bigmushroom

rotateleftbyte said:

rcpone said:

Both are great American companies doing great things. Wouldn't want to live without either of them.

It is easy to live a productive without feeding google data about yourself whick in turn is sold to advertisers. You just have to make an effort. I did two years ago. I have to let googleapis through my block list otherwise around 50% of websites just don't work but the rest of google is a no go area for me. I don't use Bing (Bling) because MS is just as bad as Google when it comes to slurping data.
If you are careful and use lots of different aliases you can remain anonymous on the internet.
I know that this is a bit of a phyrric victory but I can sleep easy knowing that I'm not feeding the Google Dragon.

With a similar effort you can also live without the iPhone 

Question is why would you want to live without either of them. You can simply go into account settings on Google and shut down most data collections if you are so inclined.

I had a German friend who was so suspicious of Google that he got rid of his Gmail account and instead kept all his email in some giant pop mailbox on thunderbird on linux. Now he has no email on any other device. Plus he spends ridiculous amounts of time keeping his Linux desktop up to date. 

He thinks of me some naive slave of the big tech companies but I think being a prisoner of your fears and obsessions is far worse. Plus I think his setup is much more vulnerable to hacking than consuming Gmail on an iOS, Android or Chromebook device.

Apple's emphasis on the Chinese market in the past 4 years might have been misguided. China has a history of slapping down dominant foreign companies to favor domestic one, especially in the tech sector. For example, Baidu became dominant after China crippled Google's services (out of Hong Kong). A lot of it has to do with control - Apple still controls its app store (even though China increasingly censors apps it dislikes such as the NYT app). However, it's much more convenient for the central government to have obedient domestic players such as Huawai with local app stores that can be directly monitored by the government.

Apple should enjoy the Chinese sales while they last but it's a fool's errant to try to counter Chinese industrial policy.

kamilton said:

In the long run, all companies that depend on revenue from the collection and sale of personal data are doomed.  We're simply in the earliest phase of the business model.  The majority of people have no idea of the exposure they have.  They have little or no direct experience with the consequences of that exposure.  Accordingly, they are still ripe for tremendous exploitation.  Consumer exploitation will continue until a threshold of direct experience with negative consequences is met, then the paradigm will shift dramatically toward security and privacy.  Where/when is this threshold?  I don't know, but once consumers start to feel violated and manipulated, it won't take long to eschew the companies and tech that screwed them over.

Apple is paying the short term price for building in privacy and security.  Siri's learning curve.  HomeKit's agonizingly slow progress.  Ridicule from government and citizens that consider disallowing a backdoor to be unpatriotic or even treasonous.  Watching nice niche markets get chewed up by competitors that are falling over themselves to exploit customer data.

Ultimately, the puck will be at customer security and privacy.  Apple may be the only player there.  Apple is doing both what is right and what will be in greatest demand.

I get nervous each time someone writes "sale of personal data". Newspapers and other old-fashioned subscription  services used to sell addresses. Google doesn't sell any addresses. They sell access to "consumers who are tech enthusiasts" or "consumers who have young kids". That's a big difference.

I remember a time without Google where there was no effective search, there was no unlimited email and you had to constantly backup old messages, there was nothing like Google Maps etc. These services have created tremendous consumer surplus and they are financed by targeted ads. Google has a dashboard which shows exactly the data they collect and you can switch off any parts of that data collection that you dislike if you are so inclined.

Moreover, I find it very funny that you believe that Apple is doing "what is right" and that it cares about customer security and privacy:

Apple is fully invested in China which is its second biggest market. It engages in censorship since it removes apps that the Communist government doesn't like as well as books and publications (such as NYT app in China). 

The much-maligned Google on the other hand gave up the Chinese market in 2010 when it retreated to Hong Kong - giving up a 30% search market share in that country and tremendous growth potential. They did that after the Chinese government tried to hack the accounts of political activists. They also gave up news censorship after moving out of China (which was a condition for operating Google New in that country before 2010).

Ultimately, most of the AI by Facebook, Google, Apple etc. is applied to data that is already stored on these companies servers - such as uploaded photo, emails, messages etc. Just because you don't allow Apple to tag your photos doesn't change the fact that they could facematch everything on their servers if they choose to do so.

Hence, it all comes down to trust. How much do I trust Apple, Google, Facebook etc?

So far I haven't seen Apple do anything as self-damaging as Google's pullout out of China. Why should I trust Apple more than Google?

Rayz2016 said:

charlesgres said:

bobolicious said:

Photos in Sierra auto tags all photos - no opt out, or in, and as I recall even had an arguably misleading statement on the photos web page suggesting the possibility, rather than the compulsory data mining...  One can call it various shades of private, but I'm guessing all one needs is an executive order and fair game on...

All photo analysis happens on the iPhone itself.. there is no sending of data to the servers, so Apple has no idea what your iPhone found on the photos on your iPhone..

Absolutely true. This is why your phone and your iPad run separate syncs when tagging your photos. None of this tagging info is stored outside the device.

Photos are actually a good example of the limits of Apple's approach.

I use Google Photos because it allows me to group faces: the AI automatically detects and groups faces and you can provide labels (Google doesn't try to identify who the person is - the AI is just able to group all the faces of my son or daughter, say).

If this grouping is not synced across Mobile and Desktop it would be useless for me. I don't want to maintain two sets of face groupings (the AI has sometimes trouble differentiating between my son at age 1 and age 4 - so I manually combine those instances).

I figure since I back up my photos on Google Photos or iCloud, these companies already have all my photo information - if I trust them with that why wouldn't I trust them with calculating summary statistics on them?

It's the same with email: if you use email by Apple or Google, all the data is already on their servers. Hence, doing things like Priority Inbox etc. do not collect any further data - it just makes use of the data that they already have.

I can understand better that people are concerned about tracking cookies - because here new data is created that otherwise wouldn't exist. Similarly, if Siri records voice transcriptions in order to do AI on them, then this also collects new data. 

But why would I be concerned about Google or Apple doing AI on my email or photos since they already have access to every single email and photo?

This whole Airpod business looks to me like a solution searching for a problem.

When getting Airpods I am losing the cable but in exchange I have to (a) make sure I don't lose these pods, (b) deal with recharging them after 5 hours of usage (which isn't very much), (c) deal with potentially unequal discharge rates on both pods. 

On top of this, enormous engineering resources have to be wasted on making them work well.

I am predicting an initial rush to buy these pods from enthusiasts, then lots of anguished reports of people losing them while jogging etc., followed by more reports that people take along wired headphones as "backups" to deal with loss and empty batteries.

The closest analogue to this in my mind are the Falcon doors on the Tesla Model X (which not even Tesla will imitate in future models).