If a company’s business model is aligned with statements by its CEO, I would consider those statements more valid, not less. Apple is putting its money where Tim Cook’s mouth is. That’s a good thing.

If the CEO of a tobacco company say cigarettes do not cause cancer, should should consider this statement valid?

They didn't align their business model in order to further privacy, though. It just happened to shake out that way. If Apple cared in the slightest about issues like this, they wouldn't make it impossible to control your own hardware when you buy an iPhone.

That’s Apple cared only about issues like this. In the slightest is too narrow.

Plausibly they care for many things and trade them off.

That's fair. My point is only that self-interest explains more variance here than caring about privacy. They may genuinely care about privacy to some degree - just as i'm sure Google and Facebook do. They both just care about profit more, and for Google/FB, those things come into conflict. For Apple they don't.

Your stance seems unfalsifiable. If a company did exist that cared more about their values than profit, how would you recognize it?

But more importantly: who cares? We’re not judging whether Tim Cook oughta get into heaven.

People seem highly driven by the profit motive, arguably more than by most other motives. If Apple’s goals are aligned with mine and motivated by profit so they’re likely to be careful to keep from damaging their reputation... great!

It is falsifiable, i've explained elsewhere my reasoning, but i'll repeat it here: The same basic moral orientation that would motivate one to care about privacy would also motivate them to care about freedom. Apple's policy of not giving you sovereignty over your device is anti-freedom. However, the thing that explains both behaviors is self-interest. It's to Apple's strategic interest to focus on privacy, it's not to their strategic interest to focus on freedom. Therefore, the most likely explanation for their behavior is their strategic self-interest, and not any moral orientation towards privacy.

It's also been brought up by others that Apple discards its privacy morals when it comes to China. Which is another point in the "probably doesn't actually care about privacy" column. Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is most often true. The simplest explanation here is self-interest.

so in summary you are saying 1. Apple is selfish (like any other company). 2. Their self interest is coupled to user privacy (but not freedom or moral values).

I'm saying that their stance on privacy is motivated by self-interest. Nothing more, nothing less.

What disincentives are implicit in Apple's business model that discourages collecting more data from their users?

Not collecting user data is something that only Apple can do. Google depends on data collection for its primary revenue stream. Apple does not. This means that focusing on privacy is a uniquely competitive tactic for Apple to take, and they have shrewdly taken it.

To be absolutely clear, i'm not disparaging them for taking this position. I think it's great. I'm just trying to contextualize it.

And yet we know that the personal data of your customers is worth billions.

And we also know that nothing about writing walled software ecosystems prevents one from syphoning this data.

So it would appear that Apple has purposefully left money on the table.

So please tell me how that fits with your 'self-interest' explanation of Apple's stance here.

I already have elsewhere in this thread, but here goes: Google's primary business model is contingent on user data collection. Apple has the most profitable business in the world, which is not contingent on user data collection. Yes, you are absolutely correct that Apple is leaving a few billion dollars on the table by not doing this. However, that's only true in a fairly narrow, greedy (in the sense of a 'greedy algorithm') sense.

Taking a more strategic perspective, you would look around and see that your competitors have to collect this data to survive. But you don't. That makes this a weakness for them, which means that it's a differentiating factor for your product that they can never copy. This strategic advantage is worth much more than the few billion in quick cash they might pick up by monetizing their user data.

But we see that the general public's relationship with privacy is a lax one at best and at a time when AI solutions are the breakthroughs and revenue generators of the future, that Apple is restricted to an uncertain trajectory. Are you sure that the market value of data and their derived innovations aren't worth more in dollar terms than the privacy market?

Not only that, but having taken this stance so strongly, it makes any future relaxations of their self-imposed rule an even riskier move as it exposes them to hypocrisy. So it's clearly a double edged sword. And while it's certain Google depends on data now, nothing stops them from making excellent phones with excellent hardware with privacy to boot to compete with Apple on their turf.

Apple, Microsoft and Amazon will be perfectly unperturbed when the so-called “attention economy” goes away. They are real companies offering real goods and services.

I think it will hit them as well, just not to the same extent as Facebook & Google.

Microsoft owns LinkedIn, which is an advertising company. I also seem to recall that they make a reasonable chunk of change from search advertising and other online properties.

According to this link they took in a little over 6 billion in advertising revenue last year:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/725388/microsoft-corpora...

According to this link, amazon took in somewhere in the region of 1.7 billion in revenue from mainly advertising last quarter alone:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/725388/microsoft-corpora...

Microsoft for example has several billion dollar businesses aside from Windows, Office, and enterprise. Their Surface and Xbox hardware, for example, pulls in that much revenue each. They'll be fine.

Yeah, Google and Facebook are not tech companies. They are mainly ad companies run by social justice activists. Their only purpose is to stuff ads down peoples throats.

Google could exist in a diminished form off their cloud and office suite. But e.g. GMail is not a viable business without slurping user data.

I don't know about completely. They still all show ads and collect user data. But they will be less affected than some others (google).

It’s nice that Apple’s interests and my interests align. It always refreshing when a company puts a lot of effort into structuring their company in such a way that it aligns with users’ beat interests.

Note: Above not valid in China

Know when to hold, know when to fold.

It's just co-incidence that they align on this issue, though. They care about user privacy because they happen to make most of their money by selling hardware, not ads or data. But ask them to open up that hardware and let you install your own OS? That's a no. Even something as simple as letting your preferred mapping software be the default.

Apple loves privacy and hates freedom. It sure looks like the only thing they actually care about is their financial interest.

> Apple loves privacy and hates freedom. It sure looks like the only thing they actually care about is their financial interest.

Hates freedome how? This statement is overbroad.

In a nutshell, I would rather support Apple as they're primarily a hardware company that has stated their privacy interests align with mine. As opposed to me supporting an advertising company that happens to sell phones and produce a mobile operating system that seems tailored to do the opposite.

The fact that I can't install my own OS is entirely tangential to the overall company goals of Apple versus Google or even Samsung. Focusing on a phone platform to behave as if it was the PC platform of the 80's reminds me of the for want of a nail proverb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail

Focusing too far down on "freedom" from the gnu perspective will just put us into territory we can't cover at all realistically right now.

Besides which, I just want to use my phone, not spend endless hours fucking around with it to install all manner of stuff.

> Hates freedome how? This statement is overbroad.

In the sense that their devices are not free.

> Besides which, I just want to use my phone, not spend endless hours fucking around with it to install all manner of stuff.

The fact that you don't want to use it that way is hardly relevant to the question of freedom.

Listen, i'm not saying they should spend a bunch of time engineering a solution to support this use case. I'm not saying they should aid people in doing it in any way. But that's not all they're doing. They actively expend resources to thwart people controlling their own devices. It is their corporate policy not just not to support this behavior, but to make it technologically impossible. That is the key point.

If Apple had just said "if you modify the OS, you void your warrant and you're on your own - we offer you zero support", i'd be totally fine with that. Personally, i'm not interested in modifying my device at all, i'm happy to leave it as is. But to go out of their way to make it impossible to do that? That's anti-freedom, no matter how you slice it.

The fact that they make it hard is what guarantees that there's a large pool of people with stock iphones. And this pool is too big a market to ignore, which is why I can have good apps, even from companies I don't trust, and deny them permissions I don't want to grant.

I think Apple understands this. The freedom you desire has ecosystem effects which I don't want.

You may quibble about precisely how hard is hard enough. Maybe they could loosen up a little bit, walk some middle path, and satisfy both of our desires. Maybe. Has anyone done it? Apparently people will sign anything you ask them to in order to play farmville. And every jailbreak seems like a security hole I'd rather not have.

I see no reason to think that making this possible would alter their ecosystem at all. It would always be a small minority of users. A small minority that developers could always just ignore. Developers on Android don't bother to think about custom Android kernels, unless they're specifically targeting that user niche.

I'm not too sure what exact freedom this minority of users is after. Does granting the ability to load a custom kernel require zero engineering effort from Apple? Including doing it in a way which won't leave the door open for the FBI, and whoever else, to break in?

It requires substantially less engineering effort than they've put into making sure people cannot do those things.

They are just preventing several potential headaches in their view. If I build something and I don't want end users to do X with it, I'm entitled to do that. If the user doesn't like it, the user can go elsewhere. Those are the terms I set as the vendor and you are free to not engage, you have other choices.

In short, you are still free to not buy their hardware.

Absolutely true. Just as you are free not to use Google and Facebook if you don't want your data collected. Not trying to say they don't have every right to do it.

Apple can make a very good case that your vision of freedom is in opposition to privacy. By preventing certain things you categorize as 'freedom' Apple can provide stronger security and privacy protection, they can limit the ability of untrustworthy developers to sidestep protections, they can make it incredibly difficult to set up side-channels that leak privacy, and they can set OS-mediated protections of device info (GPS, etc) that are difficult to bypass.

The fact that this privacy protection happens to be in the financial interest of Apple pleases me, because they are unlikely to sell out long-term interests in protecting reputation for short-term gain in abusing my trust. This alignment of interests makes Apple a better guardian of my privacy, not worse.

> Apple can make a very good case that your vision of freedom is in opposition to privacy. By preventing certain things you categorize as 'freedom' Apple can provide stronger security and privacy protection, they can limit the ability of untrustworthy developers to sidestep protections, they can make it incredibly difficult to set up side-channels that leak privacy, and they can set OS-mediated protections of device info (GPS, etc) that are difficult to bypass.

None of that is true. All they need to do is create an opt-out mechanism to over-ride those security settings that requires authentication. It's trivial to have both, they just choose not to.

It is also trivial to convince technically unsophisticated users to over-ride these security settings to get some ephemeral (and probably not even true) benefit. On the front page of HN today was another story describing how Facebook harvested a large chunk of contact info and text messages because people _gave it permission to do so_ when the app asked for it. Expecting these same users to be sophisticated enough to know what they are actually opting out of in this case strikes me as being a bit delusional.

So make it difficult and explicit. Or shit, just don't go out of your way to make it impossible. Android threads this needle extremely well. Installing a different kernel is not something a casual user can be tricked into doing. It requires a restart, and a moderately complex sequence of clearly dangerous actions. There is no epidemic of people being 'tricked' into installing alternate Android kernels.

Are you not conflating two separate issues here?

How is letting you install your own OS helping with improving privacy?

In today's world can you really decouple hardware and software if you want strict controls over data and hence privacy?

I'm not conflating the issues. What i'm saying is that Apple acts like they care about privacy, because it's in their strategic interest to do so. However, truly caring about privacy tends to go along with caring about freedom. Apple does not care about freedom, as evidenced by their device locking. Ergo, Apple cares about privacy only insofar as it benefits them to do so.

> truly caring about privacy tends to go along with caring about freedom

Only in your opinion. A non-free system whose vendor has an incentive to protect privacy may also provide even stronger privacy protection for the masses than a system that meets your version of 'freedom'.

> Only in your opinion. A non-free system whose vendor has an incentive to protect privacy may also provide even stronger privacy protection for the masses than a system that meets your version of 'freedom'.

This isn't a "version" of freedom. It is what freedom literally means. You can say you're willing to sacrifice some freedom to gain privacy, sure. But from a technical perspective, that's a totally false choice.

It is not a false choice from either a technical nor a philosophical perspective. There are positive and negative freedoms/liberties and each leads to different results when applied to a real world situation. You view freedom as a negative liberty (e.g. absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints) so anything that hinders your usage of a device in a manner you desire is contrary to your view of 'freedom'. Others may view device freedom as a positive liberty, where freedom is manifested in a way that enables them to take control of their life and realize a more fundamental purpose. If I view a computer as a means of accomplishing some other goal and not a tool that I need to think about much or to modify, but where the existence of such liberties can negatively impact my goal then your version of freedom makes me less free. If I need to spend time and mental energy wondering if some action I take might make my privacy less secure, if some app I install is a threat or a benefit, or if some action a third-party asks me to take is going to subtly invalidate a simple security model I keep in my head, then I am less free.

To dive straight towards the third-rail of this conversation, some people think that being able to go out and buy a gun makes them more free while other people think that the ability of other people (of possibly questionable mental state or moral character) to buy a gun increases the probability that they will be killed by someone else with a gun and because of this they are less free. Both are correct.

If only the market would allow us to make a choice as to which version of freedom we wish to engage in and would provide us with multiple competing platforms that represent alternative visions of computing and informational autonomy. If only...

> If I view a computer as a means of accomplishing some other goal and not a tool that I need to think about much or to modify, but where the existence of such liberties can negatively impact my goal then your version of freedom makes me less free.

How, exactly? Are you saying that the burden of potentially unlocking your device in error, even if Apple makes that a convoluted, explicit process makes you less free? If i'm misunderstanding your argument, let me know. If i'm not, I think we both know it's totally silly.

Of course Google will tell you that cigarettes cause cancer and climate change is a threat: they don't sell tobacco or drill for oil! They're just looking out for their own interests.

Apple actively chooses to not pursue these revenue streams even though they have the resources and reach to do so.

> Apple actively chooses to not pursue these revenue streams even though they have the resources and reach to do so.

I disagree. Apple can't compete in those spaces effectively because they're already owned by Google/FB. Microsoft has similar resources to Apple, and they tried to compete with Google on search - look how that turned out. Even Google can't compete with FB in social, look at Google Plus.

Apple has, intelligently, recognized that they cannot compete in that space. So they aren't trying. They are then using that to their advantage, by focusing on privacy, which is something their competitors cannot focus on. It's a perfectly legitimate strategy, and there's nothing wrong with them doing that. I support it wholeheartedly.

On the contrary however, it is not in Apple's strategic interest to give users's sovereignty over their devices. In both cases, their behavior aligns not with user interests, but with their own. Being financially self-interested better explains the sum total of Apple's behavior than any interest in user well-being.

Microsoft azure is not going so bad, and it started in a space where amazon was far ahead. A large head start doesn't mean that you can't compete, it depends largely on the space.

You're completely right. I didn't mean to imply that you can't compete with a head start. What I meant to imply was that in social/search specifically, it's extremely difficult to compete, due to the virtuous cycles of networks and data.

I like the reward system with-in Bing. Covered the cost of my kids Xbox gold/live subscription.

Exactly. Apple has lots of opportunities to monitize the App Store by profiting from user data.

I get where you're coming from, but I'm not sure that matters to me personally. Privacy and security are important to me, and that's what Apple is selling, so I'm going to buy.

The more consumers support privacy as a selling feature, the more Apple will guard it. I'll gladly pay a premium to a company that has a vested interest in keeping my shit safe, and a straightforward business model of keeping me happy enough to sell me more shiny things.

I don't disagree. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from buying their products. If you care about privacy, absolutely, buy an iPhone. I'm just trying to point out that their caring about privacy comes as much from a place of greed and fortunate coincidence than anything else.

I'm not sure it's fortunate coincidence, seems like Apple chose this path. As for greed, well, they're a corporation. That's a given. They're driven to profit by their very nature. If you need a phone you choose one, or you build one yourself.

Opening up iMessage to Android users would definitely reduce Facebook's collection of user data, since friends wouldn't be compelled to use FB Messenger. But yeah it's not in his business model.

But I would be more concerned about the privacy of the iMessage content on an Android device than on an iOS device.

Compelled to use FB Messenger when WhatsApp is available? I don't think there are many people who have FB, but not WhatsApp.

You know the phone numbers of all of your FB contacts?

Getting someone's phone number has always felt like a much higher bar than their FB since you could harass them with calls, SMS, etc and it's more difficult to block. Plus there's an implicit sexual connotation if you ask a woman for her phone number that doesn't apply to Facebook or LinkedIn.

I really don't like how WhatsApp piggybacks on phone numbers and phone contacts but clearly I'm in a tiny minority given how successful they've become.

> You know the phone numbers of all of your FB contacts?

I don't have a Facebook account.

> Getting someone's phone number has always felt like a much higher bar than their FB since you could harass them with calls, SMS, etc and it's more difficult to block.

It's quite easy to block a number. If they'll go as far as to use a different phone to call you, then they could also use someone else's FB account too.

> Plus there's an implicit sexual connotation if you ask a woman for her phone number that doesn't apply to Facebook or LinkedIn.

That's probably something specific to your culture or a misconception on your part. I don't see how the two actions are different when in the same context, except friending someone on FB means you let them not only try communicate you, but observe a certain period of your past and see pictures/videos/posts of yours. I can't see how that's not more demanding in terms of privacy than asking for someone's phone number.

I'd ideally go for an e-mail address instead of both of them, but well...

I find WhatsApp is ubiquitous among my international friends, but my American friends who joined Facebook in college don't have it. Anecdotal data, of course.

Facebook owns WhatsApp.

Certainly but WhatsApp is rather privacy-friendly.

What makes you say this? How do you know what Facebook is doing with the whatsapp data?

If WhatsApp is not lying about end-to-end encryption, FB don't have the data.

There’s plenty of useful data besides the content of messages.

See also: BBM

Correct. They didn't build a business model around doing something unethical, which eventual can get the entire company in trouble - so great strategic leadership I'd say.

"Unwall the iPhone garden"—you mean allow anyone to access things like SMS, or chat logs as was the case on Android? In that case I very much like those walls, thank you.

It's a cynical view but valid. It's not like Apple made a decision to be a non-player in social media for moral reasons - they just never got around to it because of the insane profits they got from selling iPhones.