gatorguy

StrangeDays said:

TravisV said:

This brings up another disturbing scenario with Apple. If the photo's that you deleted years ago reappear what else is Apple storing on their servers that you have deleted from Data Recovery in iCloud. ARE THEY REALLY DELETED or are they just hidden like files hidden on a mac with a ".".. THe question now is can Apple be believed when they say they can not read your FileVault Key that might be stored on their servers and that in Systems Setting in Sonoma and is Advance System Protection, protection at all!

markbyrn said:

If photos are reappearing years after you deleted them, this 17.5 bug only exposed the fact that Apple was somehow retaining the deleted photos. This 17.5.1 update only re-hides that egregious violation of privacy.  Tim Cook bad!

Read the article. The bug appears to involve a corrupted local database, which is then insufficiently deleting the images. It isn’t about secret Apple policies to retain cloud images.

Did they say it was a local database, i.e., on the owner's device? If so, I missed that in Apple's explanation. I had read it as a database maintained by Apple on Apple servers. 

EDIT: No they didn't say anything about a local database, and in fact did not mention where the "corrupted database" existed AFAICT.  It's a very vague and unclear explanation, isn't it? I could be misunderstanding. 
"This update provides important bug fixes and addresses a rare issue where photos that experienced database corruption could reappear in the Photos library even if they were deleted."

davidw said:

avon b7 said:

Stabitha_Christie said:

jdw said:

Summary of the Conversation:

Activist Judge: "How can you justify making more profits than companies barely scraping by?"

Apple: "We seek to be here 10-20 years from now and therefore seek the profits necessary to achieve that."

Activist Judge: "I personally think you should make only profit necessary to barely remain in business, and I honestly don't care what your investors think."

I’m embarrassed on your behalf. 

Judge Gonzales-Rogers has rules in Apple’s favor on  all but one count. Her ruling stated that Apple wasn’t a monopoly

I think you should expand on 'wasn't a monopoly' because her ruling, IIRC, was severely conditioned by how Epic brought its arguments to court. Wasn't it all specific to video games?

And I may be mistaken on this but didn't she go as far as to say if the case had been brought to court in a different manner, her ruling may have changed?

The Federal Court Judge ruled that Apple had not been proven to have a monopoly under US Anti-Trust laws. 

She did not rule on Apple's overall anti-competitive position. That was not the crux of the legal case put in front of her. Her ruling on the question of an Apple monopoly was a very narrow one regarding the relative merits in a very specific market. In fact, Judge Gonzalez implied that had Epic filed and pursued the lawsuit put to her from a different legal perspective, they might have had more success with arguing antitrust. In essence, Epic's attorneys may have asked the wrong questions.

She stated in her ruling "Apple is only saved by the fact that its share is not higher, that competitors from related submarkets are making inroads into the mobile gaming submarket, and, perhaps, because [Epic] did not focus on this topic.

I feel that helped Epic make a more effective and focused legal case when a similar antitrust suit against Google was argued and won. Had they done the same with Apple, the case may have turned out differently, as suggested by Judge Gonzalez.  But they did not, and Epic doesn't get a do-over.

For those readers who sometimes don't look past the headlines,
The TLDR version:
The Epic/Apple ruling did not address and certainly did not answer questions concerning Apple's overall monopoly exposure. 

MacPro said:

gatorguy said:

Privacy and data retention at odds with Apple's stated Privacy Policy? I thought I recalled 6 months being the maximum time Apple says they keep deleted accounts and content. But I'm old, and my memory is not as good as it once was.

In any event, four years later is well beyond expectations. 

To my way of seeing the logic, there isn't any increased risk in this. It's not as if someone can rummage through the deleted data I assume. Why wouldn't the deleted data be secure if the undeleted data is safe? I assume only the account owners are seeing the deleted images returned. Now, is it a PITA? Yep.  That all said, it is better this than images not deleted disappearing

A valid assumption would be that Apple has some use for those photos after the owner no longer does and thus ordered their deletion. Perhaps for AI training purposes as they would no longer have been considered "user data" after their deletion?

On a more personal level, had the owner of the NSFW images been with a new partner when these years old trashed photos were resurfaced this week, I could see it being an issue in the relationship.  At best it's a very bad look for Apple, one that seems counter to stated policies. 

Marvin said:

gatorguy said:

Marvin said:

gatorguy said:

foregoneconclusion said:

Question: why would developers complain about Apple handling the payment processing if they can't negotiate a better rate than 3% themselves? The reality for credit card processing fees is that online transactions are ALWAYS going to have higher cost than physical transactions with a card. That's how the banks have set it up. 

It's not the 3% fee that's an issue. It's the attached 27% cut of the gross for Apple that the company insists on. Apple gets the same cut as before while doing far less to deserve it.

Apple's doing exactly the same for the 27% (and it's 12% for non-millionaires). This is a commission for being part of a well-curated store that serves 1.5 billion customers. The 3% is a transaction fee. Google's discount is similar:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/02/google-will-allow-alternative-payment-systems-for-play-store-in-more-countries/

"The company gave a 3% discount on fees for developers using third-party billing in the EEA region. With the new announcement, Google is offering a 4% discount on fees to developers."

Apple is already under a judge's order. What happens on another platform isn't immediately relevant.

EDIT: Google is operating under the premise that if Apple can game the ruling and maintain their prior commission, then it's leaving money on the table to do otherwise. If Apple ends up on the wrong side of the judge, and I'm confident they will, I fully expect Google to roll back their alternative payment commission voluntarily; no court order to do so is required. Simply reading the landscape is answer enough.

This is the entirety of Apple's and Google's app store revenue stream at risk. If external payment options had 0 commission, all that would need to happen is a payment system like Paypal comes along, offers them a small processing fee and nearly every developer would use it. This would cost Apple and Google over $100 billion. Not overnight but it would happen quite quickly as the biggest app developers would move first. The store commission is what pays for the whole operation, they have a right to charge it and for most developers a 12% fee is a small amount.

This issue is only about payment competition for the transaction fee being tied to Apple's payment processor. Apple's service here is 3%, that's all they need to remove. It's not Apple's problem if other payment processors charge higher fees. If they charge more then it shows Apple's option is fair and competitive.

Marvin, it's not about the 3% payment processing fee. Several articles outside of AppleInsider report on what the issue truly is, so it's easy enough to get familiar with, but in a nutshell, it's the up to 27% fee Apple tacks on top of it. 
https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-probes-epic-games-claims-apple-violated-injunction-on-app-store-rules/

If you have any interest in a more detailed report on the Judg's line of questioning and Apple's response, this Bloomberg article has more of the nitty-gritty:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-10/apple-says-no-major-app-developers-accept-new-outside-payments?sref=10lNAhZ9
One excerpt: 
“You’re telling me a thousand people were involved and not one of them said maybe we should consider the cost” to the developers? the judge said. “Not a single person raised that issue, of the thousand that were involved?”

My guess is the judge will settle in on something south of 10% tack-on for the IP.

On the surface this would seem to support the rumor of Apple using Google's on-device Gemini GenAI. The Pixel 8's were the first smartphones to do this on-device, and it required an update that installed Gemini Nano to accomplish it.