elijahg

Remember that 1 in 1 trillion isn't 1 false positive per 1 trillion iCloud accounts - it's 1 per 1 trillion photos. I have 20,000 photos, that brings the chances I have a falsely flagged photo to 1 in 50 million. Not quite such spectacular odds then.

Rayz2016 said:

elijahg said:

Rayz2016 said:

elijahg said:

This probably also means eventually (if not already) Apple is scanning data that goes through iCloud Private Relay. Why try and force every ISP to scan people's data when they can by default pass it all through an Apple server? One hell of a lot easier to have a single point to collect data from.

Mmmm ߤ䦬t;br>
The ISPs would surely be a better bet. This will only trap Apple users. What about Windows and Android users?

Well we don't know if Apple is performing a MITM attack on the data by claiming it's encrypted in Safari, but it's actually being encrypted on Apple's servers then sent to Safari over the iCloud VPN - after scanning of content. That's not possible for an ISP to do. So whilst it'd only work for Apple users, they'd have much better data on those Apple users.

Right, so you make the request, that goes through your ISP which routes it through Apple servers. But they just have the request, not what was sent back. All they see is the encrypted stuff which Safari unpacks at your end?

Normally yes. With iCloud Private Relay the ISP only sees packet header information (destination IP and source IP mainly), and from that can only discern the data is going to Apple. What request or data is inside that is unknown to your ISP. Only Safari can unpack the received data.

Apple however, could be using iCloud private relay as an encryption-stripping proxy: Through iCloud Private Relay, Safari asks the iCloud server to fetch a particular site, which then fetches the page on behalf of Safari. The connection between the requested site and iCloud server is encrypted, but the iCloud server can decrypt it as it was the one making the request. That request is then re-encrypted over the iCloud VPN, and displayed in Safari after being scanned, unbeknownst to the user.

FileMakerFeller said:

elijahg said:

Apple is a $2tn company. It really needs to stop introducing so many "magical" next best things and then abandoning them. That's what startups do when they haven't the man power. Apple definitely has the manpower.

Alternatively, Apple should continue innovating and listening to the market to see if what they've done is worth further investment.

Not sure Apple has "continued innovating" with Siri. People liked the HP, but Siri and the price let it down.

This is probably due to four issues:

Timing. Apple is often late to a market but blows everyone else away with what they introduce. HomePod's sound blew everyone away, but everything else was a let down. Unfortunately for Apple, few people will pay for high quality sound. Most listen though crappy headphones or laptop speakers so great sound wasn't much of a selling point.

Price. The original HP was just way too expensive. 3x more than the next most expensive smart speaker at the time. They sold so poorly that in 2021 people were receiving models with serial numbers from 2017. Even the mini is expensive. Other than privacy and marginally better sound quality, what do you get from the HP mini that you can't get in a $30 Dot? For $50 you can have a "smart" Alexa home, with voice activated lights, and $30 for each additional speaker. Or you can go Homekit and the initial cost is $120, with $100 for each speaker. People are willing to pay more for Apple products because they work well. Only the HomePods don't because the main interface is decidedly less good than average: Siri.

Siri is crap. A MobileMe-esque disaster, but Cook apparently hasn't the teeth to get it sorted out. Aside from false activations and then not activating when I say "Hey Siri", it's actually embarrassing how often it totally fails to understand. Playing a song rather than turning lights on, or answering with some unwanted quip, less than funny. I have a 300mbps fibre connection and Siri is still regularly slow to reply. Often it needs my iPhone to be on the same wifi network for things like notes and reminders, despite having full access to exactly that data via iCloud. Siri hasn't materially improved since the iPhone 4. And in some cases it's worse than the 3G's voice controls feature, i.e. it's not on-device, so it fails or is slow to reply. This has of course been partially fixed with iOS 15, but apparently requires AI hardware. The iPhone X's AI hardware isn't good enough, but the iPhone 3G's non-existent AI hardware was apparently just fine for pre-Siri voice recognition. The original HP has an A8 CPU (iPhone 6 era) so it's never going to get on-device recognition. Out of the 10 or so people I know with iPhones, no one uses Siri. It's just too unreliable. And even when it understands you, some obscure bug rears its head and the request fails even if it's the exact same request you made earlier. "Alexa" though, I hear at least once a week.

Thirdly, features. Amazon smart speakers have a multitude of powerful skills you can install. HomePod? Nothing. Until recently you couldn't even change the default streaming provider. Shortcuts are a crap patch. Again relies on your phone to do the processing. 

Apple is a $2tn company. It really needs to stop introducing so many "magical" next best things and then abandoning them. That's what startups do when they haven't the man power. Apple definitely has the manpower.

AA is pretty lacklustre. There are a couple of good games, with reasonable engagement, but few that make me want to sit down and play. There are way too many bog standard app store games with IAPs removed, and barely any console quality games. Often the developers don't bother to adjust the required tokens/coins/whatever so the game follows the exponential difficulty curve of the IAP sibling, meaning its almost impossible to progress because its intended to persuade you to dish out for coins (a complete scam of course).

They've now taken to adding popular paid-for App Store titles like The Room, which is great for those who've yet to purchase them but so good for those who already own them. And as @Beats said, the graphics are generally crap. Whilst they're supposed to scale with hardware, apparently developers just target the lowest common denominator and leave it at that. The games that also play on macOS too look like they're from the early 2000s. 

The Xbox Game pass can be had for £49 for 6 months - £7.80 per month, for which you get 400 games; many of which are AAA games with the best gameplay and graphics, costing £49 or more.