Somehow Apple maintains this perception that they make money on the hardware and therefore are trustworthy because they don't have any interests hostile to their users.

But when you look at what's really happening it's clear - they have a highly hostile interest to their users - they want to lock them into the ecosystem and then rent seek like crazy on services that their users have almost no choice but to buy.

This is why I love Apple products but I only buy the open ones that leave me choice to do what I want - which pretty much means I'm only buying Macbooks these days.

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matthewaveryusa an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Can you elaborate? I own an iphone and pay for zero apple services. I imagine you’re thinking icloud? I have my phone backed up on the 5 gigs they give for free. photos is where data gets heavy. I previously ran things on google photos and paid, but recently moved to immich — either way it’s zero bucks for apple.

wrt hostility: they’re the most privacy focused phone provider out there (which is why they can’t produce an llm from user data)

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PlatoIsADisease 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Walled Garden is marketing speak. Walled Prison is the reality.

Its always been like this, but I don't think their target demographic cares. I remember 10 years ago I heard something like: "Iphone, the phone your mom uses." Not that its accurate. Blows my mind VIPs use iphones after Pegasus.. How could these people be so unaware?

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msy 6 hours ago | parent [-]

iPhones, particularly with the advanced security/hardening turned on are light years in front of Android devices for protection against advanced/sophisticated actors. Which is why VIPs use iPhones.

Apple responded to Pegasus with Lockdown Mode, which is probably the most hardcore security modality that's ever shipped in mass produced consumer hardware.

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matheusmoreira 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Apparently Cellebrite is able to crack open iPhones but not phones running GrapheneOS. There's no doubt iPhones are reasonably secure but I wouldn't say they have "the most hardcore security".

	▲	xethos 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		This cuts both ways - ADP requires changing some settings on-device, and (in some cases I've heard) calling Apple to disable. So it is baked in, but it's hardly easy to enable and disable GrapheneOS (which, FWIW, I do trust at least as much as ADP) has a web-installer IIRC, making it similarly easy to enable, but a little harder to disable for normal users. Moreover, it's not built-in to the Pixel. It's entirely third-party, and did not ship on mass-market hardware Being an option on the default OS, with OEM support, can make all the difference sometimes

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PlatoIsADisease 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Empirical evidence doesn't support this. IIRC the bounty for an Android exploit is 500k more than an iphone... Let alone the number of people killed from an Android exploit is... 0? Iphone is at least at 1... Let alone the 1000 other VIPs.

Induction says, its dangerous to have an iphone. There is no deduction based answer here that has been validated by experiment.