(Also, political solutions are more likely to incur severe unwanted side-effects, such as, for example, making it almost impossible for any new operating system to enter the smartphone market ever again).
Also, the options Tim Cook has at his disposal go beyond technical solutions: in particular, it would be straightforward for Apple to switch to a pricing strategy that gets iOS devices into the hands of 100s of millions or billions of people who will stick with or choose Android if Apple keeps its current pricing model.
Here is a writer who estimates that Apple could sell the iPhone X at at 40% discount from its current (at the time the web page was written) price without losing money on the sale:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2017/11/08/apple-iph...
Rather than switching pricing strategies, Mr Cook apparently prefers to lobby the government to help him maintain the iPhone's status as a premium or luxury brand, which in turn preserves the iPhone's very high profit margins.
Weak political solution: Thou shalt not make unauthorized charges to other people's credit cards.
Technical solution: Replace the whole concept of credit card numbers with a secure payment authorization flow.
Credit cards: Meh. That sounds hard.
[20 years later...]
Credit cards: Check this out! We offer a secure payment authorization flow! And your credit card numbers still work like they always did!
[Someday...]
Stronger (but late) political solution: Thou shalt provide a secure payment authorization flow instead of credit card numbers.
Politics and social customs are all about taking particular spots on a landscape of choices. Technology shapes that very landscape.
--
- [0] - note how difficult it is to really censor anything these days, or curtail someone's audience; hell, if anything, technology is showing that ubiquitous free speech has some negative consequences too.
The real-world effectiveness of any technical solution depends on the political will to enforce it. Without no political will, technical solutions are not effective or enforceable, or even deployable. A political solution on the other hands eliminates the need to even consider a tech solution.
Does anyone want to sell me a phone that runs Debian with the option of running Android or iOS in a VM with appropriate management functions that would make it very hard for an app to misbehave?
Many times yes. And even more important, the contacts!
Now it's you have to "give the app all the contacts" even if you know you want to give it only one or two. And of those one or two, just the number. Not the picture, not the date of birth, not the address.
In short we should be able to pre-select what any app actually sees of of all the databases, records and fields.
It sounds too technical but it could be done properly.
"Why do I have to click through all this mess when I just want to post this picture I just took to Facebook?"
"I think I set it right but now Facebook can't see the picture I wanted to post"
et cetera. These granular controls aren't something that regular people want to deal with.
Also, how does that work with GDPR compliance if the UI clearly doesn’t ask for my consent that all photos are somehow accessed and maybe even uploaded?
How many people would leave it on as they drive away from home, and then struggle with their phones as they're driving?
Apple doesn't generally expose more options than it thinks a substantial number of people need. That's a UX decision, not a "Apple wants to track you forever" evil business decision.
I'll admit I wouldn't mind an option like this, but I'm fine with three levels of location service controls for apps.
They can also have an option is settings to ONLY allow foreground app to use location service.
I bet most people don't want random apps to know their location in the background. They only want location when they know what it's used for (e.g. Google Maps, Uber/Lyft etc). If Apple is really so pro-privacy, they can find a way to stop apps tracking location in the background.
"Allows access to Location Services only when the app or one of its features is visible on screen. If an app is set to While Using the App, you might see your status bar turn blue with a message that an app is actively using your location."
Always: an app can always access your location
While using: an app can access your location until explicitly terminated by the user or the OS due to resource constraints
Never: self-evident
> An app is considered "in use" when you're actively using it in the foreground, or when it's in use in the background, which the status bar will indicate.
from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203033. There is still the indication, but admittedly that is not the same.
I really hoped they'd add this in iOS12.
• add VPN on/off to control center
• allow per-app VPN via Apple Configurator, without enterprise MDM
• once the above two are available, we can use Tor, IDS, DPI or pihole on a per-application basis, to reduce data harvesting
• bonus1: allow the open-source iOS MDM community OR the iOS Shortcuts community to make it easy for novice users to have one-click install of "privacy-plus configurations"
• bonus2: provide open-source code for on-device, silicon-enabled voice recognition using Neural Engine. In the meantime, allow anonymous (no iCloud login) use of Siri via Tor on a per-application basis