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  • Security theater: All you stuff is encrypted but they have the decryption keys

    Proprietary App Store: The apps and the store itself are proprietary and I don't trust Apple.

    Gaslighting their customers: Images shared with Android users from iPhone are purposely crushed to a unreviewable quality. The idea is to convince people that Android takes terrible photographs.

    • From recent experience: They read your screen which means the government reads your screen as well. Its okay. if you’re doing nothing illegal, you have nothing to hide! All history books that could tell you otherwise are paywalled anyway!

    • About "Security theater": you can enable what's called "Advanced Data Protection" so the encryption keys are only stored on-device for most types of data including photos, backups and also notes for example. Mail and calendar is one exception that comes to mind, but you could also always use a different mail and calendar service. This is a fairly recent feature, so you may have missed it. Sure, it's not your fully self-hosted "cloud" on which you can audit every single line of code and whatnot, but it might actually be the best "compromise" of ease-of-use vs. privacy for many people outside the tech bubble we're in in this community.

      About "Proprietary App Store": the store itself and many apps on there are proprietary, but there are a lot of open source apps on the App Store as well. The bigger problem is the fact that the App Store is the only (hassle-free) way to install apps to the iPhone and only recently the EU seems to change that with alternative storefronts now emerging, but Apple is limiting the use of them to the EU, so they're essentially doing the bare minimum to comply with EU law.

      About "Gaslighting their customers": I'd like to see hard proof on that. I think what you're talking about is the fact that messages sent to Android users using the default "Messages" app are sent as MMS, which is an ancient technology and as such only support tiny, low-quality images. Android doesn't support iMessage and Apple seems to like to keep it that way as it's apparently selling a lot of iPhones this way in the US (and sure, I agree that's a bad thing). It does get better with the just-announced RCS support (a supposedly open protocol which Google added so many proprietary extensions to you can't really call it open anymore) so pictures can be send in full quality to Android users using the Messages app. Also, you could always use a third-party messenger like Signal or WhatsApp and send full-quality pictures just fine.

      I'm not saying there aren't any concerns, but some of the information you provided is at least out of date.

      • Android doesn’t support iMessage

        I think it's the inverse: iMessage doesn't support Android.

        Those aren't equivalent statements; the first implies that something about Android makes it impossible for Apple to produce an iMessage client for it when that is purely a business decision on Apple's part.

      • About "Security theater":

        keep in mind that companies can lie on how their stuff works, also I don't think the nature of the store matters, as much as the fact that you're only allowed to get the open source apps from there which will also run on top of a proprietary OS, with proprietary firmware

        Gaslighting their customers": I'd like to see hard proof on that

        Consider that I have a low standard on what a hard proof should be,.. I consider telling people that : "Privacy, that's iPhone", while literally developing nothing in the open, which is the best and ONLY way to guarantee transparency, instead they went with the "trust me bruh" method, plus they display ads... like.....they have... a.. dedicated.. ad .. platform...

        You don't respect my Privacy while you target me with ads

      • Regarding gaslighting: See Apple’s response on the CSAM backdoor shit show. All the critics were wrong, including the various advocacy groups.

    • And in addition they run big adverts on caring about privacy, while in reality they do the same shit as all the other tech companies, but just use their monopoly power to push out surveillance advertisement competitors.

  • Seeing as no-one's answering the question in terms of privacy (although I agree with their sentiment)

    Trust. You have to trust that they will respect your privacy. They actually talk a good game, are probably superior in privacy to the average android (but not GrapheneOS or Linux) in so much as they fend off other entities trying to hoover your data, mostly so they have exclusive access (at least to metadata, actual data may currently even be secure but that can change and possession is nine tenths and all that). At the end of the day, they're a greedy mega-corporation and cannot be trusted if they need to keep that line going up this quarter. I much prefer transparent systems that keep me in control and possession of my data.

    I like their hardware, excellent build quality (shame about long term support and e-waste though). Will probably pick up a cheap M1 Air once Asahi linux stabilises.

    • Yes, thank you for answering the privacy issue. To be honest, I use Apple products but not so much iCloud. I’m in the Proton ecosystem and I’m waiting for Firefox to become less terrible than it currently is, otherwise in the meantime I’m using Safari with AdGuard...

  • Few reasons, first is this:

    . Seems like as long as something has a clean interface, or it looks shiny enough, then all its privacy faults are overlooked.

    Apple also seems to intentionally cultivate and sell their products as privacy-friendly, which is clearly not the case (see image above).

    2nd reason is that I had an iphone 2g (one of the first models, I forget which one), and it had bluetooth support. An iOS update broke it, and when I reached out to apple, they lied to me and told me my device had no bluetooth module at all. They're one of the worst offenders of planned obsolescence, and have become one of the richest companies on the planet because of it.

    3rd reason: they sell overpriced products to mainly to high-income imperial-core consumers, selling an image of "upper-class professional". Look at a graph of iOS market share worldwide, vs its market share in the richest countries. Apple didn't even bother to condescend to make affordable products for the global south.

    The markup on iphones is something outrageous, like 40% of the purchase price is going to the shareholders of apple, not the workers who built the phones. By buying apple, you are mainly supporting these wealthy parasites. Its also why other smartphone brands have higher performance at half the cost of iphones. They really bank on the fact that they're selling an upper-class identity, and less of a phone.

    4th reason: Their ecosystem is locked down in such a way as to make it difficult for open source development. iirc apple won't even let you use the GPL for any app on their app store.

  • Major privacy issues that come to mind include:

    • App store lock-in on iOS combined with terms incompatible with the GPL mean that some of the most privacy-respecting software cannot be distributed for Apple's mobile devices.
    • Apple proposed, but ultimately did not implement client-side scanning for end-to-end encrypted cloud storage. That such a thing even made it to the public proposal stage shows either incompetence (unlikely) or a lack of serious commitment to privacy (more likely). Apple's proposal may have emboldened EU regulators who are trying to mandate client-side scanning for encrypted chat apps.
    • Browser engine lock-in on iOS means hardened third-party browsers are unavailable.
    • The popularity of Apple's platform-exclusive iMessage service in the USA may be hindering adoption of cross-platform encrypted messaging. On the other hand, without it perhaps most of its current users would use SMS, which is obviously worse.

  • Anti-consumer shit like crazy pricing, doing everything they can to discourage repairs, going after third party parts/accessories/service, and how locked down their OSes are. Also, it's ridiculous that they don't have any sort of real enterprise management and IT has to rely on third party stuff (ironic given how Apple can be about third party stuff sometimes).

  • Locked down proprietary ecosystem that lacks basic support for open standards.

    No thanks

    • Worst relation price - performance, you pay design not features
    • Apple is own by Apple, never by the user
    • Not share-friendly with other phones or systems; you are locked within the Apple world, you can't even download a simple mp3 without installing first the iTunes app.
    • Almost not repairable
    • It's the closest of all closed source, hermetic against all out of the Apple ecosystem.
    • Not more private than other

  • Mostly their marketing practices. They are designed well but mostly designed to keep you locked in one way or another.

    For me, their desktop is not as intuitive as people make it seem and lacks simple shortcuts that most other desktops have.

    On mobile, its the restriction of customization and options. They are getting better at customizing but still limit you on options for anything outside of their apps. They claim to be private but follow similar practices as other companies, just in a more quite way with better PR.

  • Forcing me to keep updating my OS version, even though it probably isnt that necessary (yes like Windows). Ok there will be perks and nominal security/privacy issues but not sufficient to make me have to replace all my usual software for versions with huge bloat and zero improvement.

    The quality of build and user experience are great and def better than even top end Windows machines, but really, is that the deal maker? (I use both Mac and PC units every day.) If you look after a MBPro it will last 20+ years, but the constant 'you cant update something bc your OS is really old (High Sierra in this case) becomes a total PITA, along with battery death etc. My PCs also last a very long time and are very reliable. If they do break they are usually easier to sort out (and much cheaper).

    Genius bar is a joke. As a pretty mid range tech person I actually repaired/reinstalled a Yosemite machine myself rather than wait in excess of 14 days to get any help from them and then be charged an arm and a leg. Google was my friend. Cost? Nothing. I got a battery replacement for an old mac laptop from an independent good rep company, cost was about 25% of what Genius bar would have charged.

    My next laptop will probably be a Dell or System 76 Linux. Just to experience a fancy Linux build in a posh box.

  • Not because of their privacy choices, but because they have made it impossible for people to leave their ecosystem, and anyone outside of it can't use anything from apple (not like I would anyway)

  • When I was going through college I had to work as a Microsoft salesperson in the largest commercial shop of my country. Basically I had to sell Windows laptops and ensure every purchase had a Microsoft office attached.

    My stand was right next to Apple's and I had a lot of Apple fan boys tease me saying how superior Apple hardware was, how fast and secure everything is. I felt that by having no experience with Apple devices I was not doing my work properly, I couldn't personally disprove their experiences and opinions with my own. I ended up buying a 13 inch MacBook pro for 1300 euros, I believe. Since I worked at the shop they gave me a considerable discount, I'm unsure what the actual retail price was but certainly at least 1800 euros.

    I felt robbed, to be honest. Using an Unix like system was nice, I always loved posix shells. Everything else was honesty a terrible experience. Why the hell do I need xcode to do anything? Why does git depend on xcode? Why is xcode no longer available for my machine directly from the store? Why is the store sooooo damn slow? Why am I forced to use Safari's garbage engine, regardless of the browser I choose?

    I understand the appeal of having an entire ecosystem of devices that play nice together but MacOS was the only operative system I tried that would actually get on the way of doing work for me personally. For 1300 euros I could have gotten a beast windows laptop at the time, with a nice dedicated GPU instead of that Intel integrated garbage card that can barely play a YouTube video without full speed fans.

    A couple of months ago I ended up installing EndeavourOS on this MacBook and it honestly brought this laptop back to life. So much faster and I can finally go back to installing up to date browsers! I have full Java stack running on an up to date intellij IDE and it works nice. A little slow, sure, but fast enough to get work done on emergencies. No more eternal spinning wheel loops.

    Hate is a very strong word, I don't hate Apple. I just would not buy or recommend anyone to buy any of their products. They're pretty, tho!

214 comments