[helsinkiandrew]

With all due respect that is nonsense. How would they come close to competing with Facebooks ad system which is built into the FB product?

The overwhelming majority of Apple revenue and profit is still hardware, app store and music etc. Whatever Tim Cook et al truly think about their customers privacy they can take the "moral high ground" when it comes to privacy because they are in a different business and it doesn't hurt their revenue (and perhaps helps it).

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202074

[jay_kyburz]

I don't think its nonsense, I think you didn't read what he is saying. I also believe that if Apple had been successful at building its ad business when it tried to, they would not be talking about privacy now.

Apple sees all your data before it is ever sent to Facebook.

[helsinkiandrew]

Sure - if they were arms dealers or a drug company they would be doing other bad things, but their business model doesn’t need targeted ads.

People and companies should be judged on their actions not on what you think they would do if they were in some other business.

[jay_kyburz]

Sure, but what we are saying is that Apple _is_ a bad company, and that we don't believe they are on our side. (or that they are trying to protect us.)

They are not on our side when it comes to repairing our devices. They are not on our side when it comes to running software we want to on the hardware we own. They are not on our side when it comes to walled gardens. They are not on our side when it comes to how quickly they stop supporting the hardware they sold us.

If they _were_ in the business of selling data, they would not be on our side there either.

[helsinkiandrew]

Apple is on Apples side. However, the fact that they are "defending our privacy" (as the article states) in this small way compared with what Facebook and others are doing is a good thing. Apple don't sell ads in the same way as Facebook do and have never done so (unless they are doing it secretly and illegally - they are not - it would be worth so little to them and the potential loss if they were discovered would be so huge).

Whatever their motive is, or how bad they are in other aspects of their business, or how different it would be if they had a different business model the fact that they are providing this 'privacy' to their users is a good thing.