Apple has an embedded advertiser ID, yet apple fanbois breathlessly exclaim that they don't track.

There's tons of examples, up to and including terrible repairability and locking down components. Crazy stuff.

But here we are.

Sure, but which side of it are you on?

Nobody should celebrate Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc. They create barriers to competition that suck the air out of the small company and startup ecosystem.

Smartphones should be a dead and withered technology. Instead they're wholly owned by two giants that sit atop them and tax them in perpetuity.

We need to move on and forward, yet we're being leased old tech because the regulators haven't done anything to protect competition in decades.

Apple isn't defending privacy. They're hoovering up information for themselves using their massive anti-competitive platform apparatus.

Google isn't advancing web browser tech. They're extending their claws into every pane of glass and search interface for society, making themselves the gatekeepers of search intent commerce.

Amazon isn't offering amazingly flexible and scalable cloud hosting. They're reaping fat profits off the back of open source, locking companies into years of bills that slice the fat off of their margins.

I'll bite. What technology should we be using that surpasses smartphones?

Distorted by an anti-competitive duopoly.

Separate hardware from software / platform.

Instead, the argument is that there are some good features about them.

Those good features can be brought to the iPhone to make the iPhone better, even if the rest of the iPhone is better in certain ways.

Prior to the major smartphone push starting with Apple, cell phones were horrific devices that charged $5 per ringtone, apps were $30 or more and only per provider, no tethering, and basically were nasty little expensive locked down bricks.

Apple did change that, with the initial strong-arming AT&T. And Iphone compared to prior was amazingly open. Had no app store yet, but had a real full-featured web browser and lots of useful tools.

But, this was still very locked down to what the iPhone really is - a general purpose computer. The company still has say-so on everything on these devices. I'd argue that these are rentals, instead of a purchase.

Android is a different beast. Google never created Android. They *BOUGHT* android, as a back-way in to the smartphone ecosystem. And they marketed it as "free", to get all the i-clones to use it. Of course, as Google does, it starts free, but you slowly pay more (with your data) and the noose slowly tightens. Now, we have locked bootloaders and PlayProtect and other invasive "root detection" garbage. And the platform becomes less and less hospitable.

Forward? Im no fortune teller, but it seems that separating the actual physical interface from the compute would be a great start. And these *general purpose* computers need to be enforced as such. Tie-ins and cloudshit need to be unbundled or FTC enforced as rentals.

The platforms we currently have are locked down. The first big steps are actual device ownership.

I feel like this is worded in a misleading way. Apple does not sell user data or search information to Google. It sells Google the option to be the default search provider.

Google will, of course, vacuum up as much data as possible from these searches. As would Bing if you select them. Ultimately, I have a hard time seeing how the privacy problem in this is on Apple and not the search provider.

Yes, it does, for people who don't know how to change their search engine.

At some point - probably almost immediately - you’re going to use your phone to access a service or app outside of Apple’s walled garden. You’re going to connect to an open WiFi network, a secure WiFi network without a VPN, the wrong VPN, use Bluetooth, download an app, visit a website, make a search. At that point your user data is going to be collected by services Apple does not control.

By all accounts Apple has and continues to implement increasingly aggressive privacy protecting measures on their devices to minimize the amount and type of data third party users can collect.

I’m not an Apple apologist. But it’s just funny to me how someone could see all these services collecting their data and see Apple as the problem. Apple cannot save you from yourself. If you want complete privacy, you need to jump through hoops to get it, and you need to know a lot about technology across all levels.

Is my router company getting money for this? If not, it's not selling. Apple knows very well why Google pays so much for the default search engine: to track Apple's users. This is intentional. Your Internet provider doesn't necessarily track you (at least outside of US) and you can't change any option in the router to affect that.

> Apple does not allow users to set a default search engine that's not listed within the Safari settings.

https://screenrant.com/change-default-search-engine-safari-i...