Comment by wcfrobert 14 hours ago
Apple's commitment to privacy and security is really cool to see. It's also an amazing strategic play that they are uniquely in the position to take advantage of. Google and Meta can't commit to privacy because they need to show you ads, whereas Apple feels more like a hardware company to me.
I still recommend Mr. Fart's Favorite Colors as a refutation, describing why all of these precautions cannot protect you in a real-world security model: https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177...
Unbreakable phones are coming. We’ll have to decide who controls the cockpit: The captain? Or the cabin?Krstić: “Here’s how we reduce the chance that even Apple can access or alter X, and here’s how we can make that credible.”
Ross: “Even if you make X cryptographically airtight, the real fight becomes political/physical coercion: ‘ship this or else.’”
Those can both be true at the same time.
modeless linked to this article earlier today:
https://james.darpinian.com/blog/apple-imessage-encryption/
My current understanding of the facts:
1. Google defaults to encrypted backups of messages, as well as e2e encryption of messages.
2. Apple defaults only to e2ee of messages, leaving a massive backdoor.
3. Closing that backdoor is possible for the consumer, by enabling ADP (advanced data protection) on your device. However, this makes no difference, since 99.9% of the people you communicate will not close the backdoor. Thus, the only way to live is to assume that all the messages you send via iMessage will always be accessible to Apple, no matter what you do.
It's not like overall I think Google is better for privacy than Apple, but this choice by Apple is really at odds with their supposed emphasis on privacy.
Apple's other emphasis is customer experience, and there are more "I forgot my code, help me recover my stuff" people than you can imagine.
It would be bad PR for Apple if everybody constantly kept losing their messages because they had no way to get back into their account.
Nobody expects their text messages to be backed up.
They get deleted and people shrug.
Security is pointless if platform allows 90% users to be social engineered into running code disabling that security
I still like their hardware. But let’s not pretend that there is any part of Trump’s body that he won’t kiss and sell out his customers for. If Trump asked Cook to put a backdoor in iPhones or impose tariffs on Apple, Cook would do it in a minute
Cook couldn't personally put that backdoor in himself though. There would (presumably) be Apple employees who would blow the whistle if they received such a command.
In today’s market? You see how many tech workers have shut up about protesting every little thing inside large companies with all of the layoffs happening?
I have been cocky for 30 heads with the thought that I could always find a job quickly - and have even in 2023 (3 offers within 2 weeks) after being Amazoned and in 2024 (just replied to one recruiter the day after a layoff). But even I shut up and keep my head down these days. As long as we ain’t killing kids, I am not saying anything.
Apple's ad revenue was 1% of its total in 2024. It was estimated to be 2-3% in 2025.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2024-q4/FY24_Q4_Consol...
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/10/30/apple-4q-2025-earnings/
Their net profit was a little over $100 billion last fiscal year. They get $20 Billion+ in pure profit from Google being their default search engine.
That’s 20% of their profit
Google paying Apple to be the default search engine is not the same as Apple selling $20 billion worth of ads to track you.
The point is that Apple will make money any way that it can, including ads. That's why iOS privacy is worse than its competitors. You can't install an app without telling Apple because if you could, Apple wouldn't be able to monetize you as well. You can't get your location without also telling Apple because if you could, Apple wouldn't be able to build its location services as easily. No such problems on Android.
As long as you don’t count the $25 billion that Apple gets from Google.
That seems like a stretch. Even in Europe where people can choose to use different app stores, few people actually do. So few, in fact, that one of the alternative app stores recently shut down.
Have you considered that people just like Apple's products and services?
What does whether they’d go bankrupt or not have to do with whether they’re an ad company?
They sell third party ads: companies unaffiliated with Apple pay Apple to advertise on Apple platforms.
They’re an ad company. Just because it’s currently a small slice of their total revenue doesn’t make it untrue.
What matters is that the parent comment said “Apple is an ad company now,” as if that negated all the privacy and security stuff they do.
Making some cash on ads doesn’t have to rely on targeted tracking. That only matters if ads are an existential part of your business, and without huge ad revenue growth, your company is dead.
I guess it’s also a financial company, since they have a branded credit card?
Well that’s what Americans voted for. So I don’t think anyone cares that every CEO (definitely not just Tim Cook) is schmoozing with Trump.
> Well that’s what Americans voted for.
Americans are not one person.
> So I don’t think anyone cares
Clearly they do.
> every CEO (definitely not just Tim Cook) is schmoozing with Trump.
Tim Cook was (supposedly) principled. I guess it's hard to pretend that you care about privacy or human rights while eating dinner next to bin Salman.
> Tim Cook was (supposedly) principled. I guess it's hard to pretend that you care about privacy or human rights while eating dinner next to bin Salman.
I guess if you thought he had principles then yeah that could be disappointing. Personally I've never tried to moralize corporations though, I just assume the only principle that every company and CEO operates by is whatever increases the stock price.
Funny that you think that people have free will under this zombie social media mind controlled Internet world we’re living in.
Besides Trump‘s approval ratings are worse than ever so I don’t think people really got what they wanted, they got who they voted for not what they voted for.
You know what's even cooler? Apple's commitment to hiding US federally-mandated backdoors for dragnet surveillance: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
Apple has since confirmed in a statement provided to Ars that the US federal government “prohibited” the company “from sharing any information,” but now that Wyden has outed the feds, Apple has updated its transparency reporting and will “detail these kinds of requests” in a separate section on push notifications in its next report.I claim bs at this whole apple privacy thing, nothing but propaganda.
Two years ago I was locked out of my MacBook pro.
Then I just booted in some recovery mode and just..reset the password!?
Sure macos logged me off from (most) apps and website, but every single file was there unencrypted!
I swear people that keep boasting that whole apple privacy thing have absolutely no clue what they are talking about, nothing short of tech illiterate charlatans. But God the propaganda works.
And don't start me on iMessage.
You chose not to enable FileVault during setup. Probably because you were worried about being locked out and wanted an easy way to reset the password.
Would you prefer that Apple did not give you the option to disable the security feature you disabled during setup?
All while slowly stuffing (more?) ads into their software.
In a lot of ways Apple is as aligned to data privacy the same way other "platforms" are: to gatekeep the user data behind their ad service. It's better than selling your data, maybe, but you're still being tracked and monitored.
The worst part is since Apple is technically not a 3rd party, many of the rules don’t apply to them even though they bring the same harm to the users. Did you notice the new “creative suite” has analytics with identities linked to your Apple account turned on by defend? Free Pages/Numbers is not so free anymore.
> Apple's commitment to privacy
We know now that it was all marketing talk. Apple didn’t like Meta so they spun a bunch of obstacles. Apple has and would use your data for ads, models and anything that keeps the shareholders happy. And we don’t know the half of the story where as a US corp, they’re technically obliged to share data from the not-E2EE iCloud syncs of every iPhone.
I still like to encourage people to watch all of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U&t=1993s for the details (from Apple’s head of Security Engineering and Architecture) about how iCloud is protected by HSMs, rate limits, etc. but especially the timelinked section. :)