this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
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Privacy

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Real question. I would like to know what drives you to hate Apple? (In terms of privacy of course because in terms of price it’s another story).

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[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Few reasons, first is this: . Seems like as long as something has a clean interface, or it looks shiny enough, then all its privacy faults are overlooked.

Apple also seems to intentionally cultivate and sell their products as privacy-friendly, which is clearly not the case (see image above).

2nd reason is that I had an iphone 2g (one of the first models, I forget which one), and it had bluetooth support. An iOS update broke it, and when I reached out to apple, they lied to me and told me my device had no bluetooth module at all. They're one of the worst offenders of planned obsolescence, and have become one of the richest companies on the planet because of it.

3rd reason: they sell overpriced products to mainly to high-income imperial-core consumers, selling an image of "upper-class professional". Look at a graph of iOS market share worldwide, vs its market share in the richest countries. Apple didn't even bother to condescend to make affordable products for the global south.

The markup on iphones is something outrageous, like 40% of the purchase price is going to the shareholders of apple, not the workers who built the phones. By buying apple, you are mainly supporting these wealthy parasites. Its also why other smartphone brands have higher performance at half the cost of iphones. They really bank on the fact that they're selling an upper-class identity, and less of a phone.

4th reason: Their ecosystem is locked down in such a way as to make it difficult for open source development. iirc apple won't even let you use the GPL for any app on their app store.

[–] Betawhat@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 years ago

Wow, this is the most complete answer I have ever seen. But is it wrong if I stay at Apple? Are there any competitors on the Android side that are worth it (I am thinking in particular of a pixel on which GrapheneOS is installed)?

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Seeing as no-one's answering the question in terms of privacy (although I agree with their sentiment)

Trust. You have to trust that they will respect your privacy. They actually talk a good game, are probably superior in privacy to the average android (but not GrapheneOS or Linux) in so much as they fend off other entities trying to hoover your data, mostly so they have exclusive access (at least to metadata, actual data may currently even be secure but that can change and possession is nine tenths and all that). At the end of the day, they're a greedy mega-corporation and cannot be trusted if they need to keep that line going up this quarter. I much prefer transparent systems that keep me in control and possession of my data.

I like their hardware, excellent build quality (shame about long term support and e-waste though). Will probably pick up a cheap M1 Air once Asahi linux stabilises.

[–] Asudox@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)
  • Overpriced
  • Tim Cook
  • Closed ecosystem
  • People using Apple devices are usually people that don't know a thing about tech, yet boast about how good Apple is while criticizing other brands, blindly believing the marketing Apple does
  • Shitty decisions
  • Devices are designed to be as hard as possible to self-repair
  • Overpriced
[–] phoneymouse@lemmy.world -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

What’s wrong with Tim Cook?

Edit: Downvoted for asking a question, y’all are miserable people.

[–] Sneptaur@pawb.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think for most privacy nuts it comes down to “I don’t trust them and it’s closed source. They could be hiding anything in that code.”

And then there’s the people who can’t afford or won’t spend the money it takes to have an enjoyable Apple experience. It genuinely costs multiple thousands of dollars to get into the Apple ecosystem and then it’s massively painful to get out. It’s basically just “corporation bad” because corporations are bad. The only way to be truly private is to not carry a phone at all and use only FOSS solutions.

I keep hearing how painful it is to get out. Can someone please elaborate on this?

I am not super tech savvy and was DEEP in the ecosystem but didn't think it was hard by any stretch.

I migrated my data, purged my files, canceled my subscriptions in a few taps/clicks, sold our imacs, MacBook pros, homepods and iPhones and moved on with my life and haven't looked back since. Took maybe an afternoon for the data piece and a few other after-the-fact logins to cancel things I forgot about. This is legit the 4th time in two days I've read this comment so I am just genuinely curious!

[–] bluegandalf@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They've redefined privacy to be privacy from everyone except themselves, and then indoctrinated people that they are the most privacy conscious company.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

iPhone user here, that is...

...quite accurate actually.

I have used Android and even tried to switch to Android a few years ago, but whenever I use Android, I can't shake the feeling that uncle Google watches whatever I do, I don't get the same feeling when I use iOS.

Weather either feeling is accurate I can't say, but I hesitate to trust an ad compny's OS over a computer company's OS.

Again, that is just a feeling, I make no claim wither way which is factually better.

[–] trk@aussie.zone -1 points 2 years ago

feeling

Classic Apple user, IMO

[–] art@lemmy.world -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Security theater: All you stuff is encrypted but they have the decryption keys

Proprietary App Store: The apps and the store itself are proprietary and I don't trust Apple.

Gaslighting their customers: Images shared with Android users from iPhone are purposely crushed to a unreviewable quality. The idea is to convince people that Android takes terrible photographs.

[–] narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

About "Security theater": you can enable what's called "Advanced Data Protection" so the encryption keys are only stored on-device for most types of data including photos, backups and also notes for example. Mail and calendar is one exception that comes to mind, but you could also always use a different mail and calendar service. This is a fairly recent feature, so you may have missed it. Sure, it's not your fully self-hosted "cloud" on which you can audit every single line of code and whatnot, but it might actually be the best "compromise" of ease-of-use vs. privacy for many people outside the tech bubble we're in in this community.

About "Proprietary App Store": the store itself and many apps on there are proprietary, but there are a lot of open source apps on the App Store as well. The bigger problem is the fact that the App Store is the only (hassle-free) way to install apps to the iPhone and only recently the EU seems to change that with alternative storefronts now emerging, but Apple is limiting the use of them to the EU, so they're essentially doing the bare minimum to comply with EU law.

About "Gaslighting their customers": I'd like to see hard proof on that. I think what you're talking about is the fact that messages sent to Android users using the default "Messages" app are sent as MMS, which is an ancient technology and as such only support tiny, low-quality images. Android doesn't support iMessage and Apple seems to like to keep it that way as it's apparently selling a lot of iPhones this way in the US (and sure, I agree that's a bad thing). It does get better with the just-announced RCS support (a supposedly open protocol which Google added so many proprietary extensions to you can't really call it open anymore) so pictures can be send in full quality to Android users using the Messages app. Also, you could always use a third-party messenger like Signal or WhatsApp and send full-quality pictures just fine.

I'm not saying there aren't any concerns, but some of the information you provided is at least out of date.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world -1 points 2 years ago