Tim's Cooked
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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They have a customer base loyal enough to keep buying the Magic Mouse. I don't think strategy matters at this point.
Some people say give the customers what they want, but that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, 'If I'd ask customers what they wanted, they would've told me a faster horse.' People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.
-- Steve Jobs
And it turns out, if you are able to build an entire business out of a cult of personality, you don't even have to figure out what they will want anymore. They will just want what you make.
This. Their customer base doesn't tell Apple what they like. Apple tells its customer base what they're going to like.
Maybe he should try to...
Think Different?
Seems the only people upset with Apple are investors and anyone not in the ecosystem.
Stay mad, ig.
Yeah, we're totally mad we're not in an locked in ecosystem where they treat you like a todler.
I cry myself to sleep every night, so mad, not being able to use Apple devices. /s
But whatever makes you validate yourself, ig.
Trust me when I say, there is no reaching this one. He only knows how to regurgitate keynote talking points. Apple is secure and collects zero user data according to him.....because they said so. It's no wonder apple doesn't allow 3rd party app stores. These people need their hand held.
Proves my point 😂
Yeah, who needs investors and new customers!
Apparently this author thinks a 3 trillion dollar company does.
I doubt a change in leadership will change things for the better. A new CEO will likely just double down on an already failing AI strategy.
And then they will cut down on other products so they can double down even more.
But iPhone18 is on the horizon, now in plastic and pastel colors. Buy it shapples!
Maybe offer a good product at competitive prices?
The last thing they dropped that i thought about getting was the air when I was a college kid looking for a facebook/YouTube machine.
i really don’t agree. i see that the Vision Pro was probably too ahead of its time in terms of cost and hardware capability, but their AI strategy, while making similar mistakes, is one i agree with. while Nvidia and Microsoft et al are jerking off their investors by growing AI in wildly different directions with limited use cases, Apple clearly has a vision for bringing AI to users in a way that is private and secure first and not based on data mining their customers or glazing B2B partners. they’re not promising to reduce the professional workforce. they’re not predicting the end of the world. they want to create use experiences.
this is a similar take you might have had in 2010, wringing your hands at Apple’s demise because they didn’t jump on the virtual private cloud bandwagon with GCP, AWS, and Azure (not to mention all the failed attempts). comparing Apple to Nvidia and Google is ludicrous to me. compare Apple to Samsung or Qualcomm, and the picture looks different.
my biggest disagreement is that if Tim Cook gets ousted for someone who will do the same AI deepthroating we’ve seen from the rest of the tech industry it would be a tragedy.
Apples AI exists because of the data mining others have done. They are no more private than other high end names in their markets. With Tim Cook or without him Apple deserves to fail and if this country wasn't so engrossed in consumerism they probably would have. They're anti-competition, anti-consumer, tax dodging, and willing to do any amount of knee bending to Donald to keep numbers up. Who cares about their vision.
They are no more private than other high end names in their markets.
Source for this?
When it comes to user tracking for the purposes of targeting ads they're pretty deceptive. https://blog.lockdownprivacy.com/2021/09/22/study-effectiveness-of-apples-app-tracking-transparency.html
When it comes to Apple intelligence they skirt the question by not actually collecting the data themselves. Instead they rely on third parties to harvest the data and apple shows up to collect whatever they've rounded up.
The rest is based on the fact that all security claims made by Apple are near impossible to audit. You just have to take their word for it and for a company that makes such a ridiculous effort to paint themselves as secure and private, you shouldn't have to just take their word for it.
I would highly recommend you go through their security compliance documentation before saying its not auditable. The systems are very thorough for auditing.
Start here:
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/intro-to-apple-security-assurance-apc3cea61877b/web
Extra reading here:
https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_US/apple-platform-security-guide.pdf
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/macos-security-compliance-project-apc322685bb2/web
https://github.com/usnistgov/macos_security/wiki
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/apple-pay-security-certifications-apc3a0db329f/web
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/apple-internet-services-security-apc34d2c0468b/web
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/apple-app-security-certifications-apc392d0e98c3/web
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/visionos-security-certifications-apcf57bea62a/web
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/watchos-security-certifications-apc3dc9d68d91/web
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/tvos-security-certifications-apc3c0bb26e2b/web
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/macos-security-certifications-apc35eb3dc4fa/web
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/ipados-security-certifications-apc38ef52880f/web
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/ios-security-certifications-apc3fa917cb49/web
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/secure-enclave-processor-security-apc3a7433eb89/web
https://support.apple.com/guide/certifications/about-apple-security-certifications-apc30d0ed034/web
None of these articles are proof of anything and again you're just taking their word for it. None of this is apple open sourcing the software for audit and none of these certifications makes them special. This is like saying a Microsoft Surface device passed all of these certifications and checks so it can't get malware.
It literally describes their entire security process, which is vetted by NIST (a government agency of the United States of America who create standards), NASA (a government agency of the US that focuses on civil space programs, aeronautics research and space research), DISA (a DoD combat support agency that provides IT and communications support to the president, VP, Secretary of Defense, DoD, and any individual or system contributing to the defense of the US), and LANL (one of sixteen research and development laboratories of the DoE who conduct multidisciplinary research in fields such as national security, space exploration, nuclear fusion, renewable energy, medicine nanotechnology, and supercomputing).
Those guys are always looking at Apple's security. Always.
Its vetted, tested, and hardened based on scientific research by many organizations. Its not just apple whipping this shit up willy nilly.
You are still insisting that these stop apple from writing software to harvest user data. The chips can work and the software can still be flawed or malicious. You seem to think that these certifications make it impossible to write malicious software for this hardware. You fundamentals don't understand what you're implying.
https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
Stateless computation and enforceable guarantees
With services that are end-to-end encrypted, such as iMessage, the service operator cannot access the data that transits through the system. One of the key reasons such designs can assure privacy is specifically because they prevent the service from performing computations on user data. Since Private Cloud Compute needs to be able to access the data in the user’s request to allow a large foundation model to fulfill it, complete end-to-end encryption is not an option. Instead, the PCC compute node must have technical enforcement for the privacy of user data during processing, and must be incapable of retaining user data after its duty cycle is complete.
We designed Private Cloud Compute to make several guarantees about the way it handles user data: A user’s device sends data to PCC for the sole, exclusive purpose of fulfilling the user’s inference request. PCC uses that data only to perform the operations requested by the user. User data stays on the PCC nodes that are processing the request only until the response is returned. PCC deletes the user’s data after fulfilling the request, and no user data is retained in any form after the response is returned. User data is never available to Apple — even to staff with administrative access to the production service or hardware.
What fundamentals am I missing?
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/11062200?hl=en#zippy=%2Cnist-fips----cmvp-cavp
Pixel devices have the same certificates. Does this mean Google can't harvest my data?
Correct. It will not harvest data until you log into a Google service and agree to their ToS.
So we are back to Apples promises of privacy and security being meaningless because you can't verify that any of these claims are valid. The hardware may be secure but that doesn't mean much in this case.
I never left the topic of Apple's promises of privacy and security. The article you linked initially is completely about third party apps and their tracking. Using their App Store policies, Apple have steered apps into stating if they track you or not. It doesn't eliminate tracking. It simply lets the user know how much data will be harvested.
You can see how it shook up a lot of the big harvesters when they were EXTREMELY slow to update their apps following this policy going into affect. Each app had to determine what was being harvested and figure out a way to let the user know. You'll notice the big apps like any Google apps, Facebook (Meta), IG, etc waited a looooong time before releasing any of that data.
Apple themselves post this data in each and everyone of their apps. You can find it in the app store. Its transparent, and they let you know what they do with it.
There is no secret tracking, if thats what you are implying. The article you linked focuses on third party apps anyways, not Apple's own apps.
Apple above all has more access than any 3rd party app. You simply have no way of knowing what apple is doing behind the scenes without the source code. You are merely taking their word for it.
I'd love to have the source code, yes, but there are literally zero ads on my apple devices until I open the app store.
What data are they harvesting? and again, can you provide a source that they are harvesting data on users?
I'm done with this. Ads in this case are just one aspect. Apples ad service is a multi billion dollar part of their business and if you think they've done that with zero ad targeting you're being extremely naive.
Harvesting data in this case is also extremely vague and doesn't have to involve ads at all. If they're advertising privacy and security then it obviously should be about more than ad targeting data. It should be the case that they have no access to any user data on the device or being stored in the cloud. For instance iCloud storage is not end to end encrypted by default, instead Apple has the encryption keys and can decrypt user data at any time.
You absolutely cannot guarantee privacy and security without knowing exactly what's going on behind the scenes, especially when we are talking about a company that is more beholden to shareholders than its own users.
Apples ad service is a multi billion dollar part of their business and if you think they’ve done that with zero ad targeting you’re being extremely naive.
Need a source for that, m8. Otherwise you're just blindly throwing around conspiracies with no proof that they harvest any data (which you haven't linked to during this entire conversation)
For instance iCloud storage is not end to end encrypted by default, instead Apple has the encryption keys and can decrypt user data at any time.
All data on any Apple device is encrypted by default. Once you decide to send it to iCloud, they give you an option to turn on Advanced Data Protection (ADP), which allows you to encrypt your data with your own keys in true end-to-end fashion. That means they do not have the keys. This is optional at the moment because not all supported apple devices can use this feature, and also it isn't authorized for use with certain accounts (like children accounts). It also requires that the user store the keys offline in a way they won't lose them, because if they lose the keys, there is no way for Apple to let you recover that data since they don't have the keys themselves.
You absolutely cannot guarantee privacy and security without knowing exactly what’s going on behind the scenes, especially when we are talking about a company that is more beholden to shareholders than its own users.
Again, the documentation that I posted earlier that you are just brushing off have their entire security and privacy processes laid out for you to read. If you are refusing to accept that Apple and multiple government and private organizations came together to create those standards, then thats on you denying the science and research behind it. So do you, boo.
Need a source for that, m8. Otherwise you're just blindly throwing around conspiracies with no proof that they harvest any data (which you haven't linked to during this entire conversation)
This was 2 years ago but you can find more up to date numbers with a quick search and it's only increased since this Forbes article was written.
All data on any Apple device is encrypted by default. Once you decide to send it to iCloud, they give you an option to turn on Advanced Data Protection (ADP), which allows you to encrypt your data with your own keys in true end-to-end fashion. That means they do not have the keys. This is optional at the moment because not all supported apple devices can use this feature, and also it isn't authorized for use with certain accounts (like children accounts). It also requires that the user store the keys offline in a way they won't lose them, because if they lose the keys, there is no way for Apple to let you recover that data since they don't have the keys themselves.
You just repeated back what I just told you but with more details. The end to end encryption of iCloud is not the default so most users are not end to end encrypted. The device encryption is standard across the board for when it comes to mobile devices and this isn't something that makes apple special. This also doesn't prevent apple from accessing the data on the device. Which again could be the case but we have no way of knowing without the source code.
Again, the documentation that I posted earlier that you are just brushing off have their entire security and privacy processes laid out for you to read. If you are refusing to accept that Apple and multiple government and private organizations came together to create those standards, then thats on you denying the science and research behind it. So do you, boo.
Again these certifications are held by many manufacturers of mobile phones. You seem to think this makes them incapable of having backdoors and that just isn't the case. All they are verifying is that their encryption methods and the hardware performing the encryption are working as intended. They are in no way a guarantee of privacy or a guarantee that Apple won't write code to access user data. If that were the case then everyone else with these certifications would also be making ads about how secure they are. They can all theroughly document their process for handling biometrics, keys, ECT but that still doesn't show us the source code. Even if you think some magical system exists that can scan the source for backdoors, and these private organizations run apples source through this system to certify them, you still have no guarantee that the backdoor wasn't added immediately after it was certified. Trusted security is open source and apple doesn't have it. It doesn't matter how many stickers they slap on it or how many promises they make.
Lastly Apple constantly emphasizes a commitment to privacy as a fundamental human right, built on principles like data minimization, on-device processing, transparency and control, and security but that load of bullshit went out the window when China tested them on it. They reversed course on all of it, including what they consider to be a human right, just to make some money.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-privacy-censorship.html
Source for this?
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/06/apple-governments-surveil-push-notifications/
People who think companies can be worth trillion dollars and not be guzzling or routing data through some loopholes are delusional. But do continue regurgitating their marketing and PR releases.
Push notifications are a per app permission that you can allow or disallow.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelines-us.pdf
the perfect is the enemy of the good. the article is specifically about comparing Apple to companies like Nvidia and Google, who do all those things but worse, while advocating they go further in that direction.
I get that but they aren't constantly tooting their own horn about how private and secure they are.
i honestly don’t know what you’re advocating for
I'm advocating for people to stop treating Apple like some defender of privacy and security. If any of these things comes between apple and profits, they will not hesitate to bend the rules like they've done for China.
pretty irrelevant to the point i was trying to make
When will this disgraceful pig (Tim Cook) get his Luigi?