Apple doesn’t care about user privacy, was that meant to be surprising?
I don’t like Apple. I find their UI to be hard to use and counter-intuitive. Their walled garden / vendor lock-in is a model of monopoly behavior that is terrible.
However, unlike most other US tech giants when you use their stuff you are the customer, not the product. It is in Apple’s interest to keep their customers happy.
So on one hand it is surprising that they would upset their customers like this.
However, capitalism dictates that if their is also a chance of making money by making you both the customer and the product, Apple has to take it.
So on the other hand completely unsurprising. 😅
Oh that was some good capilitist propaganda. Apple wants to keep customers “happy”. Oh I get tickled thinking people are naive enough to believe this crap. Thanks for making my day.
as a public company, it was bound to happen. shareholders ultimately come before the customer. Just because they weren’t the product, doesn’t mean apple actually cares about the consumer
Oh, how unexpected!
No way? Apple? OMG… They’d never… Would they?
In case people haven’t worked it out, Apple’s business model has always been screw-everyone, to the point that they even sent out letters to other resellers customers (at a unrelated Apple reseller) to buy Applecare…
In fact, I would be surprised if they also weren’t using the App store metrics to identify ideas/apps they should copy and target too (or, companies to buy).
If you spent money for that lovely premium computer hardware they sell, you only get updates for a few years, if you bought it at the end of the cycle.
this is not true. maybe you can point to a few exceptional cases around major changes like the architecture transitions but the vast majority of macs get updates for many years.
Apple only updates their computers for about 6-7 years. After that, no new MacOS updates. Architecture changes are unrelated, but, yes, they did that twice in the past 20 years (Microsoft and Linux both support mostly the same architectures they always did, with the itanium builds, or other funky architectures that never succeeded).
In contrast, even Microsoft only JUST broke backwards compatibility with old processors (and, have only done it once)… And I’m not even sure that’s a hard cut off (as, I’ve seen older CPU’s than 7XXX series with windows 11 being sold)
Apple profits on both the OS, and the hardware directly. They’re in full control, and it isn’t as though they need to support a RANGE of hardware. And they charge a premium for this hardware.
As BJW mentioned, even worse, developers hoping to develop for Mac OS or IOS NEED to buy an Apple computer to ensure compatibility with the latest builds. Microsoft doesn’t force you to buy a Surface if you want to develop for them. On Linux, you don’t need a specific system either
Lol. Right… That’s why my MacBook Pro is collecting dust while the spec-inferior MacBook Air I was required to purchase to keep getting OS updates is now my development machine… 🙄
You don’t need to run macos on that older machine.
I distinctly remember how at some point the “best all around laptop for running windows” was a MacBook pro,
Ofc by now more people are catching on they are much bettered served with linux…
That would be GRAND if Apple didn’t unnecessarily lock iOS compiling to only the very latest MacOS, and iOS application development is the only reason I even own Apple products.
Yeah, I bought a Mac Studio, Mac Pro, and used to own a powerMac G5. The worst part was that Apple sucks at GPU’s and always did. I dumped my Mac Pro when I realised the GPU was totally crap compared to PC half the price on the market, and there was no official way to update it, and keep using MacOS. I could switch GPU, but, Mac OS wouldn’t have the drivers.
It was super embarressing. Despite only needing to support a handful of GPU’s, Apple still didn’t offer a long timeframe of support for that system. The only solution was buy a whole new computer
Insert always has been meme
the iPhone manufacturer wants to use personal user data from Siri conversations
They will only use data from AI users using AI to train the AI. Sounds reasonable. If you don’t like AI and you don’t use it your data will not be used for training. At least for now.
I always assumed that they were just lying about their “privacy commitment”. No corpo type is going to be able to resist leaving that much data on the table. Nonetheless people quite prepared to eat up for the claim and criticise Google, who at least honest about it, it was a completely unfounded claim made by the company itself the very people most incentivize to lie.
In other news, experts say water is wet.
I haven’t update my phone in a long time. I like how it keeps asking.
Having dicked around with Local LLMs, they do get better the more they learn about you. But going through what these things figure out is kind of horrifying.
Like looking into the training data they find out, they can infer a lot about you and your methodology and it is creepy. Like really creepy.
I’m not anti-AI by any means. I have a Local LLM Agent in my router to keep an eye on things in case anything fucks up and it’s pretty good as my little administrator, but still. It knows a lot about me to the point I had to catch myself to not fucking call it “he” or “they.” It’s an object but it’s an object with a frightening amount of info on me. I just wish the average populace had this level of think of what you are giving up.
If you’re not that techy… well first one, what the fuck are you doing on Lemmy and on the Tech server? But then I want you to think about this. If someone stalked you for a week, what could they find out about you? How much do you think they would learn?
That is how these huge companies are and especially AI. They’re stalkers who manage to learn a lot about you by just observing you.
I’d argue llms know way more about you than a stalker because you ask them private questions, they analyze you. But the other thing too, this isn’t anything new since people post to social media all the time, it’s just a lot more invasive.
Also, if you couldn’t tell from my reply, I’m not a teche I just found myself here.
LLMs themselves don’t, but an external memory system that it reads/writes to might or if someone is reading the chats. But running LLMs locally can be very private.
Apple is relying on an opt-in procedure: When activating Siri AI, the manufacturer asks for help in improving the chatbot, as developers with access to the release candidate of iOS 27 report.
The update will be released to the public on Monday, September 14.
You can either agree to this or press a visually inconspicuous “Not now” button. The dialog cannot be completely dismissed. Users can switch it off again after activation in “Settings > Analysis & Improvements”.
Settings > Privacy & Security > Analysis & Improvements > Improve Siri & Dictation
I’m jaded enough to expect that the “not now” or “no” button is secretly a “yes but make it look like the option is declined” button.
I really can’t stand the “Not now”, where “services” (including Google’s backup service) prey on the user accidentally agreeing one day.
Your average apple user must have a wall of those
Can’t we just make this opt in??? I guess that’s the reason we don’t get Siri AI in the EU for now
According to the article, it is opt-in but you have to of course trust the mega corporation at their word
Hmm, i missed that Part. On second read it’s only opt in. I still thought they would do better, especially since they said all of their AI features would be privacy focused
Only opt-in …for now
Just never use Siri. It’s been available how long? I’ve always shut it off from the get-go. Also, I do not use my Apple ID to log in my computers.
Always use a local password for the hardware and just avoid the cloud like the plague.
FFS, I don’t even keep my music libraries in the default location, since all sorts of holy hell seems to arise (on my ancent systems anyhow) when I do.
This is like all things Apple - you just avoid the new shit, and step away from updating the OS until the first or second update drops because the first adopters are ALWAYS the actual beta testers.
Been that way since MacOS 7.
Exactly. I have always had Siri turned off, ever since my very first apple devices, and never had a reason to turn it on. Same with all the AI features. I don’t want them so I keep all AI options turned off, always.
I still have a couple devices on the cloud but only for shit I don’t actually care about, and whenever I get around to cleaning those up I’ll get rid of it there as well. Still on the original 5GB, too: I don’t believe in paying others to store my data when I can and should store it myself.
When it comes down to it I don’t even know why I started turning all that shit off, beyond the fact I found it annoying to speak twice (or more) when I could just quietly type once. I’m no prescient genius, but I am now very glad of whatever luddite instinct made me shut it all off, lol.
Which means eventually its going to “accidentally” be opt out as a
bugfeature.Or they just do it anyway, easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, after all it’s only a .001% revenue fine.
It is opt in. Due to capitalism these sites have to resort to clickbait.
It’s opt in only with the not now option…
Source?
E: apparently it reads “not now” in the beta screens
The article doesn’t really misrepresent anything… Apple is indeed walking back their promise, and their doing it the T&Cs nobody reads, while doing “opt in” by forcing users to make a choice on this based on deceptive doublespeak.
Yep. They’re moving it to a request that you can’t say “No” to, only “Not now”. Eventually they’ll forego the request and just slap it into a “By using this device, you agree to…” statement.
Or they’ll just keep bothering the shit out of you until you agree. That’s what “not now” means in the Apple world.
Look I get that Apple bashing is popular on here, but that’s not what apple does.
The not now is only and annoyingly so, to nudge people to update or upgrade OS versions. License agreements are always agree or decline. And toggles are toggles. Once they are off they are of aand on remains on.
It would have been good to share this during the keynote too, I agree, but considering where they stand on consent and privacy vs the AI behemoths and meta or alphabet, they are still by far the lesser evil of most of Silicon Valley.
