Apple is not playing ball with government tracking and censorship. The anti-tracking features on iPhones are seriously hurting Facebook and Google ad revenue.

Apple has refused to allow gov't backdoors into people's iCloud accounts and phones, and I believe has only cooperated in criminal cases under court order.

DOJ wants Apple to play ball and let them spy and censor, LIKE GOOGLE and FACEBOOK.

That's what this is all about.

quote:

Originally posted by American Pit Bull:

quote:

Originally posted by onegeek:
So you’re saying no one was literally forced or locked into anything?

So you’ve got nothing but a personal dislike?

A documented history of anti-consumer practices and over one billion dollars in fines, due to price-fixing and consumer protection violations, is not just a personal opinion.

Do you have any witness testimony or video confirming that Apple or its minions held a gun to literally anyone’s head and literally forced them to buy an iPhone?

No you literally don’t.

Sigh, two thoughts come to mind:

1) You know things are getting bad when you start to wonder if maybe the anarchists have a point.

2) chellim1’s signature line, "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." is pure truth.

quote:

Originally posted by onegeek
Do you have any witness testimony or video confirming that Apple or its minions held a gun to literally anyone’s head and literally forced them to buy an iPhone?

No you literally don’t.

Literally laughing out loud over here, bud.

Rehashing a baseless argument over semantics is entry level Trolling at best.


Apple has been sticking it to consumers for decades, mostly unbeknownst to the average user. when their calculated risks end up biting them in the ass, we shouldn't lose any sleep over it.

A large political donation to Biden helped get charges against DISH dropped. Wonder how long it will take Apple to wise up.

quote:

Originally posted by American Pit Bull:

quote:

Originally posted by onegeek
Do you have any witness testimony or video confirming that Apple or its minions held a gun to literally anyone’s head and literally forced them to buy an iPhone?

No you literally don’t.

Literally laughing out loud over here, bud.

Rehashing a baseless argument over semantics is entry level Trolling at best.


Apple has been sticking it to consumers for decades, mostly unbeknownst to the average user. when their calculated risks end up biting them in the ass, we shouldn't lose any sleep over it.

Evidently they’ve stuck it to you and the DOJ. Very few actual Apple consumers seem to feel even slighted, much less criminally ’stuck’.

You have yet to address how your claims of forcing and so on are even close to reality. No one has been forced to buy Apple.

To me the bigger issue I see is if any manufacturers come up with a proprietary feature that its competitors don’t have, they risk the DOJ suing to force corporations to share their intellectual property.

I see this as a potential slowing or hindering innovation, not to mention any perceived competitive advantage a manufacturer might have.

quote:

Originally posted by American Pit Bull:
Rehashing a baseless argument over semantics is entry level Trolling at best.

You are the last person that should be accusing anybody else of trolling in this thread:

quote:

Originally posted by American Pit Bull:
Apple is well known for it's anti-consumer practices and forcing it's sheep users into propriety entanglement.
...
Batterygate (planned obsolescence) was an interesting one that the Apple fanboi's readily ignore.

(Emphasis added)

quote:

Originally posted by DanH:
They've also been making a more significant push into user privacy instead of sharing everything with the Feds without a warrant.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
Apple is not playing ball with government tracking and censorship. The anti-tracking features on iPhones are seriously hurting Facebook and Google ad revenue.

Apple has refused to allow gov't backdoors into people's iCloud accounts and phones, and I believe has only cooperated in criminal cases under court order.

DOJ wants Apple to play ball and let them spy and censor, LIKE GOOGLE and FACEBOOK.

That's what this is all about.

Given the way the Biden Administration has been shown to operate, weaponizing the "Justice" department and pursuing other forms of lawfare, one might reasonably be excused for suspecting this is precisely what this is all about.

There was an episode, a couple years back, when Apple was going to install CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) scanning on their devices and in MacOS {*}. They received such universal, overwhelming push-back from the security community and consumers (it actually affected sales {**}) they "suspended" their plans. (They still haven't announced permanently cancelling them, nor have they resumed them.)

The primary objections on the part of the security community and knowledgeable consumers: That the CSAM-scanning engines could be easily re-purposed for government surveillance purposes. The primary proponents of putting that scanning software into their devices: Governments, who else? And, of course, the government-supported anti-CSAM organizations.

Apple, with all its faults, and it does have its faults, is entirely unlike the rest of Big Tech in that it takes user privacy seriously. It shares nothing with anybody, including the Government.

{*} Google, DropBox, and others already do this in their Cloud storage systems, and have been for years.

{**} At our household I suspended plans to upgrade my iPad and our plans to buy a pair of Mac desktops. I removed my subscription to additional iCloud storage space, cancelled my Apple Card, and cancelled Apple TV+. We essentially began distancing ourselves from Apple as much as we "reasonably" could.

Oh boy, it's even worse than we thought:

quote:

Apple’s ‘green bubble’ Android texts fuel ‘social stigma,’ DOJ claims in landmark suit

By Thomas Barrabi
Published March 22, 2024, 11:07 a.m. ET

The Justice Department called out Apple for afflicting Android smartphone users with the dreaded “green bubble” in text messages — calling it a mark of “social stigma, exclusion and blame” as part of its landmark antitrust case against the iPhone maker.

Full article: Apple’s ‘green bubble’ Android texts fuel ‘social stigma,’ DOJ claims in landmark suit (Also additional "news" sites.)

So at least part of the DOJ's lawsuit is based upon Apple not being sufficiently woke?

Much to my surprise it turns out, this is an actual thing:

quote:

I'm Buying an iPhone Because I'm Ashamed of My Green Bubble

By Michael Nunez
PublishedOctober 19, 2016

As a person who has only ever used an Android phone, I never had a clue about my “green bubble” status until someone I was dating brought it up in the middle of a conversation.

Full article: I'm Buying an iPhone Because I'm Ashamed of My Green Bubble

Jeebus Christos, where's that gorram meteor

In the process of development of an industry standard, you find that it usually was driven by a dominant company in that space or a very small group of companies initially. That dominant company usually also ends up driving further improvements into the standard, etc.

I have participated in a network standard and adoption of RFCs when I was at a number of very dominant networking companies in the Bay area years ago. The dominant player usually drive the standards.

For example, Tesla's proprietary charging standard that has become the North American Charging Standard. Tesla is the dominant EV company, so it drives the standard. Nothing new.

Apple was invited to participate in the RCS standard but it declined. So Google, being the dominant company, drove the standard and it was adopted for GSMA. Google continue to add features etc which may or may not be adopted. Now Apple has announced that it will work with GSMA to drive RCS encryption standard so we'll see how that will shake out. But this is good for the users and industry alike.

Standards are good.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Oh boy, it's even worse than we thought:

quote:

Apple’s ‘green bubble’ Android texts fuel ‘social stigma,’ DOJ claims in landmark suit

The Justice Department called out Apple for afflicting Android smartphone users with the dreaded “green bubble” in text messages — calling it a mark of “social stigma, exclusion and blame” as part of its landmark antitrust case against the iPhone maker.

Full article: Apple’s ‘green bubble’ Android texts fuel ‘social stigma,’ DOJ claims in landmark suit

quote:

I'm Buying an iPhone Because I'm Ashamed of My Green Bubble

As a person who has only ever used an Android phone, I never had a clue about my “green bubble” status until someone I was dating brought it up in the middle of a conversation.

Full article: I'm Buying an iPhone Because I'm Ashamed of My Green Bubble

I'll say it: If you don't like your Android or other device, buy an iPhone. If you can't afford the latest and greatest, buy a used one.

Apple has created one of the most popular and useful product ecosystems in the world. I like it, as do many others.

Only the Apple watch works with the Apple phone. Boo fucking Hoo.

Seriously, I think a small minority of people like Android phones because they are easier to mess with if you're a super techie. The vast majority of people with Androids buy them because they're cheaper.

And iPhones just work.
90% of Android users don't know to use their fucking phone. I know this from experience.

So let's punish the successful superior product and knock it down to a level with the less successful inferior product, and that will make it better. What a joke.

And I don't even know or care if an Android is technically better than an iPhone in any way. If 90% of the owners don't know how to use them, then they are inferior for the intended purpose.

quote:

Originally posted by honestlou:
If you don't like your Android or other device, buy an iPhone...

Seriously, I think a small minority of people like Android phones because they are easier to mess with if you're a super techie. The vast majority of people with Androids buy them because they're cheaper.

Honestly, I think you're off base there. I prefer Android because it's more logically designed, more customizable, and MUCH more intuitive IMO. On the other side of the spectrum, I loathe Apple at times because of the far too numerous 'secret squirrel' swipe here or there two times features that aren't documented ANYWHERE that only the cool 'fanboys' seem to know about! At the same time, there's a significant portion of the iPhone user market that's content to just do it the Apple way, at least in part, because there's so much that it just does without you even needing to think about it, sometimes whether you want it to or not.

AND, for the record, I don't know ANYBODY that uses Android because the can't 'afford' an iPhone. Pretty much any cellular provider will finance any cell phone to just about anyone. Further, Samsung has plenty of overpriced smartphones that cost just as much as the latest iPhone anyway. And there's no shortage of people that have to have the latest & greatest of either as soon as it's released.

This is just another example of the Gov't meddling in the free market and it's all much adieu about nothing! Just sayin'

An unpatchable vulnerability has been discovered in Apple's M-series chips that allows attackers to extract secret encryption keys from Macs under certain conditions, according to a newly published academic research paper .

Same with Intel chips.
https://www.macrumors.com/2024...ity-encryption-keys/

Just a feature.

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:

quote:

Originally posted by honestlou:
If you don't like your Android or other device, buy an iPhone...

Seriously, I think a small minority of people like Android phones because they are easier to mess with if you're a super techie. The vast majority of people with Androids buy them because they're cheaper.

Honestly, I think you're off base there. I prefer Android because it's more logically designed, more customizable, and MUCH more intuitive IMO. On the other side of the spectrum, I loathe Apple at times because of the far too numerous 'secret squirrel' swipe here or there two times features that aren't documented ANYWHERE that only the cool 'fanboys' seem to know about! At the same time, there's a significant portion of the iPhone user market that's content to just do it the Apple way, at least in part, because there's so much that it just does without you even needing to think about it, whether you want it to or not.

AND, for the record, I don't know ANYBODY that uses Android because the can't 'afford' an iPhone. Pretty much any cellular provider will finance any cell phone to just about anyone. Further, Samsung has plenty of overpriced smartphones that cost just as much as the latest iPhone anyway. And there's no shortage of people that have to have the latest & greatest of either as soon as it's released.

This is just another example of the Gov't meddling in the free market and it's all much adieu about nothing! Just sayin'

My experience is years of dealing with customers in the car stereo store, going all the way back to Bluetooth, through Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Before wireless CarPlay and Android Auto, you plugged in an iPhone and CarPlay popped up on the screen. With AndroidAuto, you had to give all kinds of individual permissions, and different phones were different. Hard for Sony or Apline to make Android Auto to work well when there were so many possible phones with differences.

I can absolutely state that with many years of data, that no more than 5/100 Android users could get Android Auto to work on their own.

That's my experience, and perhaps my bias, but that's where I'm coming from.

Fair enough...I wish I could still buy a SONY Xperia cell phone! I bet it would play quite nicely with a Sony Car Stereo and Android Auto!

Hmm. I plugged my Pixel into my new Nissan and it worked first time. There's really no setup. Mine is a 2023 Nissan so it's new.

I remember early this century, Intel was sued by FTC for anti trust behavior. In this case, Intel had threatened Dell, HP and other large computer makers that if they were to use AMD chips, they'd lose Intel special discounts and incentives. This is anti competitive behavior.

Same situation with Microsoft's tight Windows and Internet Explorer bundling and Google's control of online ads. I don't know why Apple fans are mad at these lawsuits. They all aim at opening up the market for the competition and that usually leads to better products at lower prices. Isn't that what we all want?

Lightning vs USB-C.. now that Apple will use USB-C, when my brothers and I visit each other, we won't have to drag along our own type of charging cables. Just use whatever at the location. Apple fans will get charge cables at much lower prices. Better right? What's there to be mad about?

from The Verge

Probably someone still holding onto a Blackberry

There are some issues that government has with the Apple eco-system for digital wallets too. Developers are locked into using Apple Pay for the in-app transactions. I’m sure that someone is getting cut out and wants in.

MacRumors link

quote:

Originally posted by saigonsmuggler:
Lightning vs USB-C.. now that Apple will use USB-C, when my brothers and I visit each other, we won't have to drag along our own type of charging cables. Just use whatever at the location.

Except now, Apple people with a bunch of Lightning stuff they neither need nor want to update will have to have both Lightning and USB-C cables.

I had just gotten to the point where we needed only Lightning and USB Micro-B, now we have to have USB C, as well.

quote:

Originally posted by saigonsmuggler:
Apple fans will get charge cables at much lower prices.

Already could. There are all sorts of Lightning cables, from a variety of manufacturers, on Amazon, for example. Many of them Apple certified.

Other than the cables that came with our iThings, none of the Lightning cables we've acquired have been Apple brand.