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100%. Most business is just advanced sophistry at this point. Marketing and advertising serves a useful purpose for new products, when the market isn’t aware that it exists.
But by quantity and cost, most advertising is just social manipulation and is effectively an extra drain on the economy.
And that’s just the last three years!
Juan, YOU are the man! 💪
Plus people forget that if they use iCloud Apple can also see all your data in the same way Google can if you use a Google account
They can see your encrypted data. What’s the issue with that?
Only to say it’s the same with Google. The data is also encrypted. So they want to point the finger and say how much Google collects, but so do they.
Not exactly true. If you enable “Advanced Data Protection” not even apple can look at your data (with the exception of data which has to be interoperable like calendars and mail)
I’m sure the Google is also encrypting the data with the exception of the interoperable data. So there’s no difference. Why point fingers when Apple do the same?
Apple also know your browsing history. They also know your app usage. They also store your contacts, calendar, photos - just like Google. I don’t see the difference.
Apple already can’t look at most of your data. Advanced Data Protection makes it so they can’t see any of it.
Apple is 100% correct. It’s the entire reason Android exists.
Then again, Apple also does a fair bit of data collection. I hate that Apple has been able to market themselves as some kind of bastion of privacy. They aren’t.
Apple is 100% correct. It’s the entire reason Android exists.
Then again, Apple also does a fair bit of data collection. I hate that Apple has been able to market themselves as some kind of bastion of privacy. They aren’t.
So Apple is not 100% correct. They are 50% correct because the second half of their claim is that Apple is somehow different and not tracking its users…
When the pot calls the kettle black, it is technically correct.
Actually, the reason Android exists isn’t so one-dimensional.
- The company Android was initially concerned more with Microsoft dominating phones like they did computers at the time, before being bought by Google
- They created two prototype chains initially, one touch, one that was more akin to BlackBerry
- iPhone came out, they ditched the BlackBerry-esque one and focused on what became now Android
Google was mostly just doing what all tech companies were doing at the time, trying to compete in a mobile arms race for dominance. The data tracking was just a bonus. Appeasing shareholders is paramount. Look at how Apple created an Alexa speaker just because they had to as another example of this type of behavior.
Also, Apple actually has a long history of tracking user behavior that predates both Android and the iPhone.
Apple apps since some time shortly after the inception of OS X would (and likely still do) phone home to configuration.apple.com to send apple metrics on usage. Earlier variations of LittleSnitch could actually block this collection behavior.
Apple has since reconfigured the network stack to guarantee that direct encrypted connections to Apple are always possible above any VPN, or other type of network filter connection. So there’s no way to prevent communication with Apple on an Apple product at all now short of keeping it off the Internet or blocking DNS to 17.* IP addresses, which would only work on a network one has control over.
I believe the reason Google acquired Android was to make sure that Apple didn’t dominate the mobile device landscape, which would be a threat to their ad business. The data collection was just a nice side-effect, from their perspective.
All cell phones are tracking devices. Unless you faraday cage them. But yes, both apple and Android phones give out way more information than just that. And I definitely would not say that I would trust Apple more with data that I would Google.
Genuine question: in what ways do Apple track iOS users (that cannot be turned off)?
I’m of the viewpoint that most tracking can be rather easily be turned off, and that android plays in a totally other ballpark here. But I might very well be wrong.
A list from elsewhere in the thread: https://lemdro.id/comment/3314038
Yeah yeah, wake me up when you can unlock the bootloader on apple phones.
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What do you mean by get pretty close?
Having to log into a Google account that uniquely identifies you across all your devices and milks you of every single data it can put its filthy hands on?
I am an android user but honestly between the two I think Apple is the lesser evil
(If you buy a suitable device) You don’t have to use the preloaded OS (see Graphrne, Lineage etc).
Yes I know but that’s clearly not what the previous guy was talking about
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Yup, the logic people use to call Apple phones secure would put Fisher Price toy phones at the S-Tier of security.
TL;DR: the slide is from 2013, everybody calm your pants.
Is Apple trying to convince me that the Health app, Apple maps or Siri doesn’t track me?
Their slide seems to list Siri, Maps, and iAd not being tied to the user’s Apple ID as a pro. I didn’t realize this was the case.
Is Apple trying to convince me that the Health app, Apple maps or Siri doesn’t track me?
No, they are trying to convince themselves. It’s an internal brainwashing presentation after all, not for external PR.
Health app has encrypted data that doesn’t go to Apple without explicit permission
Huh I wonder how is that different from Samsung Health or Google Fit.
Google doesn’t make money off of those so its OK.
One damn iPhone in my home network makes most calls home out of anything in my home network. I cn see it in AdGuard Home log.
I also can see this on router with Gargoyle firmware
Yeah, but Android doesn’t make me constantly enter my password to do basic things. Also, Apple takes away a lot of control from their consumers.
I’ll take the phone that isn’t dumbed down tyvm
Ideally you shouldn’t have to compromise. GrapheneOS without Google is an option.
It literally isn’t - Graphene only supports Google Pixel phones.
You’ve apparently missed the point. Graphene exists solely to harden security and privacy by disabling the googly parts of the phone. That is clearly what was meant by “without Google”
You can do that without Graphene though
And?
Graphene is is way over hyped. You can basically the same thing with lineage os. The key is just not using gsf
Unlocked bootloader is considered a vulnerability tho
But if your threats model is toxic Tim, satya and sundar, it will do the job just fine.
But then you can’t use any apps that require Play Services. The killer feature of GrapheneOS is letting you run Play Services in a sandbox.
The kids need to use their buzzwords though
And how do you know there aren’t hardware level trackers in Google’s chips? The kind Graphene can’t override? Do you trust Google not to do that?
Yeah I trust them not to do it. Cause when it was found out not if when it would hurt them.
Just use Lineage os
I want to like Lineage, but while it doesn’t come with extra bloat, the system itself doesn’t do a whole lot of degoogling core services
Or literally and other custom ROM based on aosc or lineage os
Very true.
+1 for Lineage, been using them since they forked from cyanogenmod
GrapheneOS still takes away a bit of control though. Mainly in that it’s locked down for privacy in some ways that you can’t disable
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Oh irony, thy name is Apple.
Pot, meet kettle
Lol. Best comment.
Google, the famous advertising company is using its hardware,software and infrastructure to watch everything we are doing?
I’m shocked.
Apple, ruthlessly opposing standards any time it can make them a buck no matter how many people have to suffer the consequences.
I’m shocked.
Apple got shit on when they went all in on USB on the Mac. People complained they couldn’t use their mice and keyboards anymore.
They shit on FireWire and thunderbolt and called them proprietary, even those were both industry standard ports. Same for DisplayPort.
They switched to USB-C exclusively and then people complained that they had to buy dongles.
In the modern era, they have had maybe 3 or 4 proprietary ports.
It doesn’t seem so ruthless to me.
Which is why iMessage is open source and supported on all platforms, right? ;)
They should have switched to USB c years ago, they only did it because the EU forced them
Apple gets far less hate than it deserves. Fucking garbage company
Did the EU force Apple to switch the iPad to USB-C? For that matter, didn’t Apple have like 20 or so engineers on the USB-C spec?
I don’t know how much more hate Apple can get, their mere existence enables an entire tech-journalism ecosystem dedicated to laying out their evils and predicting their demise. It’s good for the economy!
Interesting perspective. Apple did not roll it out on their phones for reasons of greed like I said. Their team being involved in the spec only makes it more frustrating that they refused to fucking adopt it universally.
I don’t know how much more hate Apple can get
I would say I don’t know how much corporate cock can be sucked by the public. This is the world’s first trillion dollar company for fuck’s sake
As I understand it, Apple was frustrated with micro-USB, pushed the development of C and released Lighting for the meantime.
The fact that after years of USB C on the market, they still needed to be legally forced to use the spec they wanted to happen so badly…
Apple didn’t make enough off of Lightning for greed to be a factor. Hell the majority of Lightning cables sold were unlicensed knockoffs from Amazon and the grocery checkout aisle.
The reason Apple is so rich is that Apple isn’t really dominant in any of the markets they compete at this point(save for the tablet and watch, and that dominance is basically due to the incompetence of Microsoft(surface sucked and Android makers exited the market)) and Google(wearOS evaporated for like 3 years)).
Apple is rich because aside from a few high profile failures, they sell premium products that are competent in targeted categories, and their competitors sell a wide variety products of varying quality in every market category imaginable. What happens then is if Apple releases a new ithing, you can probably buy it and be good, so one Apple purchase leads to another, and they all sync, so might as well pay for iCloud, etc.
If I knew you IRL after this conversation I would assume that any statement you made was the precise opposite of what is true.
You’re also sounding a bit like a shitty LLM that isn’t really making sense.
The funny part is its coming from Apple
I used to sell apple gear at a reseller. They literally used to send messages to our customers for applecare.
The difference is that Apple simply uses the data for it’s own benefit and competes against everyone (including people developing for their system)
Apple simply uses the data for it’s own benefit
So… like Google
Definitely not saying Google is any better.
But don’t forget, Apple gets billions of dollars from Google too, to be default webpage… So they’re totally complicit, and in practice, they’re effectively selling your user data to google.
The biggest issue with Apple has always been their dodgy marketing. 20 years ago, they were living off the incorrect claim that “MacOS can’t get Viruses”, and now, seems to be just as dodgy with privacy.
At the end of the day, being as big as they are makes both of them malicious, manipulative and exploitative per default, otherwise they wouldn’t be multi-billion or even trillion dollar companies in the first place.
“only when it provides a better customer service” Hahaha. That’s so vague that it is completely meaningless.
They’re not wrong. Its just they aren’t the perfect solution
I don’t think they want to be. I just think they want to fragment Android. I agree with them.
Yes, but if you put graphene on a pixel it’s miles beyond an iphone
Congratulations to you and the other 0.000000001% of Android users then.
I would like to think that the percentage of users who have grapheneOS is maybe 5% of the pixel population. I’m just pulling a number out of my ass right now but basically a lot of people who want the very best privacy and security go for graphene which is limited to only Pixels even though there are more cool phones like the fp5.
There are some people who use other roms like Lineage without the google apps. It’s not as good as Graphene but it’s better than the OEM version that comes with the phones.
Well, it’s not like Apple doesn’t also collect pretty hair-raising information on you. Go digging through some of the sqlite databases on your machine and you’ll find eg. a social graph that even supports labels for things like political affiliations (I think this db was the one used by their ominously named “intelligence platform” service). Another db (which I think was for the
knowledgeddaemon) has an incredibly detailed log of everything you do on your computer and phone, including eg. web URLs and millisecond granularity events on when you interact with your devices. Whether that social graph or all that other stuff ever leaves your devices is unknown (although eg. theknowledgedstuff definitely does since I can see events for my phone on my laptop), but I wouldn’t count on it not being sent to Apple – regardless of what they claim.And yeah, sure, this is all to make “customer experience” better, but do you seriously believe that’s all they will be used for?
Edit: and just as a side note, I’m not basing these claims on stuff I read online, but on actually having looked at the contents of those databases myself
Could you cite the source for those dbs?
Sure!
~/Library/IntelligencePlatform(associated withintelligenceplatformd) has a bunch withgraph.dbbeing the social graph, but with others likebehaviors.dbandeventLog.dbalso likely being relevant, and I thinkontology.dbwas the one where they kept more information on the tags available for the social graph.~/Library/Application\ Support/Knowledge/knowledgeC.db(associated with Spotlight’sknowledgeconstructiond, which I think used to be calledknowledgedin earlier versions) has the other stuff I mentioned.There’s also some system-level things in eg.
/var/db/knowledgegraphd/but I haven’t bothered looking into those yet because it’d require disabling SIP.Ok, I’m just gonna come out and say it - I messed up.
I clearly have no idea what you’re saying, and I don’t even know why I expected anything even remotely simple to understand.
I apologise for wasting your time, but thank you so much for this comment, however pointless it may seem now.
Oh you didn’t waste my time at all, no worries. It’s not like copy-pasting those paths from my terminal was all that much work, and it’d definitely have been better if I’d included that info right from the start. Unfortunately I couldn’t give any blog posts etc as a source, because as I said it was all based on my own poking around in those databases, but at least I could say where the databases were so others could do some poking around of their own if they wanted to
Makes sense… Thanks alot for the nice response 🫡.
