Ex: all the stuff FB has been caught doing over the years
My understanding (no first hand experience) is that WeChat and Alipay are basically required in China. If a phone doesn’t have them, it’s worthless and won’t sell.
So naturally they too can do nonsense that would get the rest of us booted to space.
Needless to say that's not for me and I will probably keep sporting Androids (in my case I am happy with Samsung's top ultra offerings) since I actually use those added features, ie saving 500 bucks on proper expensive variometer for paragliding and instead hooking it up via OTG cable with basic one with good sensor but without display, for 10% of the price... needless to say relevant app isn't on play store neither. And so on.
But we certainly have choice on the market. I just wish Apple would properly focus on user security and shielding them from the worst of internet, and less on milking advertising, what I see so far didn't convince me it isn't just sophisticated marketing and not much more. You already pay premium on the device, its a proper spit in the face to be so visibly milked more and more, thats pure corporate greed.
What I mean - my wife with iphone pops up browser, I pop up mine with firefox and ublock origin. Internet is utterly useless and horrible place on her phone, while completely fine on mine (plus I get youtube ads blocking as a bonus)
That's a self-fulfilling property, with cause and effect going as much in the other direction: people who want that capability don't become Apple users. If you want openness, you don't pick Apple.
If you need a smartphone, you can choose between a company that has some missteps, or a demonstrably evil spy network. I know who I am choosing.
I can see the appeal if you don't particularly care about owning a device, but it blows my mind that people become so dedicated to this way of living.
It’s very similar to political parties: I have yet to find one that I 100% align with in all things, yet I still vote.
I would be shocked if many of these "surveillance loopholes" aren't silently mandated by government agencies around the world.
If there is an entitlement, it is as of yet unclear whether it means a consent dialog/privacy toggle or not. IIRC an entitlement only means you can ask for this sort of access, not get it automatically, but I may be wrong (I’ve never gotten far in iOS dev).
We can argue that this feature is misnamed, regular users will not understand what it is and would not be giving informed consent, and I can get behind that, but “automatic access to my private data on my device” looks like jumping to conclusions.
Is that what "local network access" means? I thought that was for controlling network connections to LAN ips and/or to send multicast packets (eg. mdns).
It’s a great time of year to donate to the EFF.
And Apple does generally prompt for location permissions, as does Google on Android.
Dunno if these apps do that or not, but I can easily imagine that using them is a Hobson's Choice even in OSS utopia: take the horse offered (app with tracking) or don't have a horse.
If Microsoft wanted to give special apps access to your private data without asking, then that is exactly what would happen.
The same thing is true in Linux, other than we'd expect that the open source nature would have users going "Yo, WTF"
I think.
Legal advice about what is and isn't legal under GDPR (and equivalents) varies a lot.
What makes this any different? It really seems more like an oversight than a conscious decision, similarly to how (I believe) both iOS and Android have retroactively had to bucket some of the Bluetooth LE permissions into "location", since that's what you can effectively do with them.
This is an interesting worldview to have in 2023.
And assuming for a second this is indeed an intentional backdoor in plain sight of the world: What’s in it for Apple?
Hanlon’s razor still cuts in 2023, at least for me.
