By posing false dichotomies:
"do you trust Apple is acting in your best interests, or do you believe they're a malevolent entity?"
It's perfectly reasonable to believe that Apple is acting in Apple's best interest without attributing malevolence.
By downplaying rational arguments:
"I think the privacy arguments are far-fetched (because others are worse)"
By using loaded terms:
"Dogwhistles
The privacy squad mobilised"
Presenting strawmen:
"if I have the code, build the code, nothing can hide in the code. This is a fallacy that people buy in to thanks to effective marketing "
Lying by omission:
"It's not feasible for an individual to maintain the list of trustworthy or untrustworthy parties that Apple does."
It's perfectly feasible for a group of individuals. I'll take any group distro maintainers over Apple's word.
He really doesn't just sound like an Apple apologist; he is one.
It is just innuendo to claim it about a particular one without evidence.
People don’t risk their privacy by trusting Apple any more than they do by trusting anyone else. Almost certainly less so than by trusting a company that makes money out of personal information.
Singling Apple out without evidence is misleading innuendo.
If we want people to have the option not to trust private corporations, we need to create infrastructure that currently doesn’t exist.
Why would you not only believe, but actively look for the PR spin on an obvious violation of trust?
The technical facts are not interpretable: Apple chose to build the new MacOS in such a way that they leaked information about every app you chose to run on your system, in plaintext, over the internet, sending it to a third party. Whether they did this out of malice or bungling, the only conclusion is that you should not trust the new MacOS with caring about your privacy.
Whatever PR spin Apple would choose to put on this is mostly irrelevant. That they chose to simply pinky swear that they wouldn't log IPs as the main defense is even worse.
It was easier to dismiss in the past because the evidence to the contrary has been largely circumstantial, of sufficiently dubious origin, or not direct enough for people to accept as proof.
They publicly announced a backdoor this time. They can’t un-invent the capability. You can now prove that Apple is lying about its concern for privacy by citing their own website.
Not as disingenuous as Apple not just stating that. It seems unreasonable to hold RogueAmoeba to the standard of "Apple says you did something wrong: list all the things that you think they might disapprove of".
I see you are trying to draw attention away from the fact that Apple has on repeated occations shown to be dishonest, disengenious and outright misrepresenting competitors by presenting information in ways they knew to be wrong.
I see you do that and I wonder why on earth anyone would be so loyal to a corporation that they would be willing to drag their own credibility down to defend the credibility of a corporation which in they have no vested interest. It baffles me and makes no sense.
That aside, let's get back to what you said:
I don't think he meant truth in terms of marketing ...snip... but truth as design fundamental.
Can you elaborate on what you think this is supposed to mean, apart from being a divertion away from the fact that Apple, more than any other company currently out there, manipulates and lies to their audience and to sustain their image as "different"?
As one of the other commenters, I wasn't suggesting that Apple is purposefully accusing innocent developers as part of a nefarious plot; I was suggesting that they might be mistaken, and obliquely hinting that it would be nice if they'd respond to the controversy with actual proof, as the article title (apparently falsely?) claimed they had.
> I don't see Apple getting anything out of it.
Refusing to admit innocent error is a very understandable course of action. If, of course, that's what they're doing. From where I stand the entire situation is completely muddy, and I don't think the linked article clarifies anything.
It shouldn't be too hard to make the case for that being malicious compliance, though. It seems to have worked in this particular case, for example: People called Apple's bluff.
I'm willing to accept that people are going to believe whatever they would like to believe.
That's true. What matters is their underlying facts or beliefs that lead them to believe so. I choose to believe that Apple is being duplicitous here because historically, corporates have never been known to be ethical in their business practice nor benevolent when it comes to their competitors. There have been similar issues highlighted here on HN, and elsewhere, that shows that Apple is no different from Google or Microsoft or Amazon or any other tech corporate in hesitating to abuse their status against competitors or anyone disparaging them.
I'm not loyal to Apple. I do like Gruber's writing though, so I was defending his use of the word 'truth'. I said what I thought it meant, including a related link to the concept on Wikipedia.
What are some examples in which Apple misrepresents customers?
I don't believe he's giving an opinion about Apple's actions, rather the accuracy of calling them "Big Brother" in light of the fact that other companies maintain a lot more information about their users than Apple does.
Just because something isn't surprising doesn't mean it is necessarily legal or ethical; meanwhile, Apple refuses to admit that "tl;dr" in public--quite likely because they appreciate the practice might not be legal and certainly isn't ethical--and so are attempting to instead claim it is justified, and so it is important to refuse to allow Apple employees that cop out and instead call them out for what we know to be the actual truth here.
You're right. The cases that are brought up in this article aren't baseless, as you say, it's just that the real reasons are camouflaged as other more generic reasons.
But there have been other cases where the "reasons" given have been completely without explanation.
I'm a huge Apple fan. But I'm no fanboy — their behavior here is unacceptable and it makes me outright ashamed (as I'm usually the one to praise them).
Apple is far from perfect, but often in the context of its market peers being much further from perfect. In that context, saying that their considerable security efforts and accomplishments amount to nothing but marketing lies is more than a little uncharitable.
It's perfectly reasonable to believe that Apple is acting in Apple's best interest without attributing malevolence.
By downplaying rational arguments: "I think the privacy arguments are far-fetched (because others are worse)"
By using loaded terms: "Dogwhistles
The privacy squad mobilised"
Presenting strawmen: "if I have the code, build the code, nothing can hide in the code. This is a fallacy that people buy in to thanks to effective marketing "
Lying by omission: "It's not feasible for an individual to maintain the list of trustworthy or untrustworthy parties that Apple does."
It's perfectly feasible for a group of individuals. I'll take any group distro maintainers over Apple's word.
He really doesn't just sound like an Apple apologist; he is one.
reply