Comment by jackstraw42

15 days ago

Apple has made policy changes and changes to the app store to make it clearer which apps to avoid. Apple really cares about my privacy, or they tell me they do and I believe them. I think they do because they know how important brand loyalty is to their customers. It's pretty much the thing Apple lives on, never losing the customer's trust. Google clearly leaves it more or less up to nature.

>Apple really cares about my privacy, or they tell me they do and I believe them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

  • I am aware. I've been around a while.

    I'm not worried about nation-state surveillance. What I am worried about is all the keyloggers on kids' Android phones these days, since I've seen a shady game company or two in my day.

To be honest, Apple lives on their walled ecosystem and people fanboying them.

I am sure that you aren't a fanboy but I would be skeptical of any company saying that they value about your privacy when the recent debacle went on.

Like hear me out, Apple encryption was being backdoored and the only reason that it got leaked was by a whistleblower and it was illegal for apple to even discuss it.

So chances are, that if that whistleblower hadn't leaked, I am not sure if he's facing jail time or not and if Apple wanted to live in the UK which I am sure they are, then they most likely would've enforced a backdoor.

Would we be any better knowing it? Like when a company's profits incentives is affected because a country wants them to have a backdoor in secret closed doors and not even reveal to the public...

I wonder how many other backdoors there are that we just don't know of y'know.

So I wouldn't say that they care about your privacy. They show that they care about your privacy because that's become a USP to them and quite frankly, after this whole scene, I am not sure how they can prove that back.

The only thing that's literally not tracking you is open source for the most part. That is the only thing and f-droid takes open source apps.

There are even games on f-droid but yes I know that games are just a weird niche which has a lot of malware/exploitative. I hope that more people can create open source games and we can contribute to them along the way.

Whenever, there is a company involved, Deep down, they care about themselves and not you, they really care about the shareholders,everything else is temporary imo.

But there are some companies run by people who have a moral spine and we need to applaud them/use them but in my opinion apple is too big to have a moral spine when they can repackage the same Iphone for god knows how long, but they are still better than google whose literally an ad company but open source graphene os with f-droid is a better option and you are showing a false dichotomy of sorts.

I hope that I can point you into better direction with graphene os + f-droid, both are open source and they are the only one I would sort of trust with my privacy because its code and the code is generally neutral, it has no incentives to sell me anything most of the times yknow. It is like clippy of sorts lol.

  • Listen, I don't disagree with any of that. I think a lot of confusion is happening because people think I'm talking about how to inform consumer choices better or what exactly about either OS to fix to make them meet the standards that I'm trying to describe. What I think is very important if not one of the most important things facing us as a species is that we need a better mobile OS option than what we have. And you don't have to convince me on GrapheneOS. I am in the process of moving to Android and F-Droid until I can afford a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS.

    What I am attempting and apparently failing to describe effectively is that this excellent option we have now (GrapheneOS + F-Droid) was in NO way accessible to any general user of mobile phones since their use has become widespread. What we have had since 2008 is two shitty options, and my point was that Apple has actively done more to keep users safe than Google has. No one seems to be arguing on that at all, but there are many people pointing out the failing of Apple's efforts over the years. Does that make them a complete failure? Absolutely not in my eyes, but I'm not going to tell you what to think.

    So, I feel like Android's ecosystem set us up for a HUGE minefield from various entry points from an American's perspective by allowing such an open system into the wild. It has been Early Access level of quality up until recently I would argue. GrapheneOS + F-Droid is safe enough to protect idiots from themselves, probably. If not now, then with time.

    How in the world anyone here is saying Google's hands-off approach was the way to go... well it is how we got our acceptable option, finally, but surely you don't think that every mobile phone company with a custom fork of Android kept its users more safe than Apple did?

    • Hm that is a fair argument in the sense that I also wish to move forward to graphene but I got a shitty redmi phone which barely works but it still has f-droid and I also want to move forward to graphene as I said.

      I mean, yes, graphene is fairly recent getting traction and I can understand why you felt that apple did a better job at saving the end user than google did.

      That is partially because imo google is essentially an ads company and there are lots of ads of spyware/malware that google does nothing about and also they are esssentially spying on you yourself for selling ads.

      Apple takes a more on hardware approach in the sense that they don't want to spy on you as much because they have less incentives to do so because they don't have an advertisement system aaas much as google y'know, so they definitely took a bite at apple = privacy which has worked for many people.

      Google bought android and android was always an open system and it had both its pros and cons. There is also an open system of marketplace called aptoid which was literally apt + android but it also might have malware sometimes and f-droid is the best option for most use cases.

      Apple had never really had an open system and it had both its pros and cons and google is seemingly shifting into it which is like a nightmare because now we have very less choices of sorts.

      And android has sort of innovated/transitioned into grapheneos for general public privacy imo.

      So, yes I do think that we are in agreement that grapheneos is now here to stay and I can understand why you atleast appreciated apple for not being as privacy invading as google for some time which you were pointing out

      We are in unison, I agree with your points. Its just that I thought that you were just fanboying over apple for the sake of it in the original comment and glad we understood each other points as really we are talking about the same thing and agreeing at essentially everything.

      Thanks for explaining your original comment better through this comment and have a nice day.

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