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Comment by fsflover

21 hours ago

> That link you provided is a "conspiracy theory," even by the author's own admission.

"Conspiracy theory" is not the same as a crazy, crackhead theory. See: Endward Snowden.

Full quote from the article:

> Mind you, this is definitionally a conspiracy theory; please don’t let the connotations of that phrase bias you, but please feel free to read this (and everything else on the internet) as critically as you wish.

> and they fixed the cleartext transmission of hardware identifiers

Have you got any links for that?

> Are you expecting perfection here? Or are you just being argumentative?

I expect basic things people should expect from a company promoting themselves as respecting privacy. And I don't expect them to be much worse than GNU/Linux in that respect (but they definitely are).

> Have you got any links for that?

It was noted at the bottom of the article as a follow up.

> I expect basic things people should expect from a company promoting themselves as respecting privacy. And I don't expect them to be much worse than GNU/Linux in that respect (but they definitely are).

The problem with the word “basic” is that it’s entirely subjective. What you consider “basic,” others consider advanced. Plus the floor has shifted over the years as threat actors have become more knowledgeable, threats more sophisticated, and technologies advanced.

Finally, the comparison to Linux doesn’t make a lot of sense. Apple provides a solution of integrated hardware, OS, and services. Linux has a much smaller scope; it’s just a kernel. If you don’t operate services, then by definition, you don’t have any transmitted data to protect. Nevertheless, if you consider the software packages that distros package alongside that kernel, I would encourage you to peruse the CVE databases to see just how many security notices have been filed against them and which remain open. It’s not all sunshine and roses over in Linux land, and never has been.