[harry8]

Wouldn't it be EPIC if apple produced a statement saying

"We are not going to keep any data at all about you unless we are forced to do so legally. We are bound by that contract with you when you purchase our device."

Then followed that with

"We're going to make it as hard as humanly possible for anyone else to collect and keep data about you if you own one of our devices. Including both legal and technical solutions and we will sue them for breach."

As it is, we're praising "least worse" which is effing awful. Apple's excrement stinks less than some others, eat it up!

[harry8]

Well that's what Apple might do if they really were in the business of being paid by customers to serve those paying customers and nobody else.

But of course Apple literally wrote the book on selling their customers as product to third parties. They've been wildly successful at it. Microsoft, IBM look on in envy at how they've managed to get away with it.

Since it has been massively profitable for them to turn their customers into their product, they see no reason to change and I guess why should they? Profit maximisation is their business, yours and my health and welfare is only of interest in service to maximising profit. If they did anything else they might be guilty of securities fraud(!) So yeah, they can be completely horrific and still win the PR battle because others seem even worse.

I see these statements of fact are always jarring for people to notice for the first time, especially if they quite like the machines (I do), and quite like liberal democracy and free market economics (again I do!) and more so that this utter hideousness is our best option right now because there is no option even remotely on the same planet as good. It is thoroughly depressing all round.