The "ads" aren't even nearly as intrusive as the author (who works for Microsoft - a company whose operating system basically spies on you non-stop, including sending binaries you run to MS, command line commands, etc) suggests. They make it sound like using an iPhone means being constantly assailed with ads. That's not even remotely true.
I switched to iOS over a year ago. I don't use any of Apple's paid services. I tried Apple Music under their free three month trial; I was totally unimpressed with the featureset and deactivated it. I think in 6 months I've gotten two, maybe three notifications with offers to re-subscribe. The offers were more and more generous.
I use iTunes and Apple Pay, and I can't remember the last time I saw an ad. When I added my cards to Apple Pay, I saw the "sign up for Apple Card" button. I didn't give it more than a second thought, and Apple hasn't "said a word" about Apple Card since. That card, by the way, has one of the strictest personal-data-usage policies of any credit card in the US. They also do something no other CC company does: automatically rotate the CCV code every time the card is used in Apple Pay.
If Apple is so hell-bent on selling their services, why do they have the world's least-painful instant sharing tool that works without even a network connection or any additional apps? I can instantly send a contact, photo, file, whatever to someone else with an iPhone.
If Apple is so hell-bent on selling their services, why do they make it possible to, with one click, automatically and completely painlessly sync your music, photos, videos, and do complete device backups, over WiFi to a Mac or PC, no iCloud subscription required? You don't get pestered in any way when you click that button, by the way.
I use Nextcloud for file sync. It's very tightly integrated into Apple Files; I don't need iCloud for anything. Never get pestered to subscribe to it. Haven't seen an ad for iCloud, ever.
My phone does dictation offline, and if I were on a newer model, Siri would work offline too. The Photos app does some magic like showing me how many Damn Cat Photos I take, but it happens entirely on-device.
Every single Apple-provided App has the same privacy controls as third party apps. Don't want Notes to use your location? Done. Don't want Maps using cellular data, for some reason? Done.
There's also stuff that's just straight-up bullshit. I've never seen an ad in the settings pages. When I bought my phone and synced it for the first time, my music was immediately visible, not "hidden" or blank like they suggest. iTunes isn't even "open" most of the time; I get in the car, iTunes starts playing, I interact with it via steering wheel controls or the lock screen controls.
The article is so bizarre. The author is a senior iOS developer for MS so they damn well know everything I just said; this blog entry seems to be purposefully misrepresenting how the OS behaves.
Way for the author to bury the lede. Nowhere in that diatribe is the word "Microsoft". You have to go to the About link to find that info. How many people do that?
On the contrary, any reasonable Android device lets you disable far more tracking than iOS. On iOS, you cannot get your location without telling Apple or install an app without telling Apple. You cannot even use your phone without an Apple account. No such problem on Android.
2) You're right. It looks like it's possible to set up an iOS device without an Apple ID, but you obviously won't be able to install any apps. I couldn't find a list of what does work if you don't enter an Apple ID during setup.
» any reasonable Android device lets you disable far more tracking than iOS
I have used Android for a decade now. I recently got a Poco X3 pro. Having had a chance to use MIUI, I immediately unlocked the bootloader and installed Lineage. Nobody uses open camera. I joined a telegram community and installed Google Camera which allowed me access to things like night mode and wide angle lens. If I wanted to use purely AOSP, I'd lose access to the wide angle lens on my phone as far as I can tell.
> the author (who works for Microsoft - a company whose operating system basically spies on you non-stop, including sending binaries you run to MS, command line commands, etc)
macOS does this too. For now it appears mostly possible to disable, although disabling some parts may require you to set up a DNS blackhole.
There's also some software on macOS that you simply cannot install without an Apple ID, because the App Store is the only way to get it. And setting up an Apple ID on macOS doesn't just require an email address, but also a credit card (with billing address) and a verified phone number.
That Apple can seriously be considered a user privacy-oriented company by anyone is a pitiful joke.
> It turns out that in the current version of the macOS, the OS sends to Apple a hash (unique identifier) of each and every program you run, when you run it. Lots of people didn’t realize this, because it’s silent and invisible and it fails instantly and gracefully when you’re offline, but today the server got really slow and it didn’t hit the fail-fast code path, and everyone’s apps failed to open if they were connected to the internet.
> Because it does this using the internet, the server sees your IP, of course, and knows what time the request came in. An IP address allows for coarse, city-level and ISP-level geolocation, and allows for a table that has the following headings:
> Date, Time, Computer, ISP, City, State, Application Hash
Would anyone care to actually make an argument how celebrating an OS that phones home about every application you run, all but forces you to create online accounts, and pushes you to store your data on the cloud as ‘pro-privacy’ because its chief competitor is truly outrageously bad does not speak to a serious degradation in our privacy standards?
MacOS and iOS do not "force" or "all but force" you to create online accounts, neither pushes you to use iCloud, and "sends a hash of the binary's cert issuer" is not even remotely the same thing as MS sending the actual binary to themselves.
You have made numerous incorrect statements in this discussion. Please stop.
> MacOS and iOS do not "force" or "all but force" you to create online accounts
How many times in the macOS install/setup wizard do you have to opt out of persistently sending data to Apple or enabling a cloud service? I can think of at least two (analytics and Siri). Do any of them hit you with a pop-up to ask if you're really sure?
What macOS installation media does Apple offer for download to users who do not have Apple accounts?
How many free apps can you download from the Mac App Store before it tells you you need an Apple ID?
> neither pushes you to use iCloud
The macOS default is literally to nag you to ‘start using iCloud’ forever, from the moment you sign in with an Apple ID. This has been so for years now (since Catalina). And it's still that way: https://osxdaily.com/2021/10/30/dont-use-icloud-how-to-remov...
> Okay, but I still don't see any actual forcing. Dark patterns -- indisputably yes. But forcing? Not really.
This is what I meant by ‘all but forcing’, but I can understand how some people might feel that language is too strong. In some ways, that language might be more appropriate for what Microsoft does with, e.g., the Windows installer, where you have to perform installation without network access in order to be provided with the option to log in with a local account rather than a Microsoft account. In others, Microsoft lets users do more without an account, since you can use the MS Store for free apps without an account (or could the last time I used it). Imo, both are awful.
> Oh, and at least you can opt out of data collection.
That's true for at least some forms of data collection, and that's a good thing for sure.
Thanks; it does really feel like they're pushing the "Apple puts 'ads' for its own services in its own apps" (something...every...app..does?) to distract from the fact that iOS offers extensive privacy controls. Their employer no doubt finds the increasingly strict privacy controls pretty annoying.
Apple offering a lot of functionality that "competes" with their cloud services really takes the wind out of their "APPLE IS TRYING TO FORCE YOU TO USE THEIR CLOUD" nonsense.
I switched to iOS over a year ago. I don't use any of Apple's paid services. I tried Apple Music under their free three month trial; I was totally unimpressed with the featureset and deactivated it. I think in 6 months I've gotten two, maybe three notifications with offers to re-subscribe. The offers were more and more generous.
I use iTunes and Apple Pay, and I can't remember the last time I saw an ad. When I added my cards to Apple Pay, I saw the "sign up for Apple Card" button. I didn't give it more than a second thought, and Apple hasn't "said a word" about Apple Card since. That card, by the way, has one of the strictest personal-data-usage policies of any credit card in the US. They also do something no other CC company does: automatically rotate the CCV code every time the card is used in Apple Pay.
If Apple is so hell-bent on selling their services, why do they have the world's least-painful instant sharing tool that works without even a network connection or any additional apps? I can instantly send a contact, photo, file, whatever to someone else with an iPhone.
If Apple is so hell-bent on selling their services, why do they make it possible to, with one click, automatically and completely painlessly sync your music, photos, videos, and do complete device backups, over WiFi to a Mac or PC, no iCloud subscription required? You don't get pestered in any way when you click that button, by the way.
I use Nextcloud for file sync. It's very tightly integrated into Apple Files; I don't need iCloud for anything. Never get pestered to subscribe to it. Haven't seen an ad for iCloud, ever.
My phone does dictation offline, and if I were on a newer model, Siri would work offline too. The Photos app does some magic like showing me how many Damn Cat Photos I take, but it happens entirely on-device.
Apple lets you turn off all sorts of data collection that Android doesn't. You'll never see a screen like this in Android: https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare...
Every single Apple-provided App has the same privacy controls as third party apps. Don't want Notes to use your location? Done. Don't want Maps using cellular data, for some reason? Done.
There's also stuff that's just straight-up bullshit. I've never seen an ad in the settings pages. When I bought my phone and synced it for the first time, my music was immediately visible, not "hidden" or blank like they suggest. iTunes isn't even "open" most of the time; I get in the car, iTunes starts playing, I interact with it via steering wheel controls or the lock screen controls.
The article is so bizarre. The author is a senior iOS developer for MS so they damn well know everything I just said; this blog entry seems to be purposefully misrepresenting how the OS behaves.