[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.