ArchStanton

foregoneconclusion said:

LOL...what "strategy" do Amazon and Roku have for hardware? They're selling iterations of the same tech they've always sold. 

Agreed. It’s a strange argument to put Apple’s streaming box completely in with Amazon and Roku. These are two companies offering options at every price point to gain volume.  They are streaming sticks or boxes, that’s it. Apple isn’t going to be offering a cheap stick version. When has Apple ever done the cheap high volume thing? AppleTV is the box with a little more that joins your iCloud, has the hub, Apple Music library, minor gaming, iphone control some control via watch, gets the eco upgrade. And It then Has Apple pricing. 

M68000 said:

Why are people so up in arms about this?  If you have nothing to hide 

Is this post for real? An actual serious point? Wow...

Fyi to the rest of the world. Privacy is one of the fundamental tenants of any level of freedom. When the powerful get to know everything you do/think/say, they will always (and I do mean always) make sure you abide by what they dictate. The very fact that the powerful can't see and know means their power, at least to some degree, is in check. 

One of the most pernicious arguments the powerful use is "As long as you have nothing to hide" or "as long as you have done nothing wrong". Everyone has something to hide, everyone has done something "wrong"(though it may not be illegally wrong), everyone has some level of thoughts and words that go against what others believe is acceptable. And everyone has done something actually illegal (there are many thousands of laws and regulations in the books. it would be impossible to live a life without crossing sentences if the massive volumes knows as law and regulation). 
The powerful use a very interesting tactic of equivocation. They try to lump ordinary people in with grossly illegal behaviors like kiddie porn peddlers -- i.e. well those despicable people have something to hide. Now why do you have something to hide. 
See how that works?

One of the worst angles of this Apple uproar is that main players of Surveillance Capitalism are the first to pile on about data privacy. 
I think it's good Apple is being questioned about this. Any move that could impinge privacy should be. If this story could make a small turn to include data privacy from corporations?
But people reading these stories are reading them on Twitter, or on Facebook, or from a web search from Google -- surveillance capitalism's big players. These players don't want you to read that angle to the story.
See how that works?

Well played Spotify, they got in on free media. Very Elon Musk move...

Not a big fan of some of the wording in the letter but I understand the meaning behind the larger message. IMHO Apple made a mistake at minimum in how they rolled this out, at minimum. DAalseth comment was correct, this will be attempted to be used to bludgeon Apple. How well it succeeds is doubtful, IMHO.  But the surreal irony is some of those doing the bludgeoning will be among the worst purveyors of data privacy collecting and exploitation.
No problem with the signers of the letter expressing this very important point. But Here's my problem with the signers of this letter: where the hell have they been on  the vast majority of smartphone users on the planet using a platform that was tracking the hell out of them? They've just been given a big platform to condemn user privacy issue  based on Apple's MEC surveilling, so where the hell is page 2 to protect hundreds of millions of people getting their privacy data tracked constantly? Speak now or show yourself to be looking for a few headlines. 

EFF has been there since day 1. Calling out Facebook and Google but also calling out Apple when it was needed. Where were the rest of these letter signers? Unfortunately a few of them probably, I suspect, getting "third party research" grants. See how that works?