Apple is 100% correct. It’s the entire reason Android exists.
Then again, Apple also does a fair bit of data collection. I hate that Apple has been able to market themselves as some kind of bastion of privacy. They aren’t.
Apple is 100% correct. It’s the entire reason Android exists.
Then again, Apple also does a fair bit of data collection. I hate that Apple has been able to market themselves as some kind of bastion of privacy. They aren’t.
So Apple is not 100% correct. They are 50% correct because the second half of their claim is that Apple is somehow different and not tracking its users…
Genuine question: in what ways do Apple track iOS users (that cannot be turned off)?
I’m of the viewpoint that most tracking can be rather easily be turned off, and that android plays in a totally other ballpark here. But I might very well be wrong.
A list from elsewhere in the thread: https://lemdro.id/comment/3314038
I believe the reason Google acquired Android was to make sure that Apple didn’t dominate the mobile device landscape, which would be a threat to their ad business. The data collection was just a nice side-effect, from their perspective.
I think you underestimate how early Google acquired Android. In 2005, Apple wasn’t even in the mobile device market. Nokia were the dominant handset in those days.
Actually, the reason Android exists isn’t so one-dimensional.
- The company Android was initially concerned more with Microsoft dominating phones like they did computers at the time, before being bought by Google
- They created two prototype chains initially, one touch, one that was more akin to BlackBerry
- iPhone came out, they ditched the BlackBerry-esque one and focused on what became now Android
Google was mostly just doing what all tech companies were doing at the time, trying to compete in a mobile arms race for dominance. The data tracking was just a bonus. Appeasing shareholders is paramount. Look at how Apple created an Alexa speaker just because they had to as another example of this type of behavior.
Also, Apple actually has a long history of tracking user behavior that predates both Android and the iPhone.
Apple apps since some time shortly after the inception of OS X would (and likely still do) phone home to configuration.apple.com to send apple metrics on usage. Earlier variations of LittleSnitch could actually block this collection behavior.
Apple has since reconfigured the network stack to guarantee that direct encrypted connections to Apple are always possible above any VPN, or other type of network filter connection. So there’s no way to prevent communication with Apple on an Apple product at all now short of keeping it off the Internet or blocking DNS to 17.* IP addresses, which would only work on a network one has control over.
Closed source is always privacy invasive by default.
Pot, meet kettle
Is Apple trying to convince me that the Health app, Apple maps or Siri doesn’t track me?
Health app has encrypted data that doesn’t go to Apple without explicit permission
Their slide seems to list Siri, Maps, and iAd not being tied to the user’s Apple ID as a pro. I didn’t realize this was the case.
Apple has very explicitly stated in very clear terms that the health app does not share data with other apps or devices unless you give permission. And as someone who has given that permission (twice, once to give a meal tracker write permission and once to link to my doctors office’s application for read and write) it’s for every application. It’s not a “hey you need to let everyone have access or no one”. You can get fairly granular.
There’s always the possibility of lying but usually when a company goes that hard on saying the same thing is so many different ways it’s legit. They don’t commit like that unless they know they won’t get in trouble. Those kinds of statements could open them to false advertising claims if it got out they were taking your health data.
Here’s a link to their privacy document which reviewed a good bit of info: https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Health_Privacy_White_Paper_May_2023.pdf
Google, the famous advertising company is using its hardware,software and infrastructure to watch everything we are doing?
I’m shocked.
Apple, ruthlessly opposing standards any time it can make them a buck no matter how many people have to suffer the consequences.
I’m shocked.
Apple got shit on when they went all in on USB on the Mac. People complained they couldn’t use their mice and keyboards anymore.
They shit on FireWire and thunderbolt and called them proprietary, even those were both industry standard ports. Same for DisplayPort.
They switched to USB-C exclusively and then people complained that they had to buy dongles.
In the modern era, they have had maybe 3 or 4 proprietary ports.
It doesn’t seem so ruthless to me.
Which is why iMessage is open source and supported on all platforms, right? ;)
They should have switched to USB c years ago, they only did it because the EU forced them
Apple gets far less hate than it deserves. Fucking garbage company
