Their record isn't perfect, but there's plenty of evidence Apple cares about privacy. For example, Apple added E2E encryption of iMessages long before signal and whatsapp made E2E popular. They also E2E encrypt the location of AirTags - which they absolutely did not need to do. Or the recent opt-in iOS data sharing rules - much to Facebook's frustration.

But companies, like governments, countries and people are not wholly good or bad. Companies don't think with a single mind, or act with a single voice by default. They're a flag waved by thousands of different people who each have a different background, different capabilities and who each make slightly different ethical and financial tradeoffs.

Google is a massive contributor to opensource. And they harvest vast amounts of user data. And they use far less of it for advertising targetting than they could, out of respect for their users. Google makes some of their most valuable IP - Android and Chrome - (mostly) opensource and open platforms. They suspend users' accounts for silly reasons, and have a bad habit of shuttering services people care about, to the point where I generally avoid new google products to prevent heartache.

Apple makes beautiful devices. And they do a good job caring about user privacy. And the iOS app store is a rent-seeking monopoly designed to maximise profit, where they pull crap like this. They have given the world llvm. And their design leadership invented the modern smartphone. Without them android might still be trying to emulate the blackberry.

Apple deserves praise for their privacy friendly technology. And they deserve criticism for how they run the app store. I see no contradiction there.

For the record, Apple didn't give the world LLVM. They bought out the original development team and then had them develop a proprietary fork for Apple devices, oftentimes referred to as Apple LLVM.

Also, while I'm here, I still am not convinced of Apple's privacy dedication. The T2 chip was a joke for anyone familiar with PRNG generation or the actual exploits being patched with it, and they've refused to add E2E encryption to debatably the most important product in their lineup: iCloud. Furthermore, their collusion with PRISM and history in China leads me to believe that their statement "privacy is a human right" is all security theater. Apparently, it's only a human right if you don't live in a place where their government disagrees. Then Apple has to abide by their rules. And if they're happy to turn over information in China, there's nothing stopping them from colluding with the US to weaponize their information.

My lizard brain reads your comment as "What? Apple do good things? No! Apple bad! All things you say are good about apple are actually bad. You'll see, because apple is bad!"

You can make tribal cynicism sound clever if you use complex enough arguments, and rely on enough obscure details. "Peh, Apple didn't give the world LLVM. They bought it out and made Chris Lattner into a sellout." But you have to heavily filter reality if you want to do this. And its suspicious when anyone hunts so hard for a particular conclusion. I mean, would LLVM be as successful without Apple? No. Did Apple fund LLVM massively? Yes. Did Apple opensource LLVM? Yeah; they did. But so what? There's a proprietary llvm binary shipped with xcode; therefore proof that apple is Machiavellian and evil? Therefore proof Apple is good and can do no wrong? No! Its complicated.

Trying to simplify the world into good guys and bad guys isn't clever. Its childish and boring; and it gets in the way of having the real adult conversation, where we look at the imperfect world as it actually exists and decide what we want. Not "Apple bad" but "Apple makes great products, and free markets are good. And the app review process is great. But on balance it would still be better for the economy as a whole if the app store had real competition - even if that would probably be worse for many iphone customers."

You can spot the people who think this way easily, because when you talk to them about stuff like this they sigh and name the ways in which their favorite solution would make some things worse. "Yeah, FB is probably terrible for our society. But also FB really does connect people in meaningful ways. I don't know how we would keep the good aspects of free market innovation and social media's shrinking of the world while also softening its negative effects on teenagers. But there have to be some real answers here. Maybe XXX".

My challenge to you is this: Name some things you respect about the "other team" (apple or whoever). What would you would do if you were king for a day, and have the power to pass any laws you want? How would you fix the ills you see in the world? What are the ways your fixes might backfire?

I'll indulge you.

I respect Apple's dedication to to having a single unified experience across all of your devices. I'm glad they switched to a Unix-based operating system instead of the garbage that powered their previous machines. I think the Quartz window manager is one the most impressively designed pieces of contemporary software, and I'd kill someone for the chance to look at the source code.

My "King for a Day" changes at Apple would probably include pausing their ARM transition, potentially to use ARM and x86 as a differentiator between their "Air" and "Pro" lines, respectively. The patents for the latter ISA are expiring this year, meaning that Apple would be well withing their legal rights to sell a chip with all of the battery optimization of the 5nm node while also supplying a more complete and standard instruction set. I would stop the chase to "make the computer disappear" and instead seek to make the computer functionally seamless. The dedication to making thinner devices is sabotaging their lifespan and usability. Plenty of other machines opt to add extra room to accommodate for a better keyboard, better webcam or more ports, and I gotta say I prefer it. I'd much rather carry around my 5 year old Thinkpad than my M1 Macbook Air, if solely for the reason that the former has RJ45 and SD card slots.

I don't really see any way that it could backfire, though I'm sure abandoning the M1 devices would cause a little initial friction. Apple could easily cart out a new "L1" chip that ships as an APU with the M1's CPU and GPU architecture onboard. Once people see that it's just as fast (if not faster for industry applications), people won't care.

In closing, I don't think Apple is the bad guy. But I'm far from convinced that they're the good guy, or even a morally grey participant. Their historic greed and botched engineering continues to make a mockery of their legacy, and it's a shame when many of the engineers involved are genuinely talented people. If Apple wants my respect, they should respect the input of the open source community trying to make package managers with Apple-level integration, or the right to repair community who's trying to make sure that the Mac lives as long as it can.

I was going to say tech people, but I think more generally people like to view the world in black or white or 0 or 1 when in reality there are few issues that clear. As you stated very well, most of the world exists in the gray. Apple can care about privacy while not being perfect. Privacy can also be good for their bottom line at the same time. Even the App Store policies are not wholly bad or good for users, just a different set of tradeoffs, some of which as you say deserve criticism.

I need some time to come up with an augment against that. But the tone and message with privacy differs a lot between Steve Jobs's Apple and Time Cook's Apple. I cant quite figure out precisely what is wrong but I just smell lots hypocrisy.

For example Apple tracks its user within App Store. Which is perfectly fine except their PR make its sounds like they dont.

E2E encryption and closed-source software don't mix imo. They claim that they encrypt iMessages and AirTag locations, but you don't have much in the way of actually verifying that everything is implemented the way they claim it is. And even if it is, their threat models are usually such that Apple is an unconditionally trusted party. Moreover, they hinder reverse engineering of iOS as much as they technically could.

+1 to this. If your threat model relies on a single centralized system, it's a bad model.

>Google makes some of their most valuable IP - Android and Chrome - (mostly) opensource and open platforms.

This was out of market necessity. They likely wouldn't have open sourced either if they thought they could have dominated the market without it.

Moreover, with both of these products they're drip feeding more and more functionality into closed source appendages (e.g. google play services). Their end goal is likely to ensure that if they did de-open source the whole lot, it wouldn't be possible to just fork it.

What most people consider “Android” - open source + all of Google’s proprietary add ons is not open source. A true AOSP only phone would not sell in any kind of volume in the US. Google yields a lot of power over Android based on its add ons.

Every major tech company open sources software that doesn’t impact its compatibility and encourages adoption of its platform.

Does Apple care about privacy? Yea, maybe, as you said there are a few evidence to support that.

But does Apple have the competence on security to fulfill that care? There are also a lot of evidence to support that the answer is no.

> despite no evidence in that direction :)

Is this a joke?

Anyways, the entitlement Uber had was one thing, it'd be another if they had passed approval while using the entitlement. Afaik it was used for an Apple Watch demo. No one ever found evidence of its use in the main app.

It wasn't an entitlement for recording a screen, it was an entitlement for low level graphics access that could then be abused to do so.

Had they actually used the entitlement to record screens it'd be one thing, and I take exception with unfair treatment of devs like this, but please. Actually implying Apple has taken 100x the steps of their nearest competitor to maintain privacy on the most used computing devices...

It's like voting politicians: you don't vote for who you think is the best, you vote for the least worse. More so, you don't vote for the candidates you'd want, but for the candidates other groups picked for you.

Apple is not doing the best for us, but compared to the alternative (Google), it's less worse.