At least Apple stood up to the FBI when they wanted an encryption backdoor.

For people willing to install their own operating systems, LineageOS and AOKP also are solid options.

We don't have to choose the lesser of two evils. We just have to be willing to research options that don't have millions to spend on marketing.

You mean Nexus 6P, the device that many coudln't could trust to not drop their Bluetooth connection to their car's audio system? Or the device that suffers random display and sound issues on a hardware level?

> For people willing to install their own operating systems, LineageOS and AOKP also are solid options.

"willing to install their own OS" saved you from trolling here. Need I remind you however how miniscule that audience is? Shouldn't we strive to make privacy available for all mothers and grandmothers out there as well?

> We don't have to choose the lesser of two evils.

Your life might allow you to go live in a cave without technology, mine doesn't. Good to know your idealism is serviceable in your life but you should realize this isn't the case for most of us.

> We just have to be willing to research options that don't have millions to spend on marketing.

Yeah. Right after I finish my work day and when I only need rest and relaxation. Oh wait.

Only for data physically stored on your phone, but you don't know what they do with your data stored/hosted on their cloud services.

There's really no argument here. Google is the world's #1 internet activity-tracking organization.

Apple is a hardware company that has data retention policies roughly somewhere around what one would expect for the pervasiveness of it's technology. I don't have to like either, but I'd be a fool to think that we're talking about equal amounts of intrusion.

Just what Google could do with the same amount of phone tracking, tied to all the other information it gathers from the multitude of other gathering apparatuses it operates makes an Andriod the less privacy minded option.

Is it a bug though, or a feature? On Windows 10 regular updates do the exact same thing and revert your privacy settings back to default, as far as I know.

> Just what Google could do with the same amount of phone tracking, tied to all the other information it gathers from the multitude of other gathering apparatuses it operates makes an Andriod the less privacy minded option.

You can use Android outside of the Google ecosystem. I have Firefox as my main browser on Android, and I dont use Google Play stores, while iOS gives you no option to use alternatives.

If they had nothing to gain, you could claim it's a misunderstanding or a bug, but when there are obvious benefits into letting such things happen, I'd say you should be suspicious as to why it's even occurring.

It's a bug.

They also gave the FBI the last iCloud backup of the phone (a month before the attack happened), so it's not like they haven't cooperated with the FBI at all in that case. It's just that it wasn't enough to the FBI, and that's where Apple drew the line.

Apple is clearly working toward securing that data so they can't supply it in readable form. Hard to reconcile that with excellent usability & UX, but they're solidly heading that way. Encrypting that iCloud backup such that it [mathematically] cannot be used without the Secure Enclave is surely coming. To wit: "here's all the data we have, only the defendant can unlock it, and no we're not building backdoors in."

The trick, of course, to preventing government surveillance is for companies to just not have the data in the first place.

Oh, wait...

But I admit my conspiracy theory assumption was written as a statement, sorry about that !

[0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2013/09/10Apple-Announces-iPh...

There are open source google-free builds of Android like CopperheadOS which focuses on security and privacy. Many of those security improvements even make it into Google Android builds eventually.

We do have some real choices on hardware that happens to ship with Google Android but Apple devices should not be a consideration if one wants to maintain their ability to have choices.

But they did acquire the company that did.

While I do agree that Apple is no better at preserving privacy, it doesn't fit the scope of this article.

> This means they are not only tracking what you search for, they're also tracking which websites you visit, and using all your data for ads that follow you around the internet

Apple may be doing the exact same thing as well, so they should not recommend Apple on the same principle. Otherwise it's just preposterous.

I've gone very far in limiting what Google has on me. But if my goal was simply to ditch Google completely, iOS is a completely valid point. So is Vimeo.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio...

It seems that you are hardly going out of the loop by searching for stuff on an iOS device. Google still ends up serving the results and collecting information on you. And by default Safari does not block ads that track you either.

This way of stating that Google pays to be the default search engine in Safari is inaccurate at best or disingenuous at worst. Phrasing it as you did makes it sound like Apple is hiding the fact that you're using Google and surreptitiously passing on your search information to Google.

Sure, one could argue that Apple should use a different engine by default and forgo that $3 billion. That certainly would be something. What's the trade off for them? At this point what major search engine doesn't track? (Yes, DuckDuckGo doesn't, and I use it as my default, but I also think people can reasonably disagree whether it's a major search engine, and I also recognize that the results aren't always as good as Google.) Apple does make it dirt simple to change the default, and doesn't nag you after you've changed it.

Definitely different than Apple "selling search requests". If you switch your search provider to anything non-Google, (presumably) Google is not going to get your search requests.