- I love Tim Cook’s stance on issues like privacy protection. But at the same time, I have a hard time understanding how Apple can continue to sign a search deal with Google while advocating privacy protection. This is simply unsustainable and hard to defend if you ask me. I know… $$$. Yet… will they ever try to make their search engine or buy one like DuckDuckGo and kick Google out as the default search engine? That would be such a powerful message to send.
- Today, Apple under Tim Cook, has never been so well positioned to represent the best corporate defender of many of my core values: privacy protection, careful attention to details in design, openness to diversity, environment protection, sustainable development, great user experiences. Apple is not perfect, far from it. Yet, there is nothing like them these days.
- Tim Cook is candidly answering the question of where he sees himself in ten years from now. I wonder what are the plans for his or her successor? Does he and Apple’s upper management actively put as much thought into it as Steve Jobs did in his last few years at Apple? I wonder and I hope this is the case.
- This interview maybe seen as a bit self-serving, yet it is what it is. We, Apple’s customers like me, pay Apple to make calls on issues like encryption and privacy protection, environmental protection, etc. That’s the way I see my voting dollars anyway. As soon as I like most of their calls, I’ll be fine and be one of their customer. I dearly hope it stays that way because alternatives are scarce to say the least.
- Is Apple playing the same rules for ALL developers? I doubt it. Is Apple’s curation of the App Store perfect? Far from it: 80% of the stuff in there is pure junk.
I own 3 YubiKeys that I have for personal use. There’s one that I keep connected to the USB hub on the desk in my study, another that I keep in my work bag, and a third that I keep in the safe at my mum’s house. Source: I Won’t Buy A YubiKey - Kev Quirk
When I read stories like this one, I’m reminded of how bad I am at managing my security posture. I depend on 1Password (less and less) and (more and more) on Apple’s Keychain. Will passkeys suppress the need for YubiKeys?
I’m dropping this here. It’s a matter of time. Mark my words.
Today, you can choose not to drive a Tesla if you don’t want Elon Musk, Inc. knowing everywhere you go.
Tomorrow, you might have to limit where you live because you won’t live in a Google Home and reconsider having 20/20 vision again in exchange for the artificial lens company seeing everything you see.
Privacy is not something you can “vote with your wallet” on. We either protect it as a human right or we lose it altogether.
👀🤔
The Password-Less Future Looks Bright and Secure
For the first in years, I just bought something from eBay. Man, this website design sucks and seems to date back to the early web. Is there anyone who cares about design at eBay? Anyway, they do care about security, though. Upon logging in with my password this morning, there was a popup asking me if I wanted to get rid of my password. I thought it was the eBay website that was about to turn on the Touch ID but instead asked me to confirm the passkey creation. It took me a confirmation with my finger on the Touch ID sensor on my M1 MacBook, and voilà, no more password required! That’s super cool.
While waiting for iCloud Private Relay...
I’m using NextDNS.io for a better web experience… not the same but it does a great job of making the web more privacy friendly and a lot faster too. Too bad that we will have to wait for iOS 15.1 or later for iCloud Private Relay. Each year there are features that get dropped from the initial release… remember iMessage in the cloud, anyone?
Joke of the day: “We believe that personalized ads and user privacy can coexist.”. 😂😂😂
Are Facetime Links Enough to compete against Zoom or Teams?
Benjamin Mayo on FaceTime 15 in the landscape of collaboration tools like Zoom and Teams:
FaceTime is more like an add-on of Messages, competing against WhatsApp and traditional phone calls if anything. You also see this in how each service handles identity; Zoom and Teams have abstracted user accounts, whereas on FaceTime you connect by sharing your personal phone number or email address — information that you only want to give out to close friends. Source: FaceTime in iOS 15 — Benjamin Mayo
Surprisingly, to use FaceTime, you need to give very personal information like your phone number of your email address… while other competing platform has abstracted that account information a long time ago. FaceTime links represent a step in the right direction, as sharing a link is enough for others to get onboard. Time will tell if this proves to be enough in the enterprise.
Is your iPhone really yours?
But the thread running through everything was that if you buy an Apple device, it’s yours. And it’s you. And if you buy, well, anything else, you’re just a slab of meat holding a slab of glass through which the internet will manipulate and extract data from you any way it wants. So, yeah, the garden’s walls may be high, but Apple says that’s only to keep you safe.
— David PierceSource: Apple defends the walled garden - Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech
Many would argue the since you cannot install apps from outside the App Store, your iPhone isn’t really yours. Others would argue that since you don’t have a choice but go to Apple to get “your” iPhone repaired, your iPhone isn’t really yours. what is “your” take on this?
I was over-simplifying quite a bit
After publishing my essay on what I was hoping Apple would do in response to the developers community, Matt Birchler wrote a small response regarding my assertion about payments processing platform being a limited feature in the grand scheme of things. It appears I was wrong. Thanks to Matt blog post, I have a better view of what goes behind the scene here.
That being said, Apple’s payment processing service within the App Store serves Apple’s purposes and is the one that is very narrow, very focused. It’s a good thing. I’m not sure Apple has to compete against this industry. Allowing third-party payment processing services would need to focus on the minimum in order to protect privacy or help guarantee that privacy is in good hands. It’s an attainable goal.
I’m Closing my Telegram Account — Here is why
First:
Apple is very efficient at pursuing their business model, which is based on selling overpriced, obsolete hardware to customers locked in their ecosystem," Durov wrote. “Every time I have to use an iPhone to test our iOS app I feel like I’m thrown back into the Middle Ages. The iPhone’s 60Hz displays can’t compete with the 120Hz displays of modern Android phones that support much smoother animations.
And:
Durov added that the worst part about Apple’s technology is not “clunkier devices or outdated hardware,” but that users who have an iPhone are a “digital slave of Apple.”
”You are only allowed to use apps that Apple lets you install via their App Store, and you can only use Apple’s iCloud to natively back up your data,” he said.
“It’s no wonder that Apple’s totalitarian approach is so appreciated by the Communist Party of China, which – thanks to Apple – now has complete control over the apps and data of all of its citizens who rely on iPhones.”
Source: Telegram founder says iPhone users are digital slaves | AppleInsider.
Mr. Durov can go to hell. Typical talk from an Android guy. Nobody his forcing him to develop for the iPhone. Nobody. He is a digital slave of Apple himself. I can’t stand this attitude and I’m voting with my digital means: closing my Telegram account.
96%. (#asknottotrack #privacy #privacyprotection)
I’m so proud of people right now: medias are reporting that 96% of them chose to protect their basic right for online privacy. I wasn’t expecting that many people to select the “Ask Not To Track” option. This is a game changer. This should serve as a clear message to businesses with business models essentially based on personal data mining and online profiling without user consent. Enough is enough. For those who are ok with hyper targeted ads, fine, but not at this cost. I salute Apple for moving forward with this feature in iOS 14.5. Coupled with services like NextDNS, I’m starting to see quite an improvement in my web surfing experience and being more at ease doing so.
Those who selected “Allow” probably didn’t know what it was all about.
On Tim Cook’s interview by Kara Swisher (#apple #timcook #privacy)
There is a lot to like in the recent Tim Cook’s interview with Kara Swisher (link to Podcast). It’s a must-listen. Here are a few observations and remarks.
I think it is important to stay critical about Apple. We must keep them on their toes.
Dear Google, this time you win (#google #YouTube)
This shouldn’t be this way. Thanks to the numerous ads, my YouTube experience was a calculated nightmare. As my usage grew in the last few weeks because of my daytime job, my time on YouTube felt light a nightmare with no end. I decided to put an end to all this by subscribing to YouTube Premium. I feel in full contradiction to my values.
YouTube Premium so much better. But it shouldn’t be this way. Yet, it is. I feel that I’m sleeping with the enemy. Tell me that it is ok, will you?
For those who likes newsletters, I’ve got one too! It’a about Apple, photography, privacy and climate change, in that order! https://numericcitizen.substack.com/p/2021-02
On the Lack of Safari’s extensions support (#apple #safariextension #browserextension)
It’s becoming quite frustrating to see Apple’s Safari not being supported for browser extensions. Safari is now reportedly supporting standard web extensions but with an Apple twist making it cumbersome for developers to add support. Apple being Apple, I think it is related to the requirement of having to download an application in order to be able to expose an extension to Safari’s engine. Thanks to privacy protection, Apple is forcing the game here, but this has real consequences.
Today is about data privacy (#privacy #dataprivacy #privacyprotection #apple)
Today, January 28th, is data privacy day. I didn’t know that. Now I know, thanks to Mr. Phillip Schiller. I paid a visit to Apple’s privacy web page. What I found is a super nicely designed page with highlights of Apple’s ecosystem privacy focused features. To me, Apple’s privacy stance is a product, not a feature.
“Privacy is a fundamental human right. At Apple, it’s also one of our core values. Your devices are important to so many parts of your life. What you share from those experiences, and who you share it with, should be up to you. We design Apple products to protect your privacy and give you control over your information. It’s not always easy. But that’s the kind of innovation we believe in.” — Apple
What is worst than Facebook? (#privacy #privacyprotection)
Apple made mandatory privacy protection “nutrition” labels on its App Store. One guy refuses to update its apps since then: Google. Maybe they are even worst than Facebook if such a thing is even possible. Was Google caught by surprise? Highly impossible. They had many months to prepare for that. When your business model highly depends on sucking all users data, it’s hard to escape suspicion.
The challenges with online speech and publishing (#socialnetworks #socialmedia #platforms)
A recent article by Benedict Evans exposes how hard it is to “fix” social networks.
“The internet and then social platforms break a lot of our definitions of different kinds of speech, and yet somehow Facebook / Google / Twitter are supposed to recreate that whole 200-year tapestry of implicit structures and consensus, and answer all of those questions, from office parks in the San Francisco Bay Area, for both the USA and Myanmar, right now. We want them to Fix It, but we don’t actually know what that means.”
I often think about issues that platforms like Facebook brings to our society. I don’t pretend to have any solution. I can’t quite define what Facebook is actually from a societal point of view. That being said, a lack of definition and understanding cannot prevent me to wish for things to be done differently. And I have one simple wish.
I want the eradication of algorithm-based feeds. I want them to be regulated, prohibited even. At the very least, it should be an opt-in “feature”. I want the return of chronological feeds. No tweaks, no tricks, nothing more. Nothing less. I want all people to have a look at the same reality. Two people having the exact same followers and following the same guys should give the same timeline. Period.
Without hyper-manipulated feeds, we have to wonder about the usefulness of all gathered data about us and our behaviours. Maybe ads targeting doesn’t make as much sense in tact hypothetical context.
If two people don’t see the same thing, it’s because the choice was made by an individual wishing to control his or her exposure, not by a corporation’s algorithm or an arbitrary group of people.
That’s my wish. Let’s try it and see if things change for the better.
Telegram a Signal to iMessage, Please (#messaging #privacy #apple #parler #signal #telegram)
DHH on Twitter seems happy that the messaging app, Signal, finally has its moment. I don’t really know about Signal, but I do know about another one, Telegram. Now that Parler is out of this world, I’m wondering if people prefer Signal over Telegram. Is Signal more secure than Telegram? According to this website, Telegram, is apparently not as secure as its maker pretends it is.
Now, I’m wonder how these movements between messaging platforms would be affected if Apple decided to make iMessage cross-platform: on iOS, on macOS, on the web and on Android. Maybe this year the dynamic is different enough for Apple to make the move? Are they afraid that people will leave the iPhone if iMessage is available on Android? What is more sticky for the Apple ecosystem: the Music app or iMessage? In my opinion, iMessage is much more powerful than Music for keeping people inside Apple’s walled garden.
Reminder, you can find me on Telegram here.