I really enjoyed Jon Patrick Pullen's article in Time Magazine,
"Forget the iPhone X, Apple's Best Product
Is Something You Can't Buy".
Pullen favors Apple's privacy policy
and practices above those of competitors like Google and Amazon,
based in part on the companies' business models. I like Pullen's
approach here: if user data is a revenue stream, it follows that
users' privacy cannot be a primary concern for that company:
Google, by contrast, not only sells phones and other devices,
but also makes money off the ads (and the user data) that
appear on those handsets, laptops and tablets. Amazon's
gadget-oriented business model wants to sell you things...
that will help sell you more things.... Facebook's users...
are themselves the products unwittingly feeding the social
network's revenue model.
I take issue with one point Pullen made, which was
to partially blame Apple for the successes of a 2014 phishing
campaign that led to the leaks of celebrities' embarrassing
personal photos. It's wrong to hold Apple responsible for
that. Google or Apple or Slappy's Online Fish Market could
encrypt and secure absolutely everything related to users' data,
but if the user surrenders their means of accessing it — maybe
the ONLY way to access the data in decrypted form (passwords,
physical keys, fingerprints, or whatever) — that's not the
company's fault. That's like blaming Ford for the theft of your
car because you gave a stranger your keys.
The article is worth the few minutes to read, because
it encourages one to think about the companies behind the
data storage. The author notes the privacy policy and protections
add to the value proposition of Apple's products — even the
$1,000 iPhone X — and subtly reminds us there's always
a catch.
|