[kilburn]

1. It does, but do you know what's easier? Not collecting that data unnecessarily in the first place.

2. He does call against mobile devices altogether (see the Cellular Phones section [1]).

3. A company can choose where to conduct business. RMS's opinion is that companies should not conduct business where the laws impose said company to routinely act in ways that are harmful to society.

4. "I know better than them (so I choose what to censor)" and "I do it because otherwise someone else will" are poor defenses from a moral standpoint. RMS is all about morality, not pragmatism. His stance is that bit by bit, slight compromises become landslides.

5. You are free to do as you please, just like RMS is free to disapprove of your support to apple ;)

[1] https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html

[valuearb]

What evidence is there that Apple collects data unnecessarily?

[kilburn]

I didn't think this was a controversial assertion. Most big techs have been collecting plenty of information that is non-essential for their functions.

For instance, you must have an apple account (that includes your personal details) just to get MacOS security updates. Why is that necessary if you don't intend to buy any software from the store?

[kalleboo]

> you must have an apple account (that includes your personal details) just to get MacOS security updates

I don't think this is true anymore since they decoupled system updates from the App Store again in Mojave

[Otek]

It's necessary so if anyone ever feel like buying something from the store they don't need to register. It reduces the chance that they will 'bounce' and not buy. It's that simple.

[kilburn]

I know that is the reason. I strongly disagree in that qualifying as a necessary thing to do.

If that was accepted as necessary data collection, GDPR wouldn't have made any fuss whatsoever: big techs would keep collecting all the data they wanted because "it is necessary to reduce the chance that we won't earn buckets of money".