Comment by kennywinker

2 days ago

Apple is the classic “good king”. By and large they have used their power in ways that benefit users. Other than enriching apple, there’s been no direct or apparent harm to the end user from the walled garden. I know that is a controversial point, but harms we don’t ever know about are pretty hard to get upset about.

But the “good” king never lasts. They’re always eventually replaced by a despot, and all the power you ceded to the “good” king falls into the hands of the bad king. Which is why ceding that power is a bad idea, and kings are a terrible system of government.

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kennywinker

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cowpig  2 days ago

Their business model revolves around people to choose to pay them for products, which aligns them with customer interests on a fundamental level. They have to work within those constraints when they engage in lock-in chicanery

Most of the other big tech companies make their revenue from other companies paying them to leverage the influence they have over their users. So they are not constrained in the same way.

I believe that most Googlers are pretty aligned with the principles of the HN crowd, but Google the machine is not.

chermi  2 days ago

Please explain what makes them good? They make a better product than most, but they also charge more than most. That's just a business model.

  • raddan  2 days ago

    For one thing, Apple has tended to focus on privacy at the expense of profit. Apple could certainly be monetizing all of their user data. Now more than ever. It's not just businesses that want your data to sell you stuff, it's the hyperscalers wanting to funnel it into AI training.

    Apple is not perfect, by any means. I recently had a conversation with a former Apple employee about how they employ differential privacy internally. This former employee was upset about Apple's interpretation of one parameter ("privacy budget"), but the fact that we're having this conversation at all is a positive. Google, despite being an early adopter of differential privacy, is on the other side of the privacy spectrum: virtually everything they provide is intended to capture what you do on- or off-line.

    I will pay a premium for Apple stuff for this, and other reasons. I do wish they were more developer-friendly, however. Enough so that every time I buy a new computer I have to run through the mental calculus of whether I'd rather fight with the cathedral or the bazaar. I recently bought a new computer and the cathedral won the last round.

    • curt15  2 days ago

      >For one thing, Apple has tended to focus on privacy at the expense of profit.

      A company reveals its priorities when it is forced to make inconvenient choices. What privacy compromises did the CCP force out of Apple in exchange for doing business in China?

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  • kennywinker  2 days ago

    In this case i am using “good” to mean “not actively hostile towards users”. Yes they are more expensive, but many people are happy to pay a premium to get a premium product. Like going to a fancy restaurant and getting good food. Google’s version is like going to a less-fancy restaurant and getting less-good food but also they sell photos of you eating to TMZ.