Comment by krustyburger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by krustyburger | Hacker News Reader

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When consumers decide that Apple products are no longer worth a significant premium for their design, their ease of use and the company’s acknowledgement of the existence of such a thing as user privacy (and I sincerely doubt this will happen for a very long time, if ever), they will stop selling so many products and their market share will shrink and so will their market capitalization.

As someone who dislikes Apple, you’ll be pleased to know that their stock price could go all the way back down to levels as low as the ones that obtained before Steve Jobs returned as CEO. In fact, their shares could hypothetically go all the way to zero as the company failed completely.

Even in this preposterous (and tremendously implausible) scenario, Apple would be a company that failed as it tried to sell physical products and continued to go to battle for the privacy rights of its users.

And this is the company that disgusts you? Not the ones who profit by using dark patterns to monetize every misbehavior and bad habit of their users?

Oh please, Apple is a hardware company and that's why their profits don't require the exploitation of user data, otherwise they would be doing it. I mean, they exploit the natural resources of the planet and 3rd world slaves to make completely unserviceable devices ridden with planned obsolescence, so why wouldn't they exploit your user data if they needed to?

I'm not saying that other tech companies are any better, I'm saying that Apple, being the richest and most successful, should be pioneering change in the tech sector on all fronts, but most importantly social and environmental.

You make a fair point. I’m also aware that their pivot toward emphasizing user privacy smacks of opportunism. Not only because they are a hardware company, as you say, but because their rivals had left the territory completely virgin.

But even given this motive, I view privacy as the single most important issue in the tech industry at this time. I therefore am very glad that at least one powerful company is making a stand against the most nefarious practices of the others. So Apple will have my loyalty in my purchases as a consumer until they move away from the positions they have staked out. And, I hope the market will continue to reward them handsomely for what they are doing.

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