[dopu]

It is becoming increasingly difficult to not just recommend an iPhone to the average person with privacy/security concerns. Sure, you can tell them to go the GrapheneOS route, but I don't think you can trust the average user not to just go and install Google Maps/Google Photos/etc as soon as the alternative FOSS option inconveniences them. I've certainly struggled with this. Then they're arguably worse off than if they'd just stuck with the Apple equivalents.

[pixl97]

Apple produces a very nice set of golden handcuffs. Polished shiny look, comfortable fur lining. Customers are really going to going to scream bloody murder when Apple latches them down tight.

The problem here is we are wholly dependant on Apples goodwill. It is not required in anyway (hence Googles behavior). At any moment Apple can revoke said goodwill and exploit us to our hearts content and we will have no fallback what so ever because we decided to let the market codify our freedoms rather than preventing companies from being ruthless.

[DrBenCarson]

How is the possibility that Apple may flip down the line relevant? By that logic, no one should ever use any product ever.

I've enjoyed 15 years of a wonderful and privacy-first device ecosystem. They're evidently making it even better. And you want me to be upset?

[llanowarelves]

It's because the "lanes" that non-tech juggernauts break out of are typically pretty restricted, much in advance (aside from "Emergency Use Authorization" etc). Maybe it was "paranoia" (thinking of conditional incentives ahead of time), or people had to suffer enough before these to come into existence.

What's the equivalent of the FDA but for consumer privacy?

[smoldesu]

> What's the equivalent of the FDA but for consumer privacy?

Corporate altruism, apparently

[DrBenCarson]

That has nothing to do with Apple. Just because the American government doesn't understand the importance of technology doesn't mean Apple is in the wrong.

[mackrevinack]

its only a privacy-first device if you ignore how their treat their customers in china

[Terretta]

Let's assume they do eventually flip their brand on its head and turn on the users.

While waiting for them to latch you down tight, you could have already been enjoying the most consumer-centric and privacy-conscious mainstream mobile OS since 2007.

[three_seagrass]

>Let's assume they do eventually flip their brand on its head and turn on the users.

Chinese customers don't need to wait. Apple flipped sometime in 2017 and gave up all user emails, photos, messages, etc. to the CCP to stay in the market.

People complain about TikTok spying for China, but Apple is one of the biggest CCP spies around. That runs counter to the brand headspace they keep investing in though.

[greendude29]

Seriously, with what we know about PRISM [1], why do comments on here only fear China's surveillance and not that of the United States?

Apple was revealed to be a participant in 2013; there is no reason to believe they are not a part of it now.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

[Omniusaspirer]

I'll never understand people who expect Apple to try and fight the CCP and inevitably get themselves barred from the Chinese market. It's not principled, it's just dumb and will completely screw over all of their current customers in the country who will now have useless devices. Apple is not a nation-state and has no judiciary or military power, and if they're to have any hope of making positive change in the country they need to play ball to some extent and become a large player who can actually exert some influence.

[three_seagrass]

>I'll never understand people who expect Apple to try and fight the CCP and inevitably get themselves barred from the Chinese market.

People have this expectation because other companies have done this.

For example, Google employees revolted when dragonfly was leaked, and got the CCP search-spying project killed. It's weird to think that Google cared more about user privacy than profits than Apple does, but that's how weird the branding works here.

[pixl97]

"I am in a benevolent dictatorship, nothing ever could go wrong"

Just because Apple is playing nice at the moment, there is no reason not to force them, and all the other players to have a legal requirement of playing nice. I mean, the hog that is fattened for slaughter thinks its life is great, right up until its not.

[stouset]

I've been using an increasing number of Apple products since 2006 or so, after having used Linux for a decade and Windows from 3.1 through 2000.

If it's a benevolent dictatorship, it's undeniably been a good one to me over nearly half my life. If they ever do turn, I can always just leave. But what is and/or was my alternative? The less-benevolent dictatorships of Google or Microsoft? Spending inordinate amounts of time and effort making a hodgepodge of various Linux devices work together (often unsuccessfully)? I'll pass.

[Spivak]

"I'm not worried if the benevolent dictator turns on me because on that day I'll just stop using an iPhone."

[judge2020]

Except Apple does not have a police force that will detain you if you try to leave after they institute less-desirable products, and I'm sure they'd lose a lot of money and value if they literally disables data exports.

[makeitdouble]

I used to think Apple could be forced to play nice, and again and again that doesn’t seem to happen. The hammer never fell on their 30%, nor on Safari binding, nor on third party stores. And the funny thing is Google sees that and just goes the same direction, so if tomorrow Apple goes south it’s not like Google would rise as a bastion of vertue.

The question could be less if Apple should be trusted, and more if phone makers in general should be allowed to be dictators.

[judge2020]

Why should phone makers not have ultimate control over their devices?

Say I make the Avocado Phone:

- my entire shtick is that "you can only run apps we make, and we vet the source code of every one of the few thousand third-party apps we allow on our device. We will pay you $10,000 if you get compromised using our phone"

- Of course, to achieve this, the phone can't be susceptible to "informed" evil maid attacks (as in, say the hotel's cameras capture you entering your passcode and Avocado ID Password) that replace your OS with an identical one preloaded with Malware. This means that, even as a user, you literally can't load any other software onto the bootloader or OS that would touch the operating system.

- it also takes every opportunity to prevent third-party apps from gaining access they don't need, which includes disabling JIT compilation (ruling out third-party browser engines, unless they want to use a slow javascript interpreter).

At what point does my phone turn from a product that services the security-conscious crowd with a completely bulletproof device, into something that people want to be able to preload software onto, because they didn't realize that security comes at a price? Is it when I sell enough? Is selling 10 million a year enough to where my market presence becomes a problem? 100 million a year? Why would people buy it if the government forces it to be 'open' at the cost of invalidating its entire use-case of being a secure device?

[janalsncm]

I think a lot of the privacy-conscious Apple users would wholeheartedly support laws that guarantee better privacy than is currently required. That said, we have to act in the world we live in not the world we want it to be.

In any case, I don’t see how using Apple products is at odds with supporting better privacy laws. If anything, they are perfectly aligned since it demonstrates a $2 trillion alternative to surveillance capitalism.

[phpisthebest]

>>most consumer-centric

the fact you believe this is true today is most telling, I do not find them to be "consumer-centric" they have very draconian policies and if your use of the device fits in their narrow band of use cases then it is find, if it does not you are SOL

[judge2020]

Given they accommodate over 50% of United States residents[0], I'm not sure the band is as narrow as you say it is. Of course, for those it doesn't accommodate, there is a different product that hopefully better fits their use cases.

0: https://9to5mac.com/2022/09/02/iphone-us-market-share/

[makeitdouble]

Market share is irrelevant if there’s a high enough barrier to entry and cost of switching for the user. For instance Comcast probably has a very good market share and competitors too on paper.

[judge2020]

Is the cost of switching that high? People at the phone store do 'data transfers' already (seemingly just texts, pictures/videos, and contacts), and, hilariously, the transfer to Android is a lot better than the 'move to iOS' app that has terrible reviews[0]. I bet most of the time being spent on switching will be on reinstalling all your apps and logging back into them.

0: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.move...

[brokenmachine]

>most consumer-centric

This has to be satire.

[snowwrestler]

If I don’t like what Apple does with iMessage, I can move to WhatsApp. If I don’t like what Apple does with photos, I can move to Google Photos. If I don’t like what Apple does with iCloud, I can move to Dropbox. If I don’t like what Apple does with iOS, I can move to Android.

What am I missing? How am I handcuffed to Apple?

[makeitdouble]

> If I don’t like what Apple does with photos, I can move to Google Photos

I can’t. I don’t use Apple Photos, and I can’t set Google Photos as the default photo handler, nor default source or destination, nor tell any iOS device to never save photos in Apple’s silo.

> If I don’t like what Apple does with iCloud, I can move to Dropbox.

I can’t either. I wanted to backup my phone elsewhere and there is no option outside of iCloud.

How have you hacked your system and how long will you be able to?

[snowwrestler]

To use Google Photos on iPhone: install the Google Photos app and grant it access to your phone's photos. Then you can go into the Google Photos app to see and manage all your photos.

To keep Apple from saving your photos: turn off iCloud Photos, or log out of iCloud.

To back up your iPhone without iCloud: make a local backup on your Mac or PC. You can even encrypt the backup with a password you choose. You can sync these backup files in any way you would like, including via Dropbox.

You can also sell your iPhone and get a different phone if you don't want anything to do with Apple.

[makeitdouble]

You're skirting around the issues, as Apple just won't allow you to get out of their system in the key parts. Any of the alternative you describe are just clunky workarounds with utterly broken parts (local backups through a Mac have severe issues compared to cloud backups)

> You can also sell your iPhone and get a different phone if you don't want anything to do with Apple.

If you come to that conclusion, it's basically the answer to your "How am I handcuffed to Apple?" question. If you need to give up the system to properly manage your backups, it's pretty much a situation where you're handcuffed or not, with no clear negotiable middle ground option.

[smoldesu]

And if you don't like Safari? Gotta sell the whole phone, sorry bud.

[WorldMaker]

I use Firefox just fine on iOS. Sure, it's just user chrome and Firefox Sync, but those are the things I care a lot more about than the rendering engine.

I'd love to support Gecko on mobile too, as I've moved the vast majority of my desktop usage to it, but Webkit is still fighting the Blink/Chromium hegemony, too, and that's still fighting the good fight.

[smoldesu]

> and that's still fighting the good fight

Not if they treat user freedom as their enemy.

[WorldMaker]

I appreciate that you feel that way. I think most users don't care about the details of rendering engines and think user chrome choice (not Google's Chrome specifically; it's stupid Chrome confused pre-existing browser language) is enough. I mostly agree, as I already stated, and I'm okay with the compromise on rendering engine for security and I'm okay with the compromise on rendering engine to keep at least one non-Blink renderer high enough on caniuse usage statistics that I can fight back some in corporate projects that "Chrome is the only browser we need to support" because we have enough iOS using users and many of them are executives. That's a more important fight to me than "user rendering engine freedom". I don't personally need IE6 2.0 "Chrome is the only supported browser for the next few decades" (whether or not you think Google would declare victory in the same way that Microsoft did and stop innovating on Chrome entirely that very minute that happens), and I don't think the web as a whole needs that either. So I'm with Apple right now on their compromise choices.

I don't expect you to agree with me. I just want you to know it is a perspective of its own merits. The web has seen what happens when one rendering engine gets enough market share to dominate and that had a decade or more of repercussions, especially in enterprise application development. We're so dangerously close to that happening again. You may think you are fighting the most for freedom of the two of us, but from my perspective you are fighting a proxy battle in the Cold War and I'm much more worried about the Cold War and the freedoms it may lose us in the long run.

[snowwrestler]

Yes, exactly, I can switch phones. Doesn’t seem like handcuffs to me.

[brokenmachine]

There can be no free or fair market here. The barrier to entry for new companies to enter the phone market is just unbelievably high with all the patents.

Modern human communication, phones, are too important to be held hostage by just two companies, neither of which are acting in consumers best interests.

IMO this is the time that governments should be acting on behalf of the people, and not the corporations with the deepest pockets.

[pixl97]

You seem to miss that you're switching the golden handcuffs for rusty uncomfortable handcuffs with the spikes facing inward.

"It's a free market because I have the choice between two brutal masters!"

[snowwrestler]

I guess we're all wearing the handcuffs of not getting exactly what we want.

[madeofpalk]

Why would someone not like Safari?

There is a Chrome app on iOS. I don't think many people pick their browser based on rendering engine, but rather on actual browser UI and features (like sync).

[smoldesu]

Guess it's a shame I'm one of those people then, all infatuated with silly things like 'options' and 'choice'.

[vbezhenar]

What will you do when Apple would delete Whatsapp from AppStore?

[snowwrestler]

> If I don’t like what Apple does with iOS, I can move to Android.

[hn_user2]

Is it really that hard to switch from Apple to/from Google or to/from Windows/Linux?

I mean, I really emjoy my current Apple ecosystem, and I do have all the devices, and I like how everything works currently. But, a switch is mainly a matter of movies my files and exporting/importing photos, contacts, and email. It might take a few years to cycle out ALL the devices, but I don't feel like there is a ton of friction in switching my data over.

It is more that everything is working so well together that I don't want to switch right now.

I do stay away from Apple home automation though, for this very reason. I want something open and local that I control since that WOULD be a huge pain to try and swap away from.

[MagicMoonlight]

>Because in theory Apple could go completely against their own philosophy and our decades of prior experience with them, you should instead give all your information to Google so that they can sell it

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[smoldesu]

Apple's own philosophy? The one they pay to put in advertisements, or the one Edward Snowden leaked to us?

[HL33tibCe7]

I’m a FOSS person and run Linux as a daily driver. But I recommend every single person who asks to just buy an iPhone or a Mac (if they can afford it). The user experience alone is so superior to the other options. Security and privacy too, these days.

[RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm]

Their software is NOT open source (well, some parts are, but AFAIK it's a minority).

Thus the privacy claims are just advertisement, there is no way to verify them.

Apple devices might as well be fully backdoored.

[madeofpalk]

Apart from some very niche options, so is everything else.

This is about trust. If you don't trust the manufacturer of your hardware (or developers of software), that puts you down a very specific path of what you can happily purchase.

[therealmarv]

The marketing is strong with Apple.

[DrBenCarson]

If by marketing you mean product development and putting their money where their mouth is, yeah, it's pretty strong.

There isn't another mainstream product that offers that.

[therealmarv]

People seem to forget fast (this is only 2 weeks ago) https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-privacy-dsid-analytics-pers...

[faet]

This was tied to an action in the App Store. Not sure how you purchase apps without tying it to your Apple ID. It is also laid out in the ToS "We use information about your browsing, purchases, searches, and downloads. These records are stored with IP address, a random unique identifier (where that arises), and Apple ID"

No one (or even the author) has been able to replicate it or find the Apple ID in any other logs calls.

[hackmiester]

Also the products, though.

[Pr0ject217]

> Sure, you can tell them to go the GrapheneOS route, but I don't think you can trust the average user not to just go and install Google Maps/Google Photos/etc as soon as the alternative FOSS option inconveniences them

Isn't it fine to install Google Maps, etc, in a separate profile, inside GrapheneOS?