It would be colossally stupid for them to betray user trust in that way as it would almost certainly come out eventually, but that doesn’t change the trust problem they ultimately do have.
There should be a law against that sort of thing, for hardware that you fully paid for.
So do you mean use the software you paid for? (Fair)
Or am I missing a nuance.
Edit: Or are you referring to iDevices.
Also, is the Linux support actually official? Considering the above, I think not. I can't vote with my wallet for a company that has no clear map for the future, for my particular usecases.
Yes, iDevices are another problem. And yes, paying for the software when you use only the hardware is a problem too.
Too many problems with this company. I honestly can't understand why so many other hackers are happy being tethered and parent-controlled by Apple.
Obviously it varies from person to person.
Some just don't care about this at all and/or don't consider it an issue.
Some are just really used to it, or invested in the platforms, and don't want to waste time moving.
Some will just find much worse experiences for their taste anywhere else.
There are likely other personas in this story, these are just off the top of my head.
Frankly, I do not understand the disdain for Apple. They built their stack. That should be admired. Also, it's one ecosystem in the market.
Don't like it? Buy something else.
Not all the hardware, or at least not yet if you're on Apple Silicon.
Mainline Linux can now run all the critical features of apple silicon laptops and the remaining stuff like power management is really just waiting on someone to work out what the best way to modify Linux to support it would be.
> You can wipe it and install Linux and use the hardware you paid for unencumbered.
My point is, it works. In fact, it works fairly well. Some people use it as a daily driver.
Not all drivers are finished though, which is what I meant by "not all the hardware". By installing Asahi you are deliberately choosing to not use the GPU, not having brightness control and a few other things are missing.
With that in mind, my point stands: by installing Linux on an Apple Silicon machine, you cannot "use the hardware you paid for unencumbered."
In fact it is proven that not only is Microsoft deeply in bed with the whole US Government, but the amount of vulnerabilities and flaws and outright back doors that have been publicly exposed in Windows is wildly larger.
I don’t even understand this immense focus on criticizing Apple, as valid as it is, when people use Android and Windows and Google services that are all shown as clear hangar door sized vulnerabilities.
It really kind of boggles my mind. Apple is constantly being out under pressure by the government and is constantly pushing increasing security and privacy features, as imperfect as they may be, but that is in comparison to Windows and Android, folks.
With that said I can still use Windows without a Microsoft account.
Only because you are a power-user and know the magic trick to perform when installing Windows to avoid signing in with a Microsoft account.
It sounds like you may not realize that you have never needed an Apple account (i.e. an Apple ID, which might call an "iCloud account") to use macOS. No magic tricks are required, although some Apple services will naturally not be avaiable.
and I'm sure if I searched I could find the same thing for Google, Facebook and others too.
Whether or not an upgrade for efficiency is worth it is subjective though.
It was true that power stagnated for a long time but it's finally back on the upturn.
> There should be a law against that sort of thing, for hardware that you fully paid for.
There is a vocal minority on most of these things:
- Powerusers and "learnt just enough to be dangerous" users complain about products not being targeted towards their wishes
- Privacy alarmists don't like what they can't control
- Commercial interests don't like having to pay for things, but do like getting paid for their own things
Technically all correct, but in practise this is nearly all in the same bucket as fastfood, sugar, air pollution etc. It's something that affects everyone, but it's much easier to deny it, ignore it, and just go with the nice, easy, comfortable, and profitable paths.
> It seems the market isn't what you tink it is.
I think that the market is an opportunity for companies to compete on features, price, service, and quality. Is that incorrect?
If Apple is not competing on features, then shouldn't the market provide an alternative company that does? Specifically, Apple requires a network connection to its servers to used basic functionality yet consumers do not like this. Other companies provide devices that do not require a network connection to its servers to used basic functionality, though possibly at a higher price (doubtful) or lower quality, or worse service. But the opportunity does exist.
I'm happy to hear where either my understanding is wrong, or where the market is failing.
Every time someone comes up with some confident theory on markets or how things should be, or how bad the things are as they currently are, they forget that the reality is 'the market' (whatever their definition happens to be at that time) did not, in fact, change due to either supply or demand.
So when you were to say "the market demands offline devices, and the big companies are failing because they don't deliver that", you're either talking about a theoretical market, or about a different market, but not about the mass consumer electronics market. Because the big companies aren't failing, and regardless of the demand, no significant portion seems to be supplied.
> Just look around you, do you see any critical mass on both the vendor or consumer side that does something the way you describe it?
Or do you dispute that a market-based economy is the proper form for designing, selling, and buying goods and services?
For example many people want smaller phones. However manufacturers all decided to make them bigger instead.
To function in society I need a phone, so I either buy one that needs 2 hands to be operated or be an outcast and have major problems having a normal life with no access to banking, communication and so on.
So, if Apple were to say you didn’t fully pay for the hardware, it would be OK?
Not sure why there is this persistent myth that you can only use Apple tech if "connected" to Apple.
Yes. Unless, of course somebody is pointing a gun to their heads and forcing them, like the US government was already caught doing to other companies.
This begs the question why is it not possible. I monitor the traffic on the computers I own which means I have sometimes to decrypt traffic from applications and then re-encryot before sending from the loopback to the local network I own and then over the wire onto "the internet". I like to know what data applications are sending or trying to send. I like to have control over it. That's not unreasonable in the slightest.
Yet, in the "tech" company model of computer network use, the computer owner is discouraged, e.g., scary browser warnings, SSL errors, connection failures, etc., from placing any trust in themselves. Instead it advocates, if not effectvely mandates, placing trust (and fees, i.e., for "domain names") in some other entity, e.g., Apple, other "Certificate Authorities", etc. The mere act of questioning this model is often attacked by "tech" workers commenting online. Watch it happen in the replies.
Under this model, it is as if the the computer and local network owner does not also own the traffic. Who owns the computer. Who owns the local network. Who own the data. Who should be allowed to view it and control it. If anything, one would think the computer and network owner should be allowed to prevent any third party, including Apple, if they so choose, from initiating remote connections and sending data from the computer owner's computer.
Even after purchase Apple believes it is entitled to collect data from someone else's computer, over someone else's network. And it also believes no computer purchaser ever has an interest in seeing what data is being collected, by monitoring the traffic, let alone an interest in preventing these connections. There is no option provided to globally disable all phoning home to Apple, to indicate "No, thank you."
It was not always like this, folks. I owned older Apple computers that never made such assumptions. The computer belonged to the purchaser. Generally, firewalls were not used to block software pre-installed on the computer by Apple. The so-called "tech industry" has moved the needle and tried to normalise what is IMHO an entirely different scenario.
Good luck with that. Unless you are running a Commodore 64 it is unlikely that a single person can understand, inspect and make decisions on modern operating systems or even individual applications.
There was a small window in which you had the option to use your computer as a 'digital typewriter' and 'sometimes send a fax', but expected and supplied functionality this day and age relies on many small components being heavily interconnected, much in the same way that social circles are interconnected, social networks (the digital variant) are based on critical mass (not technical prowess, legal status or privacy) and the amount of people that have narrow/well-defined use cases for their computers are at an all-time low making them less and less significant to cater to.
If you had a Apple computer with 10.3 or newer, this was the norm. If you had macOS 9 with iTools, it was the norm as well (for a bit until it got dropped in favour of MobileMe).
The old times weren't better, just different (and much less feature-rich). Great for a few power users, bad for everyone else.
This is defeatist, and ignores the second-order advantages of Free and Open Source software. You don't need a Commodore 64, you need a decent GNU/Linux distro.
In practice, it's far less common for FOSS to contain code that works against the user's interests, as the vendor/developer has no veil of ambiguity and no deniability. Only one person needs to find the troublesome code, and they can make the rest of us aware. Everyone knows this, so FOSS malware is rarely released in the first place.
FOSS isn't a silver bullet (see Firefox's telemetry) but it's not the case that there's nothing you can do but use user-hostile proprietary software for everything.
That's both a gross misrepresentation of what I wrote, and completely wrong too. It doesn't matter how open your software sources are if you run it on closed hardware. And unless you go back to ancient hardware, it will be closed enough that you do not get what you think you are getting.
At the same time, it's also just realistic: if you buy something that is made to cater to a market segment that expects a lot of complex systems to appear to work together in a seamless way, supporting many features requiring many thousands of top-tier engineers to build and maintain for many years, then you, a solo user, are not likely to be able to contain the same amount of knowledge and time to see every detail and component of such a system. So no, the product, the context and biology will not allow you to contain such a system in a single mind.
Same goes for what you call user-hostile. If you ask a user which OS is more user-hostile out of a list that contains any Linux-distribution, but also Windows and macOS, it doesn't matter what is technically measures, what matters is that the user will call out that Linux distribution for being user-hostile. Again, it's not about wat is technically possible, what has been done, or what some individual does for themselves, it's about the giant user base that the commercial giants are targeting with their products.
As for telemetry: just because alarmists alarm about it all day long doesn't mean it's universally bad. What is bad is going it for user profiling and not telling about it, but if I need to know how my software is performing, I know ahead of time that asking my user base is a waste of time. Either I'll need automated reporting of things like crashes, performance measurements and spindumps, or I can't do much to make the software better. There are too many configurations and situations out there to realistically cover using some imagination and testing. Even on Debian, popcon is super useful, and people who complain about their stuff not making it on disk 1 are usually also the ones not submitting. You get what you pay for, and if you don't supply how you use the product, chances are you're not going to get an improvement you like. That is a choice to make, but removing it completely "because telemetry bad" is kinda dumb.
It matters a great deal. This thread is about the behaviour of Finder, a proprietary software application.
More broadly, while it's true that most modern hardware prevents the user from having full control, it's also the case that much is won by using only Free and Open Source software.
(Last year the FSF got their servers onto fully Free Software BIOS software, but this took considerable effort as well as the use of hardware from 2012. [0])
> So no, the product, the context and biology will not allow you to contain such a system in a single mind.
Agreed, but while a total understanding of the system is one way to achieve confidence that it isn't built to work against your interests, it isn't the only way.
> If you ask a user which OS is more user-hostile out of a list that contains any Linux-distribution, but also Windows and macOS, it doesn't matter what is technically measures, what matters is that the user will call out that Linux distribution for being user-hostile.
Again this is defeatism. Free Software desktop operating systems have some usability issues, but in my experience they're much more approachable than many people seem to think. This is especially true now that a web browser is enough to enable most of what desktop computers are used for. It's not as if the non-Free operating systems are perfect either.
FOSS operating systems aren't in such a good place on mobile as they are on desktop and server, unfortunately.
> As for telemetry: just because alarmists alarm about it all day long doesn't mean it's universally bad. What is bad is going it for user profiling and not telling about it
Yes, I don't think anyone disagrees. HackerNews folks give Firefox a hard time over its telemetry precisely because the user isn't given a choice. They aren't even told it's going to happen, as I recall. It's particularly grating considering Mozilla's self-promotion as being uniquely pro-user.
> You get what you pay for
In terms of spying on their users, Debian is far better behaved than Microsoft, despite that Debian's offering is available free of charge and Microsoft's is not.
[0] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/closing-in-on-fully-free-...
A couple years ago I was able to intercept every connection on an Android with a mirrored switch port and Wireshark+ a root certificate. We shouldn’t be discouraging people from controlling their own machines. Certificate pinning might be trickier, I haven’t played with it yet.
It might make much more sense to just get the thing you wanted in the first place, right?
Agreed, we have to pick our battles. Personally I pick this one. We should exercise as much control as technically possible over these devices that are intimately linked to every aspect of our lives.
They are collecting data on how their software in used. Also this article is talking about a visual search feature that uses Apple's servers to search for things in your images. Apple is just as much entitiled to do this as a multiplayer game connecting to game servers. You choose to use the software and you choose to permit it onto your network.
>e.g., scary browser warnings, SSL errors, connection failures, etc., from placing any trust in themselves
These tech companies are trying to improve the security of their ecosystem. TLS is paramount in them modern world to protect people from MitM attacks.
The first reason is that Apple does not ask purchasers for permission to do this surveillance. It just makes it a default.
The second reason is that if purchasers applied the same standard to Apple, it is unilkely Apple would agree to such surveillance of its own computers.
Imagine hypotethically that purchasers shared data with Apple but every time Apple used the data, Apple computers would automatically make outbound connections from Apple's computers, over Apple's internal local network, through Apple's firwalls, over the internet, to purchasers computers so the purchasers would "understand how Apple was using their data".
Imagine further that Apple had no control over these connections, and that Apple was not allowed to "MiTM" the outbound connections made from Apple's computers to purchasers' computers to see what data/information was being sent.
What if purchasers argued they were "only trying to protect the security of their ecosystem", e.g., the collection of entities with whom they share data. What if purchasers argued they were only trying to protect against MiTM attacks where a third party might learn about Apple's activities, namely how Apple uses the data Apple gathers from Apple computer purchasers.
The point is that Apple might have concerns about others, including its hardware customers, knowing when and how it is using its own computers. Similarly, purchasers might have concerns about others, including Apple, knowing when and how how they are using their computers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headline...
"Images viewed in apps supporting VLU have neural hashes computed, and those are uploaded to Apple’s servers to perform look up and return its results to the user, as previously detailed[1]." (but not for CASM reasons)
1. https://eclecticlight.co/2022/03/25/how-visual-look-up-works...
That said, to reiterate the OP, there's no evidence that VLU executes when using Finder or QuickLook alone.
"While VLU is taking place, the image being looked up is opened in the floating window of a QuickLook preview."
[0]https://eclecticlight.co/2022/03/23/how-visual-look-up-works...
> Although the original description given was ‘Finder browsing’, for some that might include the display of images as QuickLook Previews, by selecting the image and pressing the Spacebar... [The process triggered from this] is consistent with the briefer task used in Live Text, and quite different from VLU. There is thus no evidence of the generation of neural hashes or any search query by PegasusKit typical of the later stages of VLU...
> Local images that are viewed in QuickLook Preview undergo normal analysis for Live Text, and text recognition where possible, but that doesn’t generate identifiers that could be uploaded to Apple’s servers.
>It’s perhaps worth pointing out here that VLU is nothing like Apple’s proposals for CSAM recognition. The neural hashes used to look up images in VLU are ‘low resolution’. They’re good for distinguishing specific images of paintings, breeds of dog and cat, and so on. But – as you can read in my detailed account of the proposed method – they fall far short of what would have been required to detect CSAM. Another big difference is that initial CSAM detection was intended to be performed locally, using a database of ‘positive’ neural hashes stored locally. Apple recognised that looking them up online wasn’t feasible, but that’s exactly what VLU does, because it works differently, with a much larger database and forming less robust and more inaccurate matches. So VLU ≠ CSAM detection, not by a long way.
I'm still not super sure it couldn't be misused, though. A tool that is good enough to be able to reliably detect things like dog breeds (as the author also points out) seems like it should reliably enough also do things like detect drug paraphernalia, pictures of tankman, banned religious symbols, or whatever thing that people were more worried about being oppressed by a potentially authoritarian government. That's also why it seems, to me, like the more worrying vector for an authoritarian government to force abuse wasn't the higher resolution neural hashes matched against known images but the ML labeling of images for searchability.
It sounds like anytime I open an image in Preview it sends hashes to apple?
"VLU can be disabled by disabling Siri Suggestions in System Settings > Siri & Spotlight, as previously explained[1]."
1. https://eclecticlight.co/2022/04/08/how-to-enable-use-and-fi...
There could be all sorts of explanations why a connection might not have shown up in their analysis, rate limiting, batch upload, regional settings. It would have been much better to say: "in my tests I could observe any evidence..." or something similar.
I'm afraid we are still in the first version territory given what we know about big tech and Apple's recent behaviour.
“There is no evidence that local images on a Mac have identifiers computed and uploaded to Apple’s servers when viewed in Finder windows.”