Privacy, Apple style

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Apple may be hobbling its advertising revenue by its strict adherence to privacy-friendly policies, but it’s getting a lot of respect at the same time
[See the full post at: Privacy, Apple style]

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Elly, lizzytish

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I feel a lot better about using Apple’s products than Microsoft’s. I avoid Google like the plague, unless I have no choice.

Apple first caught my eye when they refused to cave to FBI demands that they crack their own encryption. Reading an article like this gives me even more confidence that I have had.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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ryegrass, Bill C., lizzytish, lurks about, Noel Carboni, FakeNinja

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MrJimPhelps wrote:

I feel a lot better about using Apple’s products than Microsoft’s. I avoid Google like the plague, unless I have no choice. Apple first caught my eye when they refused to cave to FBI demands that they crack their own encryption. Reading an article like this gives me even more confidence that I have had.

I feel Microsoft kept enterprise in check but sold out everyone else in terms of privacy. Microsoft at least knew better then to [mess] with enterprise. But home users were sold out as anything goes in terms of data collection.

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Apple still satisfies most government requests for user data without a second thought, at least in US jurisdiction. That brief battle over a phone was merely a show; just like Microsoft, Google and Facebook, Apple cannot be above law or effectively stand against pressure from government agencies.

Though, it’s not the same as monetizing said data and stockpiling it for dubious reasons, so I agree that Apple is much better than Microsoft and Google in that matter.

EDIT HTML TO text

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Yeah, slowly working towards complying to the upcoming May 28 regulations….

I guess.

Another sign could be their building a new datacenter just “around the corner“.

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HiFlyer

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Per my Rant in the forums (Exit ramp from WinX & Glide path to… – April, 2017), this solidifies my decision to move away from the Windows platform. It appears more and more to me that Apple may be a viable alternative, even with the higher forecast costs. What is trust worth? Looks like I might be finding out at my local Apple store sooner than I thought.

I wonder when my employers will arrive at the same decision point. History does have a way of repeating itself – I recall quite vividly how Windows established a beach head in the early 90’s.

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Bill C.

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I switched to Mac 5-6 years ago. I mostly run Windows in Parallels Desktop Virtual Machines.

I have done a series of topics in the MacOS for Windows wonks forum. I’m not through with the series yet, so there may be more to come.
If anyone is considering switching, I suggest starting with Debunking the myth of Mac as a Walled Garden

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Elly, Bill C., AlexEiffel, lizzytish

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Another reason to recommend Apple products

Woody, Just received my Consumer Reports November edition. Article: “Microsoft Surface Laptops are No Longer Recommended.”

The problem is predicted reliability, with estimated two-year breakage rates of 25 percent

Consumer Reports is removing its “recommended” designation from four Microsoft laptops and cannot recommend any other Microsoft laptops or tablets because of poor predicted reliability in comparison with most other brands.

To judge reliability, Consumer Reports surveys its subscribers about the products they own and use. New studies conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center estimate that 25 percent of Microsoft laptops and tablets will present their owners with problems by the end of the second year of ownership.

The decision by Consumer Reports applies to Microsoft devices with detachable keyboards, such as the new Surface Pro released in June and the Surface Book, as well as the company’s Surface Laptops with conventional clamshell designs.

The magazine has a chart depicting “Estimated breakage rate of laptops by brand by the end of the 2nd year of ownership. Microsoft 25%, Apple 10%. I should also point out that Dell comes in at 22%

These stats are based on 41,304 subscriber experiences between 2014 and 2017

I say again, I cannot think of a single Microsoft product that I can recommend.

CT

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Elly

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Canadian Tech wrote:

…estimated two-year breakage rates of 25 percent…

You can be sure that’s planned, too.

The OS “expires” in a year or two. The hardware expires in two years.

Who do they think they’re fooling?

Apple is a respectable hardware company, but their philosophy seems also to obsolete things far too quickly. That’s why Microsoft succeeded so wildly – they DID consider compatibility and continuity important.

My real problem is I don’t quite know what OS to put on my next workstation, which I will want to build in the next couple of years. I’m starting to think I’m going to have to embrace Unix or Linux. Or maybe one last good run of Win 8.1.

-Noel

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Sessh, Elly, Ascaris

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Noel Carboni wrote:

My real problem is I don’t quite know what OS to put on my next workstation, which I will want to build in the next couple of years. I’m starting to think I’m going to have to embrace Unix or Linux. Or maybe one last good run of Win 8.1.

I’d suggest both!

It’s the same thing I have on both of my main PCs… Win 8.1 and Linux (Mint 18.2 in my case).

I know that 10 is not likely to become something I want at any point in the future, given its current trajectory, but you never know.  Expect the best, but prepare for the worst.  That’s what the Linux installation is– a preparation for the day when there is no longer a usable form of Windows available.  It looks inevitable at this point, now that Satya Nadella has “hit refresh,” so we might as well get used to the idea and start learning how to use the new OS when there’s no pressure and we have all the time we need.

With Windows 8.1, we nominally have six more years, though I bet MS will try their best to foul the nest long before then, and they might succeed in doing it.  We depend on them for security updates, and if those are bundled with a poison pill that we just will not swallow, it’s done.  It doesn’t really matter whether Linux is as good as Windows in any given way when that day comes, and one way or another, it is coming. Windows 10 is already poison-pilled, so even if we stick with 8.1 until 2023, we’re still going to arrive at that same day of reckoning, just at the latest possible date.

We either go where Microsoft “wants to go today,” for any possible value of “where” or “today,” accepting that they’re in control and we’re merely along for the ride, or we leave Microsoft behind, for better or worse.  In my case, getting to know Linux relieved the stress to a degree, since now I do know I can live without Microsoft.  While Linux is behind Windows in a lot of areas, there’s also a lot of really good things that make me wish Windows had done it that way.

Linux, fortunately, continues to improve, and Windows continues to get worse.  Six years is a long time, of course; if 8.1 does last that long, in a practical sense, we can only guess what state Linux will be in by then.  If MS really is trying to execute an exit strategy from the general-purpose OS market, there is going to be a surge in development interest in Linux like we’ve never seen.

If MS is not, in fact, trying to scuttle Windows, then at some point you would think they would start making some good decisions here and there, like not requiring businesses to perform rollouts six times more often than they ever have before so they can have “feature upgrades” they neither desired nor asked for, which MS will then tell them are necessary to keep up with security threats in this day and age, even though the feature updates aren’t about security anyway, and end up causing more security holes rather than less because of code churn.

If MS is not trying to destroy Windows… yeah, we could use less of… that.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

9 users thanked author for this post.

Sessh, MrJimPhelps, Cybertooth, David F, Elly, Noel Carboni, HiFlyer, AlexEiffel, lurks about

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I see the just-released Firefox 56 is apparently trying to make privacy more transparent and inviting feedback.

https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2017/09/06/making-privacy-transparent/

Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie

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HiFlyer

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Just was at the Apple Store yesterday.  I was really sweating hard trying to resist the iPad with keyboard for mobile computing.  I succeeded for a few days at least.  But I can guarantee it IS in the future.  I do want a 27″ iMac, but Apple’s website makes it so hard to find prices of the i7 versions unless you ask to the double secret, ULTRA level links.  I am just not ready to shell out that much cash.

Linux is my route for a true desktop.  I am waiting for the release of the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS version sans Unity (even though I personally really like Unity.)  If I finish the build before it releases, I will go with Linux Mint, probably Cinnamon.  I also want to try a KDE release also.  I will try Kubuntu and probable Suse, as I have had good luck with them in the past.

The Windows 7 desktop will hang in there until I get a hardware failure or Win7 is EOL.  I will miss Office 2010, but it really feels like MS is trying to slowly make Outlook unusable.  Other than games, and some photo editing programs, having Outlook for my email archives is the only reason to keep a Windows box.  Fortunately I have been using Thunderbird for archiving in case MS totally hosed Outlook 2010.  The cross-platform applicability of the Thunderbird settings and files is truely refreshing.

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Elly, HiFlyer

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Bill:

I’ve already moved on to Linux Mint. I use Windows only when there’s no other way to perform a task. I’ve got till 2023, because my wife has Windows 8.1 on her laptop; hopefully I will have all issues figured out long before that time.

If there was still a Novell, I would consider Suse Linux; but there’s not. I tried Ubuntu/Xubuntu, but I wasn’t happy there, so I moved to Linux Mint. I’m very happy with Linux Mint.

Jim

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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I don’t use Google products except for Chrome which I never sign into. I think Google has a direct interest in my data because its primary money maker is ads and that conflicts with any promise of privacy commitment. Apple does seem rather committed to the end users privacy and has defended this even when government ask for it. Apple isn’t perfect, but is definitely more in tune with its customers privacy concerns. Microsoft also seems to have toned back its quest for user data, but not enough to convince me they have seen the light.

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I think much or Microsoft’s apparent toning back has been due to the pressure from the European security agencies, not the goodness of their heart. How much is actual toning back, and how much is just warning the User so they have an option to opt out, is questionable.

I doubt seriously the average user understands the implications of the options anymore than they realized they had settings already in place to block some of it. The visitors to AskWoody are much more aware. But most average Users never look at the Control Panel or the Settings App. They have no idea what makes Windows work (or not). I find this to be the case with most of the “clients” (if you can call the people you help pro bono “clients”) who ask me for help and whose computers I maintain.

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PK, the vast majority of Windows users have no more insight into what makes their computers work than they do their electric toothbrushes. This is how MS succeeds with its Win10 conversion.

CT

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HiFlyer, MrJimPhelps

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Apple not collecting ‘telemetry’ data? They are even worse than Microsoft…

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? says:

well, iphone always puts ridiculously long ttls to Cupertino, California (eg.17.249.92.XX) on my router and I have to reboot it to flush them. Almost as bad as the ones from Irish Facebook.

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Is this the same Apple whose iCloud routinely leaks embarrassing photos of celebrities all over the Internet?

-- rc primak

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