>Apple seems to be the only tech giant adhering to "do no evil." I've been a developer for a long time, even though development workflows are typically more compatible running on Macs, I've resisted going all in working on a Mac. I also have an Android phone. That is going to change. I trust apple a whole lot more than Google or Microsoft. My next phone will be an iPhone and luckily my Mac book pro is already on its way.

Ugh. As a long-time "all in on Macs" person I've dreaded the day this would happen. As much as I am an Apple whore, the world is worse off when important things are too tightly bound to monopoly players. It's not like I want to ONLY ever have the option of buying Apple products.

I am, however, glad that these values are being "proven right" in society and culture. I just wish they would percolate up through Big Tech more.

> Apple seems to be the only tech giant adhering to "do no evil."

They are the ones that might currently do less than the other two, but history shows that giving one company too much power means it will be abused sooner or later. Google seemed a really, really nice company in the late nineties. When it developed, people were fascinated. When the first versions of Android came out, I was coding like a crazy, happy to own an "open phone" I could simply copy MP3s and ebooks to. And look what a monster they became. Now I do whatever I can to get rid of Google from every aspect of my life, and believe me, it's not easy at all.

Google hasn't been "Do No Evil" since Ads became their primary revenue. People have been saying they've been suspicious and not super trustworthy before Android came out.

The writing on the wall has been there for a long time. They just had a very large stockpile of goodwill.

When were ads not Google's primary revenue source?

In the sense the business pivoted around it... before ~2003 I’d say. Writing was on the wall by 2001.

But it got SO MUCH worse around 2005 for some reason.

1997

-1 : I am very uneasy with the "evil" / "not evil" characterisation. There are many practices that are in a morally grey area but they don't go as far as invoking demons. Maybe it is because English is not my first language that this figure of speech has always bothered me.

-2 : I don't really see Apple as very different from Amazon or Google or any other tech giant. They are here to defend their bottom line and IMO they have remarked that ads were an easy critique of their rival so they are tabling on it.

If only they could :

- stop changing their TOS every 5 minutes and make them actually human readable.

- let anybody distribute an app on iOS, even outside of the app store, even if it competes with iTunes, Safari, etc

I would be way more inclined to cheer for Apple and call them a defender of our liberties. Another issue is that as far as net neutrality is concerned, this is scary.

What makes Apple different from Google is that I give them money and they give me stuff. My interests and their interests are mostly aligned. They make money by selling me stuff, not by tracking me around the web, collecting information etc.

I guess Apple makes you pay money directly to them when you buy devices so they don't have to do things behind your back like ad financed companies have to do. It's probably easier to opt out of apple.

Please could we get over this anthropomorphizing of companies at least here on HN? If you believe in a good/evil dichotomy in a religious sense, then be aware that, in theological notions of good and evil, only human beings are equipped with such qualities; hence attributing good/evil to a thing or a juristical person is nonsensical. If, OTOH, you don't have a religious understanding of good/evil, then rationality dictates that companies must do whatever necessary to survive, else they simply wouldn't exist. In any case, there is no such thing as an "evil company".

That said, I fully support Apple in their pro-privacy stance. Now if only they'd produce professional notebooks/equipment, I'd be re-considering them for my next purchase (having owned a PowerBook from 2003 onwards, and still using a Mac mini for graphic work).

"development workflows are typically more compatible running on Macs"

This is stated as if it were fact, when it is clearly an opinion with many complicated factors behind it that vary from person to person.

I run into examples almost daily where I need a mac. The latest being the cognita/angular example from awslabs https://github.com/awslabs/aws-cognito-angular2-quickstart. States right in the instructions you need to run the createresources.sh on either linux or mac. Even running babun or cygwin on windows doesn't work. I tried and wasted quite a lot of time. I ran it on my mac pro and it just works. It's not that mac is inherently better, its that the vast majority of developers work on macs and don't bother to get their workflows to work on windows.

This kind of thing is good, but I would definitely characterize going all-in on walled gardens and creating ecosystems where only approved code can run as "evil". That certainly characterized Apple/iOS when last I looked, which is why I dropped them. (What's the status of the latest iPhones for that? Can they be jailbroken at all?)

the "no headphone jack" thing seemed pretty evil to me. also, all of the monopolistic app store practices really aren't awesome.

the new specs for the Mac Book pro are also a joke for the price, and wtf is that touch bar crap.

also, paying 800-1000$ for a phone is ridiculous

So while Google is invading every single aspect of your private life, following you on every site you visit, and mining your data for engagement and advertising, Apple is... charging too much?

- Also the Google Pixel is $749.

> So while Google is invading every single aspect of your private life, following you on every site you visit, and mining your data for engagement and advertising, Apple is... charging too much?

Yes, of course. These two statements are not mutually exclusive.

> the "no headphone jack" thing seemed pretty evil to me.

Ignoring the hyperbole ("evil"? Really?) all removing the headphone jack was was proactively responding to market forces (because BT headphones have outsold wired for a while now) as it gave them more leeway in industrial design (the port is large and repeats functionality the other port already has anyhow).

> all of the monopolistic app store practices really aren't awesome.

You don't understand what "monopolistic" practices are. Sorry. Apple controls their own platform but that's not monopolistic.

> the new specs for the Mac Book pro are also a joke for the price

Not if you compare like for like it's not. Sorry, doesn't hold up under even a cursory examination of the competition.

> wtf is that touch bar crap.

Awesome is what it is - I have one and it's freaking great.

> also, paying 800-1000$ for a phone is ridiculous

That's literally the price range of most major high-end smart phones (ok, $700-$1000, but still). The flagship phones from Samsung, HTC, and Huawei are in that range. You have to go to LG or Oppo (much much smaller sales and they are selling at a loss) to get below that (and only into the $600 range, even then).

I think calling the removal of the headphone jack "evil" is stretching it a bit

I don't like the removal of the headphone jack, but how is it "evil"? They even include an adapter with the phone!

How is the lack of a headphone jack "evil"? They support standard Bluetooth headphones and come with an adapter in the box. Was it also evil when they got rid of the Ethernet port and forced users to either use Wifi or get an adapter?

"Apple seems to be the only tech giant adhering to 'do no evil.'"

Apple does plenty of evil, as you're about to find out when you realize the amount of freedom you enjoy on your Mac will not in any way translate to your iPhone, and further discover the business model to which Apple would want to gravitate (hint: not the Mac model).

They're arguably less evil than Google and Microsoft right now, but to say that they're "adhering to 'do no evil'" is by no means accurate when they still push their walled garden and treat their mobile users as incompetent children needing their hands held.

I'm curious what "freedom" you miss on the iPhone. I'm assuming it's something more important than "I can change my icons and fonts"?

Installing third-party software without an intermediary's approval?

If it keeps my device free of malware, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Side loading is a thing. Not hard to do. Absolutely legitimate (if less easy than the App Store).

That's called jail breaking. Which is a thing. That you can do.

Not easily, and absolutely not with Apple's approval.

>Apple seems to be the only tech giant adhering to "do no evil."

That's such an odd idea. I'm not sure how you arrive at it.

Apple, in this case, is simply setting itself up as a gatekeeper for advertising. Just like Apple is the gatekeeper at the app store who takes 30% of everything.

Apple isn't going to stop ads. It's going to charge advertisers a cut to reach Safari users. In the process, it claims to protect users of Safari from the "evil" cookies. Essentially, they're taking shots at Google's business model and trying to get a cut of Google's income at the same time. It's purely a money grab.

This is also great news for server side trackers. This will be a big boost for their business.

Ads are not Apple's primary business. It's a side-service to attract app creators. More/better apps = maintain/increase the marketshare for their devices. Apple remains a hardware company at the core.

Apple got out of the ad business years ago.

Apple is an iPhone company,

http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/59289f0379474ce7238...

Diversification doesn't hurt. Especially if it's at the expense of one of your largest competitors. Especially when your core market is mobile phones. Ask Motorola or Nokia about how being #1 in phones works out in the long run.

Apple makes a lot of money off of protecting it's customers privacy, which is why it can never be competitive in ads.

And it's well diversified. It's third largest business is Macintosh, which is the fastest growing and most profitable personal computer company in the world.