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Comment by fezfight | Hacker News Reader

Feels more like their standard move, lock out competitors so they can control it for their own profit.

Not that I mind them fucking with advertisers, but let's not pretend Apple is benevolent here.

They aren't benevolent but there is such a thing as a mutually beneficial relationship. I'm fine with people making money off advertisement as long as they aren't selling my data directly and the number of companies I trust to do that is very low. In a lot of ways targeted ads and the like can be beneficial, it's about connecting people selling something the the people who want/need that thing, the problem is when data companies can just hoover up or buy that data and do gross things with it.

I don't trust any company to do it because:

* Even the competent companies have data leaks.

* Even the competent companies will give it up if their government comes knocking.

* Even a company which is relatively ethical now might someday be taken over by nickle-and-dime management.

That's fine, but then you shouldn't give your info to apple at all. Or google, or facebook, or microsoft, or amazon, or ycombinator, for that matter. The fact is, unless you want to be a luddite (which you aren't, you're here, with an account, at least) then you have to trust at least some of these companies. So the question is, which ones can generally be trusted, and which can't? I personally trust apple more than facebook, ycombinator more than amazon, etc. Your ordering might be different, and that's fine, but you're drawing a bright line there, which only hurts yourself.

> So the question is, which ones can generally be trusted, and which can't?

Let's see... pretty much any of the companies listed as PRISM-compliant back during the Snowden leaks?

It's fun to be pedantic about security, but Facebook and Apple both phone home to the NSA at the end of the day. Quibbling about these differences is a zero-sum game, since FAANG's lowest common denominator is total surveillance.

Not sure if you're aware, but this is the classic tu quoque fallacy on display.

I don't think we need to trust these entities in order to interact with them. Unfortunately some information has to be leaked to engage with modern society, it is just a matter of trying to minimize it to the extent possible. It isn't trust, it is an exchange.

Companies need to increase revenue, so even if they don't do it right now there is no guarantee they will not.

This position doesn't even make any sense.

- Google has a monopoly on ads on Google Search.

- Facebook has a monopoly on ads on Facebook, Instagram etc.

- Apple has a monopoly on ads on App Store, News+ etc.

Every company has a monopoly on ads on their own properties.

The issue is Apple considers anything running on an iphone to be their property.

Have you ever used a Nintendo Switch?

No you can get a developer license and run anything you like.

That costs 100 dollars a year. And you can't share what you made with anyone without getting Apples permission.

They have consciously chosen to give up dozens of billions in potential revenue, because it would be against their customer's interests. That's got to count for something.

Not recalling AirTags until the privacy implications are fixed, says otherwise.

Tile predated AirTags for nearly a decade and is still worse on privacy today. If you want to argue that consumer-level trackers shouldn't exist, that's fine, but it's not at all unique to Apple.

Personally I don't think it's a solvable problem, and they shouldn't exist at all.

Tile never became ubiquitous though - but yes, I agree, if it can't be done in a way that can be abused, it shouldn't be a product.

But money talks, and Apple have decided they're comfortable with the risks because it's another brick in their ecosystem wall, and makes them money.

Any half-competent EE can throw together the equivalent of a Tile or AirTag with off the shelf parts nowadays. That genie is out of the bottle and has been for years and years

They can - but that's a higher barrier than "Pay $35".

you can go to AliExpress and pay less than $35 if you just want to creepily track people

And now you don't have to - and don't have to wait 30 days for it to be shipped to you from China.

> yes, I agree, if it can't be done in a way that can be abused, it shouldn't be a product.

What about knives, alcohol, cars, escooters, power tools, rope, bleach?

These are all products that can be abused. Should they also not exist?

There will always be a new product that can be abused. Education and threat of punishment keep a lot of people from abusing them. The same can be true for AirTags.

It can be both true that they have potential privacy problems with a product, and that they have given up dozens of billions in potential revenue due to privacy concerns.

The article is literally about them successfully locking out their competitors and moving in on those billions for themselves.

The article posted by a business entity with an agenda of its own, you mean?

It’s but one of many subjective takes by someone who earns through clicks, grabbing attention, instigating circular discourse online.

I have no obligation to support this author’s position, OR Apple’s rhetoric. I judge on the technical implementation; Apple earns through hardware sales and fees for services charged directly to service users.

Whether you agree with the price they set for those things is irrelevant; technically speaking the bulk of their revenue comes from hardware sales and direct charges for services.

Their competitors could do that too. They could charge for a phone and take a cut for app distribution, sell storage services. They don’t, because they don’t want to compete with Apple; they want the public and courts to force Apple to change.

That they went a different way of generating revenue and it bit them in the ass is not Apple's problem. Those businesses made their choices.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. All this rhetoric about those “poor” wealthy businesses being screwed by Apple are actually mad they picked the wrong path to revenue.

Apple and Google held back generations of children who got phones instead of computers. They did this for profit. They should be fined for contributing to the delinquency of minors.

All the whining about whose sports team is best belittles the tremendous disservice these profit seeking monsters have done throughout the advent of true portable computing.

Except that Apple not only hasn't done that, but has created ad network APIs and processes to support "competitors".

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwo...

As the article points out this is almost certainly about advertising within their own sites, apps and stores. In which case competing and networks are irrelevant.

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