Apple: Siri is basically a failure after over 7 years in development and barely usable. Rivals: services actually work, but collect your info, spy on you, and are run by companies with little to no moral compass.
Honestly a tough call at this point.
Oh, and my HomePod literally just bricked itself for no reason; Apple care’s only solution is to bring it in.
These last few months have been the first time I’ve ever felt pessimistic about Apple. I hope they get their shit together, bc this is getting pathetic.
I'm not sure I agree with the assumptions that this article is based on. Could Apple have developed something like Voice Match to differentiate between less personal accounts, e.g. News or Apple Music without opening up access to contacts or calling? If the issue was privacy not technology then why wouldn't they at least start with those? This looks very much like retrofitting a privacy excuse that was never the main reason for HomePod's limitations.
The article doesn't say that every HomePod limitation is an intentional privacy-based decision.
However, Apple is also not racing to rapidly throw out ideas in the voice category because:
d) from your point of view but I've not seen anything to validate it
Are you completely unaware of “antenna-gate” and signal attenuation on iPhone 4? Signal attenuation was nothing new at the time but it exploded when exhibited on the iPhone 4. Heck, I even had a manual to a previous phone that had a drawing of a hand holding that model of phone and basically saying if held in that way the signal may be affected. Nobody cared. But when Apple released a phone that exhibited the same behavior as other cell phones it was suddenly front page, screaming headlines news.
That’s just one example.
Apple has around 30-40% market share in the US. I'd be surprised if it wasn't headline news. We have an inbuilt negative bias that the media exploits. Every big company makes headlines when something happens - Samsung's exploding batteries, Facebook's CA problems, Google's issues around diversity, tax avoidance, censorship, car crashes, demonitising some youtube channels, screw ups on messaging, email scanning, book scanning. And we are currently commenting on one of many articles about Amazon's Echo spying.
Agreed, it's Apple loons who think that there actually are people who seriously dedicte their time and energy to hating and conspiring against a near trillion $ company. It seems DED can no longer write an Apple article without bringing up the same companies that aren't really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple. Google is a search engine ad company, Amazon is an everything online store, Samsung is the everything electronics and appliances store, Apple is the iPhone/computer company, in what universe can you reasonably equate any of these business models ? constantly implying that since Apple is the only one succeeding at the computer business (which is their model) means the rest are implicitly evil and out to exploit and harm people is ridiculous. Apple's moral stance isn't a virtue of bieng inherently "good" but a feature of corporate branding, if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy they wouldn't advertise to us so much about their efforts, but they do because as you can see by this thread it sell more iPhones, if it didn't it be out the window i.e China.
Says what authority? If you think the level of effort apple has put into environment or privacy values is equal to other corps you’re delusional.
I didn't say it was equal, just that it's not pure nobility it's marketing intended to generate sales like all marketing. Apple isn't good or evil, there are no good or evil companies, they are all out to make money, Apple like all other brand companies is selling a brand, like Chanel or BMW, the brand transmits a massage about the company that the company hopes will resonate with their targeted customers to the point of generating a sale, the company associates the brand with social causes and ideas that will best achieve this, Biz school 101 really. Strange can you honestly say that Apple's environmental and privacy efforts aren't one of the reasons we are so loyal and infatuated with Apple and why its brand holds such esteem and people are proud to own Apple products to the irrational point that we absolutely loathe Google or Samsung ? does Apple not do these things in part to paint it self in a light that it knows will romance the pants/cash off it's customers ? BTW I don't see this as bad, evil or deceitful, its great, after all it's just business
You said "if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy..." which clearly implies your claim that they don't really care. But you're reasoning is poor -- your claim is because it's good for their business and brand, therefore they don't really care. Sorry, but that's just dumb. Two two ideas are not self-exclusionary -- you can really care about a thing and promote it as part of your brand. Companies do this all over the world. As consumers, part of our decision making on who to align our spending with is ranking what the brand values.
Apple values privacy and the environment. And they promote it.
Aaa I do love reductio ad absurdum, you're cherry picking sentences in my post to quote me out of context to present an agument I never made. I said "if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy" implying that if those two things were the primary motivation for them as a business they'd supperceed profits, Apple cares about the venvironment and privacy to the extent that it facilitates more profits such that should either privacy or the environment threaten profits they would be swiftly dropped as they were in China. It serves Apple's bottom line, as it does any of the company you are talking about, the moment they stop doing so they'd be abandoned, so how can a company or any one claim to truly care a bout any principles when those principles are subject to a higher force.
Mind you I am not at all claiming Apple gives zero shit about the environment or privacy they do, very much so, but not more than they do the numbers.
"As consumers, part of our decision making on who to align our spending with is ranking what the brand values" but what the brand values isn't determined in a vacuume, brands value what their intended customers value when that shifts so does the brand, we live in a time where the environment and privacy are things that people whom Apple wants to sell their products to care about, so Apple cares about those things to, not the other way round, these aren't bad things for a company like Apple to care about but it aligns with the business not the reverse.
You seem to think Apple gave up on privacy in China because they continue to sell their products there after being forced to host iCloud on Chinese servers. I’ll say two things about that, which maybe will alter your perception. First, Apple has a stated policy of engaging when it disagrees rather than boycotting. Tim Cook has stated this and defends it by pointing out that more can often be accomplished by engaging in dialog than in disengaging. And second, it’s only a potential issue that China may use that iCloud data in some manner against its citizens. The rules in place there are similar to the United States; a warrant is needed to search. But I suppose some would advocate companies that produce rope should not sell to China due to potential of their product being used to hang dissonants.
fair enough @radarthekat but you do have to find it a little ironic that the same CEO who made such a grand and dramatic stance against the Feds now seems to have bend to the Chines will with out even the slightest protest, where was Tim's Nobel worthy bleeding heart letter to Chinese customers lambasting their Government actions. I'm not asking for the same resistance as Apple isn't really a Chinese company but at the very least an official statement made by Cook stating something to the effect of
" yes iCloud in China will no longer be in our complete control as we would wish as new laws there have forced us, but let me be clear we as a company strongly believe in encryption and protection of customer's personal data, we are fully against any efforts that compromises that"
I think this would have been a show of strong leadership by Cook, but instead we have both Apple and it's evangelists trying to make it seem as though this is no big deal, after all Apple can't control what happens in other countries, they just run a business, and are bound by laws, but this is the risk you run when you tie a brand to social and political hot buttons like same sex marriage and privacy, there's a reason other silicon valley companies are less vocal about some of these things, they can conflicts with business. Unless you run a company you founded and own you're mouth shouldn't be writing cheques your balls can't cash, if Cook owned Apple he could just balls up and say fuck it and pull Apple out of China, principles matter more than money after all.
You’re equating two very different issues. The US government was demanding an encryption back door to the handset, which might hold much more data, and much more sensitive data, than a user chooses to replicate in the cloud. That’s a major issue as such a backdoor would likely get into the hands of bad actors. Think about what might happen in a trial. A defense attorney could demand access to the very code that provides the backdoor, so that his experts could determine whether such a backdoor really gives access to the data without altering it. Now how secure do you suppose a backdoor would be if dozens, hundreds, of defense experts had access to scrutinize it?
What Apple was required to do in China is to host iCloud data in China. On the surface this is a perfectly reasonable request by a government. Place the shoe in the other foot. If some service’s cloud data, let’s use Amazon for example, were hosted in China, which might include data from phones or computers used by some of your company’s employees, would you think it wrong for your government (assuming US) to demand that the data be hosted within the US? That’s all China has demanded. It’s speculation, perhaps based upon good reason, to be concerned about the Chinese government snooping on that data without a valid warrant. Hmm, then again, aren’t there thousands of information demands made to Apple right here in the US that Apple is enjoined from even speaking about, other than to indicate a total number for each year? Maybe that’s what China is concerned with. So you cannot reasonably equate the two issues.
I'm not sure I agree with the assumptions that this article is based on. Could Apple have developed something like Voice Match to differentiate between less personal accounts, e.g. News or Apple Music without opening up access to contacts or calling? If the issue was privacy not technology then why wouldn't they at least start with those? This looks very much like retrofitting a privacy excuse that was never the main reason for HomePod's limitations.
The article doesn't say that every HomePod limitation is an intentional privacy-based decision.
However, Apple is also not racing to rapidly throw out ideas in the voice category because:
d) from your point of view but I've not seen anything to validate it
Are you completely unaware of “antenna-gate” and signal attenuation on iPhone 4? Signal attenuation was nothing new at the time but it exploded when exhibited on the iPhone 4. Heck, I even had a manual to a previous phone that had a drawing of a hand holding that model of phone and basically saying if held in that way the signal may be affected. Nobody cared. But when Apple released a phone that exhibited the same behavior as other cell phones it was suddenly front page, screaming headlines news.
That’s just one example.
Apple has around 30-40% market share in the US. I'd be surprised if it wasn't headline news. We have an inbuilt negative bias that the media exploits. Every big company makes headlines when something happens - Samsung's exploding batteries, Facebook's CA problems, Google's issues around diversity, tax avoidance, censorship, car crashes, demonitising some youtube channels, screw ups on messaging, email scanning, book scanning. And we are currently commenting on one of many articles about Amazon's Echo spying.
Agreed, it's Apple loons who think that there actually are people who seriously dedicte their time and energy to hating and conspiring against a near trillion $ company. It seems DED can no longer write an Apple article without bringing up the same companies that aren't really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple. Google is a search engine ad company, Amazon is an everything online store, Samsung is the everything electronics and appliances store, Apple is the iPhone/computer company, in what universe can you reasonably equate any of these business models ? constantly implying that since Apple is the only one succeeding at the computer business (which is their model) means the rest are implicitly evil and out to exploit and harm people is ridiculous. Apple's moral stance isn't a virtue of bieng inherently "good" but a feature of corporate branding, if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy they wouldn't advertise to us so much about their efforts, but they do because as you can see by this thread it sell more iPhones, if it didn't it be out the window i.e China.
Says what authority? If you think the level of effort apple has put into environment or privacy values is equal to other corps you’re delusional.
I didn't say it was equal, just that it's not pure nobility it's marketing intended to generate sales like all marketing. Apple isn't good or evil, there are no good or evil companies, they are all out to make money, Apple like all other brand companies is selling a brand, like Chanel or BMW, the brand transmits a massage about the company that the company hopes will resonate with their targeted customers to the point of generating a sale, the company associates the brand with social causes and ideas that will best achieve this, Biz school 101 really. Strange can you honestly say that Apple's environmental and privacy efforts aren't one of the reasons we are so loyal and infatuated with Apple and why its brand holds such esteem and people are proud to own Apple products to the irrational point that we absolutely loathe Google or Samsung ? does Apple not do these things in part to paint it self in a light that it knows will romance the pants/cash off it's customers ? BTW I don't see this as bad, evil or deceitful, its great, after all it's just business
You said "if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy..." which clearly implies your claim that they don't really care. But you're reasoning is poor -- your claim is because it's good for their business and brand, therefore they don't really care. Sorry, but that's just dumb. Two two ideas are not self-exclusionary -- you can really care about a thing and promote it as part of your brand. Companies do this all over the world. As consumers, part of our decision making on who to align our spending with is ranking what the brand values.
Apple values privacy and the environment. And they promote it.
Aaa I do love reductio ad absurdum, you're cherry picking sentences in my post to quote me out of context to present an agument I never made. I said "if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy" implying that if those two things were the primary motivation for them as a business they'd supperceed profits, Apple cares about the venvironment and privacy to the extent that it facilitates more profits such that should either privacy or the environment threaten profits they would be swiftly dropped as they were in China. It serves Apple's bottom line, as it does any of the company you are talking about, the moment they stop doing so they'd be abandoned, so how can a company or any one claim to truly care a bout any principles when those principles are subject to a higher force.
Mind you I am not at all claiming Apple gives zero shit about the environment or privacy they do, very much so, but not more than they do the numbers.
"As consumers, part of our decision making on who to align our spending with is ranking what the brand values" but what the brand values isn't determined in a vacuume, brands value what their intended customers value when that shifts so does the brand, we live in a time where the environment and privacy are things that people whom Apple wants to sell their products to care about, so Apple cares about those things to, not the other way round, these aren't bad things for a company like Apple to care about but it aligns with the business not the reverse.
You seem to think Apple gave up on privacy in China because they continue to sell their products there after being forced to host iCloud on Chinese servers... it’s only a potential issue that China may use that iCloud data in some manner against its citizens. The rules in place there are similar to the United States; a warrant is needed to search.
Don't understate the change in Apple policies regarding customer privacy. While a Chinese warrant to access an Apple customers iCloud data may be technically required (or not) it no longer needs to be served on Apple, nor does Apple have any say in whether it's complied with or not. GCBD, a state-run server company, has the same access to the encrypted user data it holds as Apple does. That's according to Apple themselves, and that IMHO is a relative sea-change.
Imagine the uproar if Apple were to make the same announcement in the West substituting GCBD with Google or Amazon or Microsoft who also house Apple user data. But you'd be OK with it? Love to hear your answer to that.
BTW, about those search warrants: In China they can be issued by the police to the police following internal hearings, not requiring a judge in an independent court. Since police are expected to keep anything they know about an investigation confidential to begin with there are not the Western concerns and restrictions about them accessing and reviewing any available personal information they think might be pertinent, or if need be gathering confidential documents belonging to private companies that could even involve trade secrets as I understand it.
See my response above to holyone where I speak to this issue.
I'm not sure I agree with the assumptions that this article is based on. Could Apple have developed something like Voice Match to differentiate between less personal accounts, e.g. News or Apple Music without opening up access to contacts or calling? If the issue was privacy not technology then why wouldn't they at least start with those? This looks very much like retrofitting a privacy excuse that was never the main reason for HomePod's limitations.
The article doesn't say that every HomePod limitation is an intentional privacy-based decision.
However, Apple is also not racing to rapidly throw out ideas in the voice category because:
d) from your point of view but I've not seen anything to validate it
Are you completely unaware of “antenna-gate” and signal attenuation on iPhone 4? Signal attenuation was nothing new at the time but it exploded when exhibited on the iPhone 4. Heck, I even had a manual to a previous phone that had a drawing of a hand holding that model of phone and basically saying if held in that way the signal may be affected. Nobody cared. But when Apple released a phone that exhibited the same behavior as other cell phones it was suddenly front page, screaming headlines news.
That’s just one example.
Apple has around 30-40% market share in the US. I'd be surprised if it wasn't headline news. We have an inbuilt negative bias that the media exploits. Every big company makes headlines when something happens - Samsung's exploding batteries, Facebook's CA problems, Google's issues around diversity, tax avoidance, censorship, car crashes, demonitising some youtube channels, screw ups on messaging, email scanning, book scanning. And we are currently commenting on one of many articles about Amazon's Echo spying.
Agreed, it's Apple loons who think that there actually are people who seriously dedicte their time and energy to hating and conspiring against a near trillion $ company. It seems DED can no longer write an Apple article without bringing up the same companies that aren't really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple. Google is a search engine ad company, Amazon is an everything online store, Samsung is the everything electronics and appliances store, Apple is the iPhone/computer company, in what universe can you reasonably equate any of these business models ? constantly implying that since Apple is the only one succeeding at the computer business (which is their model) means the rest are implicitly evil and out to exploit and harm people is ridiculous. Apple's moral stance isn't a virtue of bieng inherently "good" but a feature of corporate branding, if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy they wouldn't advertise to us so much about their efforts, but they do because as you can see by this thread it sell more iPhones, if it didn't it be out the window i.e China.
Says what authority? If you think the level of effort apple has put into environment or privacy values is equal to other corps you’re delusional.
I didn't say it was equal, just that it's not pure nobility it's marketing intended to generate sales like all marketing. Apple isn't good or evil, there are no good or evil companies, they are all out to make money, Apple like all other brand companies is selling a brand, like Chanel or BMW, the brand transmits a massage about the company that the company hopes will resonate with their targeted customers to the point of generating a sale, the company associates the brand with social causes and ideas that will best achieve this, Biz school 101 really. Strange can you honestly say that Apple's environmental and privacy efforts aren't one of the reasons we are so loyal and infatuated with Apple and why its brand holds such esteem and people are proud to own Apple products to the irrational point that we absolutely loathe Google or Samsung ? does Apple not do these things in part to paint it self in a light that it knows will romance the pants/cash off it's customers ? BTW I don't see this as bad, evil or deceitful, its great, after all it's just business
You said "if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy..." which clearly implies your claim that they don't really care. But you're reasoning is poor -- your claim is because it's good for their business and brand, therefore they don't really care. Sorry, but that's just dumb. Two two ideas are not self-exclusionary -- you can really care about a thing and promote it as part of your brand. Companies do this all over the world. As consumers, part of our decision making on who to align our spending with is ranking what the brand values.
Apple values privacy and the environment. And they promote it.
Aaa I do love reductio ad absurdum, you're cherry picking sentences in my post to quote me out of context to present an agument I never made. I said "if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy" implying that if those two things were the primary motivation for them as a business they'd supperceed profits, Apple cares about the venvironment and privacy to the extent that it facilitates more profits such that should either privacy or the environment threaten profits they would be swiftly dropped as they were in China. It serves Apple's bottom line, as it does any of the company you are talking about, the moment they stop doing so they'd be abandoned, so how can a company or any one claim to truly care a bout any principles when those principles are subject to a higher force.
Mind you I am not at all claiming Apple gives zero shit about the environment or privacy they do, very much so, but not more than they do the numbers.
"As consumers, part of our decision making on who to align our spending with is ranking what the brand values" but what the brand values isn't determined in a vacuume, brands value what their intended customers value when that shifts so does the brand, we live in a time where the environment and privacy are things that people whom Apple wants to sell their products to care about, so Apple cares about those things to, not the other way round, these aren't bad things for a company like Apple to care about but it aligns with the business not the reverse.
You seem to think Apple gave up on privacy in China because they continue to sell their products there after being forced to host iCloud on Chinese servers... it’s only a potential issue that China may use that iCloud data in some manner against its citizens. The rules in place there are similar to the United States; a warrant is needed to search.
Don't understate the change in Apple policies regarding customer privacy. While a Chinese warrant to access an Apple customers iCloud data may be technically required (or not) it no longer needs to be served on Apple, nor does Apple have any say in whether it's complied with or not. GCBD, a state-run server company, has the same access to the encrypted user data it holds as Apple does. That's according to Apple themselves, and that IMHO is a relative sea-change.
Imagine the uproar if Apple were to make the same announcement in the West substituting GCBD with Google or Amazon or Microsoft who also house Apple user data. But you'd be OK with it? Love to hear your answer to that.
BTW, about those search warrants: In China they can be issued by the police to the police following internal hearings, not requiring a judge in an independent court. Since police are expected to keep anything they know about an investigation confidential to begin with there are not the Western concerns and restrictions about them accessing and reviewing any available personal information they think might be pertinent, or if need be gathering confidential documents belonging to private companies that could even involve trade secrets as I understand it.
See my response above to holyone where I speak to this issue.
Which does not at all speak to Apple abrogating their responsibility and pledge to protect user data that applies everywhere Apple does business other than China (and possibly Russia) Applying the same policy here in the US, or for you the Philippines, would mean Apple allowing Google and Amazon the exact same access to user data as Apple themselves and permitting Google and/or Amazon to answer warrants for Apple user data. I don't think you can convince me you're OK with that, nor would any other member here, but feel free to argue that position. Convince me how much of a non-issue it would be if it were your own data involved.
Just because "Hey they're Chinese, who cares, they're not free anyway and it's not my data" doesn't mean that Apple isn't now walking along a slippery-slope.
Since when did Apple worry about a strained relationship with some government, skulk away mumbling "Yes Sir" when a government tells them they're not happy with some Apple decision? Is the money involved more important than a company's public ethos? Is profit the real ethos anyway? Maybe it is, maybe it should be, and most of the PR talk of corporate responsibility and privacy and the environment is intended at the end of the day to deliver profits... until it doesn't and then the pivot.
Apple should maintain at least the possibility of saying "not in this case, this is a specific warrant we won't comply with". Instead they've turned that over to a Chinese run server company. Even the new TOS frequently indicates that the agreement is between GCBD and the user. Apple is simply along for the ride. Removing themselves from the user data control decision making process does not equal clean hands.
Anyway I won't go on about it any further. I doubt I'll receive any reply that actually speaks to the points I mentioned anyway.
Everyone here in the States enjoy your holiday. Lots of rain on the way here.
You seem to think Apple gave up on privacy in China because they continue to sell their products there after being forced to host iCloud on Chinese servers. I’ll say two things about that, which maybe will alter your perception. First, Apple has a stated policy of engaging when it disagrees rather than boycotting. Tim Cook has stated this and defends it by pointing out that more can often be accomplished by engaging in dialog than in disengaging. And second, it’s only a potential issue that China may use that iCloud data in some manner against its citizens. The rules in place there are similar to the United States; a warrant is needed to search. But I suppose some would advocate companies that produce rope should not sell to China due to potential of their product being used to hang dissonants.
fair enough @radarthekat but you do have to find it a little ironic that the same CEO who made such a grand and dramatic stance against the Feds now seems to have bend to the Chines will with out even the slightest protest, where was Tim's Nobel worthy bleeding heart letter to Chinese customers lambasting their Government actions. I'm not asking for the same resistance as Apple isn't really a Chinese company but at the very least an official statement made by Cook stating something to the effect of
" yes iCloud in China will no longer be in our complete control as we would wish as new laws there have forced us, but let me be clear we as a company strongly believe in encryption and protection of customer's personal data, we are fully against any efforts that compromises that"
I think this would have been a show of strong leadership by Cook, but instead we have both Apple and it's evangelists trying to make it seem as though this is no big deal, after all Apple can't control what happens in other countries, they just run a business, and are bound by laws, but this is the risk you run when you tie a brand to social and political hot buttons like same sex marriage and privacy, there's a reason other silicon valley companies are less vocal about some of these things, they can conflicts with business. Unless you run a company you founded and own you're mouth shouldn't be writing cheques your balls can't cash, if Cook owned Apple he could just balls up and say fuck it and pull Apple out of China, principles matter more than money after all.
You’re equating two very different issues. The US government was demanding an encryption back door to the handset, which might hold much more data, and much more sensitive data, than a user chooses to replicate in the cloud. That’s a major issue as such a backdoor would likely get into the hands of bad actors. Think about what might happen in a trial. A defense attorney could demand access to the very code that provides the backdoor, so that his experts could determine whether such a backdoor really gives access to the data without altering it. Now how secure do you suppose a backdoor would be if dozens, hundreds, of defense experts had access to scrutinize it?
What Apple was required to do in China is to host iCloud data in China. On the surface this is a perfectly reasonable request by a government. Place the shoe in the other foot. If some service’s cloud data, let’s use Amazon for example, were hosted in China, which might include data from phones or computers used by some of your company’s employees, would you think it wrong for your government (assuming US) to demand that the data be hosted within the US? That’s all China has demanded. It’s speculation, perhaps based upon good reason, to be concerned about the Chinese government snooping on that data without a valid warrant. Hmm, then again, aren’t there thousands of information demands made to Apple right here in the US that Apple is enjoined from even speaking about, other than to indicate a total number for each year? Maybe that’s what China is concerned with. So you cannot reasonably equate the two issues.
@radarthekat thanks for you're calm and measured response hope you don't mind me persisting, ( final point, promise ), you make excellent points, however my intent wasn't to equate what Apple has had to deal with in China with what it faced and continues to face in the US, but merely point out that Tim's liberal agendas (some of which I m fully behind) latched on to the Apple brand aren't holy noble, they carry financial incentive. A brand like the Apple brand looks good to us "customers" if it seems to care about the same things we care about, this makes us more willing to associate with and buy that Brand's products.
I am not against China in this particular case, and as you've stated, on the surface this doesn't appear to be an unreasonable request by the people's republic, and yes Apple probably does similar or even more sinister shit with the Feds and great Satan, but China is a well known human rights violator, Apple giving even an inch over there has far graver implications and ramifications than it would in the US, Chinese customers are at a greater disadvantage because they are already under an oppresive regime. The Chines govenment wants total hegemonic domination of its citezens, like most govenments, the best way to do that is to be technologicaly and economically independent, once a country can provide for its every need with zero need to import any thing from the outside world, it becomes all magnificent ,how then does the rest of the world keep such a monster in line.
The question I think is, to what degree can Apple continue to pursue it's moral stances on such divisive issues before jeopardizing its financial obligations either by alienating customers or governments. Apple could have easily told the Chines gov to go screw it self on principle alone, and iCloud isn't the only situation Apple has been complicit in, they also conceded and aided censorship in the AppStore, there also have been many instances relating to child labour (not condemning Apple in any way here) but it is slow and mesured but sure progress by the people's republic.
The case with the FBI was simple in that it could be fully addressed from a technical perspective in a country where people are free speak their minds, but eventually, even there, things will move from the engeneers table to the sociopolitical sphere where there are no simple wrongs or rights. I'm grateful that Apple has a moral compass it suites their brand, but I think it is unwise for the leadership to continue to put the bran out there so carelessly with out forethough of future scenarios that might conflict with excessively bold and dramatic declarations made in the present that's all.
I'm not sure I agree with the assumptions that this article is based on. Could Apple have developed something like Voice Match to differentiate between less personal accounts, e.g. News or Apple Music without opening up access to contacts or calling? If the issue was privacy not technology then why wouldn't they at least start with those? This looks very much like retrofitting a privacy excuse that was never the main reason for HomePod's limitations.
The article doesn't say that every HomePod limitation is an intentional privacy-based decision.
However, Apple is also not racing to rapidly throw out ideas in the voice category because:
d) from your point of view but I've not seen anything to validate it
Are you completely unaware of “antenna-gate” and signal attenuation on iPhone 4? Signal attenuation was nothing new at the time but it exploded when exhibited on the iPhone 4. Heck, I even had a manual to a previous phone that had a drawing of a hand holding that model of phone and basically saying if held in that way the signal may be affected. Nobody cared. But when Apple released a phone that exhibited the same behavior as other cell phones it was suddenly front page, screaming headlines news.
That’s just one example.
Apple has around 30-40% market share in the US. I'd be surprised if it wasn't headline news. We have an inbuilt negative bias that the media exploits. Every big company makes headlines when something happens - Samsung's exploding batteries, Facebook's CA problems, Google's issues around diversity, tax avoidance, censorship, car crashes, demonitising some youtube channels, screw ups on messaging, email scanning, book scanning. And we are currently commenting on one of many articles about Amazon's Echo spying.
Agreed, it's Apple loons who think that there actually are people who seriously dedicte their time and energy to hating and conspiring against a near trillion $ company. It seems DED can no longer write an Apple article without bringing up the same companies that aren't really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple. Google is a search engine ad company, Amazon is an everything online store, Samsung is the everything electronics and appliances store, Apple is the iPhone/computer company, in what universe can you reasonably equate any of these business models ? constantly implying that since Apple is the only one succeeding at the computer business (which is their model) means the rest are implicitly evil and out to exploit and harm people is ridiculous. Apple's moral stance isn't a virtue of bieng inherently "good" but a feature of corporate branding, if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy they wouldn't advertise to us so much about their efforts, but they do because as you can see by this thread it sell more iPhones, if it didn't it be out the window i.e China.
I think the companies you claim here “aren’t really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple” would all be surprised to learn that they aren’t. Today, particularly the folks at Samsung, who just were told by a jury to fork over half a billion dollars to Apple for reasons that really do seem to relate to direct competition. Doesn’t Google produce Android OS? I could swear Samsung, Google and Amazon have all manufactured phones, speakers and other devices that compete directly with Apple.
Yeah, I am almost certain these companies (and others) are all direct competitors with Apple. I also think, when millions and billions of dollars are at stake, it’s quite likely that all kinds of businesses commonly hire all kinds of consultants, industrial spies, PR firms and troll farms to try to gather and manipulate information about their competitors.
You missed "in any significant way", yes Sammy makes Phones but that is not their primary business and yes Goog make phones and owns the most used mobile OS in the world but again that is not their primary money maker and Amazon makes a hole lotta things and any that are coincidentally also made by Apple are a rounding error in the books, but Zulu ( I can speak Zulu btw) you can't seriously claim Samsung, Google and Amazon are all phone/computer companies in the same way and to the same degree that Apple is, no one can, Apple killed off all the phone companies, Nokia, Moto, BB were all directly comparable to what Apple is today and all are dead. Samsung make washing machines for haven's sake, glad the case is over though God that dragged on for ever, I had even forgotten, Sammy is in no way shape or form Apple's peer.
Didn’t miss anything, actually. You’re trying to claim that “in any significant way” is a qualifier that allows you to make a ridiculous assertion, then backpedal that you didn’t really mean it, except that you did. A jury just awarded Apple a half a billion dollars from Samsung for patent violations for a product Samsung introduced in direct competition with Apple. Now, let’s see if Samsung tries to appeal that. I’m guessing that they’ll think a half a billion dollars qualifies as significant.
You’re trying to argue that because Samsung also makes washing machines, and Google makes a search engine, the places where they overlap with Apple are essentially insignificant corporate dalliances and hobby projects. You know that argument is nonsensical, but you want to have things both ways. That’s like a guy trying to convince his wife that his habit of regularly doinking a coworker is ‘nothing significant’ because the coworker totally has a husband and family outside their doinking sessions at the office and is in no way shape or form his wife’s peer.
Since when did Apple worry about a strained relationship with some government, skulk away mumbling "Yes Sir" when a government tells them they're not happy with some Apple decision?
I'm not sure I agree with the assumptions that this article is based on. Could Apple have developed something like Voice Match to differentiate between less personal accounts, e.g. News or Apple Music without opening up access to contacts or calling? If the issue was privacy not technology then why wouldn't they at least start with those? This looks very much like retrofitting a privacy excuse that was never the main reason for HomePod's limitations.
The article doesn't say that every HomePod limitation is an intentional privacy-based decision.
However, Apple is also not racing to rapidly throw out ideas in the voice category because:
d) from your point of view but I've not seen anything to validate it
Are you completely unaware of “antenna-gate” and signal attenuation on iPhone 4? Signal attenuation was nothing new at the time but it exploded when exhibited on the iPhone 4. Heck, I even had a manual to a previous phone that had a drawing of a hand holding that model of phone and basically saying if held in that way the signal may be affected. Nobody cared. But when Apple released a phone that exhibited the same behavior as other cell phones it was suddenly front page, screaming headlines news.
That’s just one example.
Apple has around 30-40% market share in the US. I'd be surprised if it wasn't headline news. We have an inbuilt negative bias that the media exploits. Every big company makes headlines when something happens - Samsung's exploding batteries, Facebook's CA problems, Google's issues around diversity, tax avoidance, censorship, car crashes, demonitising some youtube channels, screw ups on messaging, email scanning, book scanning. And we are currently commenting on one of many articles about Amazon's Echo spying.
Agreed, it's Apple loons who think that there actually are people who seriously dedicte their time and energy to hating and conspiring against a near trillion $ company. It seems DED can no longer write an Apple article without bringing up the same companies that aren't really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple. Google is a search engine ad company, Amazon is an everything online store, Samsung is the everything electronics and appliances store, Apple is the iPhone/computer company, in what universe can you reasonably equate any of these business models ? constantly implying that since Apple is the only one succeeding at the computer business (which is their model) means the rest are implicitly evil and out to exploit and harm people is ridiculous. Apple's moral stance isn't a virtue of bieng inherently "good" but a feature of corporate branding, if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy they wouldn't advertise to us so much about their efforts, but they do because as you can see by this thread it sell more iPhones, if it didn't it be out the window i.e China.
I think the companies you claim here “aren’t really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple” would all be surprised to learn that they aren’t. Today, particularly the folks at Samsung, who just were told by a jury to fork over half a billion dollars to Apple for reasons that really do seem to relate to direct competition. Doesn’t Google produce Android OS? I could swear Samsung, Google and Amazon have all manufactured phones, speakers and other devices that compete directly with Apple.
Yeah, I am almost certain these companies (and others) are all direct competitors with Apple. I also think, when millions and billions of dollars are at stake, it’s quite likely that all kinds of businesses commonly hire all kinds of consultants, industrial spies, PR firms and troll farms to try to gather and manipulate information about their competitors.
You missed "in any significant way", yes Sammy makes Phones but that is not their primary business and yes Goog make phones and owns the most used mobile OS in the world but again that is not their primary money maker and Amazon makes a hole lotta things and any that are coincidentally also made by Apple are a rounding error in the books, but Zulu ( I can speak Zulu btw) you can't seriously claim Samsung, Google and Amazon are all phone/computer companies in the same way and to the same degree that Apple is, no one can, Apple killed off all the phone companies, Nokia, Moto, BB were all directly comparable to what Apple is today and all are dead. Samsung make washing machines for haven's sake, glad the case is over though God that dragged on for ever, I had even forgotten, Sammy is in no way shape or form Apple's peer.
Didn’t miss anything, actually. You’re trying to claim that “in any significant way” is a qualifier that allows you to make a ridiculous assertion, then backpedal that you didn’t really mean it, except that you did. A jury just awarded Apple a half a billion dollars from Samsung for patent violations for a product Samsung introduced in direct competition with Apple. Now, let’s see if Samsung tries to appeal that. I’m guessing that they’ll think a half a billion dollars qualifies as significant.
You’re trying to argue that because Samsung also makes washing machines, and Google makes a search engine, the places where they overlap with Apple are essentially insignificant corporate dalliances and hobby projects. You know that argument is nonsensical, but you want to have things both ways. That’s like a guy trying to convince his wife that his habit of regularly doinking a coworker is ‘nothing significant’ because the coworker totally has a husband and family outside their doinking sessions at the office and is in no way shape or form his wife’s peer.
Firstly: "That’s like a guy trying to convince his wife that his habit of regularly doinking a coworker is ‘nothing significant’ because the coworker totally has a husband and family outside their doinking sessions at the office and is in no way shape or form his wife’s peer." supper hilarious
Secondly I'm not sure what the argument you're making has to do with what I'm saying, so I'll try to put it in another way, Apple Music is a streaming service like Spotify is a streaming service, but in no way is Spotify Inc the same as Apple Inc, in no way is Spotify as a company a "significant" rival or competitor to Apple as a company they aren't even in the same league even though Apple music is the same as Spotify (I hope that that isn't what you are saying) if this is true for Apple + Spotify then it should also be true for Apple + Samsung, Google, Amazon etc.
PS you're comment feels spiteful and defensive, please remember we are having a friendly discussion no need to feel attacked, theres nothing to be worn or lost, if I've come to an incorrect conclusion about something I'm more than willing to be corrected but you also must be or we'll be going around in circles
I'm not sure I agree with the assumptions that this article is based on. Could Apple have developed something like Voice Match to differentiate between less personal accounts, e.g. News or Apple Music without opening up access to contacts or calling? If the issue was privacy not technology then why wouldn't they at least start with those? This looks very much like retrofitting a privacy excuse that was never the main reason for HomePod's limitations.
The article doesn't say that every HomePod limitation is an intentional privacy-based decision.
However, Apple is also not racing to rapidly throw out ideas in the voice category because:
d) from your point of view but I've not seen anything to validate it
Are you completely unaware of “antenna-gate” and signal attenuation on iPhone 4? Signal attenuation was nothing new at the time but it exploded when exhibited on the iPhone 4. Heck, I even had a manual to a previous phone that had a drawing of a hand holding that model of phone and basically saying if held in that way the signal may be affected. Nobody cared. But when Apple released a phone that exhibited the same behavior as other cell phones it was suddenly front page, screaming headlines news.
That’s just one example.
Apple has around 30-40% market share in the US. I'd be surprised if it wasn't headline news. We have an inbuilt negative bias that the media exploits. Every big company makes headlines when something happens - Samsung's exploding batteries, Facebook's CA problems, Google's issues around diversity, tax avoidance, censorship, car crashes, demonitising some youtube channels, screw ups on messaging, email scanning, book scanning. And we are currently commenting on one of many articles about Amazon's Echo spying.
Agreed, it's Apple loons who think that there actually are people who seriously dedicte their time and energy to hating and conspiring against a near trillion $ company. It seems DED can no longer write an Apple article without bringing up the same companies that aren't really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple. Google is a search engine ad company, Amazon is an everything online store, Samsung is the everything electronics and appliances store, Apple is the iPhone/computer company, in what universe can you reasonably equate any of these business models ? constantly implying that since Apple is the only one succeeding at the computer business (which is their model) means the rest are implicitly evil and out to exploit and harm people is ridiculous. Apple's moral stance isn't a virtue of bieng inherently "good" but a feature of corporate branding, if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy they wouldn't advertise to us so much about their efforts, but they do because as you can see by this thread it sell more iPhones, if it didn't it be out the window i.e China.
Says what authority? If you think the level of effort apple has put into environment or privacy values is equal to other corps you’re delusional.
I didn't say it was equal, just that it's not pure nobility it's marketing intended to generate sales like all marketing. Apple isn't good or evil, there are no good or evil companies, they are all out to make money, Apple like all other brand companies is selling a brand, like Chanel or BMW, the brand transmits a massage about the company that the company hopes will resonate with their targeted customers to the point of generating a sale, the company associates the brand with social causes and ideas that will best achieve this, Biz school 101 really. Strange can you honestly say that Apple's environmental and privacy efforts aren't one of the reasons we are so loyal and infatuated with Apple and why its brand holds such esteem and people are proud to own Apple products to the irrational point that we absolutely loathe Google or Samsung ? does Apple not do these things in part to paint it self in a light that it knows will romance the pants/cash off it's customers ? BTW I don't see this as bad, evil or deceitful, its great, after all it's just business
You said "if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy..." which clearly implies your claim that they don't really care. But you're reasoning is poor -- your claim is because it's good for their business and brand, therefore they don't really care. Sorry, but that's just dumb. Two two ideas are not self-exclusionary -- you can really care about a thing and promote it as part of your brand. Companies do this all over the world. As consumers, part of our decision making on who to align our spending with is ranking what the brand values.
Apple values privacy and the environment. And they promote it.
Aaa I do love reductio ad absurdum, you're cherry picking sentences in my post to quote me out of context to present an agument I never made. I said "if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy" implying that if those two things were the primary motivation for them as a business they'd supperceed profits, Apple cares about the venvironment and privacy to the extent that it facilitates more profits such that should either privacy or the environment threaten profits they would be swiftly dropped as they were in China. It serves Apple's bottom line, as it does any of the company you are talking about, the moment they stop doing so they'd be abandoned, so how can a company or any one claim to truly care a bout any principles when those principles are subject to a higher force.
Mind you I am not at all claiming Apple gives zero shit about the environment or privacy they do, very much so, but not more than they do the numbers.
"As consumers, part of our decision making on who to align our spending with is ranking what the brand values" but what the brand values isn't determined in a vacuume, brands value what their intended customers value when that shifts so does the brand, we live in a time where the environment and privacy are things that people whom Apple wants to sell their products to care about, so Apple cares about those things to, not the other way round, these aren't bad things for a company like Apple to care about but it aligns with the business not the reverse.
You seem to think Apple gave up on privacy in China because they continue to sell their products there after being forced to host iCloud on Chinese servers... it’s only a potential issue that China may use that iCloud data in some manner against its citizens. The rules in place there are similar to the United States; a warrant is needed to search.
Don't understate the change in Apple policies regarding customer privacy. While a Chinese warrant to access an Apple customers iCloud data may be technically required (or not) it no longer needs to be served on Apple, nor does Apple have any say in whether it's complied with or not. GCBD, a state-run server company, has the same access to the encrypted user data it holds as Apple does. That's according to Apple themselves, and that IMHO is a relative sea-change.
Imagine the uproar if Apple were to make the same announcement in the West substituting GCBD with Google or Amazon or Microsoft who also house Apple user data. But you'd be OK with it? Love to hear your answer to that.
BTW, about those search warrants: In China they can be issued by the police to the police following internal hearings, not requiring a judge in an independent court. Since police are expected to keep anything they know about an investigation confidential to begin with there are not the Western concerns and restrictions about them accessing and reviewing any available personal information they think might be pertinent, or if need be gathering confidential documents belonging to private companies that could even involve trade secrets as I understand it.
See my response above to holyone where I speak to this issue.
Which does not at all speak to Apple abrogating their responsibility and pledge to protect user data that applies everywhere Apple does business other than China (and possibly Russia) Applying the same policy here in the US, or for you the Philippines, would mean Apple allowing Google and Amazon the exact same access to user data as Apple themselves and permitting Google and/or Amazon to answer warrants for Apple user data. I don't think you can convince me you're OK with that, nor would any other member here, but feel free to argue that position. Convince me how much of a non-issue it would be if it were your own data involved.
Just because "Hey they're Chinese, who cares, they're not free anyway and it's not my data" doesn't mean that Apple isn't now walking along a slippery-slope.
Since when did Apple worry about a strained relationship with some government, skulk away mumbling "Yes Sir" when a government tells them they're not happy with some Apple decision? Is the money involved more important than a company's public ethos? Is profit the real ethos anyway? Maybe it is, maybe it should be, and most of the PR talk of corporate responsibility and privacy and the environment is intended at the end of the day to deliver profits... until it doesn't and then the pivot.
Apple should maintain at least the possibility of saying "not in this case, this is a specific warrant we won't comply with". Instead they've turned that over to a Chinese run server company. Even the new TOS frequently indicates that the agreement is between GCBD and the user. Apple is simply along for the ride. Removing themselves from the user data control decision making process does not equal clean hands.
Anyway I won't go on about it any further. I doubt I'll receive any reply that actually speaks to the points I mentioned anyway.
Everyone here in the States enjoy your holiday. Lots of rain on the way here.
Very well put, and the troubling thing is that Apple brought this on to itself, if Tim hadn't turned the FBI thing into a publicity stunt but handled it quietly with distingtion, he wouldn't have created this unrealistic Jesus Christ defender of sick and dying expectation around Apple's brand.
at the end of the day, even if Apple is about making great products and protecting users privacy, and I think they do/are, you would have to be borderline retarded to think Apple would take a principled approach and give the bird to China, ignoring a market the size of the US.
Not even the Cheeto has done it.
For what it’s worth, any assistant, digital or otherwise, needs to know a lot about you to be truly useful. I can’t imagine any human assistant would keep their job for long if they didn’t know your favourite coffee, and where to get it depending on where you are, or your routine in general, who your preferred colleagues are, and so on. I don’t think you can capture all that information within the confines of one device
I'm not sure I agree with the assumptions that this article is based on. Could Apple have developed something like Voice Match to differentiate between less personal accounts, e.g. News or Apple Music without opening up access to contacts or calling? If the issue was privacy not technology then why wouldn't they at least start with those? This looks very much like retrofitting a privacy excuse that was never the main reason for HomePod's limitations.
The article doesn't say that every HomePod limitation is an intentional privacy-based decision.
However, Apple is also not racing to rapidly throw out ideas in the voice category because:
d) from your point of view but I've not seen anything to validate it
Are you completely unaware of “antenna-gate” and signal attenuation on iPhone 4? Signal attenuation was nothing new at the time but it exploded when exhibited on the iPhone 4. Heck, I even had a manual to a previous phone that had a drawing of a hand holding that model of phone and basically saying if held in that way the signal may be affected. Nobody cared. But when Apple released a phone that exhibited the same behavior as other cell phones it was suddenly front page, screaming headlines news.
That’s just one example.
Apple has around 30-40% market share in the US. I'd be surprised if it wasn't headline news. We have an inbuilt negative bias that the media exploits. Every big company makes headlines when something happens - Samsung's exploding batteries, Facebook's CA problems, Google's issues around diversity, tax avoidance, censorship, car crashes, demonitising some youtube channels, screw ups on messaging, email scanning, book scanning. And we are currently commenting on one of many articles about Amazon's Echo spying.
Agreed, it's Apple loons who think that there actually are people who seriously dedicte their time and energy to hating and conspiring against a near trillion $ company. It seems DED can no longer write an Apple article without bringing up the same companies that aren't really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple. Google is a search engine ad company, Amazon is an everything online store, Samsung is the everything electronics and appliances store, Apple is the iPhone/computer company, in what universe can you reasonably equate any of these business models ? constantly implying that since Apple is the only one succeeding at the computer business (which is their model) means the rest are implicitly evil and out to exploit and harm people is ridiculous. Apple's moral stance isn't a virtue of bieng inherently "good" but a feature of corporate branding, if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy they wouldn't advertise to us so much about their efforts, but they do because as you can see by this thread it sell more iPhones, if it didn't it be out the window i.e China.
I think the companies you claim here “aren’t really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple” would all be surprised to learn that they aren’t. Today, particularly the folks at Samsung, who just were told by a jury to fork over half a billion dollars to Apple for reasons that really do seem to relate to direct competition. Doesn’t Google produce Android OS? I could swear Samsung, Google and Amazon have all manufactured phones, speakers and other devices that compete directly with Apple.
Yeah, I am almost certain these companies (and others) are all direct competitors with Apple. I also think, when millions and billions of dollars are at stake, it’s quite likely that all kinds of businesses commonly hire all kinds of consultants, industrial spies, PR firms and troll farms to try to gather and manipulate information about their competitors.
You missed "in any significant way", yes Sammy makes Phones but that is not their primary business and yes Goog make phones and owns the most used mobile OS in the world but again that is not their primary money maker and Amazon makes a hole lotta things and any that are coincidentally also made by Apple are a rounding error in the books, but Zulu ( I can speak Zulu btw) you can't seriously claim Samsung, Google and Amazon are all phone/computer companies in the same way and to the same degree that Apple is, no one can, Apple killed off all the phone companies, Nokia, Moto, BB were all directly comparable to what Apple is today and all are dead. Samsung make washing machines for haven's sake, glad the case is over though God that dragged on for ever, I had even forgotten, Sammy is in no way shape or form Apple's peer.
Didn’t miss anything, actually. You’re trying to claim that “in any significant way” is a qualifier that allows you to make a ridiculous assertion, then backpedal that you didn’t really mean it, except that you did. A jury just awarded Apple a half a billion dollars from Samsung for patent violations for a product Samsung introduced in direct competition with Apple. Now, let’s see if Samsung tries to appeal that. I’m guessing that they’ll think a half a billion dollars qualifies as significant.
You’re trying to argue that because Samsung also makes washing machines, and Google makes a search engine, the places where they overlap with Apple are essentially insignificant corporate dalliances and hobby projects. You know that argument is nonsensical, but you want to have things both ways. That’s like a guy trying to convince his wife that his habit of regularly doinking a coworker is ‘nothing significant’ because the coworker totally has a husband and family outside their doinking sessions at the office and is in no way shape or form his wife’s peer.
Firstly: "That’s like a guy trying to convince his wife that his habit of regularly doinking a coworker is ‘nothing significant’ because the coworker totally has a husband and family outside their doinking sessions at the office and is in no way shape or form his wife’s peer." supper hilarious
Secondly I'm not sure what the argument you're making has to do with what I'm saying, so I'll try to put it in another way, Apple Music is a streaming service like Spotify is a streaming service, but in no way is Spotify Inc the same as Apple Inc, in no way is Spotify as a company a "significant" rival or competitor to Apple as a company they aren't even in the same league even though Apple music is the same as Spotify (I hope that that isn't what you are saying) if this is true for Apple + Spotify then it should also be true for Apple + Samsung, Google, Amazon etc.
PS you're comment feels spiteful and defensive, please remember we are having a friendly discussion no need to feel attacked, theres nothing to be worn or lost, if I've come to an incorrect conclusion about something I'm more than willing to be corrected but you also must be or we'll be going around in circles
Firstly, no spitefulness here, and no ad hominem, either. Just challenging an argument you presented.
Secondly, if you’re arguing that no other company is exactly like Apple, I suppose that’s true, but it’s also irrelevant. Big companies like Apple or Google or Samsung compete with each other in some categories and not in others. That is true. Saying that because a company is only competing in a given category, it’s therefore not competing “in any significant way” is just a silly, diversionary point. No, Spotify is not the same as Apple in every way, but they are absolutely a big competeitor in the music streaming market, which is something that Apple has heavily invested in. The fact that Spotify currently has more paid subscribers than Apple Music is not some insignificant concern for Apple. Music is an incredibly important piece of Apple’s business model. That content is a critical component of the Apple ecosystem that keeps customers coming back for updated hardware, which is Apple’s core business. Streaming services pulled the rug out from under iTunes, which had been a critical means to keep customers buying iPods and iPhones. So streaming services created a vector for separating consumers from that ecosystem. Now we have Apple Music, which is rapidly building a subscriber base to compete with and overtake Spotify. All of these companies that you’ve dismissed are in fact absolutely significant competitors for Apple. Claiming otherwise is just silly.
I'm not sure I agree with the assumptions that this article is based on. Could Apple have developed something like Voice Match to differentiate between less personal accounts, e.g. News or Apple Music without opening up access to contacts or calling? If the issue was privacy not technology then why wouldn't they at least start with those? This looks very much like retrofitting a privacy excuse that was never the main reason for HomePod's limitations.
The article doesn't say that every HomePod limitation is an intentional privacy-based decision.
However, Apple is also not racing to rapidly throw out ideas in the voice category because:
d) from your point of view but I've not seen anything to validate it
Are you completely unaware of “antenna-gate” and signal attenuation on iPhone 4? Signal attenuation was nothing new at the time but it exploded when exhibited on the iPhone 4. Heck, I even had a manual to a previous phone that had a drawing of a hand holding that model of phone and basically saying if held in that way the signal may be affected. Nobody cared. But when Apple released a phone that exhibited the same behavior as other cell phones it was suddenly front page, screaming headlines news.
That’s just one example.
Apple has around 30-40% market share in the US. I'd be surprised if it wasn't headline news. We have an inbuilt negative bias that the media exploits. Every big company makes headlines when something happens - Samsung's exploding batteries, Facebook's CA problems, Google's issues around diversity, tax avoidance, censorship, car crashes, demonitising some youtube channels, screw ups on messaging, email scanning, book scanning. And we are currently commenting on one of many articles about Amazon's Echo spying.
Agreed, it's Apple loons who think that there actually are people who seriously dedicte their time and energy to hating and conspiring against a near trillion $ company. It seems DED can no longer write an Apple article without bringing up the same companies that aren't really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple. Google is a search engine ad company, Amazon is an everything online store, Samsung is the everything electronics and appliances store, Apple is the iPhone/computer company, in what universe can you reasonably equate any of these business models ? constantly implying that since Apple is the only one succeeding at the computer business (which is their model) means the rest are implicitly evil and out to exploit and harm people is ridiculous. Apple's moral stance isn't a virtue of bieng inherently "good" but a feature of corporate branding, if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy they wouldn't advertise to us so much about their efforts, but they do because as you can see by this thread it sell more iPhones, if it didn't it be out the window i.e China.
Says what authority? If you think the level of effort apple has put into environment or privacy values is equal to other corps you’re delusional.
I didn't say it was equal, just that it's not pure nobility it's marketing intended to generate sales like all marketing. Apple isn't good or evil, there are no good or evil companies, they are all out to make money, Apple like all other brand companies is selling a brand, like Chanel or BMW, the brand transmits a massage about the company that the company hopes will resonate with their targeted customers to the point of generating a sale, the company associates the brand with social causes and ideas that will best achieve this, Biz school 101 really. Strange can you honestly say that Apple's environmental and privacy efforts aren't one of the reasons we are so loyal and infatuated with Apple and why its brand holds such esteem and people are proud to own Apple products to the irrational point that we absolutely loathe Google or Samsung ? does Apple not do these things in part to paint it self in a light that it knows will romance the pants/cash off it's customers ? BTW I don't see this as bad, evil or deceitful, its great, after all it's just business
You said "if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy..." which clearly implies your claim that they don't really care. But you're reasoning is poor -- your claim is because it's good for their business and brand, therefore they don't really care. Sorry, but that's just dumb. Two two ideas are not self-exclusionary -- you can really care about a thing and promote it as part of your brand. Companies do this all over the world. As consumers, part of our decision making on who to align our spending with is ranking what the brand values.
Apple values privacy and the environment. And they promote it.
Aaa I do love reductio ad absurdum, you're cherry picking sentences in my post to quote me out of context to present an agument I never made. I said "if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy" implying that if those two things were the primary motivation for them as a business they'd supperceed profits, Apple cares about the venvironment and privacy to the extent that it facilitates more profits such that should either privacy or the environment threaten profits they would be swiftly dropped as they were in China. It serves Apple's bottom line, as it does any of the company you are talking about, the moment they stop doing so they'd be abandoned, so how can a company or any one claim to truly care a bout any principles when those principles are subject to a higher force.
Mind you I am not at all claiming Apple gives zero shit about the environment or privacy they do, very much so, but not more than they do the numbers.
"As consumers, part of our decision making on who to align our spending with is ranking what the brand values" but what the brand values isn't determined in a vacuume, brands value what their intended customers value when that shifts so does the brand, we live in a time where the environment and privacy are things that people whom Apple wants to sell their products to care about, so Apple cares about those things to, not the other way round, these aren't bad things for a company like Apple to care about but it aligns with the business not the reverse.
You seem to think Apple gave up on privacy in China because they continue to sell their products there after being forced to host iCloud on Chinese servers... it’s only a potential issue that China may use that iCloud data in some manner against its citizens. The rules in place there are similar to the United States; a warrant is needed to search.
Don't understate the change in Apple policies regarding customer privacy. While a Chinese warrant to access an Apple customers iCloud data may be technically required (or not) it no longer needs to be served on Apple, nor does Apple have any say in whether it's complied with or not. GCBD, a state-run server company, has the same access to the encrypted user data it holds as Apple does. That's according to Apple themselves, and that IMHO is a relative sea-change.
Imagine the uproar if Apple were to make the same announcement in the West substituting GCBD with Google or Amazon or Microsoft who also house Apple user data. But you'd be OK with it? Love to hear your answer to that.
BTW, about those search warrants: In China they can be issued by the police to the police following internal hearings, not requiring a judge in an independent court. Since police are expected to keep anything they know about an investigation confidential to begin with there are not the Western concerns and restrictions about them accessing and reviewing any available personal information they think might be pertinent, or if need be gathering confidential documents belonging to private companies that could even involve trade secrets as I understand it.
See my response above to holyone where I speak to this issue.
Which does not at all speak to Apple abrogating their responsibility and pledge to protect user data that applies everywhere Apple does business other than China (and possibly Russia) Applying the same policy here in the US, or for you the Philippines, would mean Apple allowing Google and Amazon the exact same access to user data as Apple themselves and permitting Google and/or Amazon to answer warrants for Apple user data. I don't think you can convince me you're OK with that, nor would any other member here, but feel free to argue that position. Convince me how much of a non-issue it would be if it were your own data involved.
Just because "Hey they're Chinese, who cares, they're not free anyway and it's not my data" doesn't mean that Apple isn't now walking along a slippery-slope.
Since when did Apple worry about a strained relationship with some government, skulk away mumbling "Yes Sir" when a government tells them they're not happy with some Apple decision? Is the money involved more important than a company's public ethos? Is profit the real ethos anyway? Maybe it is, maybe it should be, and most of the PR talk of corporate responsibility and privacy and the environment is intended at the end of the day to deliver profits... until it doesn't and then the pivot.
Apple should maintain at least the possibility of saying "not in this case, this is a specific warrant we won't comply with". Instead they've turned that over to a Chinese run server company. Even the new TOS frequently indicates that the agreement is between GCBD and the user. Apple is simply along for the ride. Removing themselves from the user data control decision making process does not equal clean hands.
Anyway I won't go on about it any further. I doubt I'll receive any reply that actually speaks to the points I mentioned anyway.
Everyone here in the States enjoy your holiday. Lots of rain on the way here.
Clean hands is a legal term that doesn’t apply here. You seem to be holding the position that Apple needs to demand of the Chinese government that Apple, a company, should have a higher say than a sovereign government that actually represents its citizens. Where is that the accepted norm anywhere on earth? Government is always the higher authority. And so if the Chinese government, or any government, requires by law that a business host their citizen’s data in-country, then what choice does the business have? Take their ball and go home, abandoning all their customers who have already spent money with that business?
As I see it Apple had two reasonable choices. (A) they could host their own servers in China, in which case they would be responsible to field legal requests for access to user data, or (B) they could outsource that to a Chinese entity and let them deal with it. Given that the same information requests will be required to be served, I know which option I’d choose. Stay out of that mess. Now you might say that Apple, while claiming to be a staunch defender of user data, is abrogating its responsibility to defend its users data, but is that true? Apple already serves US Governmrnt secret information requests for iCloud data. I’m sure they would prefer those were available to public scrutiny, but they are not. Why set themselves up for the same issue in China or any other country that imposes the same data hosting requirement? Apple would need legal experts in every such country. What a mess. And they did spell out to their Chinese customers the changes taking place and that storing data in iCloud is optional.
Apple would likely strongly defend its stance on backdoors into a handset, as it does here, should the Chinese government begin making that demand, and I believe they did if you recall your recent history from a few years back. So what Apple is doing regarding data protections in China is not much different than they are doing here. ICloud data is stored in-country, legal government data requests are served, and no backdoor into the handsets are implemented.
It gets me that this whole China iCloud debate misses a huge point related to data privacy. Some here have claimed that Apple, because it claims to be such a staunch defender of data privacy for its users, should either have hosted iCloud in China on its own servers, to remain a wall between that data and the Chinese government’s requests for access to it, or should have abandoned the Chinese market altogether over China’s demand that its citizen’s data be hosted in-country.
What these folks seem to miss is that there’s a bunch of switches inside iOS Settings that indicate which data from your iPad or iPhone you want to replicate in iCloud. It’s all optional. You can get substantially all of the functionality of an iPhone or iPad without replicating any of your data in iCloud. So it’s key for Apple, or any hardware manufacturer, to draw the line on hardware backdoors or Clipper chips (remember that) and Apple has done so both here and in China in recent history. But it’s not so crucial when it’s information that the user has the option to store in a potentially less secure place, like a social network server or a cloud backup or synchronization service (as iCloud represents). Users can guard their own privacy in the latter instance by accepting a little less convenience in backing up their devices (locally via iTunes versus in the cloud) and by foregoing the convenience of data synchronization between their devices.
Does this his say that GCBD can pre-screen Content? What does that even mean?
If you have two ithings, which I do, turning all that optional stuff off would be a real PITA. Imagine having different contacts, calendars and app configs between the devices.
I'm not sure I agree with the assumptions that this article is based on. Could Apple have developed something like Voice Match to differentiate between less personal accounts, e.g. News or Apple Music without opening up access to contacts or calling? If the issue was privacy not technology then why wouldn't they at least start with those? This looks very much like retrofitting a privacy excuse that was never the main reason for HomePod's limitations.
The article doesn't say that every HomePod limitation is an intentional privacy-based decision.
However, Apple is also not racing to rapidly throw out ideas in the voice category because:
d) from your point of view but I've not seen anything to validate it
Are you completely unaware of “antenna-gate” and signal attenuation on iPhone 4? Signal attenuation was nothing new at the time but it exploded when exhibited on the iPhone 4. Heck, I even had a manual to a previous phone that had a drawing of a hand holding that model of phone and basically saying if held in that way the signal may be affected. Nobody cared. But when Apple released a phone that exhibited the same behavior as other cell phones it was suddenly front page, screaming headlines news.
That’s just one example.
Apple has around 30-40% market share in the US. I'd be surprised if it wasn't headline news. We have an inbuilt negative bias that the media exploits. Every big company makes headlines when something happens - Samsung's exploding batteries, Facebook's CA problems, Google's issues around diversity, tax avoidance, censorship, car crashes, demonitising some youtube channels, screw ups on messaging, email scanning, book scanning. And we are currently commenting on one of many articles about Amazon's Echo spying.
Agreed, it's Apple loons who think that there actually are people who seriously dedicte their time and energy to hating and conspiring against a near trillion $ company. It seems DED can no longer write an Apple article without bringing up the same companies that aren't really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple. Google is a search engine ad company, Amazon is an everything online store, Samsung is the everything electronics and appliances store, Apple is the iPhone/computer company, in what universe can you reasonably equate any of these business models ? constantly implying that since Apple is the only one succeeding at the computer business (which is their model) means the rest are implicitly evil and out to exploit and harm people is ridiculous. Apple's moral stance isn't a virtue of bieng inherently "good" but a feature of corporate branding, if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy they wouldn't advertise to us so much about their efforts, but they do because as you can see by this thread it sell more iPhones, if it didn't it be out the window i.e China.
I think the companies you claim here “aren’t really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple” would all be surprised to learn that they aren’t. Today, particularly the folks at Samsung, who just were told by a jury to fork over half a billion dollars to Apple for reasons that really do seem to relate to direct competition. Doesn’t Google produce Android OS? I could swear Samsung, Google and Amazon have all manufactured phones, speakers and other devices that compete directly with Apple.
Yeah, I am almost certain these companies (and others) are all direct competitors with Apple. I also think, when millions and billions of dollars are at stake, it’s quite likely that all kinds of businesses commonly hire all kinds of consultants, industrial spies, PR firms and troll farms to try to gather and manipulate information about their competitors.
You missed "in any significant way", yes Sammy makes Phones but that is not their primary business and yes Goog make phones and owns the most used mobile OS in the world but again that is not their primary money maker and Amazon makes a hole lotta things and any that are coincidentally also made by Apple are a rounding error in the books, but Zulu ( I can speak Zulu btw) you can't seriously claim Samsung, Google and Amazon are all phone/computer companies in the same way and to the same degree that Apple is, no one can, Apple killed off all the phone companies, Nokia, Moto, BB were all directly comparable to what Apple is today and all are dead. Samsung make washing machines for haven's sake, glad the case is over though God that dragged on for ever, I had even forgotten, Sammy is in no way shape or form Apple's peer.
Didn’t miss anything, actually. You’re trying to claim that “in any significant way” is a qualifier that allows you to make a ridiculous assertion, then backpedal that you didn’t really mean it, except that you did. A jury just awarded Apple a half a billion dollars from Samsung for patent violations for a product Samsung introduced in direct competition with Apple. Now, let’s see if Samsung tries to appeal that. I’m guessing that they’ll think a half a billion dollars qualifies as significant.
You’re trying to argue that because Samsung also makes washing machines, and Google makes a search engine, the places where they overlap with Apple are essentially insignificant corporate dalliances and hobby projects. You know that argument is nonsensical, but you want to have things both ways. That’s like a guy trying to convince his wife that his habit of regularly doinking a coworker is ‘nothing significant’ because the coworker totally has a husband and family outside their doinking sessions at the office and is in no way shape or form his wife’s peer.
Firstly: "That’s like a guy trying to convince his wife that his habit of regularly doinking a coworker is ‘nothing significant’ because the coworker totally has a husband and family outside their doinking sessions at the office and is in no way shape or form his wife’s peer." supper hilarious
Secondly I'm not sure what the argument you're making has to do with what I'm saying, so I'll try to put it in another way, Apple Music is a streaming service like Spotify is a streaming service, but in no way is Spotify Inc the same as Apple Inc, in no way is Spotify as a company a "significant" rival or competitor to Apple as a company they aren't even in the same league even though Apple music is the same as Spotify (I hope that that isn't what you are saying) if this is true for Apple + Spotify then it should also be true for Apple + Samsung, Google, Amazon etc.
PS you're comment feels spiteful and defensive, please remember we are having a friendly discussion no need to feel attacked, theres nothing to be worn or lost, if I've come to an incorrect conclusion about something I'm more than willing to be corrected but you also must be or we'll be going around in circles
Firstly, no spitefulness here, and no ad hominem, either. Just challenging an argument you presented.
Secondly, if you’re arguing that no other company is exactly like Apple, I suppose that’s true, but it’s also irrelevant. Big companies like Apple or Google or Samsung compete with each other in some categories and not in others. That is true. Saying that because a company is only competing in a given category, it’s therefore not competing “in any significant way” is just a silly, diversionary point. No, Spotify is not the same as Apple in every way, but they are absolutely a big competeitor in the music streaming market, which is something that Apple has heavily invested in. The fact that Spotify currently has more paid subscribers than Apple Music is not some insignificant concern for Apple. Music is an incredibly important piece of Apple’s business model. That content is a critical component of the Apple ecosystem that keeps customers coming back for updated hardware, which is Apple’s core business. Streaming services pulled the rug out from under iTunes, which had been a critical means to keep customers buying iPods and iPhones. So streaming services created a vector for separating consumers from that ecosystem. Now we have Apple Music, which is rapidly building a subscriber base to compete with and overtake Spotify. All of these companies that you’ve dismissed are in fact absolutely significant competitors for Apple. Claiming otherwise is just silly.
@AppleZulu true competition is when adversaries of equal strengths are competing for the same thing i.e Mercedes Benz / BMW, not only do they operate in the same exact way they also compete for the same customer, the Spotify example was an attempt to demonstrate that even though Sportify is similar to Apple in some ways the ways in which it is dissimilar is of greater significance and impact to how well Sportify can compete with Apple. I m not claiming zero competition only that the competition is not optimal enough to be effective. If competition is ineffective it does not exist. Xiomi is Apple's counterpart far more that Google or Amazon but Xiomi is no Apple challenger.
Most of Google's attention and focus goes to its search divisions because that's the business that's how they make money, most of Amazon's focus and efforts go to its prime and cloud arms coz that's the hole ball game, there is thus less resources left to the areas in which both these companies compete with Apple directly, areas that are primary to Apple's business and get nearly all of Apple's attention and focus, this isn't true completion, these companies mealy compete in being big tech companies. Because they do different things they are driven by different priorities thus they possess incomparable proficiencies and competence tuned for what they do best. This lack of focus is the primary reason no one make devices of Apple's quality at scale like them which is what a competitor would have to do to effectively and significantly challenge Apple
There is no company that does what google does better than Google, Apple couldn't beat Google at their game in a hundred year and visa versa, what is silly is the assertion that just because Google Amazon Samsung and Apple are often talked about together in Tech commentaries that they are thefor the same and compete, if you drive a Benz you can't also use BMW's idrive at the same time, but you can pull out you're iPhone right now launch Chrome "google" amazon and buy a book about BMW.
You're position is acceptable only on a general level, which is that, all these are big tech compaties and compete for impact and size but because each is so big in its respective area that they compete on a wide industry level and effectively mascle any small competitor out as evidenced by how easilly Apple music challenged Spotify, it wasn't because AM is that much better, it was because Spoty has no phone of its own, even if it did it wouldn't be iPhone size because its only a music streaming service, music is primary to its business, but to Apple music is complementary and supplementary not primary by any stretch of the imagination. Looking around the closest competitor to Apple is Sammy but only if you squint, and you're position that an accountant who's a gifted player but only plays tennis in his pare time counts as competition to Roger F. who does nothing but play tennis is extremely baffling to me.
@AppleZulu true competition is when adversaries of equal strengths are competing for the same thing i.e Mercedes Benz / BMW, not only do they operate in the same exact way they also compete for the same customer,
BMW also make mororcycles, and Mercedes also make aeroplane engines.
I don't think the point you're making is particularly pertinent. Corporate breadth means that any company of significant size is going to be active in multiple sectors, and rarely are you going to find a complete mapping from one company to another. Being so anal about things would basically mean that no company is competing with any other company, which is obviously nonsense.
It gets me that this whole China iCloud debate misses a huge point related to data privacy. Some here have claimed that Apple, because it claims to be such a staunch defender of data privacy for its users, should either have hosted iCloud in China on its own servers, to remain a wall between that data and the Chinese government’s requests for access to it, or should have abandoned the Chinese market altogether over China’s demand that its citizen’s data be hosted in-country.
What these folks seem to miss is that there’s a bunch of switches inside iOS Settings that indicate which data from your iPad or iPhone you want to replicate in iCloud. It’s all optional. You can get substantially all of the functionality of an iPhone or iPad without replicating any of your data in iCloud. So it’s key for Apple, or any hardware manufacturer, to draw the line on hardware backdoors or Clipper chips (remember that) and Apple has done so both here and in China in recent history. But it’s not so crucial when it’s information that the user has the option to store in a potentially less secure place, like a social network server or a cloud backup or synchronization service (as iCloud represents). Users can guard their own privacy in the latter instance by accepting a little less convenience in backing up their devices (locally via iTunes versus in the cloud) and by foregoing the convenience of data synchronization between their devices.
The argument isn't about the technicalities you've been bring up nor is it about iCloud it's an issue about Apple PR, they act and say one thing in one country to get browny points and do a complete 360 in another, which is fine but maybe they shouldn't have said anything, that all that's being said, big mouths should be in check, or you end up with pie on you're face.
I'm not sure I agree with the assumptions that this article is based on. Could Apple have developed something like Voice Match to differentiate between less personal accounts, e.g. News or Apple Music without opening up access to contacts or calling? If the issue was privacy not technology then why wouldn't they at least start with those? This looks very much like retrofitting a privacy excuse that was never the main reason for HomePod's limitations.
The article doesn't say that every HomePod limitation is an intentional privacy-based decision.
However, Apple is also not racing to rapidly throw out ideas in the voice category because:
d) from your point of view but I've not seen anything to validate it
Are you completely unaware of “antenna-gate” and signal attenuation on iPhone 4? Signal attenuation was nothing new at the time but it exploded when exhibited on the iPhone 4. Heck, I even had a manual to a previous phone that had a drawing of a hand holding that model of phone and basically saying if held in that way the signal may be affected. Nobody cared. But when Apple released a phone that exhibited the same behavior as other cell phones it was suddenly front page, screaming headlines news.
That’s just one example.
Apple has around 30-40% market share in the US. I'd be surprised if it wasn't headline news. We have an inbuilt negative bias that the media exploits. Every big company makes headlines when something happens - Samsung's exploding batteries, Facebook's CA problems, Google's issues around diversity, tax avoidance, censorship, car crashes, demonitising some youtube channels, screw ups on messaging, email scanning, book scanning. And we are currently commenting on one of many articles about Amazon's Echo spying.
Agreed, it's Apple loons who think that there actually are people who seriously dedicte their time and energy to hating and conspiring against a near trillion $ company. It seems DED can no longer write an Apple article without bringing up the same companies that aren't really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple. Google is a search engine ad company, Amazon is an everything online store, Samsung is the everything electronics and appliances store, Apple is the iPhone/computer company, in what universe can you reasonably equate any of these business models ? constantly implying that since Apple is the only one succeeding at the computer business (which is their model) means the rest are implicitly evil and out to exploit and harm people is ridiculous. Apple's moral stance isn't a virtue of bieng inherently "good" but a feature of corporate branding, if Apple really cared about the environment or privacy they wouldn't advertise to us so much about their efforts, but they do because as you can see by this thread it sell more iPhones, if it didn't it be out the window i.e China.
I think the companies you claim here “aren’t really even in any significant way directly competing with Apple” would all be surprised to learn that they aren’t. Today, particularly the folks at Samsung, who just were told by a jury to fork over half a billion dollars to Apple for reasons that really do seem to relate to direct competition. Doesn’t Google produce Android OS? I could swear Samsung, Google and Amazon have all manufactured phones, speakers and other devices that compete directly with Apple.
Yeah, I am almost certain these companies (and others) are all direct competitors with Apple. I also think, when millions and billions of dollars are at stake, it’s quite likely that all kinds of businesses commonly hire all kinds of consultants, industrial spies, PR firms and troll farms to try to gather and manipulate information about their competitors.
You missed "in any significant way", yes Sammy makes Phones but that is not their primary business and yes Goog make phones and owns the most used mobile OS in the world but again that is not their primary money maker and Amazon makes a hole lotta things and any that are coincidentally also made by Apple are a rounding error in the books, but Zulu ( I can speak Zulu btw) you can't seriously claim Samsung, Google and Amazon are all phone/computer companies in the same way and to the same degree that Apple is, no one can, Apple killed off all the phone companies, Nokia, Moto, BB were all directly comparable to what Apple is today and all are dead. Samsung make washing machines for haven's sake, glad the case is over though God that dragged on for ever, I had even forgotten, Sammy is in no way shape or form Apple's peer.
Didn’t miss anything, actually. You’re trying to claim that “in any significant way” is a qualifier that allows you to make a ridiculous assertion, then backpedal that you didn’t really mean it, except that you did. A jury just awarded Apple a half a billion dollars from Samsung for patent violations for a product Samsung introduced in direct competition with Apple. Now, let’s see if Samsung tries to appeal that. I’m guessing that they’ll think a half a billion dollars qualifies as significant.
You’re trying to argue that because Samsung also makes washing machines, and Google makes a search engine, the places where they overlap with Apple are essentially insignificant corporate dalliances and hobby projects. You know that argument is nonsensical, but you want to have things both ways. That’s like a guy trying to convince his wife that his habit of regularly doinking a coworker is ‘nothing significant’ because the coworker totally has a husband and family outside their doinking sessions at the office and is in no way shape or form his wife’s peer.
Firstly: "That’s like a guy trying to convince his wife that his habit of regularly doinking a coworker is ‘nothing significant’ because the coworker totally has a husband and family outside their doinking sessions at the office and is in no way shape or form his wife’s peer." supper hilarious
Secondly I'm not sure what the argument you're making has to do with what I'm saying, so I'll try to put it in another way, Apple Music is a streaming service like Spotify is a streaming service, but in no way is Spotify Inc the same as Apple Inc, in no way is Spotify as a company a "significant" rival or competitor to Apple as a company they aren't even in the same league even though Apple music is the same as Spotify (I hope that that isn't what you are saying) if this is true for Apple + Spotify then it should also be true for Apple + Samsung, Google, Amazon etc.
PS you're comment feels spiteful and defensive, please remember we are having a friendly discussion no need to feel attacked, theres nothing to be worn or lost, if I've come to an incorrect conclusion about something I'm more than willing to be corrected but you also must be or we'll be going around in circles
Firstly, no spitefulness here, and no ad hominem, either. Just challenging an argument you presented.
Secondly, if you’re arguing that no other company is exactly like Apple, I suppose that’s true, but it’s also irrelevant. Big companies like Apple or Google or Samsung compete with each other in some categories and not in others. That is true. Saying that because a company is only competing in a given category, it’s therefore not competing “in any significant way” is just a silly, diversionary point. No, Spotify is not the same as Apple in every way, but they are absolutely a big competeitor in the music streaming market, which is something that Apple has heavily invested in. The fact that Spotify currently has more paid subscribers than Apple Music is not some insignificant concern for Apple. Music is an incredibly important piece of Apple’s business model. That content is a critical component of the Apple ecosystem that keeps customers coming back for updated hardware, which is Apple’s core business. Streaming services pulled the rug out from under iTunes, which had been a critical means to keep customers buying iPods and iPhones. So streaming services created a vector for separating consumers from that ecosystem. Now we have Apple Music, which is rapidly building a subscriber base to compete with and overtake Spotify. All of these companies that you’ve dismissed are in fact absolutely significant competitors for Apple. Claiming otherwise is just silly.
@AppleZulu true competition is when adversaries of equal strengths are competing for the same thing i.e Mercedes Benz / BMW, not only do they operate in the same exact way they also compete for the same customer, the Spotify example was an attempt to demonstrate that even though Sportify is similar to Apple in some ways the ways in which it is dissimilar is of greater significance and impact to how well Sportify can compete with Apple. I m not claiming zero competition only that the competition is not optimal enough to be effective. If competition is ineffective it does not exist. Xiomi is Apple's counterpart far more that Google or Amazon but Xiomi is no Apple challenger.
Most of Google's attention and focus goes to its search divisions because that's the business that's how they make money, most of Amazon's focus and efforts go to its prime and cloud arms coz that's the hole ball game, there is thus less resources left to the areas in which both these companies compete with Apple directly, areas that are primary to Apple's business and get nearly all of Apple's attention and focus, this isn't true completion, these companies mealy compete in being big tech companies. Because they do different things they are driven by different priorities thus they possess incomparable proficiencies and competence tuned for what they do best. This lack of focus is the primary reason no one make devices of Apple's quality at scale like them which is what a competitor would have to do to effectively and significantly challenge Apple
There is no company that does what google does better than Google, Apple couldn't beat Google at their game in a hundred year and visa versa, what is silly is the assertion that just because Google Amazon Samsung and Apple are often talked about together in Tech commentaries that they are thefor the same and compete, if you drive a Benz you can't also use BMW's idrive at the same time, but you can pull out you're iPhone right now launch Chrome "google" amazon and buy a book about BMW.
You're position is acceptable only on a general level, which is that, all these are big tech compaties and compete for impact and size but because each is so big in its respective area that they compete on a wide industry level and effectively mascle any small competitor out as evidenced by how easilly Apple music challenged Spotify, it wasn't because AM is that much better, it was because Spoty has no phone of its own, even if it did it wouldn't be iPhone size because its only a music streaming service, music is primary to its business, but to Apple music is complementary and supplementary not primary by any stretch of the imagination. Looking around the closest competitor to Apple is Sammy but only if you squint, and you're position that an accountant who's a gifted player but only plays tennis in his pare time counts as competition to Roger F. who does nothing but play tennis is extremely baffling to me.
I think @Crowley summed it up well. This is just nonsense. See my prior posts for supporting arguments.
@AppleZulu true competition is when adversaries of equal strengths are competing for the same thing i.e Mercedes Benz / BMW, not only do they operate in the same exact way they also compete for the same customer,
BMW also make mororcycles, and Mercedes also make aeroplane engines.
I don't think the point you're making is particularly pertinent. Corporate breadth means that any company of significant size is going to be active in multiple sectors, and rarely are you going to find a complete mapping from one company to another. Being so anal about things would basically mean that no company is competing with any other company, which is obviously nonsense.
@Crowley Well too bad then, the issue I think is we are playing different spots, with incomparable end goals. Many here are holy concerned with proving how smarter then everybody els they are, so you're response is not surprising. In all the time I've been on this forum never once have I seen two people with differing view points reaching conclusion where the right position prevailed, I've been going back and forth with @AppleZulu for more than two days on this, every argument presented against mine has been an attempt to belittle and invalidate, it's an arguing style I'm not very proficient in, I don't tweet so I don't know how to make 120 charecter augments.
You are right though Crowley, "true competition is when adversaries of equal strengths are competing for the same thing i.e Mercedes Benz / BMW, not only do they operate in the same exact way they also compete for the same customer" this point isn't pertinent, and is nonsense, if you showed it to a random person they'd think so too, but MY POINT WAS MADE OF FOUR PARAGRAPHS TOTALING OVER 400 WORDS. If all you got from it was that sentence you quoted then there is no need for further discussion, I cannot reason with you.
And if the crux of you're and Zulu's augment is that since Apple, Amazon, Samsung and Google are big tech companies that make products that overlap in some areas by virtue of being in the same electronics category and all these companies are often spoken about together because of those products then all these companies thus directly compete with each other and thus it is fair to claim that all these companies are the same and any difference therein e.g search engine, cloud bisiness, chip fab and 200mln phone/yr makes no differents to their competitiveness on products they make that compete with Each other and competences and proweses observed from one can therefor be demanded and expected from all the rest because as you point out "BMW also make mororcycles, and Mercedes also make aeroplane engines" that difference is comparable to the difference between Apple and Amazon, then well, I'm afraid, no one can reason with either of you. So God bless and goodnight.
PS note, nowhere do I use the words stupid, ridiculous, or nonsensical as a summation of anyone's point regardless of how much I disagree it that point, because this isn't an attack of an argument but of the person making it.
Comments
Apple: Siri is basically a failure after over 7 years in development and barely usable.
Rivals: services actually work, but collect your info, spy on you, and are run by companies with little to no moral compass.
Honestly a tough call at this point.
Oh, and my HomePod literally just bricked itself for no reason; Apple care’s only solution is to bring it in.
These last few months have been the first time I’ve ever felt pessimistic about Apple. I hope they get their shit together, bc this is getting pathetic.
What Apple was required to do in China is to host iCloud data in China. On the surface this is a perfectly reasonable request by a government. Place the shoe in the other foot. If some service’s cloud data, let’s use Amazon for example, were hosted in China, which might include data from phones or computers used by some of your company’s employees, would you think it wrong for your government (assuming US) to demand that the data be hosted within the US? That’s all China has demanded. It’s speculation, perhaps based upon good reason, to be concerned about the Chinese government snooping on that data without a valid warrant. Hmm, then again, aren’t there thousands of information demands made to Apple right here in the US that Apple is enjoined from even speaking about, other than to indicate a total number for each year? Maybe that’s what China is concerned with. So you cannot reasonably equate the two issues.
Just because "Hey they're Chinese, who cares, they're not free anyway and it's not my data" doesn't mean that Apple isn't now walking along a slippery-slope.
Since when did Apple worry about a strained relationship with some government, skulk away mumbling "Yes Sir" when a government tells them they're not happy with some Apple decision? Is the money involved more important than a company's public ethos? Is profit the real ethos anyway? Maybe it is, maybe it should be, and most of the PR talk of corporate responsibility and privacy and the environment is intended at the end of the day to deliver profits... until it doesn't and then the pivot.
Apple should maintain at least the possibility of saying "not in this case, this is a specific warrant we won't comply with". Instead they've turned that over to a Chinese run server company. Even the new TOS frequently indicates that the agreement is between GCBD and the user. Apple is simply along for the ride. Removing themselves from the user data control decision making process does not equal clean hands.
Anyway I won't go on about it any further. I doubt I'll receive any reply that actually speaks to the points I mentioned anyway.
Everyone here in the States enjoy your holiday. Lots of rain on the way here.
I am not against China in this particular case, and as you've stated, on the surface this doesn't appear to be an unreasonable request by the people's republic, and yes Apple probably does similar or even more sinister shit with the Feds and great Satan, but China is a well known human rights violator, Apple giving even an inch over there has far graver implications and ramifications than it would in the US, Chinese customers are at a greater disadvantage because they are already under an oppresive regime. The Chines govenment wants total hegemonic domination of its citezens, like most govenments, the best way to do that is to be technologicaly and economically independent, once a country can provide for its every need with zero need to import any thing from the outside world, it becomes all magnificent ,how then does the rest of the world keep such a monster in line.
The question I think is, to what degree can Apple continue to pursue it's moral stances on such divisive issues before jeopardizing its financial obligations either by alienating customers or governments. Apple could have easily told the Chines gov to go screw it self on principle alone, and iCloud isn't the only situation Apple has been complicit in, they also conceded and aided censorship in the AppStore, there also have been many instances relating to child labour (not condemning Apple in any way here) but it is slow and mesured but sure progress by the people's republic.
The case with the FBI was simple in that it could be fully addressed from a technical perspective in a country where people are free speak their minds, but eventually, even there, things will move from the engeneers table to the sociopolitical sphere where there are no simple wrongs or rights. I'm grateful that Apple has a moral compass it suites their brand, but I think it is unwise for the leadership to continue to put the bran out there so carelessly with out forethough of future scenarios that might conflict with excessively bold and dramatic declarations made in the present that's all.
You’re trying to argue that because Samsung also makes washing machines, and Google makes a search engine, the places where they overlap with Apple are essentially insignificant corporate dalliances and hobby projects. You know that argument is nonsensical, but you want to have things both ways. That’s like a guy trying to convince his wife that his habit of regularly doinking a coworker is ‘nothing significant’ because the coworker totally has a husband and family outside their doinking sessions at the office and is in no way shape or form his wife’s peer.
Firstly: "That’s like a guy trying to convince his wife that his habit of regularly doinking a coworker is ‘nothing significant’ because the coworker totally has a husband and family outside their doinking sessions at the office and is in no way shape or form his wife’s peer." supper hilarious
Secondly I'm not sure what the argument you're making has to do with what I'm saying, so I'll try to put it in another way, Apple Music is a streaming service like Spotify is a streaming service, but in no way is Spotify Inc the same as Apple Inc, in no way is Spotify as a company a "significant" rival or competitor to Apple as a company they aren't even in the same league even though Apple music is the same as Spotify (I hope that that isn't what you are saying) if this is true for Apple + Spotify then it should also be true for Apple + Samsung, Google, Amazon etc.
PS you're comment feels spiteful and defensive, please remember we are having a friendly discussion no need to feel attacked, theres nothing to be worn or lost, if I've come to an incorrect conclusion about something I'm more than willing to be corrected but you also must be or we'll be going around in circles
at the end of the day, even if Apple is about making great products and protecting users privacy, and I think they do/are, you would have to be borderline retarded to think Apple would take a principled approach and give the bird to China, ignoring a market the size of the US.
Not even the Cheeto has done it.
For what it’s worth, any assistant, digital or otherwise, needs to know a lot about you to be truly useful. I can’t imagine any human assistant would keep their job for long if they didn’t know your favourite coffee, and where to get it depending on where you are, or your routine in general, who your preferred colleagues are, and so on. I don’t think you can capture all that information within the confines of one device
Secondly, if you’re arguing that no other company is exactly like Apple, I suppose that’s true, but it’s also irrelevant. Big companies like Apple or Google or Samsung compete with each other in some categories and not in others. That is true. Saying that because a company is only competing in a given category, it’s therefore not competing “in any significant way” is just a silly, diversionary point. No, Spotify is not the same as Apple in every way, but they are absolutely a big competeitor in the music streaming market, which is something that Apple has heavily invested in. The fact that Spotify currently has more paid subscribers than Apple Music is not some insignificant concern for Apple. Music is an incredibly important piece of Apple’s business model. That content is a critical component of the Apple ecosystem that keeps customers coming back for updated hardware, which is Apple’s core business. Streaming services pulled the rug out from under iTunes, which had been a critical means to keep customers buying iPods and iPhones. So streaming services created a vector for separating consumers from that ecosystem. Now we have Apple Music, which is rapidly building a subscriber base to compete with and overtake Spotify. All of these companies that you’ve dismissed are in fact absolutely significant competitors for Apple. Claiming otherwise is just silly.
As I see it Apple had two reasonable choices. (A) they could host their own servers in China, in which case they would be responsible to field legal requests for access to user data, or (B) they could outsource that to a Chinese entity and let them deal with it. Given that the same information requests will be required to be served, I know which option I’d choose. Stay out of that mess. Now you might say that Apple, while claiming to be a staunch defender of user data, is abrogating its responsibility to defend its users data, but is that true? Apple already serves US Governmrnt secret information requests for iCloud data. I’m sure they would prefer those were available to public scrutiny, but they are not. Why set themselves up for the same issue in China or any other country that imposes the same data hosting requirement? Apple would need legal experts in every such country. What a mess. And they did spell out to their Chinese customers the changes taking place and that storing data in iCloud is optional.
Apple would likely strongly defend its stance on backdoors into a handset, as it does here, should the Chinese government begin making that demand, and I believe they did if you recall your recent history from a few years back. So what Apple is doing regarding data protections in China is not much different than they are doing here. ICloud data is stored in-country, legal government data requests are served, and no backdoor into the handsets are implemented.
What these folks seem to miss is that there’s a bunch of switches inside iOS Settings that indicate which data from your iPad or iPhone you want to replicate in iCloud. It’s all optional. You can get substantially all of the functionality of an iPhone or iPad without replicating any of your data in iCloud. So it’s key for Apple, or any hardware manufacturer, to draw the line on hardware backdoors or Clipper chips (remember that) and Apple has done so both here and in China in recent history. But it’s not so crucial when it’s information that the user has the option to store in a potentially less secure place, like a social network server or a cloud backup or synchronization service (as iCloud represents). Users can guard their own privacy in the latter instance by accepting a little less convenience in backing up their devices (locally via iTunes versus in the cloud) and by foregoing the convenience of data synchronization between their devices.
Does this his say that GCBD can pre-screen Content? What does that even mean?
If you have two ithings, which I do, turning all that optional stuff off would be a real PITA. Imagine having different contacts, calendars and app configs between the devices.
To me it’s an illusory choice.
Most of Google's attention and focus goes to its search divisions because that's the business that's how they make money, most of Amazon's focus and efforts go to its prime and cloud arms coz that's the hole ball game, there is thus less resources left to the areas in which both these companies compete with Apple directly, areas that are primary to Apple's business and get nearly all of Apple's attention and focus, this isn't true completion, these companies mealy compete in being big tech companies. Because they do different things they are driven by different priorities thus they possess incomparable proficiencies and competence tuned for what they do best. This lack of focus is the primary reason no one make devices of Apple's quality at scale like them which is what a competitor would have to do to effectively and significantly challenge Apple
There is no company that does what google does better than Google, Apple couldn't beat Google at their game in a hundred year and visa versa, what is silly is the assertion that just because Google Amazon Samsung and Apple are often talked about together in Tech commentaries that they are thefor the same and compete, if you drive a Benz you can't also use BMW's idrive at the same time, but you can pull out you're iPhone right now launch Chrome "google" amazon and buy a book about BMW.
You're position is acceptable only on a general level, which is that, all these are big tech compaties and compete for impact and size but because each is so big in its respective area that they compete on a wide industry level and effectively mascle any small competitor out as evidenced by how easilly Apple music challenged Spotify, it wasn't because AM is that much better, it was because Spoty has no phone of its own, even if it did it wouldn't be iPhone size because its only a music streaming service, music is primary to its business, but to Apple music is complementary and supplementary not primary by any stretch of the imagination. Looking around the closest competitor to Apple is Sammy but only if you squint, and you're position that an accountant who's a gifted player but only plays tennis in his pare time counts as competition to Roger F. who does nothing but play tennis is extremely baffling to me.
I don't think the point you're making is particularly pertinent. Corporate breadth means that any company of significant size is going to be active in multiple sectors, and rarely are you going to find a complete mapping from one company to another. Being so anal about things would basically mean that no company is competing with any other company, which is obviously nonsense.
You are right though Crowley, "true competition is when adversaries of equal strengths are competing for the same thing i.e Mercedes Benz / BMW, not only do they operate in the same exact way they also compete for the same customer" this point isn't pertinent, and is nonsense, if you showed it to a random person they'd think so too, but MY POINT WAS MADE OF FOUR PARAGRAPHS TOTALING OVER 400 WORDS. If all you got from it was that sentence you quoted then there is no need for further discussion, I cannot reason with you.
And if the crux of you're and Zulu's augment is that since Apple, Amazon, Samsung and Google are big tech companies that make products that overlap in some areas by virtue of being in the same electronics category and all these companies are often spoken about together because of those products then all these companies thus directly compete with each other and thus it is fair to claim that all these companies are the same and any difference therein e.g search engine, cloud bisiness, chip fab and 200mln phone/yr makes no differents to their competitiveness on products they make that compete with Each other and competences and proweses observed from one can therefor be demanded and expected from all the rest because as you point out "BMW also make mororcycles, and Mercedes also make aeroplane engines" that difference is comparable to the difference between Apple and Amazon, then well, I'm afraid, no one can reason with either of you. So God bless and goodnight.
PS note, nowhere do I use the words stupid, ridiculous, or nonsensical as a summation of anyone's point regardless of how much I disagree it that point, because this isn't an attack of an argument but of the person making it.