[tylerchilds]

Put simply:

I’ve talked to Apple engineers.

Siri fell behind due to how good Apple’s privacy is.

Everyone made fun of them for protecting them.

This is exactly the opposite of that, where Mark is throwing you and your children under the bus again because he’s unoriginal and doesn’t know how to make money any other way than by getting all up in your business, statistically.

[al_borland]

I usually defend Siri, because I’m perfectly fine trading a little functionality for security. I prefer it that way.

[stego-tech]

Same. The fact they're shoving AI into it and expanding it to providers who don't have privacy as a guiding principle is a key reason I'm sitting on a 14 Pro still, and why I'm exploring local alternatives with Home Assistant.

Besides, we just need to set verbal timers and control music. We don't need a full-blown verbal Oracle.

[tyre]

They’re hosting their own Gemini, so they aren’t sacrificing to Google’s standards even if using their technology.

[kypen]

Home Assistant is indeed quite nice and relatively simple to set up with the Docker images provided by the team. Device setup on iOS was a little inconsistent, but has been rock solid for over a year. Check out Homebridge as well. I run both.

[stego-tech]

I ought to take a break from my Docker Compose work and get back to migrating off Homekit and into Home Assistant. The Home Assistant Yellow has been a real champ thus far, and once it’s set I can then tie the Unfolded Circle 3 into it for better control.

[FireBeyond]

What value do you get out of Home Assistant you don't from HomeBridge? I use HomeBridge for a few devices, my Windmill AC, some Govee lights, and previously my Ikea smart lights (Tradfri, but now Dirigera supports HomeKit).

[amazingamazing]

Im curious what the threat model is that you're protecting against

[stego-tech]

Not everything in life is a threat model, y’know; oftentimes it’s just personal preference.

I prefer to read reference material and do research instead of asking chatbots, for instance, because it helps the material stick better and enables me to make broader connections to disparate pieces of knowledge.

I also prefer technology to be narrow in scope and function, so I can spend more time enjoying life and less time troubleshooting why some needless complexity has failed again. This extends to voice assistants that consistently fumble on accents and grammar when asking for more complex queries, and often want to send data out of my LAN to some random server I have no control over just to process something that could be done on any of the myriad of GPUs and CPUs in my home instead.

Despite the EULA, TOS, and Privacy Polices governing these interactions, I intrinsically don’t trust a relationship that requires revalidation of those policies every time an update is pushed, whose changes fail to be summarized, and which force me into hostile relationships with the vendors. I also generally believe that as live services, there is no sufficient incentive for security or privacy but ample incentive for data mining and prolonged/frequent interactivity. Repeated incidents of supposedly “anonymous” and “private” conversations or data being inappropriately disclosed or compromised do not help lend any sense of security to said services, at least to me. Then you consider the wider economic environment prioritizing immediate gains over sustainable business practices, and my own personal preference for building and nurturing long-term infrastructure to solve my problems on a consistent basis, and it’s less a threat model and more just incompatibility between my personal needs and corporate goals.

[linkregister]

By disabling Apple "Intelligence" you bypass the risk of your prompts going to OpenAI.

[Tagbert]

What is your concern about prompts to go OpenAI? Apple has a contract with OpenAI that explicitly prevents them from logging, storing, training, or making any use of your prompts other than to satisfy the specific current request. Apple has some good lawyers and I’m sure that the teeth are prominent in that contract.

[linkregister]

The person I was responding to had privacy concerns. The closest thing to a privacy concern about LLM usage on iOS is Apple Intelligence, which sends some prompts to OpenAI to fulfill them. Thank you for the information about Apple's privacy program.

I send hundreds of prompts to OpenAI's LLM daily. I do not have a concern about it.

[JimDabell]

Not to mention the fact that the default settings are to ask the user before sending anything to ChatGPT, and you can selectively disable just the ChatGPT integration while leaving Apple Intelligence enabled.

[fragmede]

No. "You have to unlock your iphone first" is such a hindrance to using Siri for anything more than setting timers and alarms. If you're doing anything that involves gloves or a mask or getting your hands messy, like in a kitchen or something, it is just so frustrating. How about making a toggle so I can choose to be slightly less locked down for Siri, and I take full responsibility if I get hacked because of it.

[glenngillen]

Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri > Allow Siri When Locked

[deaddodo]

Keeping in mind that this gives quite a bit of access to your data, depending on how someone wants to structure their query

[glenngillen]

Yeah. I've offset that by then long-pressing on any particularly sensitive apps I don't want to risk other people potentially being able to control via Siri and turning on "Require FaceID" just for those apps. Which then blocks Siri from being able to interact with them too.

[fragmede]

If only that worked!

Explicitly: I have that turned on and I still need to unlock before using.

[yalok]

building new features on top of E2EE is genuinely hard, and I've seen many companies struggle to keep innovating while staying strictly E2EE.

Having seen multiple leading messaging/VoIP stacks from inside, the amount of engineering spent to work around various limitations of E2EE in real prod scenarios is insane, and even for simple every-day-use features metrics don't compare to the metrics of the same feature running without E2EE.

[garciasn]

Then a more reasonable response is: “we cannot as effectively monetize all of the data in our advertising platform disguised as another tool entirely unless we disable E2EE and we need to be able to allow not only ourselves but others to invade your privacy even more than we already do because it’s technologically difficult to do so when we encrypt your communications.”

[yalok]

it doesn't necessarily have to be tied to monetization & privacy directly.

It may just be that ROI doesn't make sense: very few user out there truly care about (or even understand) E2EE, for quite some users it creates an inconvenience & support incidents (harder to move from device to device, forgot your passphrase - lost your history, new joiners to a group chat don't see previous history, etc), it requires a significant additional engineering effort to just maintain it, many new features get shipped much slower because of it...

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

It doesn't have to be, but that's not really an argument for claiming it isn't. Considering how deeply embedded privacy violation is in Meta's corporate DNA, is there any reason other than hilariously naïve and inexplicably charitable, hypothetical speculation to believe this is not motivated by more privacy violation for profit, just like literally every single thing Meta has done in the entire history of the company? No? Didn't think so.

[yalok]

were you in that room where Adam was making that call? No? didn't think so...

Just give people some benefit of doubt. There're much simpler ways to explain certain things that suspecting some universal evil in every move...

[mfru]

not if it is one of the companies famous for going the extra mile of being "evil" / a corporate shit hole stealing every thought you ever have to better sell you stuff you don't need

[tylerchilds]

From talking to people from Meta, they don’t believe in E2EE because “it’s decrypted on the other end” which they take as “becomes insecure in exactly the way we’ve designed the sausage factory”

They’re a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy for why it is a futile effort for trying to secure information near them.

[vasco]

It's free to not use Instagram

[FireBeyond]

> Siri fell behind due to how good Apple’s privacy is.

Garbage. That's some good spin, though. Siri is a turd in a punch bowl for many reasons that have nothing to do with privacy.

"Siri, do X thing" "Done"

"Siri, do [extremely similar to X] thing" "I don't know what you mean"

Siri is connected to my Apple HomeKit. "Siri, turn off my Kitchen Lights" "I don't know what lights you mean."

Siri feels like it never evolved past a proof of concept.

[Barbing]

> "Siri, do [extremely similar to X] thing" "I don't know what you mean"

It’s funny. Even a team of interns could’ve mapped more synonyms, right?

& Apple Intelligence, when it uses ChatGPT, it wouldn’t be quite as horrible if Apple had paid for better tokens instead of quantizing into oblivion… I think.

Two savings for Apple resulting in subpar experiences.

[crazygringo]

> Siri fell behind due to how good Apple’s privacy is.

That makes zero sense.

The problem with Siri is... Siri. The interface itself.

Zero of my complaints around Siri have to do with it not being able to access my private data.

They're entirely about it not understanding my request in the first place or lacking a basic capability.

[tylerchilds]

It’s not about your data.

It’s about the sum of all expression being able to be reflected back to you in such a way that Dawkins believes he’s met intelligent life.

Facebook and Google just slurped up their data centers, while Apple was encrypted.

[wolvoleo]

I don't buy that. They could have done more with it despite the constraints. There's been a big lack of interest from Apple for a long time. Just like every few years they introduce a completely new Mac Pro with all the fanfare and then completely lose interest and let it wither and die for 5 years.

[alex1138]

Do you know what Zuckerberg said in an interview? I think it was to Lex Fridman but I could be wrong

"Apple hasn't come up with anything new in 20 years"

Very likely in response to Apple's granularity. Poor Zuck can't steal people's credentials

[thephyber]

I’m less impressed with Zuck every time I hear something new about him.

Apple has made incredible progress in the last 20 years, but almost none of that has been a brand new product. It has all been evolving the existing products and on building the world’s best supply chain and rearing incredible market share from Windows. To be clear, AirPods are a much bigger market than Nike shoes. Those, plus Apple Watch, iPad and Vision Pro are new in the last 20 years.

In the past 20 years, the Facebook website has evolved, but all of the other major investments by the company have been acquisitions. Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus. Diem (or whatever that proprietary cryptocurrency was called) and the Metaverse were massive failures. I don’t know what to credit Meta for in the AI era except some of the LLAMA tooling and some open weights LLMs. CZI is doing cool things, but that’s Zuck’s private science company, not part of Meta.

[Barbing]

Anything groundbreaking in advertising? Meta ad tools are pretty granular.

(Looking for anything here!)

[thephyber]

Facebook “allowed” Cambridge-Analytica to Hoover up a massive amount of psychometric data on US voters before the 2016 election (ins care quotes because they “allowed” it in the sense they prevented it by policy but did nothing significant to deter the data collection at scale).

I would argue that FB’s bigger wins have been in being the first app / website to get perhaps 50% of the world population using it, and also the Herculean effort it took to moderate that’s volume of content (whether or not you agree that moderation was the right choice or successful).

[shimman]

Profiting off of a genocide is a first in the social media world, pretty ground breaking. Especially when you find out that workers and management knew about it as it was on-going but did nothing in response. Truly such innovative people, surely they deserve all the money and non of the responsibility. It is a meritocracy after all.

[jesterson]

Not a fan of zack (quite the opposite), but he isn't wrong here. Apple indeed didn't come up with anything new. Their PR stunts each year are more and more laughable as time goes by.

Neither did Meta, but that's a different discussion

[antiframe]

The iPhone and Apple Watch don't count in your book? They are both younger than 20 years. I think the iPhone changed the mobile market. I don't think it was for the better but it was 'new'. It might also be just where I live but I see more Apple Watches than any other digital watches. Maybe not as 'new' but they certainly changed the watch market as well, for better or worse.

I can't think of a single new thing Facebook did in 20 years that stuck. Metaverse?

[jesterson]

Fair enough, for some reason I thought iphone is older than 20 years. iPhone was indeed a great product and it changed market, no doubt about it.

Apple Watch doesn't really count in my books - it's just a silly toy without much practical use (of course YMMV).

> I can't think of a single new thing Facebook did in 20 years that stuck

Again, I am not a fan of Meta. They didn't invent anything, arguably including FB itself, but again, this is topic for a separate discussion.

[sotix]

Interesting. I've talked with engineers at Apple that worked directly on the Siri team who made no such claim and said it largely a cultural issue.

[dyauspitr]

Privacy is the reason I’m still on team Apple.

[bramhaag]

Apple's response to the UK gov asking to see users' iCloud data says enough about where their priorities lie [1]. They do something far worse in China [2].

Don't fool yourself into believing Apple cares about your privacy. They care about money.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgj54eq4vejo

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/apple-moves-to-st...

[transcriptase]

The UK public can still vote for governments that don’t demand backdoors into citizens’ private data. Instead, over the past century they’ve turned their country into an ineffectual nanny state of shrinking global relevance, while a fading aristocratic and old money class desperately cling to influence over a population that no longer cares about the old titles and prestige of having attended some ‘old boys’ boarding school nobody outside of GB has ever heard of.

[dyauspitr]

They’re very clear about when they use e2e encryption and atleast I know when they don’t. There’s multiple reasons I don’t use iCloud.

[thephyber]

Your links say that Apple complies with the laws of major countries. Which companies don’t do that?

[bramhaag]

Signal is one example. Their values are simply not compatible with what the Chinese government wants (local data storage, key access, etc.). Instead of complying and putting their users' privacy at risk, they accepted the ban.

Google, out of all companies, also decided to partially walk away from the Chinese market in 2010 over censorship concerns [1].

Nobody is forcing Apple to do business in China, or the UK. They actively choose to do so, and because of that also put themselves in a position where they have to comply with these laws, presumably because it makes them more money.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/technology/23google.html

[thephyber]

Signal responds to warrants with all the the data they keep.

ProtonMail / ProtonVPN responds to the vast majority of warrants with the data they keep.

Apple iCloud always responded to iCloud warrants with whatever data they had (eg. If the user didn’t enable encryption). They shouldn’t have removed end-to-end encryption for the UK, but they have thousands of employees in that country and millions of customers.

Sometimes it’s not the company that is the problem, but the country / legislators.

[mfru]

Google also chooses to be a US company even thought the US is supporting a genocide and is doing an illegal war against a foreign country (again)

You could argue Signal is the most "moral" here, but even then they don't really allow self-hosted backends and refuse to open-source their setup

[wolvoleo]

Google of all companies didn't. And we all know how much they care about privacy.

[jesterson]

Would you care to explain why do you think privacy with Apple is any better than other teams?

[dyauspitr]

Because they do privacy well. Everything is encrypted.

[jesterson]

Are you forgetting the /s or sarcasm is implied?

[dyauspitr]

Neither. Name one other company that is doing things as well as them in the privacy front.

[yangm97]

Siri fell behind because the bean counters at Cupertino didn’t want to spend on it, this is well documented and has nothing to do with privacy.

[_boffin_]

> Siri fell behind due to how good Apple’s privacy is.

Uhh. What the heck are you talking about? I’m calling straight bs on this unless presented rational.

Siri has access to knowledge.db or whatever it is, which is the centralized hub for pretty much all things. Siri phones home every request made via Siri.

I think you got sold snake oil

[Handy-Man]

They were kinda forced to in the name of "think of the children". The New Mexico case that's been going on at the moment.

[cyanydeez]

thats a generous view. The dystopian fascist view is he's aligning with the surveillance state's interests and instagram is seen as a breeding ground for anti-american-american activities.

[nothinkjustai]

Apple feels like the only big tech company that remotely cares about its users. Thank god they make the best computer and OS too.

I’m sure this will not be a popular take on HN however.

[dwedge]

Android was originally enticing because of iOS locking everything down and controlling the ecosystem

[esafak]

Android was designed to prevent Windows from dominating mobile:

I literally helped create Android to prevent Microsoft from controlling the phone the way they did the PC - stifling innovation. So it's always funny for me to hear Gates whine about losing mobile to Android.

— Rich Miner (https://x.com/richminer/status/1879004092602982765)

[qmr]

Continue reading with a Verge subscription

[jesterson]

> I’m sure this will not be a popular take on HN however.

Precisely because it's your feelings, not objective observation.

No public company would care of their users, even remotely.

Indeed, during Jobs time it actually worked that way, but that time is long gone.

The OS is not nearly the best, just like laptops.

[nothinkjustai]

Nothing anyone says about Apple here is based on “objective observation” so idk what your point is. Your entire comment is also just your feelings.

[computably]

"Best" is subjective. But "caring about their users"? Their response to RtR alone shows they care about their margins more than their users.

[michaelt]

Apple care about their users like a farmer cares about a herd of dairy cows.

Whereas Microsoft and Google care about their users like a farmer cares about a herd of pigs.

[iamtedd]

I can tell you don't actually know what goes on on a dairy farm.

[overfeed]

If you charitable (like you should be), then a reasonable assumption is that they probably know what happens on a dairy farm, and that's actually their point.

[drfloyd51]

Ham and eggs. The chicken is involved. The pig is committed.

[throw1234567891]

“But I want my freedom, I want to install whatever I want, bad Apple for locking down my devices away from me.”

They stay rather secure because of all these measures. But they’ll get dismantled, too. Because idiots push idiots in power to weaken Apple’s stance. Useful idiots is the right term.

[b00ty4breakfast]

Being in a prison cell is a great way to avoid traffic accidents, I agree.

[throw1234567891]

It’s people like you who go in the dark forest because “the prison is tight”, get mugged, then complain that the sheriff doesn’t operate there. Call it a prison cell, or a fortified city. Whatever, dude…

[b00ty4breakfast]

Nah, I would never be using an Apple product to begin with because I'm not a magpie to be wooed by a shiny nickel in the mud.

[throw1234567891]

What you’re saying is that regardless of what Apple does, you’re not going to use it anyway. Why would anyone care about your opinion.

[zer0zzz]

People are bozos for wanting more from a glorified egg timer. I like Siri myself.