Apple’s business model isn’t selling your personal information. In fact they go out of their way to protect your personal info. Requiring an AppleID is significantly less concerning than requiring a Facebook account.
how exactly do you know this and why come on here and state it as a fact?
its a dubious claim at best, and if it were true would require asking the elephant sized question in the room - why collect my data if you arent going to use/sell it anyway? is collecting ny data just a fun internal project at Apple?
Apple's advertising business is estimated to be closing in on $10Bn yearly, while their browser pre-load deal with Google brings them in even more than that, and data-sharing agreements are assumed to be part of the deal.
The fallacy that Apple can be trusted with your data because it makes more money elsewhere is incredibly naive and unilateral.
Just to put this in perspective, Apple's yearly revenue is closing around 400B. 10B is in the "other" category in the revenue chart.
The ads are still only in the App store, where you need to specifically go and look for... apps. And you'll get ads for... apps.
You're not getting personalised ads for incontinence products because Apple doesn't know nor care that you have frequently visited a doctor specialising in said issues. Your phone does and Siri will suggest you the exact place as a destination if you start up maps in your CarPlay view.
Google and FB _will_ serve you said ads and with eery accuracy and speed. (I've visited a niche product store on my desktop browser, opened Instagram 5 minutes later and received ads for that exact niche)
> data-sharing agreements are assumed to be part of the deal
You're making a massive assumption there. Unless you can back that up it is what it is - fud.
You'll be fully aware that as part of Google's anti-trust case Apple was only willing to enter into data sharing with Google if they provided data to Apple, which they refused to do.
So again, we're still in a position of the only place Apple is focused on ads is the app store, so I'll ask again. What data are they collecting about you, and who is it being sold to?
I'd personally just like to see things even more separate. I wouldn't want what I do on my VR headset tied to anything else.
Sorta like how I might have a Nintendo account (or whatever they have now) for games on a Switch. It's just about my gaming activity on that one platform, and that's it.
Tying a headset to a Meta/Facebook account is just too much: I don't want my Oculus activity tied to my social media.
I agree that the Apple situation is better, but I wouldn't want my Vision Pro activity tied to iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, etc. activity.
And I get it from the "building an integrated ecosystem" perspective, and don't really begrudge them their desire to make something like that, but I'm just generally tired of being a part of some company's ecosystem.
How about not requiring accounts for all these different gadgets at all. What's wrong with being able to run whatever software you want on your VR headset or gaming tablet.
>In the meantime, Apple continues to work with ad tech vendors it trusts — or rather, those with stated policies it approves of — particularly when it comes to a cornerstone of the iPhone maker’s brand: user privacy.
>However, a key question remains: how will Apple ensure user privacy as its ad ambitions expose the iOS ecosystem to a sector of the media landscape with a chequered record when it comes to a cornerstone of its brand promise?
>Earlier this year, it unveiled a tool it will use to police user privacy in the guise of Privacy Manifests (see video above), a measure that many interpreted as Apple’s attempt to (finally) stamp out illicit user-tracking, a.k.a. fingerprinting.
Apple has a vested interest in user privacy and talks about it constantly. Facebook has an interest in selling every piece of information they have about you to the highest bidder and has talked about how stupid users are to give them personal information.
Apple's "privacy" is really privacy from people that are not Apple. Apple has access to location logs via maps and location services, the contents of your photos, iMessage contents, the history of every app usage, etc as the default settings set for most things via iCloud backup, which the vast majority of users leave on. They were almost going to deploy on device scanning that you couldn't opt out of with the few photos that don't end up on iCloud.
All of their devices don't work if they don't constantly phone home to Apple. For the devices to be anywhere near useful, you need an apple id which requires KYC payment methods attached for them or a KYC phone number.
> Apple's "privacy" is really privacy from people that are not Apple.
Sort of, but misleading…
> Apple has access to location logs via maps and location services
There are published policies about how this data gets aggregated+anonymized and then used. Care is taken to ensure data is not linked to individuals.
> The contents of your photos, iMessage contents, the history of every app usage, etc as the default settings set for most things via iCloud backup
Most people want these things backed up. Apple doesn’t just dive through data. Anything that even approaches the description of dealing with user data is carefully vetted. A big difference between Apple and other large tech companies is the internal boundaries for access to any data. It’s strict and limited by design. Apple has fought back against law enforcement for access to personal data or technology to allow governments to carte blanche access devices.
> They were almost going to deploy on device scanning that you couldn't opt out of with the few photos that don't end up on iCloud.
You are referencing the CSAM scanning for known child pornography based on international databases that was tuned for highly unlikely false-positive rates with a small group of reviewers to further reduce any chance of false-positives? Yeah, total travesty… wouldn’t want to do anything about THAT problem. (/s)
You're both right. Apple believes (as do many) that one way to achieve great shareholder profit is to differentiate yourself and perhaps get some pricing power is by truly prioritizing consumer privacy. They're both true.
This is a tired trope. They have a clear interest in user privacy, as evidenced by their actions. You're either just trolling or being intentionally ignorant to the state of the market if you're claiming their only focus is "shareholder profit". Apple isn't Boeing.
>Must be true then. Definitely not marketing.
I mean, there are countless examples. From the default encryption in messages, to the ability to double encrypt icloud backups, to a literal lockdown mode in IOS to protect against nation state actors.
>Nothing you've said suggests any different of Apple.
You've provided absolutely nothing of substance beyond a link where Apple literally states they have hard requirements around user privacy for any advertising partners.
I'm done engaging in the conversation unless you've got something of substance to provide. The low effort one liners don't really have a place on HN.
If you pay attention to the marketing, Google, and Samsung, and Qualcomm, and Sony, and Microsoft make most if not all the same claims. I haven't seen one that operates in a way that can prove it. All have some level of custom silicon involved. All could provide hardware documentation, source code, and installable or transparent keying. Barring the legal agreements between them, of course. I commend Apple for their amazing effort to uniquely ID each individual sensor and storage device in the world and tie it permanently to phone's unique ID, but again, it would be nice if the details of how that worked were published such that folks like Louis Rossmann could repair folks broken phones and laptops.
> The low effort one liners don't really have a place on HN.
Maybe you just didn't think about them long enough.
Selling points, not actual privacy. The fact that you have to identify yourself (and link that identity to your hardware serial number) to install apps on your own device is the opposite of privacy.
PRISM is just NSA's management systems for sending lawful (kinda) information requests for specific accounts under FISA act to the companies. If data is not leaving your device (e.g not synced into iCloud) then they can't get it.
Also if you opt-in for apple's advanced data encryption[0] they can't even get that because your data is fully e2e encrypted and the key is only stored on your phone. Which is probably why FBI had to sue Apple to get data on Bernardino terries and then worked around by hacking into their devices. Show me another big tech company that does this.
