They were bought by Oracle? It's people like McNealy who built the industry, whether his company survived or not.
Nope. He was an MBA who added very little to the industry and was wrong on almost every major technology decision he made. Hence why I am not really interested in his views on privacy.
Unless, of course, you want to write a porn app, a companion app for your vape, etc. Then it's up to Apple to make the decisions.
I have no problem with porn being in the App Store (nor Vape or Crypto apps), but it is Apple’s store and I am fine with where they draw the line.
And no, I don't expect Apple to do prevent tracking. Shrill fanboy defenses are so boring.
I love people like you who argue that anyone who disagrees with you is a fanboy. I do not think Apple cares about me at all (either personally or as a customer). What I do think is that at this moment on this topic our interests are aligned. As long as that is the case, I am happy. When it stops being the case is will switch to someone else whose interests are more aligned with mine.
Apple talks out both sides of it's mouth.
Nope. Apple talks about providing information and letting the user decide if he or she wishes to be tracked.
It pillories Google for violating privacy...
Sorry, this is just not true. It advocates letting people make informed decisions, as Steve Jobs used to say: Ask the user if they are ok with having their information collected and then ask them again later (and again every once in a while), so they can make their own decision and can easily change their minds.
Please provide some example of them “pillory”ing Google. They rarely if ever directly discuss anyone else’s behavior.
only to take $15B/year from them to make a privacy invading search engine the default on all Apple devices.
Microsoft takes no money from Google and yet Google is the dominant search on Windows. Is it possible that the bulk of users would switch to Google even if Apple picked a different one as the default? If not, how come Windows users were able to switch both their browser and their default search engine? If people would have switched anyway, in what way is is problematic that they got paid for a choice people would have made anyway?
It sells the idea that "what happens on iPhone stays on iPhone" only to let its developers track pretty much whatever they want.
Again, they are talking about their own actions, but what is important that they do is let users make informed decisions about if or how they are tracked. Their actions have made things better. The world may not yet be perfect, but without their actions things would be much, much worse.
I don't necessarily disagree with your perspective, but, unlike you, I'm willing to call a spade a spade.
Nah, you claim that privacy is impossible, but criticize Apple’s attempts to improve the situation because they have yet to reach perfection. You pretend to be a great impartial observer, but ignore reality.
It makes perfect sense. Apple happily deceives customers with its illusion of privacy, publicly bashes a competitor for being anti-privacy only to take that competitor's money and make that competitor's privacy-invading search engine the default on all Apple devices...
Again, please provide examples of them “publicly bash[ing] a competitor”. Explain how it “deceives customers”? How is it an illusion of privacy? They provide people the ability to make informed choices. Before they did this, no one was doing it. No even Google has begun to offer that.
Apple's whole privacy dog and pony show is just that, a show. I appreciate that they're more honest than the rest, but they're far from honest. Privacy is marketing spin to them. Like I said, means to an end $$$.
Is it your contention that Apple’s privacy labels are false or that people are no more informed about how their information will be used than before they were instituted? Do you claim that App Tracking Transparency has no effect?
Do you think that all the reports that the vast majority of users on iOS/iPadOS/tvOS opt in on for ATT are false?
Privacy is not spin, but it is marketing. Their interests currently align with mine. Since they do not make the bulk of their revenue selling advertising, they can offer a more private and transparent system than do their competitors, and have that be a marketing win for them.
However, let me ask you some simple questions to clarify your position:
- Do you think that users on iOS/iPadOS/tvOS are tracked more or less than on Android?
- Do you think that users are more able to make informed choices since Apple instituted both ATT and their App Privacy report card?
- Do you think that Apple hides that Facebook and Google track users from users or do they make it harder for them to do so without informing customers?
- Do you think that, despite the example of Windows users overwhelmingly picking Google as their default search engine, that were Apple to have made Bing or DuckDuckGo the default choice, that most users would not have switched to Google?
