. I like that they are doing with this E2E encryption. It protects against hackers better. It doesn’t protect against Apple though… they will still continue to sell the analytics on you. Which is fine if you don’t care.
scientism 4y ago
They mine your data as long as it can be converted into a marketable product for them. The most recent example was this: https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/21/ios-privacy-concerns-deepen/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/21/ios-privacy-concerns-deepen/ Maybe images/photos isn't something they want to expand at this moment in time but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
- behnamoh 4y ago
  They might mine your data BEFORE it leaves your device. Thanks to the new A chips, Apple can definitely do that.
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    This. Technically the iphone can process images locally. Photos app shows what is in the picture (faces, pets, food) and can do ocr on text in screenshots and photos. This is a very real possibility to outsource the processing to your device.
    - nonameiguess 4y ago
      The camera itself does software processing and you can't encrypt the light. It detects faces even before you click the shutter for capture. There is no way to keep the device itself from ever knowing what it was looking at. Something that sensitive is something you don't photograph.
      - mejutoco 4y ago
        we agree I believe. I am saying that technically the device gets thst information on-device, and could send it. Idk if that is the case, but it is possible. Edit:The ocr and face recognition on the iphone is definitely more advanced than usual, thanks to the custom hardware on device.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
thrashh 4y ago
Very few people I know who choose Spotify vs Apple Music or iCloud vs Google Photos know anything about hi-res music or E2E encryption Outside tech people I know at least
- yreg 4y ago
  Hi-res music isn't important, but E2EE is. It's fine that very few people care Apple is very good at attracting customers without it anyway, so it's not the classical situation where we, tech people should feel sorry that non-tech people "just don't get it" and don't use Apple services. And lastly, if indeed no customers care, then that speaks for even bigger respect toward the individuals working at Apple who pushed for this and made it happen. (But I think Apple believes this will be a good business decision, not altruism.)
gtvwill 4y ago
>>>seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Lol I would never advocate for any company I engage with to use apple products. Why? Because they suck.iphoto and iCloud are pieces of trash. Most basic thing like, delete local but keep cloud copy seems to be missing. Can't keep a iPhone synced and do this with iCloud. Lulz worthy sitcho. Also can't even copy files off device easily. Can't put custom apps on devices easily. The company actively kicks back against things like, freedom of information, following standards, reducing e-waste. You know some of us make decisions around the companies we support on greater levels than just feature a or b is present in device. Apple are a predatory company that in no way promote a software or hardware ecosystem that is ethical imho and they don't promote one I want to participate in. I wouldn't touch their shit with a barge pole and ontop of this due to being IT everytime I'm forced to I'm mostly confused by wtf folks think is so great. I legit find the kids toy ux difficult to work with, borderline impossible. I also like blowing clients away with simple tasks like....copying photos to a usb...browsing files on my phone on a pc. You know the basic stuff like they used to do when they were younger but apple cucked it along the way for zero reason lol.
- jdiez17 4y ago
  > Also can't even copy files off device easily. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33898890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33898890. > Can't put custom apps on devices easily. You will, from May, thanks to the EU Digital Markets act. > [...] simple tasks like....copying photos to a usb...browsing files on my phone on a pc. You can do this with ifuse: https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse
  - gtvwill 4y ago
    May isn't today. Downloading some random GitHub app to access a phones storage sure as shit won't be happening on any managed corporate devices I deploy. Or unmanaged devices tbh. That's the kinda shit I leave for quarantined VMs. Data is still not easily accessible once it's on a iPhone.
logic_probe 4y ago
> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. That's an awfully bold statement! I'm quite happy in the Microsoft ecosystem for OneDrive, etc, and I'm not reading this and jumping to Apple. I'm not sure if most people care about these claims, and the people who are very security aware probably don't believe them.
namdnay 4y ago
> They're giving you 2TB+ of space No they don’t. They sell it to you
tehlike 4y ago
Apple wants your data as much as other companies, except they don't want this _specific_ data. Otherwise apple likes to track your moves in the areas they do advertising on as much as everyone else.
youniverse 4y ago
What about something like proton mail? They also have encrypted drive I believe but I'm not sure.
eastbound 4y ago
> the don't care to scan your pictures with AI 20 different ways They actually systematically scan photos and declare people to the police if IA determines it looks wrong. With Apple, you’re at risk of losing your business just like with any other company who wants your data. Apple didn’t solve the “An offline account is better than a Cloud account” problem.
- yreg 4y ago
  >They actually systematically scan photos and declare people to the police if IA determines it looks wrong. Obviously the commenter is talking about the new E2EE plan. No way to scan it then, under they do it on device, which they also walked away from.
- timmytokyo 4y ago
  > They actually systematically scan photos and declare people to the police if IA determines it looks wrong. Apple was developing this technology, but they dropped their plans. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/7/23498588/apple-csam-icloud-photos-scanning-encryption https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/7/23498588/apple-csam-iclou...
  - propogandist 4y ago
    temporarily, due to public outcry from many groups
dancemethis 4y ago
...You believe them? After PRISM and all the things revealed in the last decade and half? They DO want people's data, and they DO hoard it. If they didn't, they would share the source code with the community.
- kaba0 4y ago
  That’s a non sequitur. Also, there is no reliable way to check whether a given source code is the actually deployed version, neither on servers, nor local devices.
Iv 4y ago
Give me open source dev tools for the iPhone and I'll jump. While it is a closed garden, I'll begrudgingly accept it can be marginally better in some fields than other options, but Apple tries very hard to be a proprietary island in a world that has switched to free software.
- HL33tibCe7 4y ago
  That really isn’t true when it comes to phones, though.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    The world of phones is based on free software. Android is based on the Linux kernel and AOSP - iOS is based on XNU, which is a combination of GNU implementations and BSD patches.
widowlark 4y ago
Apple offers hi res audio, but most cant and wont take advantage of it. Why? because most users of apple music use AirPods, and apple claims lossless wireless audio is not possible (despite the existence of LDAC). Therefore, you are streaming hi res audio to your phone only to downscale it when listening via your headset. Only people who really benefit are carriers, who can rate limit your data. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183#:~:text=Can%20I%20listen%20to%20lossless%20audio%20over%20Bluetooth%3F,don't%20support%20lossless%20audio https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183#:~:text=Can%20I%20l....
- ir77 4y ago
  "most can't and won't take advantage" of it is a broad statement. i would think there are a lot more DAC/lighting adapters and analog headphones in the world than there are of AirPods, anyone that wants to listen to CD (16/44) quality can probably do so for free or a few $ already. my home "hi-fi" now consists of an old iPhone 8+ hooked up to a DAC piped into my receiver utilizing 24/96 setting from iTunes, no longer need for Tidal or Qobuz.
  - widowlark 4y ago
    This is true for wired headphones, definitely. My statement was broad, but was aimed at wireless headphones, apologies for the confusion
- kaba0 4y ago
  With high enough “resolution” does it really matter? (Don’t trying to start a fight, genuinely curious as I’m not too well versed in audio) We don’t cry over bitmaps vs vector graphics in most contexts, especially that the hardware is trivially limited. It’s probably a bit more nuanced with speakers, but I imagine that they also have very real limits on distinguishable outputs for a given input, even if it is not as trivial to see as in the case of a w*h pixel grid of depth n.
  - widowlark 4y ago
    It does to some - I recently rediscovered my love of CD's and was surprised to find they sounded much better than I remembered - I am currently in the process of upgrading my music to CD quality and higher, and was equally surprised to find that Apple doesnt support a hi-res codec for their wireless headphones, even though they offer hi-res music. For me, it makes their $549 (!!!) AirPod Max product extremely confusing, laughable even. So yes, I think mp3/aac to CD, the change is very noticable. CD to HD (24bit), not so much
alfalfasprout 4y ago
> they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry. Cross platform support is always a problem though. And frankly I don't buy the "like they did to the hi-res music industry"-- Spotify is still king here.
sneed-oil 4y ago
> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Their software is not open source. Before this announcement you had to trust Apple not to look into the files you store in the cloud, now you have to trust that they're actually going to encrypt your files and not save the decryption key. Ultimately you still have to trust Apple. A combination of any open source OS, any cloud provider and Cryptomator or Veracrypt wouldn't require as much trust in one company.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Their software is not open source. Notably, the only other serious competitor in the space is also not open source. Sure, you can probably carefully construct a phone from only FOSS, with some compromises of course. But this is unfeasible for regular users, who have for all practical purposes only two choices. And those same users are unlikely to go for alternative replacements for built-in functionality just to reduce their exposure. Convenience wins every time.
- beeboop 4y ago
  I think this is less of an issue than you might think - if they're going to decrypt for law enforcement then it will become painfully obvious there's a backdoor literally the first time evidence is brought to a court that shouldn't have been available without a decryption.
  - cromka 4y ago
    Not to mention employe whistleblowing.
  - StillBored 4y ago
    But that could be a very long time if they just apply some form of parallel construction to most cases. They aren't going to burn such information on the first low level criminal/CP target they find. Instead they will wait 5 years and then sweep up a bunch of people involved in some criminal "ring". And the problem with all these services that provide some kind of E2EE encryption and still have a way to push application updates (or run something in your browser), is that they just slip a version on your machine that sends the password to the feds/whoever when you type it in.
plzmark 4y ago
Maybe. But has this been audited? Are there backdoors, perhaps in the hardware? I thought just a couple of months ago they wanted to scan everyone's phones for illegal content.
- kaba0 4y ago
  So that they are legally saved from “storing child porn on their servers”. They explicitly wanted that feature so that they can freely upload user content, fully encrypted, without worrying about that - it was just grossly miscommunicated.
amadeuspagel 4y ago
> They're not Google No, google has had encrypted android backups for years.
- ir77 4y ago
  so did apple, you could encrypt through iTunes for decade, and if you're that paranoid about encrypted backups i would trust an off-line encrypted backup more than i would an encrypted backup in google's cloud.
phpisthebest 4y ago
>>seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Well for your use case maybe, but I do not find the value of trading privacy for freedom to be a good one, specifically since I can secure my data other ways including not storing it at all on my phone. My phone is a tool, and I prefer to own and control completely that tool
- brewdad 4y ago
  What phone do you own and control completely? I was under the impression that every phone capable of being a phone contains BLOBs that you have no control over.
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    Not to mention a veritable panoply of chips that you could probably spend a lifetime on trying to prove correct and not malware'd, assuming you could even get the schematics, etc.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
> anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. in financial circles, an immediate thought would also be "is such a person short AAPL?".
skrowl 4y ago
He's very excited to get something android has had for a decade now
thih9 4y ago
> They don't want your data. They're not Google/FB/Amazon. (…) Note that they still want some data, especially given the recent increase in advertising activity.
theonlybutlet 4y ago
The fundamental iCloud product itself however is subpar and until that is dealt with, it won't be that huge. Few examples: Still can't keep photos on iCloud and delete thumbs on the phone. A real issue my old iPhone had insufficient space and I had to move to OneDrive. Support for other operating systems is lacklustre. One of the core benefits of cloud is accessing your files anywhere when you need them, not possible unless you're lucky enough to find yourself on a Mac at that moment.
- vxNsr 4y ago
  This is the biggest gotcha that causes people to lose data every day. They try to free up space on their phone only to unwittingly permanently delete photos. The other really annoying thing is you pay $3/m for 200gb or $10/m for 2tb… there’s no middle ground, I’d like to pay $4 for 500gb or $6 for a tb.
OOPMan 4y ago
- ir77 4y ago
  you know your first two sentences aren't really honest. there's the secondary market, considering that apple keeps updating their devices past typical android equivalent you're getting same $/years of use value. there are SE models that are in line to cheaper android alternatives. if you're poor you're probably not data hording TBs of data, because you've got other problems, so yes, this is all speaking from the point of the privilege, and you being here is also from the point of privilege. and to answer your 3rd question -- i'll bite and say that this maybe true. but is it really apple's problem or the problem overall? where we're all mined for data and now when someone does offer security you scream that it's unfair. shouldn't you take the equivalent effort and write your legislator and ask them what they're doing about bringing the bar to the level that apple is bringing it to, for all of the poor people out there?
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    The solution to being poor: a $400 iPhone instead of a $600 one!
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    Obviously a device doesn't become useless once it stops receiving OS patches. For one, it'll keep receiving security patches for other components (eg the browser, which is in many ways more important than the OS) for many years past end of life.
- dang 4y ago
  Ouch - attacking others like this will get you banned on HN. Please don't do it again! If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
andrepd 4y ago
>seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river Fanboyism is expected, but this kind of statement is always bizzare to me. I run an aosp build with no Google software. How can a closed, proprietary system which pinky swears they will not do nasty stuff with your phone possibly be better than that?
nl 4y ago
> They're giving you 2TB+ of space Where are you seeing this?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
danShumway 4y ago
> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. This is a little hyperbolic. E2EE backups are fantastic; Apple seriously deserves a ton of praise for this. And iPhones have been getting a ton of security/privacy features that I really love, I am not going to dismiss their contributions to privacy. And while I wish some of their services like the Apple VPN/masked emails were better done, they are still fantastic features that I encourage iPhone users to enable, and that I am thrilled to see rolled out to a mass audience. Alongside that praise, I am though going to point out that the adblocking on the iPhone is sub-par[0] because mobile Safari lacks Firefox's extension APIs, and I'll point out that their app store model blocks some privacy apps like Newpipe, which forces people into using more invasive alternatives that require stricter privacy controls. I'll point out that it is harder in some ways to get away from the default tracking that happens in Apple's apps than it is to root an Android phone and disable/swap Google services. Threat model and personal expertise matters here; I like a lot of what iPhone do, but I also dislike a lot of what they do. Personally, I feel more confident in my ability to secure a rooted Android device than I do to secure an iPhone against the majority of privacy attacks I'm worried about. That doesn't mean that iPhones aren't the correct choice for a lot of people. I feel much less confident in a family member's ability to secure an Android phone if I can't give them advice or help them through the process. And all of this is ignoring that privacy is one aspect of consumer freedom and rights. I think we can praise Apple for what is objectively a great move for privacy without being this over-the-top. ---- [0] Before someone complains, I'm not saying that iPhones don't have adblocking. They do have adblocking and I encourage you to use it, it's great. But that adblocking is objectively not as powerful or comprehensive as it would be to use a tool like Ublock Origin.
- scarface74 4y ago
  “I don’t like tracking. But I’m okay with a third party ad blocker intercepting all of my traffic”
  - danShumway 4y ago
    I think this might be the single strangest objection to using an adblocker I have ever heard. Are you implying that installing uBlock Origin in a browser raises your risk of being tracked online? I don't think I've ever seen someone make the argument that Gorhill should be trusted less than the advertising industry, that's a new one for me.
lxgr 4y ago
> anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. What if it's for somebody that wants to play Fortnite on their phone?
jchw 4y ago
> they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry. ... so, they... didn't? Plenty of those services, including Tidal, probably the most prominent one, still exist. > seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. This is the top comment in this thread right now, and I'm guessing it's because the readers of Hacker News value satire. If Apple's ecosystem is so bewilderingly excellent that nobody in their right mind would choose anything else, why did Apple start offering a bunch of their services, like Apple Music and Apple TV, on other hardware ecosystems?
debevv 4y ago
This sounds a bit exaggerated. Until they don’t offer a Dropbox-like folder sync on desktop (Linux and Windows), I’ll keep my Tresorit subscription
gernb 4y ago
Can I use AppleTV+ without them tracking what programs I'm watching? Can I get them to stop showing me an ad in front of each program? Can I use Apple Music without them tracking the music I listen to? Can I use the App store without them tracking what apps I browse and download? Can I remove the ads from the App Store? Can I remove the ads for Apple Music from my iPhone? > they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry. Except they only control 50% of the smartphone market and 15% of the PC market. So there is still a large market they're not covering
- geraneum 4y ago
  > Can I use AppleTV+ without them tracking what programs I'm watching? Can I buy something from my local supermarket without them knowing what I bought? Can I create an EC2 instance on AWS without Amazon knowing who created the instance? I don't like a super powered monopolistic company as much as the next guy and I totally agree that ads situation in App Store is not a straight business but come on. Some people want to use their computer completely privately and that's totally fine, but when you are using a cloud service, they probably will know how you use it. What they do with that data and how they handle it on the other hand is of importance. The problem with the whole tracking fiasco starts when the provider sells your data or "access", collected using dark patterns for example to others.
  - greatgib 4y ago
    Can I buy something from my local supermarket without them knowing what I bought? That is stupid, yes you can easily if you don't use their fidelity card and eventually that you use cash!
    - TheCapeGreek 4y ago
      I interpreted GP's comment to be more about how it's inevitable that businesses track consumer patterns, because after all it's directly their data. Who bought it is usually irrelevant. That still leaves the purchase data freely available, and if you purchase the same kinds of items regularly you can probably build a profile. The purchase data itself is still valuable and still tracked.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
seanw444 4y ago
That was a bombastic final sentence. I'm going to assume you're ignoring third party Android ROMs like Graphene, Calyx, Divest, etc.? And all of the excellent open source projects that substitute Google's stuff?
- ir77 4y ago
  i'm speaking from the perspective of the mass consumer and thus am comparing them to other mass consumer product companies. what you're describing is not the norm and those options should always be available, but the effort to value is simply not there to large portions of the mobile users.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    Okay, that's fair.
JTbane 4y ago
>seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river sideloading is a deal breaker for me, so I'd rather stay out of the walled garden on my Android
TheBrokenRail 4y ago
Apple has a lot of things going for it, but let's not pretend they're perfect and anyone who doesn't use their products is unreasonable. iOS still doesn't allow you to sideload without shenanigans (requiring your to not only have a Mac, but also have it resign any custom apps every week is beyond unreasonable). Some people don't care about that, but I do and not being able to do so is 100% a dealbreaker for me. Not using Apple because you disagree with their decisions does not make one intentionally "going out of their way to swim up river." It just makes one a normal person who doesn't want to use, what it to them, an inferior product. > the don't care to scan your pictures with AI 20 different ways This is especially ironic as another post on the HN front-page today is about Apple giving up on their plan to scan iCloud photos for CSAN after months of pushback.
deleted 4y ago
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tomxor 4y ago
> 1) they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry. This is not something to celebrate IMO, Apple keeps doing this and then pushing out the 3rd party options either by pure positioning and bankruptcy or by app store policy. The result is no choice, no competition, and over time a worse product due to absence of market forces ... beyond the high resistance threshold of getting bad enough for a user to flip the table and exit the entire iOS ecosystem they've invested in - this is the danger of 100% vertical integration.
uwuemu 4y ago
Jesus, the Apple fanboys truly are a different breed. E2E encrypted backups are nice, great even, but the rest of your post and especially the last paragraph are cringe worthy.
- dmd 4y ago
RunSet 4y ago
> anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Did Apple ever implement the ability to run software without first phoning home and asking for permission? The last time I checked they had not followed through on their promise to do so. https://www.howtogeek.com/701176/does-apple-track-every-mac-app-you-run-ocsp-explained/ https://www.howtogeek.com/701176/does-apple-track-every-mac-... https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/06/16/apple-reneged-on-ocsp-privacy/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/06/16/apple-reneged-on-ocsp-pri...
cromwellian 4y ago
As far as I can tell from Google Searches, Google already offers end-to-end encrypted backups for Android, from 2018. https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-have-your-back-by.html https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-h... Google Workspace also apparently supports client-side encryption/decryption. https://support.google.com/docs/answer/10519333?hl=en https://support.google.com/docs/answer/10519333?hl=en
attentive 4y ago
> don't care to scan your pictures with AI 20 different ways wouldn't be photos scanned on the iphone? - not sure if it's all local or goes to the mothership
webmobdev 4y ago
> they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch... Really? Isn't this the same Apple that told the FBI that they could get access to a suspect's data from their iCloud account. And the same Apple that was part of the US government's PRISM program to sell user data to the NSA? What makes you think people happy with competing services will jump to them blindly? > They're not Goodle/FB/Amazon. They are exactly like them. All of them claimed they care about user privacy, before massively collecting the private data of their users and then exploiting it. > ... reliable, secure, private service ... Reliable, sure. "Secure" is debatable when the keys are stored on the iDevices that only Apple can access any time. "Private" is laughable when every Apple product now comes with a disclaimer / popup permission informing that they will use your data to enhance personalised ads served to you by their ad platform.
_8j50 4y ago
They still need a credit card or other KYC payment. Can't use paid iCloud.
colordrops 4y ago
> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. This comment is made every time Apple makes one step forward but it's apparently easy to forget that Apple also took ten steps back. I'm using LineageOS + MicroG happily and there are other alternatives that don't buy into any of these big corporate monoliths. I'm not swimming up river but you are carrying water for a multi-trillion dollar behemoth. Apple is hella late to the game encrypting data and you better bet there's a backdoor to getting that data if an FBI request comes in.
- abalone 4y ago
  How did they take ten steps back?
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> They don't want your data. What's the truth though? Are they able to coordinate with law enforcement if needed or not? I find it hard to believe there's no government agency paying attention to iMessage of criminals. Am I mistaken?
- TheCapeGreek 4y ago
  iMessage is SMS no? That's already unencrypted.
  - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
    iMessage is not SMS.
8K832d7tNmiQ 4y ago
> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. If there's anything I learned about any offers made from big tech, I would never trust any of them until proven for long-term usage for half a decade at bare minimum. 3-2-1 strategy is still a proven method for decades and will still be over any cloud services out there, including iCloud's.
13of40 4y ago
So two words I can't find in this thread are "lawful intercept". If a judge comes down on Apple and says they are required to produce your private content, is Apple going to throw up its hands and say, "Nope, it's e2e encrypted." No, they will not. They will either run something on your device to scan it, or they will exfiltrate your encryption key, because at the end of the day they own your device. Maybe this makes it harder for man-in-the-middle attacks or whatever, but if someone with the right amount of power cares, your data isn't secure.
- abalone 4y ago
  Fun fact, they can’t exfiltrate the key because it’s burned into the secure element coprocessor and unreadable by software.
  - POPOSYS 4y ago
    Would you please like to give us some URLs that explain this for people not deeply into Apple hardware - thank you very much!
  - willi59549879 4y ago
    so that means if your iphone breaks or gets stolen the data is lost? I guess they would have to enable exporting the encryption key to users to make the backup useful in these cases.
  - ivanyu 4y ago
    How do we know this, exactly? Is it open hardware? Have anyone audited it?
FpUser 4y ago
>"seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river." Not sure how common is my attitude but I do not give a flying fuck about what Apple does. I keep my own backups (been doing it since the 80s). Today's Apple to me looks like a money company that makes some hardware by accident. and in general, the less I attached / depend on a single company for anything significant, the better I feel.
wildcow 4y ago
So up until now the government have had access to all your data because of the backups. This renders the e2e encryption on their different messaging platforms useless. Kind of a joke:"your convo can't be read because it is e2e encrypted, bit when we backup, we can read it".
dcow 4y ago
And yet, Apple won't let you install your own software onto the iPhone. The koolaid is strong with this one.
xwolfi 4y ago
You must know it's impossible: their servers, their data. Your server, your data. Their fiber cable, their data, your RJ45, your data. Whatever they say and do, they'll eventually revert to that simple logic when it matters. If you want to unload photos out of your devices with assurance no one's gonna look, buy a NAS and dont connect it to the internet.
dartharva 4y ago
I don't want to be offensive but this comment really feels like an intelligently-made shitpost. Or maybe I hope it is, and I hope OP doesn't have as much devotion to any company as they are displaying through this comment.
zer0zzz 4y ago
You’re calling out FB here but they’re one of the few to have rolled out similar backup encryption for WhatsApp messages and that was quite a while ago at this point. I think FB really wants data about your behavior but based on what they’re been doing with chat security I don’t get a sense they want to or need be able to read through peoples chat history to get that.
w-hn 4y ago
> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. This kind of thinking is a lot more dangerous than OEMs not giving us better privacy and data protection.
64bithacker 4y ago
Seriously. Your data is probably going to be mined on-device. Would make way more sense to further screw you by using your resources to mine you while you sleep.
RektBoy 4y ago
You're beyond help, bro.
slenk 4y ago
I genuinely do not understand why you say other backup solutions aren't secure. Do you have anything to back that up? re: point 3 - they really TRIED to scan all your data with your CSAM tool but got too much pushback. They are only doing this now because they are dropping CSAM and trying to garner public favor.
cptskippy 4y ago
> they don't want to mine your data, they don't want to know what you store on there, the don't care to scan your pictures with AI 20 different ways, they don't want to monetize it, etc, etc... What's stopping them from doing this scanning at acquisition or access by the user? We already see Google running models on your phone for things like Magic Eraser. All Apple has really announced here is that if you're using Apple Apps and Services then they're the only ones who can mine your data. This pivots nightly into their Ad Services.
spritefs 4y ago
> They don't want your data. They're not Goodle/FB/Amazon. They're giving you 2TB+ of space and you can encrypt it to the point that you'll lose your data and they don't care -- they don't want to mine your data Their devices are still sending a bunch of telemetry. They're still in the ads business Not saying that this recent move is bad, it's good to see. But at the same time, I'd rather manage and encrypt my own files on my own dfs than get trapped in the walled garden
cryptonector 4y ago
Just remember: Apple are delivering the software to do end-to-end cryptography.
Abishek_Muthian 4y ago
> just pay them money for their service and transactionally they give you only thing that you want in return -- reliable, secure, private service. In every country they operate in? Especially those run by dictators, autocrats and wannabe dictators/autocrats? If not would their next Ad or Speech on humanity, morals, rights, privacy and other virtue signalling include a disclaimer that those are not available in such countries? I'm baffled that the information security requirement has reduced from zero-trust to trust the shiny hardware maker because 'they say so'. > anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. I'd happily swim (or) drown trying instead of blindly trusting privacy claims of a Child labor exploiting, Union Busting, Virtue Signalling insanely hypocritical ultra-mega corporation.
ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. This does not in any way make me want to switch back from GrapheneOS.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Probably. Android is getting locked down with remote attestation anyways. There's no point to it anymore, might as well choose the better tended walled garden.
kernal 4y ago
>BUT, perhaps the BIGGEST news here is that Apple is making a backup statement to what they've been saying for years and what they've recently gotten negative attention on: They don't want your data. If they don't want their user's data then why are they running an ad business?
samstave 4y ago
I want a 'Dead-Man's Switch' option on top of this. Period.
louison11 4y ago
Yeah, and this also shows that the future is not necessarily all decentralized/run by crypto punks in basements. There is an elegant way we can move to a safer, more reliable Internet all while using the current stack that might be hyper-centralized, but has proven to be the most cost-effective and reliable way to do things.
Epitom3 4y ago
I like their products but man, its embarrassing how some people get on their knees for apple.
sensanaty 4y ago
> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. I genuinely refuse to believe a real human wrote that sentence, there's just no way, right?

by ir77 4y ago

account-5 4y ago

> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Count me in amongst the salmon then.

gigel82 4y ago

It's good to be passionate, but blind devotion is dangerous, especially since we already know by now Apple is positioning itself to become a major player in the advertising space and - with a dwindling economy and an increased pressure to sustained growth from shareholders - that's going to continuously encroach on our privacy guarantees for monetization purposes. I'm advocating for an open and interoperable ecosystem of operating systems, services and applications, which is the only way to ensure sustainable customer freedom. Unfortunately that ecosystem doesn't exist yet so we're stuck with the duopoly of evil-doers (and while Google openly admits it is their business model to monetize you and your data, Apple has been caught with their hands in the cookie jar a bunch of times already and they're just developing a sweet tooth, so...). Full disclosure: I've been using only iPhones for 12 years and am still using one today.

katbyte 4y ago
outside of appstore ads and ios ads for their services, where is apple doing advertising?
- falcolas 4y ago
  Throughout their News app for one.
  - sn0wf1re 4y ago
    And "news" in Stocks
    - nomel 4y ago
      Are these ads? If I see a large derivative, I can usually glance down at the relevant news to see why. More often than not, it says "No Recent Stories", which shouldn't be the case for an ad. The news articles in the main view are just top business stories from Apple News. I don't see anything ad like at all, actually.
  - thewebcount 4y ago
    Yeah, this has been so depressing to see. I disliked that there were ads when I signed up, but it was part of a bundle with other things (arcade, music, tv, fitness, etc.), so I gave it a try. But they've been increasing in frequency and they've been added to places they didn't exist before (like when you swipe to see the next article). It's still nowhere near as bad as reading a web page without an ad blocker, but it's definitely past my threshold of pain, and so I'm just using it less. I want the other things in the bundle, so they'll count me as a subscriber, but I'm using it less each day. What's particularly odd is that some articles have no ads at all. Some have the same ad repeated literally 3-5 times in a short 1,000 word article. And the ads are all trash. They seem like those awful chum-boxes you see on web sites. Who in their right mind thought this would be appealing to the typical Apple user? I mean, regardless, I have never intentionally clicked on any ad on the web in 30 years, and I'm not going to start now. It's sad because it's exposed me to regional newspapers from around the world. I live in California and see articles from newspapers in Idaho, Utah, Connecticut, upstate New York, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, etc. and even from other (mostly English-speaking) countries like Canada, England, Ireland, Isreal, and Australia. They even include some (English-language) stuff from China. I don't normally see news sources that diverse on the web because it takes more effort. But the ads just make it not worth it to continue using.

yunwal 4y ago

> anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river Ok, come on. What apple’s done here is great, and I personally use an iPhone, but you couldn’t think of a good reason to use anything else? An open-source OS?

smoldesu 4y ago
Any phone that doesn't trust the user to install software shouldn't be called "consumer centric".
kaba0 4y ago
The GNU/linux distros (in contrast to android) available for mobile phones are so far from usable, it is not funny. Android is a viable choice, but only if it doesn’t come with all the shit from the vendo/Google, which gives you effectively.. a pixel phone with GrapheneOS? Not too much of a choice, especially if you would like to filter based on hardware as well (where apple is just laughably ahead, iphones are ~2 generations ahead in raw performance)
- danShumway 4y ago
  I don't bring this up to start an argument, only because someone reading might look at this comment and assume they can't use a DeGoogled ROM for their phone unless it's a mainline Google flagship -- but LineageOS maintains a list of fairly lengthy list of supported devices, so if you want to use something other than your phone's stock ROM, you should definitely check to see if it's supported, it very well might be. I also encourage people to check if their devices are supported by LineageOS when they run past their support period, it can be a good way to keep getting security updates past official support windows. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Good point, though pay very close attention for which device you have, some vendors (e.g. Sony) will wipe their camera’s fancy firmware or pull similar shenanigans. That way the tradeoff may very well not be worth it.

_chu1 4y ago

[flagged]

iamjake648 4y ago
Except for the 88 million who do?
selectodude 4y ago
That's "quite literally" not true as I use Apple Music. So there you go.
macshome 4y ago
If around 80 million subscribers is nobody, then you are correct.

dzikimarian 4y ago

* They have tons of your data anyway, lots of which is more valuable for advertising than backup of your photos. * They are more and more into advertising business https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32520894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32520894 * Their executives admit that they want you and your family locked into their ecosystem (leaked emails). Sorry, but advocating for them seems like very bad idea. Google was cool, pro-customer company once too. Until they had position to not be anymore. Open standards, without any vendor lock are only reasonable way.

richrichardsson 4y ago

> They're giving you 2TB+ of space I think you and I have vastly different ideas about what "giving" means. I get 5GB of iCloud storage, unless I pay them £6.99/month for 2TB. No idea what the rate is over 2TB. Have I missed a trick to getting this 2TB+? (I have 7 Apple devices in my possession and have owned a further 2 that I've passed on to my kids; given the premium I paid for those I almost expect that I should get 5GB PER DEVICE, but of course that's fairly unreasonable in reality)

jshier 4y ago
You can't even get over 2TB unless you subscribe to Apple One and even then you only get another 2TB. Pretty useless as a large scale backup service if the maximum you can ever pay them for is 4TB.
- mvanbaak 4y ago
  Per user. I know you would probably like to backup your linux isos to icloud but besides that the 4tb per account/user is pretty much all one would need. This is for personal use, not business ;)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - another_story 4y ago
    Been seeing a lot more of these snarky sort of comments on HN as of late, and its not encouraging. Can we keep it civil without making light jabs at others preferences or tech needs?
    - exodust 4y ago
      Oh come on, that's over-sensitive. The person made a lightweight remark, complete with wink at its conclusion. It was on topic and conveyed information. Your reaction is derailment because you grabbed the wheel and steered the topic down a road about you and your expectations of discussion standards. Part of respectable human interaction includes humorous, short and sharp casual responses on occasion. In this case, the post was replying to someone who called Apple's storage limit "pretty useless"... so we're well and truly in the fun zone of casual conversation. Not sure what you're seeking, the equivalent of a formal meeting with diplomats and official representatives?

counttheforks 4y ago

> 1) they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry. This is an excellent point as to why you shouldn't even bother trying to develop software for apple machines. If it's anywhere near successful apple will just destroy you, after having taken a 30% cut from your revenue for years.

juve1996 4y ago
Apple will destroy you regardless, they're a megacorp. If the software is good but only on windows they'll just make their own.
pixl97 4y ago
- behnamoh 4y ago
  I get this sentiment, but where do we draw the line? Shouldn’t OS makers (Apple, Microsoft) add additional apps just because third party developers have done it already?
  - pixl97 4y ago
    I would state it as this "If you buy a phone or general purpose computing device, you have the legal right to choose your app store and applications installed on it seperate from manufacture demands". The particular problem with Apple is not only duplicate your app, they can underprice it by 30% because they don't self pay their own store tax, and they can kick you out of the only app store for whatever reason they choose to make up that day.
    - Cheezmeister 4y ago
      > If you buy a phone or general purpose computing device Point of clarity, the devices we are discussing are neither telephones, nor are they general purpose. They are smartphones, a sort of miniature computer with a bunch of general-purpose sensors, and actuators viz. a screen and a speaker and some haptic feedback. They don't really do much computing per se; we outsourced most of that to The Cloud some 15-odd years ago. These things are just highly capable I/O devices, or clever terminals if you prefer. And while Android has the PlayStore or whatever they call it this week, one can usually choose to load rogue APKs and one can usually succeed; and things like the Pinephone or Fairphone have been attempted that leave more power (and responsibility) in the hands of the user, but in practice it seems that they simply don't _work_ that well. I agree with you wholeheartedly; I just think the "if" part is a bit out of sync with reality.

WhackyIdeas 4y ago

Yeah but it’s still basically the great philosophical question of the douche or the turd sandwich. With everything that has happened with Apple since Job’s death, my trust has been eroded so much that yeah I still use Apple but they are the turd sandwich at the end of the day. I trust Google a percent or two less. I like that they are doing with this E2E encryption. It protects against hackers better. It doesn’t protect against Apple though… they will still continue to sell the analytics on you. Which is fine if you don’t care.

scientism 4y ago

They mine your data as long as it can be converted into a marketable product for them. The most recent example was this: https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/21/ios-privacy-concerns-deepen/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/21/ios-privacy-concerns-deepen/ Maybe images/photos isn't something they want to expand at this moment in time but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

behnamoh 4y ago
They might mine your data BEFORE it leaves your device. Thanks to the new A chips, Apple can definitely do that.
- mejutoco 4y ago
  This. Technically the iphone can process images locally. Photos app shows what is in the picture (faces, pets, food) and can do ocr on text in screenshots and photos. This is a very real possibility to outsource the processing to your device.
  - nonameiguess 4y ago
    The camera itself does software processing and you can't encrypt the light. It detects faces even before you click the shutter for capture. There is no way to keep the device itself from ever knowing what it was looking at. Something that sensitive is something you don't photograph.
    - mejutoco 4y ago
      we agree I believe. I am saying that technically the device gets thst information on-device, and could send it. Idk if that is the case, but it is possible. Edit:The ocr and face recognition on the iphone is definitely more advanced than usual, thanks to the custom hardware on device.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]

thrashh 4y ago

Very few people I know who choose Spotify vs Apple Music or iCloud vs Google Photos know anything about hi-res music or E2E encryption Outside tech people I know at least

yreg 4y ago
Hi-res music isn't important, but E2EE is. It's fine that very few people care Apple is very good at attracting customers without it anyway, so it's not the classical situation where we, tech people should feel sorry that non-tech people "just don't get it" and don't use Apple services. And lastly, if indeed no customers care, then that speaks for even bigger respect toward the individuals working at Apple who pushed for this and made it happen. (But I think Apple believes this will be a good business decision, not altruism.)

gtvwill 4y ago

>>>seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Lol I would never advocate for any company I engage with to use apple products. Why? Because they suck.iphoto and iCloud are pieces of trash. Most basic thing like, delete local but keep cloud copy seems to be missing. Can't keep a iPhone synced and do this with iCloud. Lulz worthy sitcho. Also can't even copy files off device easily. Can't put custom apps on devices easily. The company actively kicks back against things like, freedom of information, following standards, reducing e-waste. You know some of us make decisions around the companies we support on greater levels than just feature a or b is present in device. Apple are a predatory company that in no way promote a software or hardware ecosystem that is ethical imho and they don't promote one I want to participate in. I wouldn't touch their shit with a barge pole and ontop of this due to being IT everytime I'm forced to I'm mostly confused by wtf folks think is so great. I legit find the kids toy ux difficult to work with, borderline impossible. I also like blowing clients away with simple tasks like....copying photos to a usb...browsing files on my phone on a pc. You know the basic stuff like they used to do when they were younger but apple cucked it along the way for zero reason lol.

jdiez17 4y ago
> Also can't even copy files off device easily. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33898890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33898890. > Can't put custom apps on devices easily. You will, from May, thanks to the EU Digital Markets act. > [...] simple tasks like....copying photos to a usb...browsing files on my phone on a pc. You can do this with ifuse: https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse
- gtvwill 4y ago
  May isn't today. Downloading some random GitHub app to access a phones storage sure as shit won't be happening on any managed corporate devices I deploy. Or unmanaged devices tbh. That's the kinda shit I leave for quarantined VMs. Data is still not easily accessible once it's on a iPhone.

logic_probe 4y ago

> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. That's an awfully bold statement! I'm quite happy in the Microsoft ecosystem for OneDrive, etc, and I'm not reading this and jumping to Apple. I'm not sure if most people care about these claims, and the people who are very security aware probably don't believe them.

namdnay 4y ago

> They're giving you 2TB+ of space No they don’t. They sell it to you

tehlike 4y ago

Apple wants your data as much as other companies, except they don't want this _specific_ data. Otherwise apple likes to track your moves in the areas they do advertising on as much as everyone else.

youniverse 4y ago

What about something like proton mail? They also have encrypted drive I believe but I'm not sure.

eastbound 4y ago

> the don't care to scan your pictures with AI 20 different ways They actually systematically scan photos and declare people to the police if IA determines it looks wrong. With Apple, you’re at risk of losing your business just like with any other company who wants your data. Apple didn’t solve the “An offline account is better than a Cloud account” problem.

yreg 4y ago
>They actually systematically scan photos and declare people to the police if IA determines it looks wrong. Obviously the commenter is talking about the new E2EE plan. No way to scan it then, under they do it on device, which they also walked away from.
timmytokyo 4y ago
> They actually systematically scan photos and declare people to the police if IA determines it looks wrong. Apple was developing this technology, but they dropped their plans. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/7/23498588/apple-csam-icloud-photos-scanning-encryption https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/7/23498588/apple-csam-iclou...
- propogandist 4y ago
  temporarily, due to public outcry from many groups

dancemethis 4y ago

...You believe them? After PRISM and all the things revealed in the last decade and half? They DO want people's data, and they DO hoard it. If they didn't, they would share the source code with the community.

kaba0 4y ago
That’s a non sequitur. Also, there is no reliable way to check whether a given source code is the actually deployed version, neither on servers, nor local devices.

Iv 4y ago

Give me open source dev tools for the iPhone and I'll jump. While it is a closed garden, I'll begrudgingly accept it can be marginally better in some fields than other options, but Apple tries very hard to be a proprietary island in a world that has switched to free software.

HL33tibCe7 4y ago
That really isn’t true when it comes to phones, though.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  The world of phones is based on free software. Android is based on the Linux kernel and AOSP - iOS is based on XNU, which is a combination of GNU implementations and BSD patches.

widowlark 4y ago

Apple offers hi res audio, but most cant and wont take advantage of it. Why? because most users of apple music use AirPods, and apple claims lossless wireless audio is not possible (despite the existence of LDAC). Therefore, you are streaming hi res audio to your phone only to downscale it when listening via your headset. Only people who really benefit are carriers, who can rate limit your data. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183#:~:text=Can%20I%20listen%20to%20lossless%20audio%20over%20Bluetooth%3F,don't%20support%20lossless%20audio https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183#:~:text=Can%20I%20l....

ir77 4y ago
"most can't and won't take advantage" of it is a broad statement. i would think there are a lot more DAC/lighting adapters and analog headphones in the world than there are of AirPods, anyone that wants to listen to CD (16/44) quality can probably do so for free or a few $ already. my home "hi-fi" now consists of an old iPhone 8+ hooked up to a DAC piped into my receiver utilizing 24/96 setting from iTunes, no longer need for Tidal or Qobuz.
- widowlark 4y ago
  This is true for wired headphones, definitely. My statement was broad, but was aimed at wireless headphones, apologies for the confusion
kaba0 4y ago
With high enough “resolution” does it really matter? (Don’t trying to start a fight, genuinely curious as I’m not too well versed in audio) We don’t cry over bitmaps vs vector graphics in most contexts, especially that the hardware is trivially limited. It’s probably a bit more nuanced with speakers, but I imagine that they also have very real limits on distinguishable outputs for a given input, even if it is not as trivial to see as in the case of a w*h pixel grid of depth n.
- widowlark 4y ago
  It does to some - I recently rediscovered my love of CD's and was surprised to find they sounded much better than I remembered - I am currently in the process of upgrading my music to CD quality and higher, and was equally surprised to find that Apple doesnt support a hi-res codec for their wireless headphones, even though they offer hi-res music. For me, it makes their $549 (!!!) AirPod Max product extremely confusing, laughable even. So yes, I think mp3/aac to CD, the change is very noticable. CD to HD (24bit), not so much

alfalfasprout 4y ago

> they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry. Cross platform support is always a problem though. And frankly I don't buy the "like they did to the hi-res music industry"-- Spotify is still king here.

sneed-oil 4y ago

> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Their software is not open source. Before this announcement you had to trust Apple not to look into the files you store in the cloud, now you have to trust that they're actually going to encrypt your files and not save the decryption key. Ultimately you still have to trust Apple. A combination of any open source OS, any cloud provider and Cryptomator or Veracrypt wouldn't require as much trust in one company.

rootusrootus 4y ago
> Their software is not open source. Notably, the only other serious competitor in the space is also not open source. Sure, you can probably carefully construct a phone from only FOSS, with some compromises of course. But this is unfeasible for regular users, who have for all practical purposes only two choices. And those same users are unlikely to go for alternative replacements for built-in functionality just to reduce their exposure. Convenience wins every time.
beeboop 4y ago
I think this is less of an issue than you might think - if they're going to decrypt for law enforcement then it will become painfully obvious there's a backdoor literally the first time evidence is brought to a court that shouldn't have been available without a decryption.
- cromka 4y ago
  Not to mention employe whistleblowing.
- StillBored 4y ago
  But that could be a very long time if they just apply some form of parallel construction to most cases. They aren't going to burn such information on the first low level criminal/CP target they find. Instead they will wait 5 years and then sweep up a bunch of people involved in some criminal "ring". And the problem with all these services that provide some kind of E2EE encryption and still have a way to push application updates (or run something in your browser), is that they just slip a version on your machine that sends the password to the feds/whoever when you type it in.

plzmark 4y ago

Maybe. But has this been audited? Are there backdoors, perhaps in the hardware? I thought just a couple of months ago they wanted to scan everyone's phones for illegal content.

kaba0 4y ago
So that they are legally saved from “storing child porn on their servers”. They explicitly wanted that feature so that they can freely upload user content, fully encrypted, without worrying about that - it was just grossly miscommunicated.

amadeuspagel 4y ago

> They're not Google No, google has had encrypted android backups for years.

ir77 4y ago
so did apple, you could encrypt through iTunes for decade, and if you're that paranoid about encrypted backups i would trust an off-line encrypted backup more than i would an encrypted backup in google's cloud.

phpisthebest 4y ago

>>seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Well for your use case maybe, but I do not find the value of trading privacy for freedom to be a good one, specifically since I can secure my data other ways including not storing it at all on my phone. My phone is a tool, and I prefer to own and control completely that tool

brewdad 4y ago
What phone do you own and control completely? I was under the impression that every phone capable of being a phone contains BLOBs that you have no control over.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  Not to mention a veritable panoply of chips that you could probably spend a lifetime on trying to prove correct and not malware'd, assuming you could even get the schematics, etc.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

> anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. in financial circles, an immediate thought would also be "is such a person short AAPL?".

skrowl 4y ago

He's very excited to get something android has had for a decade now

thih9 4y ago

> They don't want your data. They're not Google/FB/Amazon. (…) Note that they still want some data, especially given the recent increase in advertising activity.

theonlybutlet 4y ago

The fundamental iCloud product itself however is subpar and until that is dealt with, it won't be that huge. Few examples: Still can't keep photos on iCloud and delete thumbs on the phone. A real issue my old iPhone had insufficient space and I had to move to OneDrive. Support for other operating systems is lacklustre. One of the core benefits of cloud is accessing your files anywhere when you need them, not possible unless you're lucky enough to find yourself on a Mac at that moment.

vxNsr 4y ago
This is the biggest gotcha that causes people to lose data every day. They try to free up space on their phone only to unwittingly permanently delete photos. The other really annoying thing is you pay $3/m for 200gb or $10/m for 2tb… there’s no middle ground, I’d like to pay $4 for 500gb or $6 for a tb.

OOPMan 4y ago

ir77 4y ago
you know your first two sentences aren't really honest. there's the secondary market, considering that apple keeps updating their devices past typical android equivalent you're getting same $/years of use value. there are SE models that are in line to cheaper android alternatives. if you're poor you're probably not data hording TBs of data, because you've got other problems, so yes, this is all speaking from the point of the privilege, and you being here is also from the point of privilege. and to answer your 3rd question -- i'll bite and say that this maybe true. but is it really apple's problem or the problem overall? where we're all mined for data and now when someone does offer security you scream that it's unfair. shouldn't you take the equivalent effort and write your legislator and ask them what they're doing about bringing the bar to the level that apple is bringing it to, for all of the poor people out there?
- smoldesu 4y ago
  The solution to being poor: a $400 iPhone instead of a $600 one!
- howinteresting 4y ago
  Obviously a device doesn't become useless once it stops receiving OS patches. For one, it'll keep receiving security patches for other components (eg the browser, which is in many ways more important than the OS) for many years past end of life.
dang 4y ago
Ouch - attacking others like this will get you banned on HN. Please don't do it again! If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

andrepd 4y ago

>seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river Fanboyism is expected, but this kind of statement is always bizzare to me. I run an aosp build with no Google software. How can a closed, proprietary system which pinky swears they will not do nasty stuff with your phone possibly be better than that?

nl 4y ago

> They're giving you 2TB+ of space Where are you seeing this?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

danShumway 4y ago

> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. This is a little hyperbolic. E2EE backups are fantastic; Apple seriously deserves a ton of praise for this. And iPhones have been getting a ton of security/privacy features that I really love, I am not going to dismiss their contributions to privacy. And while I wish some of their services like the Apple VPN/masked emails were better done, they are still fantastic features that I encourage iPhone users to enable, and that I am thrilled to see rolled out to a mass audience. Alongside that praise, I am though going to point out that the adblocking on the iPhone is sub-par[0] because mobile Safari lacks Firefox's extension APIs, and I'll point out that their app store model blocks some privacy apps like Newpipe, which forces people into using more invasive alternatives that require stricter privacy controls. I'll point out that it is harder in some ways to get away from the default tracking that happens in Apple's apps than it is to root an Android phone and disable/swap Google services. Threat model and personal expertise matters here; I like a lot of what iPhone do, but I also dislike a lot of what they do. Personally, I feel more confident in my ability to secure a rooted Android device than I do to secure an iPhone against the majority of privacy attacks I'm worried about. That doesn't mean that iPhones aren't the correct choice for a lot of people. I feel much less confident in a family member's ability to secure an Android phone if I can't give them advice or help them through the process. And all of this is ignoring that privacy is one aspect of consumer freedom and rights. I think we can praise Apple for what is objectively a great move for privacy without being this over-the-top. ---- [0] Before someone complains, I'm not saying that iPhones don't have adblocking. They do have adblocking and I encourage you to use it, it's great. But that adblocking is objectively not as powerful or comprehensive as it would be to use a tool like Ublock Origin.

scarface74 4y ago
“I don’t like tracking. But I’m okay with a third party ad blocker intercepting all of my traffic”
- danShumway 4y ago
  I think this might be the single strangest objection to using an adblocker I have ever heard. Are you implying that installing uBlock Origin in a browser raises your risk of being tracked online? I don't think I've ever seen someone make the argument that Gorhill should be trusted less than the advertising industry, that's a new one for me.

lxgr 4y ago

> anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. What if it's for somebody that wants to play Fortnite on their phone?

jchw 4y ago

> they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry. ... so, they... didn't? Plenty of those services, including Tidal, probably the most prominent one, still exist. > seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. This is the top comment in this thread right now, and I'm guessing it's because the readers of Hacker News value satire. If Apple's ecosystem is so bewilderingly excellent that nobody in their right mind would choose anything else, why did Apple start offering a bunch of their services, like Apple Music and Apple TV, on other hardware ecosystems?

debevv 4y ago

This sounds a bit exaggerated. Until they don’t offer a Dropbox-like folder sync on desktop (Linux and Windows), I’ll keep my Tresorit subscription

gernb 4y ago

Can I use AppleTV+ without them tracking what programs I'm watching? Can I get them to stop showing me an ad in front of each program? Can I use Apple Music without them tracking the music I listen to? Can I use the App store without them tracking what apps I browse and download? Can I remove the ads from the App Store? Can I remove the ads for Apple Music from my iPhone? > they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry. Except they only control 50% of the smartphone market and 15% of the PC market. So there is still a large market they're not covering

geraneum 4y ago
> Can I use AppleTV+ without them tracking what programs I'm watching? Can I buy something from my local supermarket without them knowing what I bought? Can I create an EC2 instance on AWS without Amazon knowing who created the instance? I don't like a super powered monopolistic company as much as the next guy and I totally agree that ads situation in App Store is not a straight business but come on. Some people want to use their computer completely privately and that's totally fine, but when you are using a cloud service, they probably will know how you use it. What they do with that data and how they handle it on the other hand is of importance. The problem with the whole tracking fiasco starts when the provider sells your data or "access", collected using dark patterns for example to others.
- greatgib 4y ago
  Can I buy something from my local supermarket without them knowing what I bought? That is stupid, yes you can easily if you don't use their fidelity card and eventually that you use cash!
  - TheCapeGreek 4y ago
    I interpreted GP's comment to be more about how it's inevitable that businesses track consumer patterns, because after all it's directly their data. Who bought it is usually irrelevant. That still leaves the purchase data freely available, and if you purchase the same kinds of items regularly you can probably build a profile. The purchase data itself is still valuable and still tracked.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

seanw444 4y ago

That was a bombastic final sentence. I'm going to assume you're ignoring third party Android ROMs like Graphene, Calyx, Divest, etc.? And all of the excellent open source projects that substitute Google's stuff?

ir77 4y ago
i'm speaking from the perspective of the mass consumer and thus am comparing them to other mass consumer product companies. what you're describing is not the norm and those options should always be available, but the effort to value is simply not there to large portions of the mobile users.
- seanw444 4y ago
  Okay, that's fair.

JTbane 4y ago

>seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river sideloading is a deal breaker for me, so I'd rather stay out of the walled garden on my Android

TheBrokenRail 4y ago

Apple has a lot of things going for it, but let's not pretend they're perfect and anyone who doesn't use their products is unreasonable. iOS still doesn't allow you to sideload without shenanigans (requiring your to not only have a Mac, but also have it resign any custom apps every week is beyond unreasonable). Some people don't care about that, but I do and not being able to do so is 100% a dealbreaker for me. Not using Apple because you disagree with their decisions does not make one intentionally "going out of their way to swim up river." It just makes one a normal person who doesn't want to use, what it to them, an inferior product. > the don't care to scan your pictures with AI 20 different ways This is especially ironic as another post on the HN front-page today is about Apple giving up on their plan to scan iCloud photos for CSAN after months of pushback.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tomxor 4y ago

> 1) they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch just like they did to the Hi-Res music industry. This is not something to celebrate IMO, Apple keeps doing this and then pushing out the 3rd party options either by pure positioning and bankruptcy or by app store policy. The result is no choice, no competition, and over time a worse product due to absence of market forces ... beyond the high resistance threshold of getting bad enough for a user to flip the table and exit the entire iOS ecosystem they've invested in - this is the danger of 100% vertical integration.

uwuemu 4y ago

Jesus, the Apple fanboys truly are a different breed. E2E encrypted backups are nice, great even, but the rest of your post and especially the last paragraph are cringe worthy.

dmd 4y ago

RunSet 4y ago

> anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Did Apple ever implement the ability to run software without first phoning home and asking for permission? The last time I checked they had not followed through on their promise to do so. https://www.howtogeek.com/701176/does-apple-track-every-mac-app-you-run-ocsp-explained/ https://www.howtogeek.com/701176/does-apple-track-every-mac-... https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/06/16/apple-reneged-on-ocsp-privacy/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/06/16/apple-reneged-on-ocsp-pri...

cromwellian 4y ago

As far as I can tell from Google Searches, Google already offers end-to-end encrypted backups for Android, from 2018. https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-have-your-back-by.html https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-h... Google Workspace also apparently supports client-side encryption/decryption. https://support.google.com/docs/answer/10519333?hl=en https://support.google.com/docs/answer/10519333?hl=en

attentive 4y ago

> don't care to scan your pictures with AI 20 different ways wouldn't be photos scanned on the iphone? - not sure if it's all local or goes to the mothership

webmobdev 4y ago

> they just ate every other 3rd party "secure" backup services lunch... Really? Isn't this the same Apple that told the FBI that they could get access to a suspect's data from their iCloud account. And the same Apple that was part of the US government's PRISM program to sell user data to the NSA? What makes you think people happy with competing services will jump to them blindly? > They're not Goodle/FB/Amazon. They are exactly like them. All of them claimed they care about user privacy, before massively collecting the private data of their users and then exploiting it. > ... reliable, secure, private service ... Reliable, sure. "Secure" is debatable when the keys are stored on the iDevices that only Apple can access any time. "Private" is laughable when every Apple product now comes with a disclaimer / popup permission informing that they will use your data to enhance personalised ads served to you by their ad platform.

_8j50 4y ago

They still need a credit card or other KYC payment. Can't use paid iCloud.

colordrops 4y ago

> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. This comment is made every time Apple makes one step forward but it's apparently easy to forget that Apple also took ten steps back. I'm using LineageOS + MicroG happily and there are other alternatives that don't buy into any of these big corporate monoliths. I'm not swimming up river but you are carrying water for a multi-trillion dollar behemoth. Apple is hella late to the game encrypting data and you better bet there's a backdoor to getting that data if an FBI request comes in.

abalone 4y ago
How did they take ten steps back?

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

> They don't want your data. What's the truth though? Are they able to coordinate with law enforcement if needed or not? I find it hard to believe there's no government agency paying attention to iMessage of criminals. Am I mistaken?

TheCapeGreek 4y ago
iMessage is SMS no? That's already unencrypted.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  iMessage is not SMS.

8K832d7tNmiQ 4y ago

> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. If there's anything I learned about any offers made from big tech, I would never trust any of them until proven for long-term usage for half a decade at bare minimum. 3-2-1 strategy is still a proven method for decades and will still be over any cloud services out there, including iCloud's.

13of40 4y ago

So two words I can't find in this thread are "lawful intercept". If a judge comes down on Apple and says they are required to produce your private content, is Apple going to throw up its hands and say, "Nope, it's e2e encrypted." No, they will not. They will either run something on your device to scan it, or they will exfiltrate your encryption key, because at the end of the day they own your device. Maybe this makes it harder for man-in-the-middle attacks or whatever, but if someone with the right amount of power cares, your data isn't secure.

abalone 4y ago
Fun fact, they can’t exfiltrate the key because it’s burned into the secure element coprocessor and unreadable by software.
- POPOSYS 4y ago
  Would you please like to give us some URLs that explain this for people not deeply into Apple hardware - thank you very much!
- willi59549879 4y ago
  so that means if your iphone breaks or gets stolen the data is lost? I guess they would have to enable exporting the encryption key to users to make the backup useful in these cases.
- ivanyu 4y ago
  How do we know this, exactly? Is it open hardware? Have anyone audited it?

FpUser 4y ago

>"seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river." Not sure how common is my attitude but I do not give a flying fuck about what Apple does. I keep my own backups (been doing it since the 80s). Today's Apple to me looks like a money company that makes some hardware by accident. and in general, the less I attached / depend on a single company for anything significant, the better I feel.

wildcow 4y ago

So up until now the government have had access to all your data because of the backups. This renders the e2e encryption on their different messaging platforms useless. Kind of a joke:"your convo can't be read because it is e2e encrypted, bit when we backup, we can read it".

dcow 4y ago

And yet, Apple won't let you install your own software onto the iPhone. The koolaid is strong with this one.

xwolfi 4y ago

You must know it's impossible: their servers, their data. Your server, your data. Their fiber cable, their data, your RJ45, your data. Whatever they say and do, they'll eventually revert to that simple logic when it matters. If you want to unload photos out of your devices with assurance no one's gonna look, buy a NAS and dont connect it to the internet.

dartharva 4y ago

I don't want to be offensive but this comment really feels like an intelligently-made shitpost. Or maybe I hope it is, and I hope OP doesn't have as much devotion to any company as they are displaying through this comment.

zer0zzz 4y ago

You’re calling out FB here but they’re one of the few to have rolled out similar backup encryption for WhatsApp messages and that was quite a while ago at this point. I think FB really wants data about your behavior but based on what they’re been doing with chat security I don’t get a sense they want to or need be able to read through peoples chat history to get that.

w-hn 4y ago

> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. This kind of thinking is a lot more dangerous than OEMs not giving us better privacy and data protection.

64bithacker 4y ago

Seriously. Your data is probably going to be mined on-device. Would make way more sense to further screw you by using your resources to mine you while you sleep.

RektBoy 4y ago

You're beyond help, bro.

slenk 4y ago

I genuinely do not understand why you say other backup solutions aren't secure. Do you have anything to back that up? re: point 3 - they really TRIED to scan all your data with your CSAM tool but got too much pushback. They are only doing this now because they are dropping CSAM and trying to garner public favor.

cptskippy 4y ago

> they don't want to mine your data, they don't want to know what you store on there, the don't care to scan your pictures with AI 20 different ways, they don't want to monetize it, etc, etc... What's stopping them from doing this scanning at acquisition or access by the user? We already see Google running models on your phone for things like Magic Eraser. All Apple has really announced here is that if you're using Apple Apps and Services then they're the only ones who can mine your data. This pivots nightly into their Ad Services.

spritefs 4y ago

> They don't want your data. They're not Goodle/FB/Amazon. They're giving you 2TB+ of space and you can encrypt it to the point that you'll lose your data and they don't care -- they don't want to mine your data Their devices are still sending a bunch of telemetry. They're still in the ads business Not saying that this recent move is bad, it's good to see. But at the same time, I'd rather manage and encrypt my own files on my own dfs than get trapped in the walled garden

cryptonector 4y ago

Just remember: Apple are delivering the software to do end-to-end cryptography.

Abishek_Muthian 4y ago

> just pay them money for their service and transactionally they give you only thing that you want in return -- reliable, secure, private service. In every country they operate in? Especially those run by dictators, autocrats and wannabe dictators/autocrats? If not would their next Ad or Speech on humanity, morals, rights, privacy and other virtue signalling include a disclaimer that those are not available in such countries? I'm baffled that the information security requirement has reduced from zero-trust to trust the shiny hardware maker because 'they say so'. > anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. I'd happily swim (or) drown trying instead of blindly trusting privacy claims of a Child labor exploiting, Union Busting, Virtue Signalling insanely hypocritical ultra-mega corporation.

ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago

> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. This does not in any way make me want to switch back from GrapheneOS.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. Probably. Android is getting locked down with remote attestation anyways. There's no point to it anymore, might as well choose the better tended walled garden.

kernal 4y ago

>BUT, perhaps the BIGGEST news here is that Apple is making a backup statement to what they've been saying for years and what they've recently gotten negative attention on: They don't want your data. If they don't want their user's data then why are they running an ad business?

samstave 4y ago

I want a 'Dead-Man's Switch' option on top of this. Period.

louison11 4y ago

Yeah, and this also shows that the future is not necessarily all decentralized/run by crypto punks in basements. There is an elegant way we can move to a safer, more reliable Internet all while using the current stack that might be hyper-centralized, but has proven to be the most cost-effective and reliable way to do things.

Epitom3 4y ago

I like their products but man, its embarrassing how some people get on their knees for apple.

sensanaty 4y ago

> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river. I genuinely refuse to believe a real human wrote that sentence, there's just no way, right?