Casey Johnston, the Outline:
Multiple segments of Apple’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference keynote presentation today indicated that Apple is rushing into spaces where other tech companies have already deeply soured customers’ ability to trust them. The presentation doubled down on Apple’s recent privacy-themed advertising campaign, but the problem with this kind of privacy has never been company’s intentions in the moment; it’s that they appear to be unable to resist the intense pull of how lucrative customer data can be. As Apple moves into services while its hardware sales slow down, the recent betrayals of other tech companies who implicitly or explicitly promised to be careful with their users’ data loom very large.
Johnston gives examples of how Google and Facebook started out as ostensibly privacy-aware, but have caved to exploiting user data; she questions whether Apple will be different over the long term, and how we can trust them not to be. What happens if the next CEO doesn’t care at all about privacy? Surely, users are owed a deeper commitment to the privacy of their data than company culture.
I think Apple mostly gets that right by encrypting user data in ways that the company cannot decrypt — in other words, it’s only accessible by the user. Therefore, it is less necessary to trust that they will not abuse user data, as they are not collecting it in a way where they can abuse it. If you have iCloud Backups turned off, much of this data isn’t stored by Apple at all.
This article raises a really great point about privacy’s long-term commitments. Maciej Cegłowski has previously highlighted a hypothetical instance of a queer Russian blogger writing on LiveJournal before its acquisition by a Russian company; shortly thereafter, Russia passed strict homophobic laws, which could put that blogger at risk. Or consider how many apps have scooped up your contact list with your permission — who owns those lists now? What if an indie developer with your contact list in its database gets acquired by a social media giant with a pathological objection to privacy for anyone but its CEO?
It is therefore critically important that user data is encrypted in a way that is impossible for anyone else to decode. Users should be entirely in control of their own data now and forever.
Michael Simon, Macworld (fire up your script blockers and get ready to enter your browser’s reader mode):
Apple’s privacy push extends to watchOS, too. One of the main features is an app called Noise, which routinely monitors background sound and alerts you when a sustained sound might be damaging to your hearing. It’s the kind of surprise-and-delight feature only Apple would think of putting in a smartwatch — let alone attempt to implement in an existing consumer product at a massive scale — but Apple also considered something most people wouldn’t think of: All of Noise’s audio processing are done in real time, and Apple doesn’t record or save any of the sounds it hears.
For any other company, that’s not a day one feature. It’s something that’s added following an apology when someone uncovers a secret trove of audio recordings on a server. Or even worse, after said recordings are stolen as part of a hack. The Noise app announcement could have came and went without a promise of privacy and no one would have questioned it. No one would have even thought of it.
Andy Greenberg, Wired:
In upcoming versions of iOS and macOS, the new Find My feature will broadcast Bluetooth signals from Apple devices even when they’re offline, allowing nearby Apple devices to relay their location to the cloud. That should help you locate your stolen laptop even when it’s sleeping in a thief’s bag. And it turns out that Apple’s elaborate encryption scheme is also designed not only to prevent interlopers from identifying or tracking an iDevice from its Bluetooth signal, but also to keep Apple itself from learning device locations, even as it allows you to pinpoint yours.
There’s a lot to like about WWDC this year, as Apple has meaningfully iterated on every single one of its platforms in a big way. But preserving user privacy from design through implementation has been a central theme this year, as well as in years past. And it’s paying off: both Facebook and Google made a show of being privacy-conscious at their respective developer events this year, though neither has proposed altering a surveillance-based business model.
Privacy is rapidly becoming a requirement from the perspective of users as well as the law, and companies that have banked on being able to collect whatever data they want are going to find it hard to adapt. Apple already assumes that you don’t want them to surveil you.
Karl Bode, for Techdirt, reacting to the coming antitrust investigations into big tech companies:
Oddly missing from coverage from these probes is the fact that much of this behavior by the Trump administration may (*gasp*) not be driven by a genuine interest in protecting markets and consumer welfare. For one, it’s hard to believe that an administration that has shown it’s little more than a rubber stamp for sectors like telecom is seriously worried about monopoly power. Two, it’s hard to believe an administration obsessed with nonexistent censorship is going to come at these inquiries with integrity, and not, say, as a vessel to pursue a pointed partisan persecution complex.
[…]
Yet again, notice how telecom gets a free pass by the Trump administration? Notice how Silicon Valley is demonized, but telecom’s surveillance and anti-competitive gambits see zero backlash? I don’t think it’s happenstance that this new Trump “big tech” antitrust push comes as big telecom has asked for just such a push to aid its own competitive agenda. A lot of folks on both sides of the political aisle who’d like to see more done to rein in “big tech” seem a touch oblivious to the possibility that this new antitrust push may not be entirely in good faith.
Even if you give this administration a benefit of doubt that it does not deserve, and you assume that the coming antitrust investigations into tech companies will be in good faith and not be driven by a perverse desire to be unabashedly cruel, there is no possible circumstance under which these companies should be investigated and telecom giants should not.
This year’s interview with Greg Jozwiak and Craig Federighi is the best one yet — not just the interview itself, but in video and audio quality as well. A few choice items of interest to me:
Contrary to rumours, the TV app that ships with MacOS Catalina is not a Catalyst app. Of the three media apps that iTunes has been split into, only Podcasts is a Catalyst app.
Federighi explained the company’s thoughts behind the hard-to-discover gestural elements of the iPad’s user interface. He compared the new three finger pinches for cut, copy, and paste to the keyboard shortcuts on MacOS for the same commands. I’m still not sure I buy the argument that this core functionality is adequately discoverable, but his explanation that the new gestures are more easily remembered and repeated than keyboard shortcuts passes the sniff test.
Federighi is the company’s fastest presenter “by far”, according to Joz. He did not disclose the slowest presenter.