Buying an iPhone (and increasingly Mac) is like going to Disneyland: You pay a lot of money to be allowed in so you can pay them even more money. The experience is highly curated and controlled. At the end of the day, you are just a guest there and what you are or aren't allowed to do is determined by the company.
EDIT: And they have CCTV and undercover security officers everywhere. More than you can possibly imagine.
I really don't Apple Hardware is a lot of money. I buy the cheapest MacBook Airs with a ram upgrade and they last me around ~6 years. Same with the phone I buy (iPhone SE). Outside of the battery needing replaced they last me a long, long time.
Everything else with I agree. The eco-system of all these companies is never-ending (cars, food, cities, etc.). It's like those sci-fi movies where one corporation owns everything. The only difference is it's 5 or 6 companies because they haven't yet started to merge.
You can buy an Android phone with better specs (except the camera, where the iPhone objectively the best) for 200$, while an iPhone is minimum 500$ (and for an SE 2 that is an old iPhone 8 with a newer SOC).
For a computer you can buy for the same money that you spend for a MacBook Air a computer with better specs and hardware that you can upgrade. Apple tends not to upgrade the oldest computers, leaving you with an insecure OS where you can't run the latest software. I have my battle Thinkpad that with Linux runs better than most Macbook and we are talking about a PC that has more than 10 years and I bought used on Ebay for 100$.
Really Apple is not that great. I once used to buy their product thinking they were superior, and maybe once they were, nowadays they are just the other crap made in China but sold at (at least) twice the price because they have the Apple logo on it.
> You can buy an Android phone with better specs for 200$
> For a computer you can buy for the same money that you spend for a MacBook Air a computer with better specs and hardware that you can upgrade
If you compare two phones at 200$, sure. But it is not possible to buy a phone with a better CPU than the 500$ iPhone SE 2. Impossible, no CPU can beat it. So no Android phone has better specs.
For a laptop, if the case is considered a spec like it should, then you have a much clearer picture. Apple has perfected its aluminium processes to provide a rigid and shock-resistant casing, and inevitably when people provide legitimate examples of PC laptops to buy, they never mention that the laptop you'll get will have a shitty plastic case with a heavy steel frame. The worst of both worlds, and many friends have come to me saying they need to change their laptop when theirs is fairly recent. The culprit? their case broke or the display hinge did.
I doubt so, maybe the Apple CPU is better in benchmarks (not even sure), but who cares? I care about day to day usage, and the CPU on a 200$ Android is more than capable of doing everything a normal person does with a phone.
> So no Android phone has better specs
Because it's all matter of CPU. To me is more important internal storage, with 200$ you get nowadays a phone with 256Gb of memory plus a micro SD slot. Or it's important RAM, you get 8Gb of RAM (the same amount of my desktop computer), meaning you can have all the apps in background without issues. You get a fingerprint reader, that is more secure and usable than the stupid face ID. You get a USB-C connector that nowadays is everywhere, not the proprietary lightning port. You get a bigger battery that you don't have to charge everyday. You get a bigger screen with an higher resolution. You get an headphone jack. You get a FM radio (a stupid thing, but I don't get why iPhone doesn't put it).
> Apple has perfected its aluminium processes to provide a rigid and shock-resistant casing, and inevitably when people provide legitimate examples of PC laptops to buy, they never mention that the laptop you'll get will have a shitty plastic case with a heavy steel frame.
I don't care about the cool case of the macbook. I care about having a solid case, even if it's ugly plastic. My thinkpad t440p that I bought for 150$ on ebay I can carry around without worrying, I can spill a coffee on the keyboard and it will not break, I can make it fall from a ladder and it will not break.
Also if something breaks on a macbook, the only option is to throw it in the bin and buy a new one. How do you replace the LCD panel on a macbook? You can't, because it's all glued together and you have to replace the entire lid of the computer, that costs more than the computer itself. On my computer? Pop the display frame with hands, 4 screw and you remove the LCD, a 10 minutes job. Want to access the internal components? Two screws on the bottom and you have access to SSD, RAM, Wi-Fi card and CPU.
Want to change the battery? You will have to do so sooner or later, well on the macbook not only you have to disassemble the entire computer, but it's also glued with a strong adhesive, not only it's difficult to remove but also dangerous, since it's easy to damage the battery and since it's a lithium battery it can even explode. On my laptop just unlock the mechanism and the battery comes out, put a new one in and job done, 15 seconds.
> For a computer you can buy for the same money that you spend for a MacBook Air a computer with better specs and hardware that you can upgrade.
Which specs? When I last checked, the latest M1 Airs were dominating the entire laptop market on CPU performance, battery life and not making noise. These are important considerations. I mean, sure, for the same price you can probably find better displays, more RAM, a bigger SSD, a better port selection, and all sorts of other things, but there are always tradeoffs, it's not like any laptop beats an Air wholesale on all specs.
If someone doesn't particularly care about upgradability (most people don't), the Air actually seems a pretty good deal. Perhaps they were overpriced before, but I don't think they are anymore.
More like going on the rides, but not paying for the Fast Pass. Taking the Fast Pass is like paying for Apple services. I took the shitty Fast Pass for Apple Music and iCloud Drive, but I'm not paying for bloody Ted Lasso!
Are you sure? I have a Mac too, and earlier this year all of my non Apple-approved software stopped working because some random Apple server went down.
Yes, and the price these companies can charge is determined by the market. If what they are doing no longer serves a large market, their business will shrink. And if there actions expose a new opportunity for someone else, that company will form and business will grow.
This sentiment gets repeated all the time and it drives me crazy.
I've read a lot of stuff by RMS and am certainly aware of his concerns.
I have an iPhone and Mac so I guess you would consider that I "ignored" him. This is a ridiculous conclusion. I considered the risks and trade-offs of non-FOSS software, and regrettably accepted them, because the FOSS alternatives had trade-offs that cumulatively (for me) were much worse. Unlike RMS, I am not a one-dimensional person that only evaluates tech on the single dimension of freedom. Tech is not a religion for me; it's just a tool.
RMS pontificating about FOSS does not magically bring iPhone comparable FOSS software and hardware into existence. If the FOSS community wants consumer adoption, ratio of pontificating about to building consumer products needs to be much lower.
This is a very solipsistic way to look at the world. FOSS has no duty to try to appeal to you personally, and if you accept the end of your privacy over UI niggles, that's your choice to make. The reason Apple can spend so much on UI is because of your willingness to eat whatever they serve you.
After emancipation, there were plenty of slaves who wouldn't leave the plantation, and became slaves-by-another-name in the sharecropping system. I don't think any of them were so up their own asses that they blamed the slaves who left for not making it easier to leave.
Also, RMS didn't talk about "FOSS." He talked about the inevitable future if we continued our trajectory, and suggested Free Software as the solution.
I'm also not going to make lowering your carbon emissions just as easy and convenient as using all of the carbon you want. Take responsibility for yourself, or at least don't actively denigrate people for being right.
All I said is if the FOSS community wants consumer adoption, the path forward is making things consumers like, NOT blaming us for "ignoring" RMS, because no one ever did that.
Basically everything your post implies (that I think I am entitled to something, that I think everything should be easy, etc...) is not true.
As I keep pointing out again and again, all I'm saying is that people don't use FOSS, but it's not because they don't value privacy, not because they don't value freedom, and for the love of biscuits not because of anything to do with RMS or ignoring him.
The options are use an iPhone (not freedom), use an Android phone (not freedom), or use something like LineageOS. Using something like LineageOS is major commitment that most people don't have room in their lives for, because they have different priorities, which might also be very good.
EDIT: Here's a metaphor, it'd be like if you asked your friend who owns a car with an ICE why he keeps ignoring Al Gore's warnings about the climate. It's like, Al Gore can be right, your friend can believe in Climate change, and he can still decide he needs an ICE car because he's barely making ends meet and is trying to support a family. You can claim that your friend has made bad choices, but there is no argument that he "ignored" Al Gore.
I guess consumerism is at the heart of the problem. And juicy complexity successfully keeps consumers remaining such.
I think humans - having been nomads for the most part of their existence – just aren't equipped to care for their habitat (say: ecosystems). It's rather recent that became important, <8k years compared to 250k before.
This is easy to say, but it’s clear from decades of cognitive science that people find it extremely hard to avoid the affordances and incentives in their environment. Blaming the victims of a concerted corporate and political effort to constrain individual liberties seems churlish. This is a tragedy of the commons and the only solution is cooperation and dialogue to set common standards and norms.
> I've read a lot of stuff by RMS and am certainly aware of his concerns.
> RMS pontificating [...]
Uh, no. RMS was right all along and you're still not getting it.
You bought devices you can't upgrade, you can't run software on, that oppress indie devs, that tax 30% of the market, that sell out freedom fighters in oppressive regimes, and that now spy on you. And now you realize the problem.
The only way out of this madness is to get the sensible representatives in Congress to move forward with an antitrust case. Breaking up the power monopoly will perhaps get us back to a place where we have rights. The way it is now, Apple is a central point of failure.
Again, everything RMS spoke was truth, and it's here again rearing its ugly head.
Congress is trash, but they're the institution that runs your life, and you at least get a nominal say about who is in it. If you're arguing for revolution, I won't disagree, but what it really sounds like is the traditional "we can't do this one thing until we do everything else first."
Congress isn't wholly incompetent, despite the fun we have poking at it. The US has a functioning democracy and leads the world in so many good and important metrics.
Our government isn't one person or one party, and that's a strength.
One of my local reps is leading the big tech breakup movement, and I'm incredibly proud to have her representing me.
>leads the world in so many good and important metrics.
Can you help me with a few? Maybe 5? I'm pretty low on the US government at the moment. I can name quite a few things we lead in that are horrible.
>One of my local reps is leading the big tech breakup movement, and I'm incredibly proud to have her representing me.
I think that's great but I doubt that will ever be allowed to happen. Too much money will be thrown at congress and they will either do nothing, or do nothing in a way that makes them look like they did.
That's the crux of it. There are a few edge cases, but quality of life across the whole spectrum of wealth is worlds ahead almost everywhere else. Things aren't perfect, but they are pretty damn good compared to almost anywhere else. People get too hung up on first world problems to appreciate what they've got.
The funny thing is that you are failing to recognize the value of devices that can render web pages, give navigation instructions that won't get me lost, run games, have long battery life, great screen quality, and a bunch of other things.
I have yet to see a phone with the build quality and value add that I need a mobile phone to have from Free Software endeavors. These are the table stakes for the majority of people. Not the list you just rattled off. You aren't even in the running to compete on the other value adds if you can't do the above.
You're right. Free Software isn't there yet. So I just took some of my money and donated to a few projects.. Drop in the ocean, but a drop nonetheless.
> The only way out of this madness is to get the sensible representatives in Congress to move forward with an antitrust case
What are you looking for out of this anti-trust case? Apple is not a monopoly. There are numerous privacy-focused phones and Android distros available. I think there just isn't a huge market for a privacy-focused phone (no, 1000 people on a HN and twitter is not a huge market.)
They didn't buy Apple products for any ethical reason, and didn't claim to have done. They bought Apple products because RMS didn't personally make the UI of Free Software polished enough for them.
Trust in this discussion isn't a binary 1/0. You do trust Apple in some regards, else it'd be impossible to use their devices for anything. There's a tradeoff being made, that Apple does not do 'certain evil things'. This one's crossing the boundary for some, opening the floodgate for others. That's the issue at hand.
For example, say US government. I trust the US government not to kill me (Dutch citizen, not a terrorist, not a criminal, etc etc). Does that mean I trust the US government with my personal data? No, that's a different discussion. And if I were to trust them with my personal data, does that mean I believe the US government has integrity? No. I've been very disappointed with the US government with regards to a recent war (I'll refrain from details as its irrelevant), so they need to earn back credibility. In my language there's a saying 'vertrouwen komt te voet, maar vertrekt per paard' which translates to something akin to 'trust comes on foot and goes on horseback'.
> magically bring a trustworthy iPhone competitor into existence
Well, purchase a Pixel 5, install CalyxOS or Graphene, lock bootloader again. Job done. Probably you'll lose some convenience, but you know, you may always ask some FOSS dev to bake a feature for you and pay for it.
> Probably you'll lose some convenience, but you know, you may always ask some FOSS dev to bake a feature for you and pay for it.
The amount of money needed to bring CalyxOS to the iPhone level of polish and to get the same sets of popular apps on there is probably in the millions.
> Not trusting Apple doesn't magically bring a trustworthy iPhone competitor into existence.
I'm afraid that'll never happen, at least, until most people don't care about their privacy and are willing to accept one-sided tradeoffs with phone vendors. BUT, there are alternatives like LineageOS that do a pretty good job. They only need more acceptance by public to be able to compete at the level of a trillion-dollar company like AAPL.
Right. And I think projects like LineageOS are super interesting.
My beef is just with statements like "people ignore RMS," as I have yet to see any evidence of this. Everything I have observed is that anyone who has heard of RMS is fully aware of his concerns, but most of those people just have different priorities.
That much was known upon purchasing the axe - maybe it cuts trees 50% quicker and thus was worth the tradeoff, but now you can re-evaluate your options and purchase a different axe.
TL;DR: You understood the trade-off, and chose to become a product for the convenience. The majority of us here have done the same, because becoming a product is part of the modern life. Nowadays choosing digital purity is like becoming a digital Amish.
I'm pretty sure that most go with habit and convenience. I mean.... Apple could lock MacOSX down tomorrow and charge you $100 for terminal access and "informed decision" people would still argue how good MacBooks are (they aren't that good)
MacOS personally looks nice and functions in a logical way - so I consider MacBooks good. It’s a personal choice while weighing negatives like how MacOS is not ‘free software’ that anyone can fork, change, and sell on their own.
I literally have to have an app to make my bluetooth mouse scroll in the opposite direction than the trackpad, because there is "Scroll Direction" checkbox in both mouse and trackpad... but it's actually one config option. And with every update I hope that they don't screw up that app... OSX has less and less of "less is more".
I think people don't like to think themselves as a product, but that's what we are. We're a potential source of income, and companies will want to know how's your health, where do you go, what do you buy, how you use your time, etc., in order to realize as much of that income as possible.
It's a mutually-beneficial trade-off, it's just that one party gains individually, and the other gains by quantity. Advertisers wouldn't care a lot what restaurants you like, but they care a lot about what restaurants people in your city like.
Well your sentiment drives me crazy, especially for techies. It is up to us whether a non-feudal digital society will exist or not. It's true that FOSS will never be as good as the monopolists' who are able to pour billions of dollars into polish while tightening their grip over our lives. But if we are unwilling to make sacrifices in this fight then the battle is already lost.
Agreed and a great example of why his message on free software is so important. I would never have been as cognizant of the topic if not for his laser-focused and committed work.
"Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform."
RMS is as close to the opposite of hypocrite as it gets. He definitely practices what he preaches to the degree that he used a slow Loongson when he couldn't get an Intel machine with free BIOS, for example.
He might not act diplomatic, be way outside social norms, or not people-please, but that does not make him a hypocrite.
Everything has software. If he follows his ideology that everything he uses be open source then he can't do anything except live off completely off grid without anything that has a semi conductor in it.
No electric meter at his house, no internet (even if his router is running open source, the ISP he's connected to certainly isn't), no transportation of any kind, no entertainment of any kind, no shopping of any kind (inventory management, cash registers, logistics). The equipment used to manufacture all the pieces of his precious decade old laptop was running proprietary software (not to mention all the small firmwares like wifi and Ethernet controllers).
You cannot escape it.
So, we should be pragmatic about it. We should push for it, but realize that it's impossible to live in society without interacting with closed source software.
Richard Stallman's positions are actually more pragmatic than that. Here is how he describes them:
> I firmly refuse to install non-free software or tolerate its installed presence on my computer or on computers set up for me.
> However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain to the local people why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't push them hard, because annoying them is not the way to convince them.
> Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then. (I do consider what those machines and their owners might do with my personal data, but that's a different issue, which would arise just the same even if they did use free software. My response to that issue is to minimize those activities which give them any data about me.)
> That's my policy about using a machine once in a while. If I were to use it for an hour every day, that would no longer be "once in a while" — it would be regular use. At that point, I would start to feel the heavy hand of any nonfree software in that computer, and feel the duty to arrange to use a liberated computer instead.
> As for microwave ovens and other appliances, if updating software is not a normal part of use of the device, then it is not a computer. In that case, I think the user need not take cognizance of whether the device contains a processor and software, or is built some other way. However, if it has an "update firmware" button, that means installing different software is a normal part of use, so it is a computer.
This isn't children sewing soccer balls with their teeth type of principles. This is a machine controlled by code the end user doesn't get access to building another thing the user actually buys that has no closed code in it. Who cares how the thing was built using whatever software to control the things to build the product? That software affects the end user in no way other than to produce the thing. That's like in an entirely different universe than running code on your computing device where you should be able to decide who/what/when/where type of questions. Telling a manufacturing company to do something regarding their software in their processes is out of this world insane. It is their software after all, so your freedom to run stuff your way should also reciprocate to them doing what they will with theirs.
With all due respect, I don't believe you are familiar with RMS positions. I'd argue most people who have not followed him closely and haven't carefully listened to what his PoV is, have a very hand-wavy understanding of the nuances of what he stands for. The fact that you talk about open source is the tell. The term "open source" was deliberately invented to de-emphasize what RMS cares about in favor of a business-friendly justification for why it benefits businesses to share source code with others. Open Source philosophy is not about emphasizing the user rights and ownership over their computers.
And yes, he is concerned about microcode--he still uses a Core 2 Duo laptop that can work without the microcode blobs in firmware, as opposed to more modern processors, for that exact reason.
I really don't see Amish as hypocritical when they hire a car or take the train. They are using the absolute minimum of tech that lets them get on with their life, I suppose Stallman is doing the same when he borrows a phone, otherwise avoiding them to the best of his ability.
To portray RMS as "against tech" is a very misleading characterization of him (he is an OS developer after all). To judge someone as a hypocrite, you have to first understand (1) what they say, (2) how they act, and then (3) compare the two. I don't think he ever said "don't use tech". You are vastly mischaracterizing what his position is.
> To portray RMS as "against tech" is a very misleading characterization of him
It's also a poor characterization of the anabaptists, for that matter - they are not in general against technology but against the impacts of particular technology (nothing to do with RMS's concerns, theirs are about community).
For example, some anabaptist communities disallow cars, some allow them in limited ways, some allow them completely - but this is decided based not on a doctrine but on their communities evaluation on the impact of peoples housing spreading apart...
You are vastly mischaracterizing the few sentences I wrote.
In the case of RMS it is non-free software tech. In the case of the Amish it is many kinds of tech and depends (as the child comment mentions) on the community. One community I lived among they weren’t allowed to own phones, but they would borrow them all the time.
To call everybody to stop using non-free software phones while depending on thise same people to own them and let you borrow them in order to live is hypocritical. Sorry if that bothers you.
He refuses to own a cell phone, because they're all closed-down, closed-source systems and that goes against his principles, but he's totally fine with using one when he needs to make a phone call. This comes across as startlingly performative.
I thought I remembered other instances, but none of them come to mind and obviously googling has turned up a ton of opinion pieces without a lot of actual substantative points made, so I'll leave it at that; not enough to argue that he is, by his nature, a hypocrite, but also not 100% pure to his principles in every circumstance.
My point is you have to understand his principles first before calling him a hypocrite: in your cell phone example, the phone call he is making with someone else's phone is not depriving him of his freedom/privacy, but its owner's. He would likely advise and nudge the owner not to carry a cellphone for the owner's own benefit, in his capacity as an advocate, but if they have made the choice to carry one anyway, his use of someone else's cellphone for making a call is no different to him than utilizing a landline phone in his capacity as a user.
In fact, he has stated his principles/policies publicly and clearly, and someone posted it here as well. He never says "You are not supposed to use someone else's cellphone, but it's okay when I use it." That would make him a hypocrite.
Thus your example is a strawman here, with the implicit assumption that he has said "you ought not to use any cellphone" which he never said.
I think most misunderstandings of RMS come from the fact that people project on him what they think he would say and how he would act, not what he actually says and how he actually acts; while assuming he is merely some sort of activist engaging in civil disobedience and boycott, just trying to make a point and show the world a pure example of how to live. The way he should actually be thought of is he is fighting a war against people building proprietary software that, based on his theory, inevitably will lead to unjust power over users' lives through control over their devices. He is very pragmatic in that sense and willing to take any strategic advantage he can get in that fight, not deprive himself of that just to make a point. My understanding is at the beginning he used proprietary UNIX compilers to build GCC, for example.
> the phone call he is making with someone else's phone is not depriving him of his freedom/privacy, but its owner's.
Maybe he's not being hypocritical, but that position -- I will pragmatically use others' phones for my convenience, but I will not retain one myself -- just seems shitty. Not sure why, maybe because it's even less of a universally applicable tenet than "phones are bad, mmkay," it's just "I'll use the systems as convenient for me, no matter how others may suffer under them."
He played Age of Empires II at a friend's house once. Is that enough?
I think he makes a pretty big tradeoff that nobody else would, without completely shooting himself in the foot. Even if he had a fully FOSS phone, the people he called probably wouldn't. He's drawn the line far enough out that I don't doubt his sincerity.
Saying that it's problematic to take RMS seriously because of the things you mentioned is in my opinion one of the problems that led us to the hellish things we're exposed to today.
It's the well dressed, well socially adjusted people with their silver tongues that convinced the masses that giving up privacy is in their interest. People like that are the people responsible for the shitshow we're now observing.
RMS is strongly opinionated, and without that kind of strong conviction, we would be far worse off. I do agree he's taking an extreme position, but when you're standing against giants with money and power, being extreme is sometimes the only way to stand a chance.
For whatever failing RMS has, hypocrite is obviously not one. There are few people on the world who are so consistent in their message and actions as RMS.
HN loves throwing around accusations of "ad hominem", but dismissing someone's ideas on IP because he picks his toes is a quintessential ad hominem attack.
Apples selling point is that they decide what should be running on your phone. From the various app store monopolization threads, people like that apple controls your iphone, and wouldn't buy one if the owner controlled it.
> people like that apple controls your iphone, and wouldn't buy one if the owner controlled it.
My guess is that this applies to about as many people as the opposite “wants to control their device” stance. Which is to say approximately nobody. Most users probably don’t think about these things much if at all. They want a smartphone that runs the expected smartphone apps and has the expected smartphone features, and do not care whether or not some nerd can install and run some apps they’ve never heard of on his own device.
I imagine, though, that most people would have an opinion one way or the other about phones snitching on their owners.
Exactly, it's easy with phones - you can have the same phone your favorite celebrity has! Not so with almost anything else. People have just the weirdest reasons. It's also funny to me because I will never ask anything about a persons phone, laptop or other tech gadget if I recognize it from a distance (for example Apple products), but I will ask and converse about brands/devices that I have not seen much of. Not sure why people think Apple products give them any credit whatsoever.
Android is a low-quality platform with limited security updates, multiple app stores, preinstalled crapware, and other debris. I chose an iPhone so I wouldn't have to deal with these issues.
I bought an iphone because I want a phone that'll last five years and get security updates for at least as long. I also bought an iphone because I have a lot of confidence it won't have design flaws that break its gps (like the motorola I had) or have its ecosystem EOL'd (like the Windows phone I had, which was an incredible piece of hardware, and I loved it!)
I wish the android hardware ecosystem had half the longevity you get with the cheapest iphone.
Why is that wrong? I also applauded (internally) when notifications were added because it was a feature that I wanted and I didn't care that Android had it before because I wasn't using an Android phone. I bought all of the Google-branded Android phones when they came out and I still preferred iOS and the iPhone so having that feature was worthy of applause for me. I don't see how the wallpaper thing is any different. As much as I would like to have had the ability to change wallpaper before then, that wasn't as important as all the other things I cared about more.
I've never been to one of Apple's events, but as a viewer of their videos some of those applause breaks have me convinced there are giant "Applause Now" signs. I imagine them being on more than they are off by how over the top their dialog is written. Or they fill the air in the room with some sort of gas that makes the attendees very susceptible to the RDF.
Those are much more fun explanations than just realizing they probably have plants to start the cheering in a room full of fanboys
Life existed before the iPhone. Life goes on even if you have to use other devices, and you'll be able to do more stuff than before iPhones were invented. ppl are very inventive and adaptable. Give Linux a try. Mint is a pretty good noob friendly version. Ubuntu is a very popular one.
Final result is better than before, because scanning applies only into targets which are ending into the cloud. Content was plaintext in the cloud before (not counting server-side encryption).
With current change, they have "partial" E2E encryption and Apple can decrypt them only if CSAM treshold is reached. If we leave all speculation, this is a great improvement for privacy in CSAM context.
You can opt-out from scanning by not using iCloud.
Fair enough, but Android includes Play Services in all notable cases. Yes a handful of people run it without, which does solve that issue, at the cost of convenience and usability.
That's why I specified "decent smartphone". I wouldn't consider the UX of Android without Play Services to be "decent".
One of the most pernicious sins of the smartphone revolution was to rebrand the "computer". We'd evolved expectations as to what we were entitled to on our own machines - yes, even those with a proprietary OS - and then with one weird trick, it all went in the trash. Advertising, surveillance, inability to install whatever you want - before smartphones, this sort of thing used to be unequivocally malware.
The worst part is that now the dam's broken, it's all bleeding back into "computers".
You're blaming smartphones for problem that exists because of the Internet. If smartphones didn't render computers irrelevant to most people, all this "bad app" stuff would have happened on computers.
And the computers that don't have "bad apps" are hacked and encrypted by ransomware. Is that better?
> The worst part is that now the dam's broken, it's all bleeding back into "computers".
Back in the day, before cellular phones, mainframe and minicomputer vendors tried their best to restrict the software that could be run on “their” hardware. They realised that they could squeeze the most out of their customers that way.
Android is also Linux. Yet some manufacturers don't allow any kind of boot unlocking or root access.
Open source doesn't guarantee we have any type of control over it if the hardware is locked down. The reason is more that the industry hasn't bothered selling locked-down computers yet by default. The tech is there, Secure Boot + TPM. They just give us the options to override in the BIOS. For now.
Linux has many more stakeholders than you. It’s a failure for you, but extremely important to many others (including me). I’d go further and allege you are in the minority among users of Linux, because think about what a user of Linux is. Linus made the absolutely correct call and Linux would be on the decline if he hadn’t; the money in Linux is in embedding (and SaaS), not people dabbling with free software who by definition don’t pay for it, and until the FSF and its adherents conquer the concept of “an economy” they’re still fighting an uphill, losing battle against the same economic forces they despite.
More than half of YC’s hardware startups, not to mention Android and probably Teslas in their current form, probably would have never happened were they not able to embed Linux in a controlled manner without having to invest in catering to the four total users who will want to build a system image and reflash the firmware on their whatever. (Android has some means to do so and an audience much more interested in doing so but the point stands.)
I’m also interested in the legal framework around a software license that’s able to dictate the architecture and design of components around the software, and I suspect it will not survive if challenged, particularly in Europe.
The greatest failure of free software, to me, is thinking in absolutes and not studying how the world actually uses computers as time goes on. The concepts, ideas, and demands are stuck in 1991 and are basically “man shakes fist at capitalism,” while writing capitalist exceptions into the very Tivoization clause in question under pressure.
> not people dabbling with free software who by definition don’t pay for it
You and I don't seem to share the same definition of Free Software. I personally pay for, and know others who pay for Free Software. Free is about freedom, not price.
> not to mention Android and probably Teslas in their current form, probably would have never happened were they not able to embed Linux in a controlled manner without having to invest in catering to the four total users who will want to build a system image and reflash the firmware on their whatever.
All they have to do is not go out of there way to lock down the ability to flash the firmware. It does not require extra effort to support this. It requires extra effort to block this.
Open source also doesn't guarantee any type of control if it's SaaS or anchored to a closed source SaaS system. There's a ton of "but it's open source!" SaaS companies that I shall not name that leverage open source but in reality are lock-in walled gardens. The code is open but the data and network effect are not.
> If people could understand what computing was about, the iPhone would not be a bad thing. But because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that Guitar Hero is the same as a real guitar.
There is no formal definition of computing which is furthered by iPhones.
I have an iPhone, and pythonista is the only potential thing which fulfils the criteria of "computing", everything else is convenience.
Smartphones have done an incredible amount at bringing the consumption of the internet, audio, video and rich communication via social media.
But they have not brought "real world computing", because "real world computing" is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes and development of both hardware and software. It has scientific, engineering, mathematical, technological and social aspects.
>"In a general way, we can define computing to mean any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computers. Thus, computing includes designing and building hardware and software systems for a wide range of purposes; processing, structuring, and managing various kinds of information; doing scientific studies using computers; making computer systems behave intelligently; creating and using communications and entertainment media; finding and gathering information relevant to any particular purpose, and so on. The list is virtually endless, and the possibilities are vast."
I basically would half agree that iPhone brought more computing. Based on practical applications, iPhone has not brought radically more computing. iPhone replaced some stationary computing with ultra-mobile computing.
Cheap feature phones, that allowed people in Africa to make cashless payments, brought more computing to ordinary people... than expensive iPhone - that is owned by people who have/had other computers.
People who formally require computing - engineers(all kinds, incl software and structural), data collectors, music professionals and so on - still rely on other forms of computing. Some have shifted to iPad, which made computing more fun. But then all of the heavier forms of computing - they are still done on a "computer", not a phone or iPad.
Yeah I think the distinction is more with OS than the form factor.
With a close garden and close sourced apps, there are basically nothing you can do (to make sure you're not being monitored). Completely at whim, true for regular computers too, but a lot more choices exist for the latter group.
Unfortunately that is accurate for every property software, not only that but you can easily make a case that all software that you personally don’t maintain including open source has same problem.
I think what you mean is that you don't control the iCloud Photos client, Apple does. Your photos are scanned by the iCloud Photos "client" (which is built into the OS) before uploading them to the cloud.
Would it be any different if Dropbox was scanning files before it uploaded them rather than afterwards? It already computes hashes of your files on your device so that it doesn't have to re-upload existing content, so I honestly don't understand the objection to doing image scanning on your device before uploading your content.
The point is that if the capability for "the iCloud Photos client" to scan your photos before uploading them to the cloud exists, it's only Apple's policy that stops it from scanning all of your photos.
While there is certainly truth to this, this is also a defeatist position. Of course Apple could do anything, with or without telling us. And they do some fairly indefensible things, though I would argue those have mostly to do with the App Store.
But this is not the time to throw our hands up and say there was nothing we could do all along. That the situation was never ideal does not preclude there being something worth fighting for.
> Problem is that the devices are really really good
their devices are really good, but they come with so much crippling for the sake of the walled garden that their goodness is wasted in some fronts.
There's a large list of things they are (or can be with minimal effort) perfectly capable for, but are forbidden for reasons, like reverse wireless charge of other iphones / airpods.
Meh. Dropbox and Google Drive can run arbitrary queries over your files stored there. iCloud (assuming they finish e2ee transition) will have to push the same hashes to everyone. It's not transparent and we don't have a way to inspect what exactly are they searching for, but at least there's a way in principle to reverse engineer the algorithm and to monitor how often hash database gets updated.
In my book that's a step in the direction of privacy, compared to old status quo.
> Meh. Dropbox and Google Drive can run arbitrary queries over your files stored there.
However, unlike with Apple's invasive on-device scanning, you can encrypt files before storing them at Dropbox or Google Drive. There are even simple turnkey solutions like Sookasa:
"Sookasa acts as a transparent layer over Google Drive to encrypt your sensitive files on the cloud and across connected devices..." https://www.sookasa.com/GD
"Sookasa protects data both on devices and in the cloud, and decouples the data from the encryption keys, meaning your data stays secure no matter where it goes." https://www.sookasa.com/dropbox-security/
In an alternative universe where they built a remotely updated database, yes. But that’s not this universe.
I’m going to go further and say that people are doing a very bad job articulating why the incremental privacy risk of the scheme is significant, over the always-existent privacy risk of a proprietary vendor updating software they entirely control to scan data uploaded to a cloud service which guarantees no protection from vendor access. A later software update to include more hashes or whatever could always regress privacy.
One is a proprietary third-party, optional service acting against you, the other is your own device acting against you. That's the difference and it should be pretty easy to understand.
They also could embed the whole database into iOS and activate certain hashes only for certain iCloud accounts. No one would know because the database is encrypted multiple times.
They could do a lot of things. They’ve told us what they do. It’s not this. The FAQ released yesterday specifically says that users cannot be targeted.
> The same set of hashes is stored in the operating system of every iPhone and iPad user, so targeted attacks against only specific individuals are not possible under our design.
The problem with this sentence is that Apple assumes that they can't target specific individuals because every iPhone and iPad user has the exact same database in their iOS device.
But what if they have a hash in the database where they know that only one person has this exact image on their device? This way you could single out one individual with the same database.
This is a better way to frame the discussion, IMHO.
The conversation is around Apple, which is critical, but we need to compare them to the rest of the industry, and discuss the government/citizen tradeoffs in that light. I.e., holistically, not per company.
True. The constant migration of everything to the cloud has lots of consequences just like this. If the false positive are as common as the fotoForensics guy states, this could also become a new weapon for corporate warfare. A small competitor to a market Apple wants to control happens to have assets stored in an apple cloud? Guess who's offices are getting raided today?
That is indeed what the article does, does it not? It makes the case that storing online with a decryption key that can be used with a search warrant is probably the right trade off, and the way other companies sometimes implement this.
Then you get to choose whether to push your data to the third party or not, given the risks involved.
The author even notes they were opposed to Facebook's end-to-end encryption previously, I assume because as for defaults it sets a precedent and makes it unsearchable, but I'm not sure the specific tradeoffs they weigh and points they consider since it's behind a paywall (and I'm not sure I agree).
> discuss the government/citizen tradeoffs in that light. I.e., holistically, not per company.
Right now the differences are essentially per-company, since we've let our experiences be controlled almost entirely by a small subset of companies. To abstract the implementation from the primary implementer is to obfuscate some of the cause and effect here. We should discuss this as a societal tradeoff, as you note, but we should not ignore that this was spurred by a company running out in front of what was required of it and implementing this system which many see as at the expense of their users privacy.
> You get to choose whether to push your data to Apple and trigger the scanning with their solution too.
That's purely an implementation detail, and subject to change at any time. That's why people are upset.
One solution is limited to you actually pushing your data off your private device, the other is limited to a list of items you say you want to push off your device, but actually happens on your device.
That's the difference between someone searching a large warehouse you and many others have stored belongings, and someone coming into your house and searching through your items freely as long as they're on the list.
Beyond the difference in privacy that search entails fundamentally, people are very worried that the list itself is limited only by policy, and truly, the search of items on that list has full access to your private details but for the grace of those performing the search and controlling the list.
The key escrow option is strictly worse than the current implementation, but it is also naturally constrained and the exposure is entirely user controlled. If you do not put data online in that situation, there is no way for them to process it without first exfiltrating it, which we already have laws and systems in place to hamper.
> That's purely an implementation detail, and subject to change at any time.
That’s an evergreen complaint. If they want to introduce a general purpose scanning mechanism they can do so at any time. This is not that.
> That's why people are upset.
I don’t think so. I think they are upset because they don’t like the fact that Apple has any power over them and this remind them of that even though it is not in fact an abuse.
I actually agree with this, but I don’t think that claiming Apple’s implementation to be something it is not is helpful.
The key escrow solution is strictly worse in any future. If key escrow becomes established as a norm between cloud providers and law enforcement, then no free alternative will ever be possible.
> The key escrow solution is strictly worse in any future. If key escrow becomes established as a norm between cloud providers and law enforcement, then no free alternative will ever be possible.
I don't think that's true. Systems or programs to encrypt locally before pushing up to a shared platform are possible and currently in use. Those that want that additional security have recourse to get it. Alternatively, people could run their own cloud sync instances (also already available in some forms). This puts the control in the users hands (don't sync to cloud, pre-encrypt to shared cloud, or do some personal sync thing), while also setting a clear precedent of what is acceptable on users personal devices.
The problem here is that this implementation really has nothing to do with cloud sync. Apple has currently linked it to whether you're pushing that data to iCloud, but that's an arbitrary distinction. In the world without iCloud, they could make it scan any media that was sent across the network. The iCloud distinction is entirely arbitrary, which is why people are not satisfied with it. There is nothing beyond promises to keep it that way, and promises are less binding than laws and national security letters.
> The problem here is that this implementation really has nothing to do with cloud sync.
It is built into the photo uploading mechanism and only scans photos in a very narrow way that can’t be twisted into generic scanning.
> they could make it scan any media that was sent across the network.
Definitely false. It cannot match anything except photos in this very narrow way.
> There is nothing beyond promises to keep it that way,
Not true. The mechanism cannot be used as a general purpose media scanner.
What is true is that Apple could add a general purpose scanner in future, but it wouldn’t leverage this mechanism, and their potential to add arbitrary spyware has always been there and is not changed by this.
I don’t keep child porn on my phone (or any where else. I also don’t keep smallpox in my freezer or nuclear weapons on my basement. Noninvasive scans for these things probably make the world a better place in some ways.
The part I object to having my life disrupted by having my personal accounts unilaterally deleted by a fucking buggy bot. Our phones are too important to us to just have them shut off without notice. That’s bullshit.
Is a picture of a naked kid going to trigger this algorithm?
In a few places taking pictures of your child naked while swimming is considered child pornography. Other places having children run around naked on the beach is the norm. (I have a few pictures of me, at 3y/o, naked on the beach)
In the world of remote medicine, can a parent take pictures of their naked child to send to a doctor?
How are they going to fit their cultural specifics to the world?
Knowing how Facebook dealt with it - they are going to apply the strictest rules, so no naked child photos are allowed on your iPhone anymore. For no reason.
Who do I call (and how do I call them) if the person agrees with the automated false positive and disables my account/phone and reports me to the police? Just being accused of having CSAM is ruinous. What's my recourse if there's an innocent bug in their system that reports me to the police?
I was at Apple for more than a decade and a half. I saw an untold number of Michael Bolton bugs [0]. It's one thing when a bug causes a dropped frame in a video or a menu takes a tenth of a second too long to appear. It's another when it ruins your life and bankrupts you defending yourself.
In a way, nothing changed. Apple could've done on-device scanning forever. In another way, everything changed.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it. Problem is that the devices are really really good.