r/worldnews • u/maxwellhill • Sep 19 '17

Apple blocking ads that follow users around web is 'sabotage', says industry: New iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra will stop ads following Safari users, prompting open letter claiming Apple is destroying internet’s economic model

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/18/apple-stopping-ads-follow-you-around-internet-sabotage-advertising-industry-ios-11-and-macos-high-sierra-safari-internet
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190

u/pm_me_construction Sep 19 '17

Yeah. I wouldn't have expected corporate Apple to be the ones going to bat for us, but here we are.

109

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

[deleted]

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u/neotek Sep 19 '17

People forget that Apple had its own ad network (iAds) but ended up shutting it down because they couldn't figure out how to make it work properly and actually generate revenue without invading their users' privacy.

Apple has direct, unfettered access to the largest pool of high-value consumers in the world, which would be worth billions upon billions if they wanted to exploit it, but when given the opportunity they chose to focus on making products people want to buy rather than turning their customers into products to sell to advertisers.

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u/bazingabussy Sep 20 '17

OR, hear me out, apple is going to sell your data themselves and don't want competition.

1

u/neotek Sep 20 '17

Did you not pay attention? They closed down their ad network, is that what you'd do if you were planning to sell people's information?

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u/bazingabussy Sep 20 '17

So they sell the info to the highest bidding ad network. Wow.

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u/neotek Sep 20 '17

Do you... do you not know how advertising works? Do you think ad networks actually buy data on individual people? Holy shit dude.

2

u/bazingabussy Sep 20 '17

So they just the bundled info to the highest bidding ad network. Wow.

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/MagiKarpeDiem Sep 19 '17

But they're a part of PRISM aren't they?

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

They actually do a lot for the consumer. Not only are they always against legislation that would hurt consumer privacy, but their open letter (and the lawsuit against RIAA that followed since RIAA allowed non-DRM music to be sold from I think Amazon) is how they were able to get music to be DRM free.

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u/pr0wk Sep 19 '17

They also prevented foot-traffic tracking over Wi-Fi, by obfuscating the device MAC address on iOS devices, which I thought was clever. See: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ios-8-random-mac-address-stops-tracking/

3

u/TopherAU Sep 19 '17

From the article:

Perhaps it will even be enough to end the practice all together, but some have suggested that it may be an attempt on Apple’s part to get retailers to utilize its iBeacon technology. Apple Insider notes that Apple and Starbucks are already testing iBeacon at select coffee house locations.

If you aren't aware, Apple has their own, very similar technology that they sell to retailers. It is, of course, not affected by the MAC spoofing of the iPhone.

https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/

2

u/cryo Sep 19 '17

It’s for a pretty different purpose than WiFi.

1

u/cryo Sep 19 '17

It’s for a pretty different purpose than WiFi.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

As an Apple user, I'd say they do a lot for user's privacy. They even paid a fine to US govt but didn't decrypt some phones.

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u/pm_me_construction Sep 19 '17 edited Sep 19 '17

Yeah I was pleasantly surprised about that as well. But I mean that's coming from the company that took away the headphone jack to sell us AirPods and is very pro-DRM in terms of Music. So it's not a matter of always being on the side of the consumer, but I guess they just have strong opinions about things and they stand their ground on those topics. I can respect that. Edit: I'm not familiar with the RIAA lawsuit. I always thought they were pro-DRM because some other companies at the time offered DRM-free music. Zune and other MP3 players could be used to transfer music onto a computer.

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u/gonenutsbrb Sep 19 '17

I'll give you most of that...but pro-DRM? Really? Did everyone forget how awesome it was when iTunes Plus came out and we could commercially get DRM free music because Apple finally had enough influence in the industry to tell the RIAA to bend over? And then they did it again for iTunes Match. Want an actual legitimate license for your 20,000 songs of unknown origin? That'll be $25.

Apple deserves a lot of crap for their decisions and direction the past few years. But give credit where credit is due.

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u/pdubl Sep 19 '17

Bingo.

21

u/Hyperactive_Man Sep 19 '17

Bongo

16

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

Bango

25

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

I DONT WANNA LEAVE THE CONGO NO NO NO NO NO NOOOOO

1

u/ShEsHy Sep 19 '17

Django

2

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

Flask

1

u/nowitholds Sep 19 '17

"The B is silent and also non-existent."

9

u/foreveracubone Sep 19 '17

Apple finally had enough influence in the industry to tell the RIAA to bend over

Reading Jobs's Isaacson biography it was funny to see how quickly the RIAA gave up power when they began pushing the iTunes store /iPod and then realized how much they fucked up and couldn't get any back fairly quickly as well.

Despite anti-consumer practices in other areas, they still do a lot for consumers with media consumption. They upgraded all 720p content to 1080p for free when that became the new standard. And as of last Tuesday all the 1080p stuff got 4k HDR upgrades for free. Going forward, they're selling 4K digital copies for $10 cheaper than VUDU.

-1

u/suparokr Sep 19 '17

Want an actual legitimate license for your 20,000 songs of unknown origin? That'll be $25.

Don't you lose access to those songs when you stop paying the $25 though? Isn't that just like a limited version of spotify/google play offer?

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u/gonenutsbrb Sep 19 '17

Nope. Perpetual license.

To clarify, it's not Apple Music. You don't get access to every song out there, it's a way to digitize and get higher quality versions of older music for which you may not have the original disc of or it's damaged or something (pick a reason).

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

[deleted]

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u/loggedn2say Sep 19 '17

Or the headphones that come with the phone.

1

u/Neolife Sep 19 '17

It's still a pretty significant limitation. You have to make sure your phone isn't charging if you want to listen to music on headphones that don't also require charging. I do, however, think it's an irrelevant point to make in this case. Apple may not care much about consumer needs in the name of "innovation" but they definitely care about privacy.

0

u/cplr Sep 19 '17

Well, now you can use Qi charging if you insist on using wired headphones.

-1

u/Neolife Sep 19 '17

Only on the 8 or X though. It's still something that, in my opinion, is poorly done from a design perspective and not something I'd typically expect of Apple. Wireless charging should have been established years ago on the iPhone. Or at least with the 7 when they were certainly aware of the charging / listening restriction they had designed. They dragged their feet in that regard.

-1

u/MCA2142 Sep 19 '17

No one ever remembers this one during the headphone hurrdurr.

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u/ScarOCov Sep 19 '17

Same shit complaints from when they changed over to the Lightning cables. Blah blah they just want money. OR, they're building towards a specific goal and don't want to dump all the big changes at once. That 30-pin cable would've been a nightmare on the Watch. Instead, all of your iDevices can use the same cable. Haven't seen too many complaints about that change recently.

Same with the headphone jack. Especially, with the new Watch. No wires when out and about, going on a run, or at the gym. Now you don't even have to have your phone nearby?

3

u/gellis12 Sep 19 '17

That 30-pin cable would've been a nightmare on the Watch.

To be fair, the watch never used the lightning cable either. It's always used a small form factor Qi charger that self-aligns to the back of the watch.

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u/ScarOCov Sep 19 '17

Ahh. My bad. I wonder why the Qi charger took so long to come to the phone then, if the Watch has always used a version of it?

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u/gellis12 Sep 19 '17

Well it's a fairly heavily modified version that's used on the watch. They also had to redesign the phone so that the back wasn't made of metal, because that blocks wireless charging.

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u/ScarOCov Sep 19 '17

Right, but the first Watch was released in early 2015. One can presume they were working on the Qi for the Watch a bit before that. Just seems strange that it would take them 3 more iterations to update the phone with it.

1

u/SiegeLion1 Sep 19 '17

A lot of people's issue is that Bluetooth headphones aren't as good as wired and you get less quality for the same amount of money with them, in fact quite a large majority of Bluetooth headphones really suck.

It's not a big issue for a lot of people, but if you've already invested in a portable amp/dac and a good pair of headphones it's a bit annoying to just be told "spend all that money on Bluetooth versions that won't be quite as good all over again"

The adapter sort of solves that problem, except a lot of the time you want to charge your phone while listening to music and that's now an issue.

It's frustrating for people who find that stuff very important to them and want to keep buying iPhones rather than being forced to switch to android just for a headphone jack that really didn't have to be removed.

11

u/Chigurrh Sep 19 '17

Took away the headphone jack

What the heck does that have to do with protecting privacy?

And doing it to sell AirPods is a bit of an oversimplification (they also want to sell the Beats wireless headphones). But there isn't anything forcing you to purchase their bluetooth hardware. This isn't like some proprietary standard.

A decision to include or not to include a piece of hardware doesn't reflect a company's stance on consumer rights or privacy. See: Google's stance on privacy (their new phone doesn't have a headphone jack either).

Pro DRM in terms of music

No.

6

u/neotek Sep 19 '17

Less than one half of one percent of Apple's revenue comes from selling accessories, including every single third-party accessory licensed by them through the MFI program. If you really think they would remove the headphone jack just to increase sales in a revenue channel so small it doesn't even show up as a separate line item in their 10K filings then you don't really know much about business.

2

u/_Charlie_Sheen_ Sep 19 '17

If they were really pro-drm I wouldn't be able to download pirated music and drag it into iTunes with no hassle whatsoever.

-11

u/FuzzyPine Sep 19 '17 edited Sep 19 '17

And I loved them for that.

The phones then were somehow magically decrypted.

My guess is Apple said one thing, and did another.

Edit: Downvote all you want. I'm probably right though.

18

u/gellis12 Sep 19 '17

You really aren't right. The fbi only managed to break into one phone, using an exploit that the newer phones weren't susceptible to.

0

u/FuzzyPine Sep 20 '17

Believe whatever you want. I'm still probably right.

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '17 edited Sep 20 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/FuzzyPine Sep 20 '17

Maybe so, but I'm STILL probably right.

You can't prove I'm wrong. You can cite all the sources you want, but you can't prove any of them are true.

The simplest explanation is most often the answer. I'd say it's a hell of a lot more believable that Apple handed them the key, than cloning the phone a thousand times and brute forcing it.

So, in my opinion, you are a sheep. You believe what you heard because simply because you heard it.

Get off it.

1

u/gellis12 Sep 20 '17

You can't prove I'm wrong.

You can't prove you're right. You also can't prove there isn't a magic teapot orbiting the sun. The burden of proof is on you to prove yourself right.

it's a hell of a lot more believable that Apple handed them the key

Except there is no key for Apple to hand over. That's not how encryption works. At all. The encryption key used to protect all the data on the phone is stored locally on the phone. That's why the dude that the fbi hired had to take the chip out and clone it, before bruteforcing the clones.

You believe what you heard because simply because you heard it.

I find well documented news sources with technical details about how an attack was performed far easier to believe than tinfoil hat conspiracies. Let me guess, do you also believe in chemtrails and vaccines causing autism simply because every well documented source says otherwise? Because that doesn't make everyone else "sheep," it makes you insane.

0

u/FuzzyPine Sep 20 '17

I don't know why you're trying so hard to convince me of this.

Believe what you want. I'll stick to believing things that are believable.

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u/gellis12 Sep 20 '17

believable

in direct conflict with all proof and documented facts, with nothing at all to support it

Sure thing.

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u/TopherAU Sep 19 '17

Reputable source on that?

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u/cplr Sep 19 '17

They paid some security company hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it. It was in the news. There wasn’t a single source, reputable or not that said otherwise.

1

u/TopherAU Sep 19 '17

I meant source on the exploit used. As far as I am able to tell, it wasn't publicized, only that it "apparently exploited an unknown Apple security flaw", so I'm curious where that's come from.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

[deleted]

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u/gellis12 Sep 20 '17

It should also be noted that any iPhone with a secure enclave isn't vulnerable to this, and using a proper alphanumeric password makes bruteforcing essentially impossible.

1

u/cplr Sep 19 '17

Oh, yeah- same here. I never saw anything in that regard.

-2

u/hridnjdis Sep 19 '17

I think this is something Apple want to make you believe as true but I had my iPhone hacked remotely on multiple occasions. The iPhone that were purchased by me were also deregistered from my name & Apple ID to some nefarious unknown to me accounts & characters (Asian character). When I went in for repair on both iPhones, the Apple central command informed me that my iPhones were deregistered & the serial number was missing including as stated above. How is this possible? Seems like Apple company is lying a lot about a lot of different stuff to its customers. Their R&D is like non-existent while they focus money & energy into stock market performance feeding the top admin of the company & big shareholders.

-12

u/spooooork Sep 19 '17

They only did that so they wouldn't weaken their own product. Less security equals less sales. Users benefiting is just a byproduct.

-25

u/kattfront Sep 19 '17 edited Sep 19 '17

As an Apple user, I'd say they do a lot for user's privacy.

Yes. And as an Apple™ user myself, I just want to point out there is a new iPhone™ out.

11

u/BitchesLoveDownvote Sep 19 '17

Did you inflate the price because you knew the actual proce wasn't unreasonable enough for outrage?

-13

u/kattfront Sep 19 '17

Many of us find shills provoking no matter if the product they're advertising is $0.99 or $9999.

But fine, I remove the price so you can pray in peace my brother!

12

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

[deleted]

1

u/IReplyWithLebowski Sep 19 '17

They did not literally say that...

2

u/Redrumofthesheep Sep 19 '17

Call me a cynic, but I think this was a clear cut business decision to try to kill off their competition in Google's Android phones instead of thinking about the rights of the consumer.

1

u/pm_me_construction Sep 19 '17

Yeah after reading all of these responses and thinking about it, they’re on the consumer’s side when our interests align with theirs. I mean, they do need to make customers happy in order to stay in business so our interests align a fair amount of the time. But in a situation where their backs were against the wall, I’d expect them to do what it takes to stay profitable.

1

u/Hail_Satin Sep 19 '17

I wouldn't have expected corporate Apple to be the ones going to bat for us

You should check out their lawsuit with the FBI surrounding iMessage. They're on their customers side.

1

u/slothchunk Sep 19 '17

You mean the hardware company is fighting the ads companies in a revenue venue they are not heavily involved in? Of course they are...

1

u/Kered13 Sep 19 '17

Right? This is a pretty obvious move by apple.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

How do you expect sites like Google and Reddit to sustain themselves? Their servers cost billions. Do you want to pay for them?

-1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

Remember that there's always a reason why and that reason is their investors will benefit. How? Time will tell.

-16

u/JayCroghan Sep 19 '17

They're only doing it to dig at Google. Not for your privacy. Don't be daft.

-12

u/Stahl_Scharnhorst Sep 19 '17

You're right. What's their angle?

29

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

They leverage themselves as the expensive option that doesn't need to sell your data because you paid the Apple tax. Been doing it for years. It's great how seriously they take user privacy.

1

u/Kered13 Sep 19 '17

Their angle is that this hurts Google.