People are arguing that Apple has a monopoly on the iPhone app store.

[garote]

I have an amazing new product. It's a handgun with big metal truck nuts on it. Those midwestern guys are going to love it. But Walmart says they won't stock it on their shelves because it violates their safety guidelines. "This weapon is too front-heavy," they say. Bah, what do those pencil-pushers know about firearm design?

You know what I found out? Only Walmart gets to approve what Walmart puts on their store shelves! That's a god damn monopoly!! My attorney says so too, and so far he's taken $75,000 in fees researching my case -- but I'll surely win that all back and more.

A lot of people move through Walmart stores. If you can get your product on Walmart shelves, you could get massive sales. How can it be legal for those bastards to deny my access to their shelves? My product is GREAT! I mean think about it; the puns write themselves. "ARE YOU A GUN NUT? WELL HERE'S SOME NUTS FOR YOUR GUN!"

Okay, so, I know how to make this fair. What they should do is, just clear a bunch of space out in their parking lot, so I can set up my own store right where their customers park. Then they should knock an entire wall out of their store, so their customers can just wander randomly out into my store instead. So, they think they're in a Walmart - with that reputation for security and efficiency - but I get their money, and I don't have to pay a stocking fee, and when they shoot themselves in the foot with a TRUCK NUTS GUN because it's too front-heavy, they'll blame Walmart for their pain.

Sounds fair!

Comments

[garote]

Not what you said, but what you implied.

"If you can't fix it, you don't own it" has always been an arbitrary line, usually laid down at the scale of a product but sometimes not, and also arbitrary in the definition of a repair versus a modification.

For example, if the exhaust system of your car gets clogged, you cannot "repair" it by simply sawing it off. (Setting aside the fact that in most modern cars this would make them run worse.) You are making an illegal modification. Not one that would be contravened by "common sense" either. Most people on Earth don't give a shit about whether they pollute the air compared to whether they can get to work.

If you're trying to tie this into the repair of iPhones, you might want to dig into the various scams that fake repair shops and organized crime outfits have been practicing, all over the world but mostly in China. Apple loses an astonishing amount of money replacing devices that turn out to be fake, or assisting people who have made crappy repairs to their devices using kits or had the equivalent done by a shop. We're talking on the scale of BILLIONS of dollars here. It makes sense for Apple to combat this. And there isn't the same "bring it into a store" restriction as there would be in a combine harvester. You can mail a phone in. If you're under warranty they will ship you a stand-in phone while you wait.

If the warranty has expired, then you may feel you have nothing to lose taking your iPhone to some random repair shop. There is no law against this. Whether that repair shop is supplying you with parts that introduce security holes - accidentally or deliberately - or expose the device to further breakage, is your problem, though regulators are still attempting haphazardly to police them.

The analogy I would be using if I were you, would be with ink cartridges for printers. Not a market for repairs, but a market for supplies.

On the other hand I would then have to tell you that that analogy doesn't work with Apple's App Store, for reasons you can learn on your own if you look into the things I mentioned above.

[peristaltor]

I've found people who disagree with my statements often jump to bizarre implications. ;-)

I'm aware of all the data points you mention. Heck, that is why I don't use most of the "features" already installed on my phone. Since I can't be sure what security holes are built into them, I don't risk it. I'm not sure there is a solution to this problem anywhere in sight. In fact, if you're concerned about developers having jobs, creating a secure and private phone OS/service to run new apps would be a wonderful start.

The analogy I would be using if I were you, would be with ink cartridges for printers. Not a market for repairs, but a market for supplies.

That is a very apt analogy indeed! The supply here is the phone's user, of course. Restricting other app developers from access gives Apple the primary (if not exclusive) access to behavioral patterns that is currently turning every corporation pursuing such strategies into the largest companies on earth.

Because of this profit incentive, sadly, the chances of having a decently secure and private phone at all is slim to about none. More and more, people I'm meeting are giving up the smart phones as a result, choosing to go without cells, or opting, as The Wife™ did, with a newer flip phone.

(That flip phone, in fact, led to a humorous but alarming encounter I recount in my latest, Episode 133.)

[garote]

I don't even know how to begin addressing the tangle of conspiracy theories, hearsay, and confirmation bias that you appear to be operating on.

I'm going to make a few broad points and then back away slowly.

1. Apple, Facebook, Google, et al are not the largest companies on Earth. Not by a long shot.
2. Apple is a hardware company, first and foremost. They make money selling hardware.
3. The usage metrics Apple does collect, it does make available to app developers, in a de-identified format. It does not collect any more usage data than that.
4. The usage analysis that Apple software does do that is outside that scope is confined to processes that run on the device itself and do not transmit that data beyond it. This is specifically for the purpose of protecting privacy. It is also in marked contrast to what Google does.
5. Your flip phone is more subject to government eavesdropping and passive monitoring than the encrypted messaging services you can get on a smartphone, including iMessage. You are not protecting people's privacy by convincing them to buy flip phones. You are reducing it.

[garote]

Let me emphasize point number 5.

SMS and MMS messaging protocols used by non-smart phones are trivially easy to intercept and accumulate by the government, the phone company, and by bad actors. Your location can be triangulated on cell tower signal data alone regardless of whether you use a smartphone or a non-smart phone. Your voicemail and your voice calls can both me trivially intercepted and automatically transcribed by the government in cooperation with the phone company, and again a bad actor within the phone company can eavesdrop on all of your calls if they have - or can fake - sufficient clearance.

And you are worried about usage patterns???

Barking up a fire hydrant in the wrong time zone.

Your best defense against this is end-to-end encryption. There are over a dozen multi-platform smartphones apps that do this. The one I use is called Signal. Using these, it is mathematically impossible for your communications to be read, even if the data is intercepted. Needless to say these are not an option on non-smart phones.

If you are worried about the OS APIs themselves being backdoored, then for God's sake, don't rootkit your phone, and don't install random shit from an app store that doesn't have a properly constructed vetting process -- or better yet, don't use the f**% Android operating system. The pieces of it that Google makes "open source" are non-essential and the company is notoriously ambivalent about whether you are a sovereign individual with rights, or an aggregate of exploitable behaviors waiting to be data-mined. (By the way, Apple has open-sourced the iOS kernel. Here, read about their most recent release. )

Years ago I wrote up a long list of all the things Google learns about you just by spidering through your emails, independent of the web and usage history they also bind it with. The list is appallingly long and would not surprise you in the least. What you're missing is that Apple and Google are not the same company, and are not even using the same business model. They also have radically different relationships with the federal government.

Okay, I think I'll stop here and go back to sorting vacation photos.

[peristaltor]

You're missing some details about Apple that directly apply to what I'm discussing. Yes, they are a hardware company… primarily. And yes, they are the better option for privacy for all the reasons you mention. I get that.

They also advertise just like Google and the rest. Therefore, they also parse user data, render behavioral databases into predictions about users, and, when anonymized, sell that information to advertisers. Just like Google. The ads go out (last I heard) through their news feed, like those on Facebook; just like FB's, these are tailored to the user, and therefore do not contain all the scripts that bog down programmatic ad auctions on Android and other devices.

This is not "conspiracy theory," except that, yes, there are those in the industry that realize how bad it sounds when spoken aloud, and that therefore it shouldn't be discussed openly. It is the growing profit center for digital providers.

Hence, that observation about "the biggest companies." That's biggest by comparing profits to expenses.

So, as to point 5, I'm not concerned about eavesdropping on conversations per se, but rather about behavioral tracking (mostly on web usage).

[garote]

Yeah I can tell you're "not concerned" about it. I find that hilarious.

I'm glad to see you included the phrase "when anonymized", at least. That shows you're paying at least some attention. Now I get to ask you: Since the data is anonymized, what is your beef with this? To the point where you would rather have your intimate communications - and those of your friends - intercepted by all and sundry, instead?

Also, on biggest by profits versus expenses: Citation needed.

[peristaltor]

Yeah I can tell you're "not concerned" about it. I find that hilarious.

I was wondering at what point in this discussion the tech industry's apparently rampant anti-government sentiment (blinding it to private abuse) would appear.

Point noted.

Since the data is anonymized, what is your beef with this?

It doesn't necessarily stay anonymized, as a researcher demonstrated.

One problem is that people don’t understand what makes data unique or identifiable. For example, in 1997 I was able to show how medical information that had all explicit identifiers, such as name, address and Social Security number removed could be re-identified using publicly available population registers (e.g., a voter list).… The point is that data that may look anonymous is not necessarily anonymous.

Take three identifiers (often available in the public realm) and anyone is your bitch. Lose your database to a hack——as far too many already have——and everyone can be brought to heel.

Oh, and the private companies are providing this information to the government (for a fee, of course), so right there your worst nightmares join mine. Ta-daaa!

Also, on biggest by profits versus expenses: Citation needed.

I'll look. Been doing a lot of reading lately. It starts to blur together.

[peristaltor]

Oh, and concerning mods to vehicles/phones/tractors: There are very good reasons why chopping out catelytic converters is illegal——breathing being paramount——reasons that simply don't exist with phones (excepting the reasons of illicit repair shops you mention). Combines might be a gray area, depending on what systems the software controls.

That said, if we don't allow owners to tinker with their stuff, we miss quite a few innovation opportunities.

[garote]

See what I wrote above: "Not one that would be contravened by "common sense" either. Most people on Earth don't give a shit about whether they pollute the air compared to whether they can get to work."

Common sense is not an adequate standard for the applicability of a given modification to a given device.

[peristaltor]

The only standard I'm aware of concerning modifications is simple: Do I own it? If so (and if there are no obvious laws on safety/pollution applicable), then I get to modify it.

That's common sense. If you'd like to protect consumer products from "tampering" by their owners, stop selling them. Simple!

Tying a "licensed" code base to a purchased item to prevent even simple repairs without involving the company? Disingenuous tomfoolery worthy of public corporal punishment.

[garote]

*shrug*

Deliberately narrow your worldview if you want. "No obvious laws applicable" is a meaningless tautology. And, you do not own these things. You are purchasing a license to use them, and that license carries restrictions.

[peristaltor]

Again, that is the case today. It is new, at least as concerns farm equipment.

Whether or not that will be the case tomorrow is simply a matter of appropriate legislation.

So, *shrugs* to you in return.