Editorial: Why is privacy-minded Apple putting its new TV app on smart TVs notorious for s...
Apple has worked to make user privacy and data security primary features it promotes in its products and platforms. So why is the company porting its new TV App to smart TVs and streaming devices from Samsung, Amazon, LG, Roku and others that are notorious for spying on users and collecting data about their viewing behaviors? Here's a look.
Where's the sledgehamer?
Nguyen initially noted that Samsung TVs could be hacked by the CIA to appear to be turned off while they're actually being used to record conversations in the room. But Smart TVs from LG, Samsung, Sony, and Visio were all designed to track what you're watching, as are streaming devices including Amazon's Fire TV, Google's Chromecast, and Roku. One notable exception, Nguyen added, was that "Apple TV doesn't collect viewing or search data."
Why would Apple be willing to put its TV app--effectively the streaming subset of its Apple TV features-- on other makers' smart TVs that are notorious for spying on users, collecting their data, and uploading it to various collectors, in some cases without any encryption? Apple's historical porting strategy detailed in the previous segment offers some perspective.
When Steve Jobs discussed Apple's distribution of iTunes for Windows with Walt Mossberg for the Wall Street Journal "All Things Digital" conference in 2007, he noted that there were more than 300 million installations of iTunes for Windows, several times the number of iPods sold.
"So that makes you an enormous Windows software developer," Mossberg noted, setting up Jobs's jab that Apple's iTunes on Windows "is like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell."
Apple Music was similarly delivered for Android In 2015 despite the increasing awareness of how sloppy Google and its licensees have been with users' data privacy and invasive behavior tracking. Like iTunes, Apple Music is a trojan horse that invites Android users into the Apple ecosystem, giving them the opportunity to upgrade to the full experience with an iPad or iPhone and leave their troubles behind.
Apple doesn't sell televisions. But by putting its TV app on the smart TVs that other companies make, it can highlight the vast difference between its experience and the befuddled, cluttered mess around it that is actively trying to spy on them. It opens a door for users enlightened to the surveillance adware exploitation that's now being built into smart TVs. It invites them to buy the full Apple TV box that does everything their smart set does without watching them and reporting their behaviors.
I've used a series of Samsung televisions over the past decade, including new Tizen models, and while their hardware is fine, their software is terrible: inscrutable UI, frustrating controls, and features that actually crash and require a reboot. A piece by Alexis C. Madrigal for the literary and cultural commentary magazine The Atlantic agreed: "smart TVs are dumb."
In an interview with the Verge earlier this year, the company's chief technology officer Bill Baxter stated that building TVs is a "cutthroat industry" with 6% margins, and that by running content monitoring, surveillance advertising, and data mining, "I really don't need to make money off of the TV."
Last year, Roku's chief executive Anthony Wood freely admitted the same about his company's TVs and streaming media sticks and boxes, explaining, "we don't really make money [from the hardware] we certainly don't make enough money to support our engineering organization and our operations and the cost to run the Roku service. That's not paid for by the hardware. That's paid for by our ad and content business."
Back in 2014, Apple's chief executive Tim Cook expressed a very different stance on his company's approach to building products. He stated, "our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don't build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don't 'monetize' the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don't read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple."
Tim Cook: "You're not our product."
By offering a clean, functional taste of the Apple TV experience on higher end models of these surveillance sets, Apple's new TV app can expand the market for the company's Services while also recommending its Apple TV hardware as a superior set of smarts, without any spyware model. Affluent customers tend to prefer privacy and security and are willing to pay for it.
That's not just conjecture. A report by Parks Associates stated that almost half of smart TV owners also used a streaming media player, and that they used their media player much more frequently than their TV's built-in services. And it specifically stated that consumers rated Apple TV highly in setup, usability, gaming, and for purchasing content.
Most typical consumer reviews of TVs and media sticks focus almost entirely on price and the most basic checklist of features. Many reviewers have a really hard time understanding how Apple is competing against $35 data collection streaming boxes, and seem to have no grasp on why anyone would care about the quality of their overall experience, or about issues including privacy, spying, and data security.
That total inability to comprehend how people who might pay $1,000 or more for a television set might also be able to afford an Apple TV that makes their experience that much better was reflected in the steaming hot takes that virtually everyone in the tech industry cynically ran with earlier this year, which confidently announced that Apple's porting of its TV app (then referred to as iTunes) was further evidence that Apple was failing in hardware.
David Katzmaier of CNET revealed an incremental awakening to Apple's TV strategy that took him months to put together.
Christopher Mims of the Wall Street Journal declared that Apple putting its software on other platforms was a "radical shift in its corporate strategy," stating that Apple "appears finally willing to sacrifice some hardware revenue in the hopes of growing its services," despite having also lived through the last twenty years of Apple putting iTunes on PCs without sacrificing any Macs and still selling the most iPods, and putting Apple Music on Android while retaining virtually all of the valuable smartphone sales.
The new tvOS not only enabled new apps and games for TV, but also made it easy for video services to take their existing content and offer it as a subscription, and for cable operators to turn their scheduled programming of linear TV channels into digital catalogs of content users could watch at any time, any way they like. So far, Apple has created partnerships with Charter Spectrum, Sony's PlayStation Vue, and AT&T's DirecTV.
Apple TV is expanding to serve rentals, channels, streaming and non-linear cable
Over the three years since, tvOS has established a strong base of users. That's particularly notable because Apple TV itself is significantly more expensive than cheap dongles or media boxes offered by Amazon, Roku, Google, and others. It also competes against the "free" smart tv interfaces integrated into most new televisions. But Apple's position in TV, particularly among affluent users, is not bleeding away into irrelevance.
In the same way that consumers upgraded to iPhones despite a price disparity and the fact that Apple's competitors were rushing out certain features first, a large segment of buyers are now moving to Apple TV despite its additional cost because it works better and offers a better experience. And the emergence of better technology makes that difference in experience even more valuable.
A report by Joshua Fruhlinger for ThinkNum based on sales data from Best Buy noted that in sales of 4K streaming devices, "Amazon has taken the clear lead, with Apple TV a close second.
"The Fire Stick is an inexpensive way to get into 4K streaming at just $35. And despite the Apple TV's higher cost [$180] compared to the others in this list, people appear to be turning to Apple for its ease of use and integration with other Apple and iCloud devices."
He added, "now that 4K TVs are ubiquitous and Apple has made its iTunes ecosystem relatively seamless, it appears the Apple TV 4K is becoming the go-to device."
So rather than joining the surveillance model of smart TV and media stick vendors, Apple is riding the wave of subsidized TV sets to provide a premium alternative that users can opt to pay for as a way out of being spied upon and tracked as a product for advertisers.
Where's the sledgehamer?
Deal with the devil
Even non-technical viewers are increasingly aware that their smart TVs are spying on them. A BuzzFeed report by Nicole Nguyen detailed to mainstream audiences that smart TVs are a pretty sold bag of bad software and creepy spying policies. And it's not by accident or mistake, but quite intentionally by design.Nguyen initially noted that Samsung TVs could be hacked by the CIA to appear to be turned off while they're actually being used to record conversations in the room. But Smart TVs from LG, Samsung, Sony, and Visio were all designed to track what you're watching, as are streaming devices including Amazon's Fire TV, Google's Chromecast, and Roku. One notable exception, Nguyen added, was that "Apple TV doesn't collect viewing or search data."
Why would Apple be willing to put its TV app--effectively the streaming subset of its Apple TV features-- on other makers' smart TVs that are notorious for spying on users, collecting their data, and uploading it to various collectors, in some cases without any encryption? Apple's historical porting strategy detailed in the previous segment offers some perspective.
Like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell
In 2003 Apple ported iTunes to Windows at a time when PCs were so plagued with spyware, viruses, and other problems that Apple turned the pain points of PCs into its "Switchers" and then "Get a Mac" ad campaigns. It wasn't hypocrisy. Apple's recommendation to PC users was to switch, and using iTunes made it that much easier.When Steve Jobs discussed Apple's distribution of iTunes for Windows with Walt Mossberg for the Wall Street Journal "All Things Digital" conference in 2007, he noted that there were more than 300 million installations of iTunes for Windows, several times the number of iPods sold.
"So that makes you an enormous Windows software developer," Mossberg noted, setting up Jobs's jab that Apple's iTunes on Windows "is like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell."
Apple Music was similarly delivered for Android In 2015 despite the increasing awareness of how sloppy Google and its licensees have been with users' data privacy and invasive behavior tracking. Like iTunes, Apple Music is a trojan horse that invites Android users into the Apple ecosystem, giving them the opportunity to upgrade to the full experience with an iPad or iPhone and leave their troubles behind.
Apple doesn't sell televisions. But by putting its TV app on the smart TVs that other companies make, it can highlight the vast difference between its experience and the befuddled, cluttered mess around it that is actively trying to spy on them. It opens a door for users enlightened to the surveillance adware exploitation that's now being built into smart TVs. It invites them to buy the full Apple TV box that does everything their smart set does without watching them and reporting their behaviors.
I've used a series of Samsung televisions over the past decade, including new Tizen models, and while their hardware is fine, their software is terrible: inscrutable UI, frustrating controls, and features that actually crash and require a reboot. A piece by Alexis C. Madrigal for the literary and cultural commentary magazine The Atlantic agreed: "smart TVs are dumb."
Cheaper by the dumbing
The surveillance "smarts" of smart TVs are, however, subsidizing the delivery of cheap TV sets. Legendarily cheap TV maker Visio called the practice of selling loss leader sets that earned back some profits by leaching your home of salable marketing data "post-purchase monetization."In an interview with the Verge earlier this year, the company's chief technology officer Bill Baxter stated that building TVs is a "cutthroat industry" with 6% margins, and that by running content monitoring, surveillance advertising, and data mining, "I really don't need to make money off of the TV."
Last year, Roku's chief executive Anthony Wood freely admitted the same about his company's TVs and streaming media sticks and boxes, explaining, "we don't really make money [from the hardware] we certainly don't make enough money to support our engineering organization and our operations and the cost to run the Roku service. That's not paid for by the hardware. That's paid for by our ad and content business."
Back in 2014, Apple's chief executive Tim Cook expressed a very different stance on his company's approach to building products. He stated, "our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don't build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don't 'monetize' the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don't read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple."
Tim Cook: "You're not our product."
By offering a clean, functional taste of the Apple TV experience on higher end models of these surveillance sets, Apple's new TV app can expand the market for the company's Services while also recommending its Apple TV hardware as a superior set of smarts, without any spyware model. Affluent customers tend to prefer privacy and security and are willing to pay for it.
That's not just conjecture. A report by Parks Associates stated that almost half of smart TV owners also used a streaming media player, and that they used their media player much more frequently than their TV's built-in services. And it specifically stated that consumers rated Apple TV highly in setup, usability, gaming, and for purchasing content.
Dumbing by the cheapers
Most typical consumer reviews of TVs and media sticks focus almost entirely on price and the most basic checklist of features. Many reviewers have a really hard time understanding how Apple is competing against $35 data collection streaming boxes, and seem to have no grasp on why anyone would care about the quality of their overall experience, or about issues including privacy, spying, and data security.
That total inability to comprehend how people who might pay $1,000 or more for a television set might also be able to afford an Apple TV that makes their experience that much better was reflected in the steaming hot takes that virtually everyone in the tech industry cynically ran with earlier this year, which confidently announced that Apple's porting of its TV app (then referred to as iTunes) was further evidence that Apple was failing in hardware.
David Katzmaier of CNET revealed an incremental awakening to Apple's TV strategy that took him months to put together.
Christopher Mims of the Wall Street Journal declared that Apple putting its software on other platforms was a "radical shift in its corporate strategy," stating that Apple "appears finally willing to sacrifice some hardware revenue in the hopes of growing its services," despite having also lived through the last twenty years of Apple putting iTunes on PCs without sacrificing any Macs and still selling the most iPods, and putting Apple Music on Android while retaining virtually all of the valuable smartphone sales.
The new Apple TV
Apple's September 2015 introduction of the 4G Apple TV introduced tvOS as a new platform for smart TV. Prior to that, Apple TV had mostly been a convenience device for AirPlay streaming from Macs and iOS devices to a television, and for watching iTunes videos or rentals and viewing iCloud photos.The new tvOS not only enabled new apps and games for TV, but also made it easy for video services to take their existing content and offer it as a subscription, and for cable operators to turn their scheduled programming of linear TV channels into digital catalogs of content users could watch at any time, any way they like. So far, Apple has created partnerships with Charter Spectrum, Sony's PlayStation Vue, and AT&T's DirecTV.
Apple TV is expanding to serve rentals, channels, streaming and non-linear cable
Over the three years since, tvOS has established a strong base of users. That's particularly notable because Apple TV itself is significantly more expensive than cheap dongles or media boxes offered by Amazon, Roku, Google, and others. It also competes against the "free" smart tv interfaces integrated into most new televisions. But Apple's position in TV, particularly among affluent users, is not bleeding away into irrelevance.
4K is to Apple TV what 3G was to iPhone
One factor that's helping: the emergence of affordable 4K televisions is creating interest in high-quality content that viewers can pay for. Apple TV is exploiting the emergence of high-quality screens and fast Internet to deliver a superior experience. Twelve years ago, technology was ripe for a game-changing smartphone but wasn't really ready for Apple TV.In the same way that consumers upgraded to iPhones despite a price disparity and the fact that Apple's competitors were rushing out certain features first, a large segment of buyers are now moving to Apple TV despite its additional cost because it works better and offers a better experience. And the emergence of better technology makes that difference in experience even more valuable.
A report by Joshua Fruhlinger for ThinkNum based on sales data from Best Buy noted that in sales of 4K streaming devices, "Amazon has taken the clear lead, with Apple TV a close second.
"The Fire Stick is an inexpensive way to get into 4K streaming at just $35. And despite the Apple TV's higher cost [$180] compared to the others in this list, people appear to be turning to Apple for its ease of use and integration with other Apple and iCloud devices."
He added, "now that 4K TVs are ubiquitous and Apple has made its iTunes ecosystem relatively seamless, it appears the Apple TV 4K is becoming the go-to device."
So rather than joining the surveillance model of smart TV and media stick vendors, Apple is riding the wave of subsidized TV sets to provide a premium alternative that users can opt to pay for as a way out of being spied upon and tracked as a product for advertisers.
Comments
That is, you as an individual still exist, but only under a cumbersome id (instead of your name) that others may very well relate to your name via usage patterns - even while Apple won’t.
So that distinction is MINIMAL to ZERO, further in the value chain.
So - contrary to what the article suggests - Apple IS collecting data on users collectively and selling TONS of aggeregate data to enable spying purposes.
(Although I kinda wish that I had anything worth spying on!)
So, anyway, I keep coming back to using a dumb computer monitor as a TV.
Yes, they are mostly designed for close-up work. But technically and practically there is no good reason why they can't work as TVs driven by some type of computer like an Apple TV.
Part of that is simply the result of my aversion to unnecessarily bundled systems (meaning systems where the bundling does not add functional value). I prefer separate components that can be assembled (as well as replaced) as needed to suit the job at hand.
The whole "you're being sold" conversation as it concerns Apple specifically (and Google too) is in general a FUD campaign.
There really are companies out there selling the real you, personal details and all: Credit bureaus who sell more than a credit rating, insurance brokerages who sell claims histories and specifics of home, auto, boat, or whatever else you have of insurable value, state licensing agencies who sell driving records and ownership registrations among other stuff, even the principle CC licensing agencies like Visa and Mastercard who sell personal purchase histories. Oh and don't forget your bank, brokerage and pharmacy and until at least the past few weeks your cell carrier. EVERYONE seems to be in on it.
Worries about an ad placement seem kind of petty don't they?
Aple TV “created” the smart tv back in the day.
Now tv makers create their own. Most play nice with competitors’ platforms.
So Apple NEEDS to do this to not only keep their platform healthy, but to grow it.
Asking why a pricavy minded apple would put its ap on TVs from manufacturers that do whatever they do is like asking why safari, iTunes, Apple Music, etc was ever put in windows or android.
You do do what you can in the confines of your own ecosystem to lock it down. But it doesn’t mean you can’t be allowed to benefit from other markets as well. That was the kind of thinking tat hurt Apple so bad the first go.
DED’s articles aren’t made to be objective - they are made to be enjoyed. And sure I did!
Apple collects and sells aggregate, anonymized data = false
Companies that collect data, the way Google collects your Google Home mic recordings, Nest videos, and other data, routinely lose it, hand it over to police--in ways that innocent users have lost their jobs over--and mistakenly leave it open for hackers to access.
You keep blatantly lying about Google and pretend that Apple is doing the exact same things. There must be a reason why you spend so much time fabricating totally false claims about Google. Can you lay out for us your business model, who you are, who you work for, and who pays you to sit on AppleInsider posting totally false information all of the time? Because it seems to be your full-time job.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/technology/google-facebook-surveillance-capitalism.html ;
Platforms like Google and Facebook may track and analyze our every search, location, like, video, photo, post and punctuation mark the better to try to sway us.
Google, in its early days, used the keywords that people typed in to improve its search engine even as it paid scant attention to the collateral data — like users’ keyword phrasing, click patterns and spellings — that came with it. Pretty soon, however, Google began harvesting this surplus information, along with other details like users’ web-browsing activities, to infer their interests and target them with ads.
The companies’ pivot — from serving to surveilling their users — pushed Google and Facebook to harvest more and more data, Dr. Zuboff writes. In doing so, the companies sometimes bypassed privacy settings or made it difficult for users to opt out of data-sharing.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/10/13/smart-home-surveillance-governments-tell-googles-nest-to-hand-over-data-300-times
Anyone pumped for this week's launch of Google's Home Hub might want to temper their excitement. A smart home is a surveilled home. That’s been the concern of privacy activists since citizens started lighting up their abodes with so-called “smart” tech in recent years.
Take Google’s current smart home division, Nest Labs. It’s been told to hand over data on 300 separate occasions since 2015. That’s according to a little-documented transparency report from Nest, launched a year after the $3.2 billion Google acquisition. The report shows around 60 requests for data were received by Google’s unit in the first half of this year alone. In all those cases recorded from 2015 onward, governments have sought data on as many as 525 Nest account holders.
Google is the default search provider on Apple devices, so how's that helping the Apple privacy stance?
1. doesn't do tracking for targeted advertising?
2. doesn't do tracking for analytics on how customers interact on their website?
3. doesn't hand over data to authorities?
I hope those aren't your points and I don't want to assume you mean something you don't. Please don't let those be your points. I'll be sad for you if they are.
Also there's nothing false in Gatorguy's post relative to Apple. I'd actually like to see you find something false in it. Not by using your stock and trade: deflection, hyperbole, and ad hominem like you did above, but directly refuting the points he made... with actual facts that counter them. I don't think you can.
I've not ever claimed "Google and Apple are the same". What is it, Red Herring Day and nobody told me?
Plainly they are not which is exactly why you might try to use that to dismiss what I've factually said.While you've always had a unique spin on words IMO some of it is silly when used to avoid a conversation. To some it might make you appear to have a weak argument.
Does Google sell private user data? Nope and I've said so. Prove that's lying DED
Does Google relegate users into baskets of anonymized Advertising ID numbers and not names and addresses for advertising activities? Yup and I said so. Prove that claim I made is lying DED
Has Google left open personal data files for "hackers to access" as you claim. Not that I'm aware of. Prove that claim is false DED (and check the facts of that Nest claim you're about to make) since you've hinted otherwise.
Do both Apple and Google hand over personal user data when presented with a legal demand from a lawful authority to do so? Yes I do believe they do. Prove that's a false claim DED since you've hinted otherwise at only applying to one of them.
I won't at this point go into how Apple profits (in the $Billions) from offering personal access to and ad tracking of Apple users, but if you'd like to have that conversation I'm game. There are not truly clean hands when it comes to monetizing users of a platform. It comes down to a matter of degrees not devil and angel, and in the degrees Apple and Google are certainly not the same. That's one point we can both agree on if nothing else. I have never claimed otherwise, but feel free to prove that's false too.
A bit of honest debate instead of so much puffery (IMO) goes a long ways Daniel. I'd appreciate you not resorting to forum rules breaking to lob a few more personal insults this way either as tho using them proves you must be right. We can talk like adults, silly personal stuff doesn't make anyone "more right".