The changes Apple made were to increase privacy. Content blockers that have access to the page have no network access. A separate process that does can only update the blocking rules.
Apple gobbles personal data too and processes it and sells it etc. They are simply rather better at looking ... friendly. They really are very good at that.
Where is Apple tracking your usage across the web? This data is sold to who? These are big claims.
Disclosure: I work at Apple, and have seen zero evidence of anything but trying to make things continuously more secure and private. This in fact makes my job (machine learning) much harder because I don’t have user datasets to leverage.
What data and how do you know? This seems to be a popular talking point, but I’ve yet to see evidence. It doesn’t make that much sense to frame Apple’s privacy stance as similar to Google’s or Facebook’s. Apple isn’t an ad business, and Google and Facebook are, plain and simple.
I don’t work for Apple, and I don’t use an Apple laptop or desktop, but I don’t buy this Apple is as bad as businesses that are primarily built on ad revenue and are actively eroding privacy. I’m sure they’re not perfect, but I feel like Apple is relatively serious about privacy, making real changes that generally protect consumers, and setting a better example than many big tech companies. Are you sure they don't look better because they really are better?
You’re making assumptions. There’s lots of reasons Apple might want to make their own browser to go with their own OSes, and protecting their users from Google is one of them. Controlling their own software and hardware stack is another, and Apple is famous for this. Another one is providing better user and developer experiences. Better user experience is very debatable, since as an ex web developer, I’m aware of some of the ways Safari sucks and fails to meet standards or behave like other browsers, at least as of five years ago. Standards support is better now. Safari was the first browser to have 60fps scrolling, and developing iOS and web apps with Safari dev tools is the only option, that’s not something Chrome or Firefox do for you.
If their own browser that they force on everyone doesn't support ad-blockers, and they don't add ad-blocking to that browser themselves, then I don't see the difference: they're preventing users from blocking ads, and in effect forcing ads on their users. Their justifications are irrelevant.
Even Google (the biggest ad-tech company) isn't that bad: they obviously don't make an ad-blocker themselves, and they've worked against ad-blockers in the Android Chrome browser, but they don't do anything to stop users from installing an alternative browser which supports ad-blocking. You can install Firefox directly from the Google Play store. (Note that the same is not true for ad-blocking alternative YouTube clients like ReVanced or SmartTube, but you can't use those on iOS either of course. And even here, while Google won't allow them in the Play store, you can simply install them directly from the .apk files, something you can't do on iOS.)
By preventing users from exercising choice, Apple has taken on responsibility for them not being able to avoid ads.
As already mentioned in this thread, Safari does allow ad blockers, your premise is false. And even if they didn’t, there’s an absolutely massive difference between not being able to block ads and being the company both selling the ads and the browser that is engineering away your privacy.
Safari does take active steps to prevent tracking that Chrome does not. Apple has not actively worked against ad blockers the way Google has. And Apple also allows you to install a different browser on iOS, Google doesn’t get any gold stars for not preventing third party browsers on Android.
Google has a conflict of interest between your privacy and their primary source of revenue. That’s not true for Apple. Google isn’t that bad?!? Hahahaha BTW you moved the goal posts, the claim you were implicitly defending was that Apple was collecting and selling private data themselves. Nothing in this thread so far backs up that claim.
It does? I see constant complaints online from iPhone users asking how to, for instance, block ads on YouTube, only to be told "buy an Android and install Firefox" because ad-blockers on iOS don't seem to do this.
Are you talking about the browser or the YouTube app? Most iOS users watching YouTube use the YouTube app, not the Safari App, so they’re obviously asking how to block ads because the app isn’t a browser, not because Safari doesn’t allow ad blockers.
I don't think Apple (or Google, Microsoft, …) sells your data. Or can you point me to the website where I can buy user data from them?
What I would admit is that Apple is maybe not as motivated to protect your data from unintentional leaking. Without user data, Google would be almost nothing. So they have to be extremely careful to maintain the trust of their users. For Apple (or Microsoft) their business is still sizeable enough with out user data.
Apple gobbles personal data too and processes it and sells it etc. They are simply rather better at looking ... friendly. They really are very good at that.