Am I the only one who is convinced Apple is focused on privacy because its cloud tech is really far behind Google and privacy was a path largely ignored in a data driven world? Don’t get me wrong—I like that they pursue the privacy angle but if the company’s strengths allowed them to compete with modern web/ads services companies, I think they would not have focused on privacy as much.
You'd be hard pressed to find any credible source for your conviction.
Apple's privacy stance is what Steve Jobs believed in, and what Tim Cook has stuck with, because they know that leaving privacy-based decisions up to third-party developers never ends well.
Here are excerpts from Jobs 2010 interview with Walt Mossberg [0]:
“Silicon Valley is not monolithic,” Jobs responded, “We’ve always had a very different view of privacy than some of our colleagues in the Valley.” Apple, for instance, does not leave it up to developers to decide whether to be dutiful about warning users that their apps are tracking their location data, instead forcing pop-ups on users to alert them that an app is tracking them, and to turn off that ability if they don’t want. “We do a lot of things like that, to ensure that people know what these apps are doing,” he added.
"Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly. I’m an optimist; I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with their data."
“A lot of people in the Valley think we’re really old-fashioned about this,” Jobs said in the interview, “And maybe we are, but we worry about stuff like this.”
Very good find, but SJ was using a slight-of-hand here. While true, privacy has always been a feature of Apple products, this was said during the Amazon iBooks lawsuit when Apple suddenly added this 30% in-app purchase restriction.
SJ was obsessed with control more than privacy and believed developers would make a mess of his beautiful iPhone. Every decision always started from that angle.
No, I believe privacy that we understand it today is wholly Tim Cook. This is his vision for Apple and how he wants to run the company. Good for him and it definitely plays better against Android.
as for your point, i don't think it was an either-or situation. i think both jobs and cook considered both control and privacy (among considerations like litigation, as you mention). jobs seemed more overtly a control freak though (not that that's always a bad thing).
I honestly don't expect to be able to cite any sources regarding Apple's decisions based on their level of transparency into their business.
It seems perfectly compatible for Jobs to make those statements about privacy after weighing the cost for Apple to implement robust cloud infrastructure and services, and (potentially) deciding Apple would just not compete in that space.
It's like Google finally conceding it won't be a social network, only not having wasted a ton of resources before pulling the plug. Actually, with their messaging apps being spun up and spun down, Google may still be in the midst of pulling.
> (I honestly don't expect to be able to cite any sources regarding Apple's decisions based on their level of transparency into their business.
If that's the case, wouldn't it be better to not, you know, not speculate? Anyone can come up with a plausible sounding reason for x once there is some evidence of y, but it doesn't change the underlying fact that it is all a conjecture -- drawing conclusion(s) from incomplete information.
I pointed you to information refuting your central claim but since you are not privy to salient information, saying nothing is much better than expanding on your conjecture.
I'm not sure where you're going with not speculating and "better". What is wrong with a conjecture? Aren't some conjectures out of the set of all conjectures going to be right?
Also, how is an interview complete information?
I also pointed out later that I don't see the information you provided as refuting what I said, but compatible with it. From your response, it seems reasonable to ask what refuting is happening here.
OK, here’s your original claim about what you were convinced about Apple’s strategy with respect to competition from web/ads companies like Google:
“Am I the only one who is convinced Apple is focused on privacy because its cloud tech is really far behind Google and privacy was a path largely ignored in a data driven world?”
I pointed to the explanation given in 2010 by the founder/CEO of Apple, regarding their stance on privacy — it was conceived because of the risk of third-party developers going rogue as has happened with Facebook/CambridgeAnalytica (even though Zuck was in the audience). Apple’s privacy position was taken independent of Google.
Google’s competitive advantage over Apple today wrt cloud tech comes from public-facing cloud infrastructure & expertise that was previously internal to Google — Google’s cloud advantage was completely non-existent back in 2010 when Jobs granted that interview.
In 2010, GCP didn’t really exist yet, developers/end users could only interact with sandboxed apps on App Engine; GCP was still in infancy, the market leader in cloud tech was and still is AWS.
Google’s main competitive advantage back then was in search, Apple recognized this and did not try to compete head-to-head with Google (like Yahoo! or Bing), or the way Google competed but failed against Facebook. (Apple would later go up against Google in maps.)
OTOH, Apple did try to compete head-to-head with Amazon using iBooks, but they shot themselves in the foot by colluding with publishers to raise prices.
I think there's some misunderstanding about what I'm saying, but unfortunately, I don't think clarification will make this discussion any more fruitful for either of us. I'm sorry, I think it's best for me to disengage for now.
> Apple's privacy stance is what Steve Jobs believed in, and what Tim Cook has stuck with, because they know that leaving privacy-based decisions up to third-party developers never ends well.
As opposed to leaving their API wide open so anyone could access anybodys photos and files? Hence, the fappening.
Apple is a marketing company, not a technology company.
I don't know if it's because they are behind in cloud tech, but I do believe their privacy stance can change as quickly as market changes. As soon as selling iphones or apps on the app store won't be enough, apple will have to change its business model. I'm not saying that making money out of the data they collect is what's gonna happen, but it's a possibility.
People learn about new things through two ways: through algorithmic recommendations, and through social media / real life social networks.
From what I can tell from recaptcha requests, Google still hasn’t figured out how to teach something to identify storefronts, bicycles, crosswalks, or traffic lights.
Apple doesn’t offer a consumer cloud, what they refer to as iCloud is just a SaaS similar to Dropbox. For their internal requirements they use both GCP and Azure IIRC.
Apple's privacy stance is based on the fact that they can make money just selling hardware. The recent news of 'pivot to services' suggests Apple's stance would loosen on privacy.
Most of Google's competitors would do well to focus on privacy, because that is one area in which Google will most likely not be able to outdo them. Google is likely to be better at machine learning or most other technical qualities of whatever products you're competing in. It still is, however, a data analytics company - that's where its main strength is, and that's what pays the bills. It will therefore be almost a guarantee that it will be worse in the privacy department than a competitor for whom that is not the case, so that's what they should capitalise on.
Even if that’s the case, rewarding Apple for that decision is still the right thing to do because in a free market, companies will make decisions where they earn the most money. If the company that out of selfish reasons is promoting privacy makes the most money, other companies will also shift to a more privacy oriented business model rather than business models which rely on selling people’s information.
Right, I would hope it encourages more consideration for privacy in other business as well. I wonder though if people with privacy concerns will turn to non-profits or other orgs instead of companies. For instance, lots of people on Hacker News will voice support for Firefox, but dish dirt on Brave or even Chromium.
That said, more consideration of privacy as part of product development practice in business, even if non-businesses may end up winning more from this, is a good thing.
