[pwinnski]

Apple has two values in conflict with each other, I think. On the one hand, they want to deliver best-in-class solutions. On the other hand, they have a commitment to user privacy[0] as perhaps only a gay man growing up in the south might value.

Siri should be better! It lost features post-acquisition by Apple, and it seems like user privacy is why.

Home automation is arguable. If you consider a single point of failure on a server somewhere to be bad, Apple's solution is pretty great. Their commitment to zigging where others zagged put them behind, since hardware vendors didn't want to put in powerful (expensive) enough chips to handle the cryptography, but while other companies go out of business, or transmit images and video to external parties, Apple's works reliably and securely.

Still, as with most of my complaints about Apple, it's a trade-off between privacy and functionality, and Apple will seemingly always choose privacy over functionality, even as Google consistently chooses functionality over privacy.

[0] Yes, there are examples of edge cases that suggest a less-than-perfect record. Contrast that with their competitors, for which invading privacy is foundational to the business model.

[sliken]

Up until recently I'd have agreed on Apple's.

Increasingly Apple seem to be blocking tracking, noteably from facebook, to make the most profit of that tracking. I've read claims that apple made between $5B and $20B on advertising in 2022. It's far from clear that Apple's view on privacy is going to stay the same.

[pwinnski]

That they're blocking tracking is still privacy-focused. There are unsubstantiated claims that they exempt themselves from the same tracking, but reports of their advertising revenue doesn't contribute anything to those claims.

At Apple's scale, it's relatively easy for them to deliver $20B in ad revenue without any privacy-invading means.

People seem to have forgotten, but ads used to be based on context, so people looking at apps related to fitness might see ads related to fitness, but that wouldn't follow them around when they looked at other things. Apple still seems to be doing that; I haven't seen fitness ads on games, or game ads on fitness apps.