That alone is a very strong reason to hoard data if you're Apple.
Really the big outlier here is Siri, I'm sure they could make Siri better if they were willing to hoard data, but Apple has demonstrated that they value user privacy much higher than the incremental improvement they'd make with Siri, and violating user privacy would likely hurt their business a lot more than making Siri a bit better would help.
IMO both Google and Apple aren't saints. Apple had a fairly similar headline in 2011[1]. Now watch people here on HN explain why that was completely different. It's a guarantee.
We really should be focusing coming up with ideas on what we can do. My friend for example (and this isn't a perfect solution) but he bought 2 phones, one of these for calling:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41AwGb3pKCL...
(extremely thin in real life)
And then he caries a smartphone for encrypted chat apps etc. He removed a bunch of hardware chips from the smartphone so even if you put a simcard it it doesn't connect anywhere. Also the microphone was removed and some other things. It works great. At first he had it with the simcard still in, but he wanted more privacy. Personally, I would have kept a 4g only simcard or something, it's kind of a trade-off because now he can only chat on wifi.
It's far from perfect, but at least he's trying something.
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/apr/20/iphone-tr...
Ok, since you’ve so eloquently asked - a local copy of your location history that colllected when location services are turned on is completely different from remotely collecting location data even when you’ve explicitly disabled location services.
Any attempt to say these are the same thing has gone beyond naive to willfully ignorant at best.
Google's entire business is carefully balanced on user trust. Anyone who posits some naive "they're an ad company" nonsense is just muddying the waters. Google is a user-trust company in a variety of spheres, and without that trust they would be annihilated.
Apple does not see user data as something to be hoarded
I've gotten downvoted elsewhere and will gladly eat it up to warn against this utterly ludicrous kool-aid fueled naivety. Apple says whatever nonsense gets a cheer at their latest product reveal. But if you don't think they're desperately vacuuming up data for their machine learning to stay ahead of the game, you should rethink your positions.
I remember virtually identical claims about Microsoft a decade ago, as an aside. Hell, in conversations about Google versus Microsoft, no less. Then Microsoft, you know, started viciously hoovering up user data like there's no tomorrow.
I'm a (mostly) happy [0] Apple customer. The lack of evidence that they are gathering all my bits makes me comfortable to use their products. I strongly feel we'd hear leaks about how they are saying one thing and doing another if they were. Employees of Apple aren't that loyal.
Yet here we are with Google and their "it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission" attitude.
[0] iOS 11 is bad. Just bad.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2011/04/27Apple-Q-A-on-Locati...
It is impossible that a unique device submits data about cell and wifi locations in an "anonymous" way aside from putting another party in between (a party that you'd have to trust), and that caveat is outrageously nonsensical to anyone with a hint of technical capability. But we trust that Apple is then mangling it up. Or do they?
And even if a cell phone does keep the same IP address for a long time, I'm confident that Apple is completely ignoring the IP address for each submission and taking only the encrypted location data. Apple has gone to great lengths to preserve privacy in so many other cases, it's outrageously nonsensical to accuse Apple of trying to match IP addresses with location data to identify individual devices (and besides, even if they did do that, all they'd know is the rough location history of some device, but nothing at all about what that device is or who owns it).
My guess is that they don't given that they have a setting in location services called "Wi-Fi networking". But this should definitely be investigated...
Apple is also much better at privacy now. Maybe they'll also change course and then we might as well stop using smartphones, cause we're being treated like sheep.
The non-Siri Apple machine learning is happening on device. This is something that Google would consider doing for 5s, before all in the meeting would start laughing and they'd go for uploading everything.
Remind me again, which company pulled out of China, Apple or Google?
"In 2014, in response to a series of terrorist attacks, China made all Google services almost unusable by tightening its Internet censorship, often called the "Great Firewall of China"
That would only happen if Google didn't comply with Chinese govt. unlike the other company we are talking about.
Apple, on the other hand, is a consumer brand that is wildly popular worldwide. People save up for these devices, they sell out within minutes and people go to extreme lengths to line up in store for them. There would be much more anger for banning them than Google.
I literally just now created, and then deleted, an Apple Id. It's trivial. Why do you think it isn't?
Being fully compliant with GDPR is a mountain of work even if you thought you were doing all the right things before.
In practice, small companies/ start-ups might not be audited / reported / pursued very much but: a) you'll never know and b) at least all the big tech and e-commerce companies are smack on in the sights of several data protection and competition(!) authorities already. We're all scrambling to be compliant in time.
Source: first hand account from running the GDPR compliance project in e-commerce company.
Apple has demonstrated time and time again their commitment to privacy and to protecting user data.
Apple does not see user data as something to be hoarded. They see user data as a liability and work very hard to collect as little as possible in order to provide the services they do.
The idea that Apple is going to discard all of this and add privacy intrusion into iOS, doing a completely 180° on their business model and discarding all of their corporate principles, is extremely unlikely.