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>People don't really care about privacy

Then why are they willing to pay a premium for Apple Products, which do as much locally as possible? (Without going into detail, I know this because a very skilled engineer I worked with was hired by them.)

Also, even if "people" don't care (I'd love to see a peer reviewed study on the # of folks who meet this criteria you claim), why should the preference of those people override those of us who DO want privacy? Why can't the few who don't care opt in to the panopticon?

We obsess over "AI" when things like "take an audio file and produce a written transcription" have been being done for quite some time. Where does the algorithm end and "AI" begin, and what is it about "AI" that necessitates throwing away years of existing work on privacy preserving queries?

2 comments

Yeah, people care about privacy, and a lot of other things, but generally lack the organization and resources to do much.

Privacy is also one of those things that is much easier to care about if the lack of privacy is highly visible (e.g. someone standing in your window), but tech companies are pretty good about keeping their snooping in the background.

I've made a lot of comments on the internet about folks like Mark Zuckerberg, but to be fair, I've never caught him outside my window ;-)

Nobody buys apple because of privacy they buy it because its a status symbol and stupidly easy to use. All the privacy marketing is there just to feel even more superior to those plebian android user that can have a factually and verifiably private OS with android forks like GrapehenOS for people who actually care.

Majority user care about privacy the same way they care about the environment with apples greenwashing. One marketing line is sufficient.

>Nobody buys apple because of privacy they buy it because its a status symbol and stupidly easy to use.

I had a friend who used to joke "Linux is free if your time has no value" -- when I went off to college I settled on a Macbook because it had a CLI paired with actual hardware/software support.

I keep my phone as long as it gets security updates -- despite talk about price, I've found I can hold onto an Apple laptop for at least four years as long as I make sure to go heavy on the ram when I buy initially buy it.

Also I'm confused how you can jump from legit crits of Apple's closed source to indicating a preference for Android, an OS that will beam a great deal of telemetry to GOOG.

I tend to treat my phone as an inherent privacy risk and lock down my laptop -- it's my understanding that at the end of the day the LTE stack is gonna be closed even on a pine phone.