I really respect Apple's privacy focused engineering. They didn't roll out _any_ AI features until they were capable of running them locally, and before doing any cloud-based AI they designed and rolled out Private Cloud Compute.
You can argue about whether it's actually bulletproof or not but the fact is, nobody else is even trying, and have lost sight of all privacy-focused features in their rush to ship anything and everything on my device to OpenAI or Gemini.
I am thrilled to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars to purchase a machine that feels like it really belongs to me, from a company that respects my data and has aligned incentives.
> to purchase a machine that feels like it really belongs to me
How true is this when they devices are increasingly hostile to user repair and upgrades? MacOS also tightens the screws on what you can run and from where, or at least require more hoop jumping over time.
Of course I wish the hardware were somehow more open, but to a large extent, it's directly because of hardware based privacy features.
If you allowed third-party components without restraint, there'd be no way to prevent someone swapping out a component.
Lock-in and planned obsolescence are also factors, and ones I'm glad the EU (and others) are pushing back here. But it isn't as if there are no legitimate tradeoffs.
Regarding screw tightening... if they ever completely remove the ability to run untrusted code, yes, then I'll admit I was wrong. But I am more than happy to have devices be locked down by default. My life has gotten much easier since I got my elderly parents and non-technical siblings to move completely to the Apple ecosystem. That's the tradeoff here.
You can buy most parts officially from Apple - I just bought a new set of keycaps to replace some on my MacBook Air. Couldn't do that 5 years ago.
You can install whatever OS you want on your computer - Asahi Linux is the only one that's done the work to support that.
You can disable the system lockdowns that "tighten the screws" you refer to and unlock most things back to how they used to be.
> How true is this when they devices are increasingly hostile to user repair and upgrades?
Not sure what you mean exactly by this, but to me their Self Service Repair program is a step in the right direction.
What you see hostile to repair I see as not worth stealing. What you see as macOS dictating what you can run from where I see as an infiltration prevention.
> MacOS also tightens the screws on what you can run and from where, or at least require more hoop jumping over time.
Can you explain what you mean by this? I have been doing software development on MacOS for the last couple of years and have found it incredibly easy to run anything I want on my computer from the terminal, whenever I want. Maybe I'm not the average user, but I use mostly open-source Unix tooling and have never had a problem with permissions or restrictions.
Are you talking about packaged applications that are made available on the App Store? If so, sure have rules to make sure the store is high-quality, kinda like how Costco doesn't let anyone just put garbage on their shelves
Apple also left a very convenient hole in their boot loader to allow running another OS. Linux works pretty well these days
Considering you need an Apple ID to log into the hardware, id argue Apple gatekeeps that ownership pretty tightly.
I have the same problem with graphics cards (not upgradable—and cost more than the pc they are in!)
Same with server parts using HBM—won’t let me upgrade memory there either.
That said, the apple ssd situation is abysmal. At least with memory they have reasons.
My MacBooks are built like a tank and outperform/outlive everything else easily for a decade. I don’t need more than 128GB of RAM or 2TB of storage… and I don’t need to repair what doesn’t break. It would be nice to have the option, but the time I save using an OS that just works like MacOS is worth more to me. And the best software in the world always runs on it. It’s a no brainier for me.
You can read the ifixit teardown before you buy it.
How true is this when they devices are increasingly hostile to user repair and upgrades?
I can neither repair nor upgrade my electric car, my furniture, or my plumbing. But they all still belong to me.
> I am thrilled to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars to purchase a machine that feels like it really belongs to me, from a company that respects my data and has aligned incentives.
You either have have very low standards or very low understanding if you think a completely closed OS on top of completely closed hardware somehow means it 'really belongs' to you, or that your data/privacy is actually being respected.
"completely closed OS" is not accurate. apple releases a surprising amount of source code.
https://opensource.apple.com/releases/
Whats the alternative? Linux? Maybe OP likes that their OS doesnt crash when they close their laptop lid.
You hit the nail on the head. And it’s something virtually everyone else replying to you is completely missing.
Apple isn’t perfect. They’re not better at privacy than some absolutist position where you run Tails on RISC V, only connect to services over Tor, host your own email, and run your own NAS.
But of all the consumer focused hardware manufacturers and cloud services companies, they are the only ones even trying.
You miss the point. It's not that I enact authority over my system in every detail all the time, but I want the ability to choose authority on the aspects that matter to me in a given circumstance.
They just have really good marketing. You fell for their pandering. If you really care about privacy use Linux. But Apple ain't it. Closed source and proprietary will never be safe from corporate greed.
>https://archive.ph/Z9z0H
Linux doesn't give you privacy guy.
If you're using the web, your privacy is about your browser and your ISP, not your OS.
At times, it's even about how you use your browser. No browser will save you from telling google too much about yourself by using gmail, and viewing youtube videos, and using search. The AI's and algorithms collating all that information on the backend see right through "incognito" mode.
Telling people they can get security and privacy by using Linux, or windows, or mac just betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the threat surface.
If you're so focused on privacy why don't you just use Linux? With Linux you'll actually get real privacy and you'll really truly own the system.
Apple takes a 30% tax on all applications running on their mobile devices. Just let that sink in. We are so incredibly lucky that never happened to PC.
As much as anyone can say otherwise, running Linux isn’t just a breeze. You will run into issues at some point, you will possibly have to make certain sacrifices regarding software or other choices. Yes it has gotten so much better over the past few years but I want my time spent on my work, not toying with the OS.
Another big selling point of Apple is the hardware. Their hardware and software are integrated so seamlessly. Things just work, and they work well. 99% of the time - there’s always edge cases.
There’s solutions to running Linux distros on some Apple hardware but again you have to make sacrifices.
I have used several distributions and daily driven linux for long periods of time (2-3 years) since 2008. Even today multimedia apps have issues, these can be solved by going through online forums, but it's always a frustrating start. Usually upgrades to software will re-introduce these issues and you will need to follow the same steps.
Which Linux?
> Private Cloud Compute
That's such a security theater. As long as nobody can look inside their ICs, nobody knows what's really happening there.
Oh? https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/25/apple_private_cloud_c...
> "Today we’re making these resources publicly available to invite all security and privacy researchers – or anyone with interest and a technical curiosity – to learn more about PCC and perform their own independent verification of our claims."
https://security.apple.com/documentation/private-cloud-compu...
There are also a million dollars of bounties to be had if you hack it
They've certainly engaged in a lot of privacy theater before. For example
> Apple oversells its differential privacy protections. "Apple’s privacy loss parameters exceed the levels typically considered acceptable by the differential privacy research community," says USC professor Aleksandra Korolova, a former Google research scientist who worked on Google's own implementation of differential privacy until 2014. She says the dialing down of Apple's privacy protections in iOS in particular represents an "immense increase in risk" compared to the uses most researchers in the field would recommend.
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-differential-privacy-short...
Does that mean you just don't bother encrypting any of your data, and just use unencrypted protocols? Since you can't inspect the ICs that are doing the work, encryption must all also be security theater.
Actually Apple has stated they are allowing security researchers to look at their infrastructure DIRECTLY.
That's a fine bit of goalpost shifting. They state that they will make their _entire software stack_ for Private Cloud Compute public for research purposes.
Assuming they go through with that, this alone puts them leagues ahead of any other cloud service.
It also means that to mine your data the way everyone else does, they would need to deliberately insert _hardware_ backdoors into their own systems, which seems a bit too difficult to keep secret and a bit too damning a scandal should it be discovered...
Occam's razor here is that they're genuinely trying to use real security as a competitive differentiator.
That could be said of any device you own, ever.
I agree 100% with this.
Amongst all the big tech companies Apple is the closest you will get to if you want Privacy.
The approach that the big platforms have to producing their own versions of very successful apps cannibalizes their partners. This focus on consumer privacy by Apple is the company's killer competitive advantage in this particular area, IMO. If I felt they were mining me for my private business data I'd switch to Linux in heartbeat. This is what keeps me off Adobe, Microsoft Office, Google's app suite, and apps like Notion as much as possible.
Apple isn't privacy focused. It can't at this size with this leadership.
Privacy puts user interests first. Apple doesn't.
Try exporting your private data (e.g. photos) from any modern apple device (one that you paid for and you fully own) to a non apple device that is an industry standard like a usb stick, or another laptop. Monitor some network traffic going out from your laptop. Try getting replacement parts for your broken idevice.
Others aren't pretending to put your interests first, Apple though...
Think for yourself.
I don't comment here often anymore. Don't bother.
Couldn’t have picked a worse example. I can literally plug a USB stick into the iPad I’m typing on and export my photos directly onto it.
I can do all of those things, I do them regularly, except replace broken parts as that's not something I really have had to deal with much.
I purchased my first iPhone and Mac during Cook’s tenure, and strictly due to his serious stance on privacy.
>I am thrilled to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars to purchase a machine that feels like it really belongs to me, from a company that respects my data and has aligned incentives.
Build a desktop PC, yes like a nerdy gamer. ^_^
Install Linux
Been the way for years.
Gamer + Linux is asking for trouble though.
Of late I have been imagining tears of joy rolling down the face of the person who decides to take it upon themself to sing the paeans of Apple Privacy Theatre on a given day. While Apple has been gleefully diluting privacy on their platforms (along with quality and stability of course). They are the masters at selling dystopian control, lock in, and software incompetence as something positive.
It's most dangerous that they own the closed hardware and they own the closed software and then they also get away with being "privacy champions". It's worse than irony.
Nowadays, the only way to have a computer belonging to you is using Linux.
> actually bulletproof
Its only 'bulletproof' in PR and Ad copy, because for as long as the US is capable of undermining any tech company that operates within its purview with NSL's, the 'perception of security' is a total fallacy.
In other words, the technology is not bulletproof, no matter how hard the marketing people work to make it appear so - only the society within which the provider operates can provide that safety.
For some, this is an intolerable state of affairs - for others, perfectly tolerable.
"10:24 – Flushed the toilet" is certainly more easy to transmit than an audio file which then must be analyzed in a datacenter.
Let's see if they really care so much about privacy in 10 years, once LLM/AI has settled. But they do seem to respect it a lot more than Microsoft.
I understand we will be able to disable that just in case? I don't want a Microsoft Windows telemetry dejavu.
> I really respect Apple's privacy focused engineering.
Everytime you launch an app, Mac OS dials home.
This is flatly incorrect.
Before you reply that it’s definitely true, I encourage you to actually look up the details of the thing you think you’re upset about.
Mac OS calls home every time you execute an application. Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU. If you send your computer/phone to Apple for repair you may get back different physical hardware. Those things very much highlight that "your" Apple hardware is not yours and that privacy on Apple hardware does not actually exist, sure they may not share that data with other parties but they definitely do not respect your privacy or act like you own the hardware you purchased. Apple marketing seems to have reached the level indoctrination where everyone just keeps parroting what Apple says as an absolute truth.
They send a hash of the binaries/libraries, and generate a cache locally so it's not sent again. That helps stop you from running tampered-with binaries and frameworks. No user-personal data is sent.
There is no evidence at all that they are trying to ensure you can only run things from the App Store - I run a whole bunch of non-app-store binaries every single day. To make that claim is baseless and makes me de-rate the rest of what you write.
There is always a trade-off between privacy and security. This still falls well under the Google/Android/Chrome level, or indeed the Microsoft/Windows level with its targeted ads, IMHO.
Choose your poison, but this works for me.
> If you send your computer/phone to Apple for repair you may get back different physical hardware.
I happen to be in the midst of a repair with Apple right now. And for me, the idea that they might replace my aging phone with a newer unit, is a big plus. As I think it would be for almost everyone. Aside from the occasional sticker, I don't have any custom hardware mods to my phone or laptop, and nor do 99.99% of people.
Can Apple please every single tech nerd 100% of the time? No. Those people should stick to Linux, so that they can have a terrible usability experience ALL the time, but feel more "in control," or something.
> Mac OS calls home every time you execute an application
Consulting a certificate revocation list is a standard security feature, not a privacy issue.
With the sheer number of devs who use Macs, there is a 0% chance they’re going to outright prevent running arbitrary executables. Warn / make difficult, sure, but prevent? No.
> not share that data with other parties but they definitely do not respect your privacy
not sharing my data with other parties, or using it to sell me stuff or show me ads, is what I would define as respecting my privacy; Apple checks those boxes where few other tech companies do
Their repair policy, from what I can see, is a thinly veiled attempt to get you to either pay for Apple Care or to upgrade. I got a quote to repair a colleague's MacBook Pro, less than 2 years old, which has apparent 'water damage' and which they want AUD $2,500 to repair! Of course that makes no sense, so we're buying a new one ...
Agree. I recently went to an Apple store in Tokyo to buy an accessory. The Apple employee pulled up their store iPhone to take my payment (apple pay) and then asked me to fill out a form with my email address and there was a message about how my info would be shared with some company. I thought about going back and pretending to buy something else so I could film it. I questioned the store person, "It's apple supposed to be "Privacy first"". If it was privacy first they wouldn't have asked for the info in the first place and they certainly wouldn't be sharing it with a 3rd party.
At the very least Apple are better than Microsoft, Windows and the vendors that sell Windows laptops when it comes to respecting user experience and privacy.
> Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU.
People have been saying this ever since Apple added the App Store to the Mac in 2010. It’s been 14 years. I wonder how much time has to go by for people to believe it’s not on Apple’s todo list.
Even if I have analytics disabled?
Genuinely asking: are there any specifics on this? I understand that blocking at the firewall level is an option, but I recall someone here mentioning an issue where certain local machine rules don’t work effectively. I believe this is the issue [1]. Has it been “fixed”?
[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/01/14/apple-drops-exclu...
> where everyone just keeps parroting what Apple says as an absolute truth.
You are free to verify.
> Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store
I don't think Apple's behavior actually reflects this if you look closely (although I can certainly see how someone could form that opinion):
As a counter example, Apple assisted with their own engineers to help port Blender to Metal (https://code.blender.org/2023/01/introducing-the-blender-met...):
> Around one year ago, after joining the Blender Development Fund and seeding hardware to Blender developers, Apple empowered a few of its developers to directly contribute to the Blender source code.
I'm assuming similar support goes to other key pieces of software, e.g., from Adobe, Maxon, etc... but they don't talk about it for obvious reasons.
The point being Apple considers these key applications to their ecosystem, and (in my estimation at least) these are applications that will probably never be included in the App Store. (The counterargument would be the Office Suite, which is in the App Store, but the key Office application, Excel, is a totally different beast than the flagship Windows version, that kind of split isn't possible with the Adobe suite for example.)
Now what I actually think is happening is the following:
1. Apple believes the architecture around security and process management that they developed for iOS is fundamentally superior to the architecture of the Mac. This is debatable, but personally I think it's true as well for every reason, except for what I'll go into in #2 below. E.g., a device like the Vision Pro would be impossible with macOS architecture (too much absolute total complete utter trash is allowed to run unfettered on a Mac for a size-constrained device like that to ever be practical, e.g., all that trash consumes too much battery).
2. The open computing model has been instrumental in driving computing forward. E.g., going back to the Adobe example, After Effects plugins are just dynamically linked right into the After Effects executable. Third party plugins for other categories often work similarly, e.g., check out this absolutely wild video on how you install X-Particles on Cinema 4D (https://insydium.ltd/support-home/manuals/x-particles-video-...).
I'm not sure if anyone on the planet even knows why, deep down, #2 is important, I've never seen anyone write about it. But all the boundary pushing computing fields I'm interested in, which is mainly around media creation (i.e., historically Apple's bread-and-butter), seems to depend on it (notably they are all also local first, i.e., can't really be handled by a cloud service that opens up other architecture options).
So the way I view it is that Apple would love to move macOS to the fundamentally superior architecture model from iOS, but it's just impossible to do so without hindering too many use cases that depend on that open architecture. Apple is willing to go as close to that line as they can (in making the uses cases more difficult, e.g., the X-Particles video above), but not actually willing to cross it.
> Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU
What has the EU done to stop Apple doing this? Are Apple currently rolling it out to everywhere but the EU?
You’re way off base. Paranoid.
>Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store
that ship has well and truly sailed, this conspiracy might once have held water but Apple's machines are far too commercially ubiquitous for them to have any designs on ringfencing all the software used by all the industries that have taken a liking to the hardware.
> Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store,
What are you talking about? I don’t run a single app from the app store and have never felt a need to.
The EU is center-right-wing, and laughs all the way to the bank whenever someone like you falls for their "we externally pretend to be the good guys" trope. Leyen is pretty much the worst leadership ever, but they still manage to convince the politically naiv that everything is fine, because of GDPR, AI laws and huge penalties for big tech. Its sad how simple it is to confuse people.
I mean, the security features are pretty well documented. The FBI can't crack a modern iPhone even with Apple's help. A lot of the lockdowns are in service of that.
I'm curious: what hardware and software stack do you use?
> Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store
I'm very happy to only run stuff approved on Apple's app store... ESPECIALLY following their introduction of privacy labels for all apps so you know what shit the developer will try to collect from you without wasting your time downloading it.
Also have you seen the amount of dodgy shit on the more open app stores ?
> Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store
I am totally ok with this. I have personally seen apple reject an app update and delist the app because a tiny library used within it had a recent security concerns. Forced the company to fix it.
You are just joking right?
From a skill and trust point of view, Google is doing a lot better than apple will ever.
Including ondevice AI
Privacy is the new obscenity. What does privacy even mean to you concretely? Answer the question with no additional drama, and I guarantee you either Apple doesn’t deliver what you are asking for, or you are using services from another company, like Google, in a way that the actions speak that you don’t really care about what you are asking for.
End to end encryption by default, such that the cloud provider cannot access my data.
Easy.
There's some weird[1] laws around privacy in Australia, where government departments are blocked from a bunch of things by law. From my perspective as a citizen, this just results in annoyance such as having to fill out forms over and over to give the government data that they already have.
I heard a good definition from my dad: "Privacy for me is pedestrians walking past my window not seeing me step out of the shower naked, or my neighbours not overhearing our domestic arguments."
Basically, if the nude photos you're taking on your mobile phone can be seen by random people, then you don't have privacy.
Apple encrypts my photos so that the IT guy managing the storage servers can't see them. Samsung is the type of company that includes a screen-capture "feature" in their TVs so that they can profile you for ad-targeting. I guarantee you that they've collected and can see the pictures of naked children in the bathtub from when someone used screen mirroring from their phone to show their relatives pictures of their grandkids. That's not privacy.
Sure, I use Google services, but I don't upload naked kid pictures to anything owned by Alphabet corp, so no problem.
However, I will never buy any Samsung product for any purpose because they laugh and point at customer expectations of privacy.
[1] Actually not that weird. Now that I've worked in government departments, I "get" the need for these regulations. Large organisations are made up of individuals, and both the org and the individual people will abuse their access to data for their own benefit. Many such people will even think they're doing the "right thing" while destroying freedom in the process, like people that keep trying to make voting systems traceable... so that vote buying will become easy again.