I'd support companies with excellent privacy / data security records being exclusive brokers of my information. Apple is on that very short list.

Are they? Do people care that much? I think, except for those who actually have their credit stolen, the average person just sees it as another headline of the world today, and will move on, the way people still fly United.

Until people's lives are actually impacted by the lack of privacy, they'll continue doing what they always do. Once something requires action on the person's part, (either credit being stolen from them, or something along those lines) most people won't take preemptive actions. And this would need to happen on a massive scale for giant corporations to change their ways.

Other than financial data I don't particularly value my privacy. I post on many online forums under my own name and even my alias here is a composition of elements of my name. I use Google services quite happily and have no material gripes with the company. But still as an iPhone user it's good to know that Apple has my back on this and I'd really hate to lose that feeling.

Also I don't think this is entirely a commercial decision on Apple's part. They must know very well that taking an absolute stance on customer privacy puts them diametrically at odds with the interests of the Chinese government. China hasn't taken many overt steps against them (though they shut down iTunes movies and iBooks and chipping away at Apple Pay and other services with onerous regulations), but does anyone really doubt that they're working away in the background to try to help Apple's competitors and slow down Apple sales and service expansion in China? There's no way the Chinese government can be happy with Apple's privacy stance and nunlike int he West Apple doesn't have the shield of the law to protect them in China. They stand naked against the Chinese government, but they're still doing it. That takes some real conviction. I really don't think I'm exaggerating in saying that this stance on privacy may very well cost them any chance of a dominant position in the Chinese market. It's certainly running a real material risk of that anyway.

Volkswagen is basically back to it's pre-dieselgate sales levels. Admittedly its stock price is still quite a bit below it's pre-dieselgate high, largely due to the still unknown factors surrounding possible future fines.

We know that since Snowden, if you remember those revelations.

I'm not implying i agree with how far governments go to intrude into peoples privacy. Just pointing out that i agree with OP that there's a big difference between for example Googles and Apples stance towards privacy.

For many people, their only positive quality seems to be "Not Apple."

Is Apple good? Probably not. Is it less of a threat to your privacy and freedom than Google? Probably.

http://www.android.protectmyprivacy.org/

While I really like non-Google Android + PMP in theory, the reality is that this solution is extremely complicated, limiting, error prone, buggy and probably not worth it.

So I concede that Apple is the better choice, but nevertheless, persist in my futile efforts to make my 1+ somehow work securely.

Samsung, really? :D weeping angel rings a bell?

In practice i have very strong doubts this is a fact. Specially since there is '5 eyes', '6 eyes', '9 eyes' and '14 eyes'. And any of the members are monitoring domestic terrorism, so i fail to see how they are not spying on their own citizens.

Maybe they offload it to the US as NSA is so good at it.

Really, Apple is anti Nothing and pro only one thing: money. Everything else is a corollary. Including ease of use, freedom, and privacy. It's just that those things do matter to me (and GP).

Edit: It would massively increase the usability, allowing any apps to be installed, not just Apple approved apps, making the phone more usable to many people. Back in the day I had to buy a dev account just to load an emulator I wanted to use (it was open source) without rooting.

I know the risks, I want to do it anyway. I don't want a nanny over my head.

For that reason, societies tightly regulate car ownership and driving. More so than phones: I don’t need a license to use a phone, nor do I have to register my ownership or have it regularly inspected.

But technology these days has this same characteristic: Others bear the costs of your decision. Every device connected to the internet is a DDOS vector.

I don’t want you deciding whether to keep your device up to date with the latest security patches, because if you (and a few million others) don’t, GitHub is down for me.

Anyway, if you don't want to deal with how an iPhone works, how about buying a different phone.

If they ever do offer sideloading/gatekeeper, it should be turned off by default and turning it on should make the risks crystal clear with a scary alert and passcode prompt. Average folks should be heavily discouraged against using it. Gatekeeper works on the Mac, but iOS devices are both far more numerous and far more personal, so the stakes are much higher.

1: http://www.cydiaimpactor.com/

You can compile and sign (and, AFAIK, upload to the Google Play Store) an APK on an Android device, using AIDE and perhaps other dev toolkits. No computer needed.

I mean, tha hardware is not open, so developers can't generally implement any proper secure boot schemes (starting from a trusted bootloader), and can't generally control what goes on in the radio modules. Because there are no devices that have those parts open (or I'm unaware of something I want to buy?), there's no security/privacy possible.

Apple can provide privacy there because they're damn huge and they can purchase or design any hardware they want, fully documented to the last every single logic gate. An average free software developer can't.

As for the userland - I believe there are AOSP derivatives + 3rd party apps that result in a reasonably good privacy and security experience.

The only part of their ecosystem that has major restrictions is the App store. Which kind of makes sense as that's one of the few ways in which someone other than Apple could completely trash their platform and make alot of Apple's customers unhappy.

I'm not saying your "anti-freedom" point is completely invalid, but it's really not a major concern for most tech-savvy people, IMO.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14339031

More timely, the WTC attacks 16 years ago marked another notable event whereafter great freedom was lost in the name of safety.

As that old saying goes, "Those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither."

I see your point in the context of e.g. WannaCry and WTC attacks emboldening authoritarians, however this privacy move we're discussing is actually an anti-authoritarian move. It gives the user more privacy and more freedom.

Advocating more lax privacy/security in this case is siding with authoritarian tendencies.

I wish Google Fi would support iOS devices.

I know, I know, walled garden prevents users from opening their phone to vulnerabilities or guaranteeing a secure experience. I guess I wish I could have my cake and eat it too.

You can't setup TouchID without a passcode. The "attack vector" only exists if you 0 security on your iPhone to begin with. (So , yes, technically the attack vector exists if you choose to use no locks at all).

> Under iOS 11, this sequence has changed to also specifically require the passcode on the device after the "Trust This Computer?" prompt.

That's part of it. Another part is that the passcode has to be entered after the device has been connected to the computer, as opposed to starting with an unlocked phone (maybe you took it while it was in use, maybe you forced the user to unlock it) and connecting it to a computer later.

Once the device is unlocked, what is the obstacle to change the passcode?

Needing the old one?

Or - if you prefer - what happens if you have a TouchID and forget the passcode?

Do you need to reset the phone?

(No, aosp is unusable, and Google is working to make it more unusable).

Google = no privacy

Therefore, Android = no privacy

Q.E.D

Privacy is achievable on Android. However, I do agree it os very involved.

By your standards, privacy is achievable with difficulty on Android and not at all on iOS.

That leaves app installs (Android allows side loading) and push messaging (I'm not sure about this one) as the ones that you can't disable on iOS.

You can argue until you're blue in the face but Apple have little to no incentive to exploit my private data while Google have every incentive to do so.

Usually that path is: boot the phone into bootloader mode, plug it into a computer, run `fastboot oem unlock`, accept the warning that this will void your warranty, then `fastboot flash <image file to flash>`. An officially documented and supported way to do exactly what you want with the device that you own.

Yes, it voids your warranty, but it's not forbidden or illegal in any way.

Please. Actions speak louder than words, I am sure you would agree with that.

I see you defending Google around here. That's fine but a grand-grand-grand...-parent of yours was saying that AOSP is unusable, and that point still stands and is true.

The officially supported experience with Google Play Services is no more privacy invasive than the officially supported iOS ROM, but in the case of Google devices, the device is yours, and you are not limited to officially supported ROMs.

There are no open source ios phones

Your comment looks like trolling. We were discussing a feature to prevent others from backing up your device.

I don't know what Google collects, but the simple answer to this is "virtually everything". Apple collects very little data from their users and does everything they possibly can on-device (and the stuff that requires the cloud is either encrypted or heavily anonymized). Nearly all data that Google collects, Apple doesn't.

Let's not get too hippy-feelgood about Apple's intentions regarding its users here.

AFAIK this is true

I'm curious - how can a carrier support and not support certain networks? Isn't that like saying I wish my ISP supported Linux?

So, I don't think it is physically possible to do the "two provider at the same time" thingy without a special hardware (you'd need two parallel "radio" circuits on your phone).

And with that, your analogy falls sadly on its face, as you seem to indicate an artificial "software" limitation has been set to prevent us from using Google Fi on our iPhones.

It's not that they're blocking iOS, but more that iPhones don't support the network.

They are not able to implement it to their satisfaction with iOS, so they stick with their own devices.

I understand that it would be needed for purchase apps, but just to download a free one?

For example Gab was rejected by the App Store because of the content people were posting. Of course, they won't ban Chrome despite being susceptible to the same content violation.

Unlike any of the tech giants, they have no incentive to pull you in their ecosystem, embrace open source, etc

If only FirefoxOS had arrived earlier and was not tied to a catastrophic 'web on mobile' idea.

I'll trust Google's engineering prowess and rigor before I trust Apple, who couldn't even bother to verify emails before leaking Apple ID attributes towards that email, and who allowed things to "fappen."

But I'll trust none of them to "guard my privates." Please.

Apples security record is not better than say, Adobe

Personally I dropped a lot of Google products with the Snowden leaks revealed to shocked Google engineers that they shouldn't have been sending unencrypted traffic between data centers and assuming it was safe because it was on leased lines. There's bugs, and then there's just negligence.