> The interesting question to me is, why is it that they are literally the ONLY large tech company that is willing to offer me this tradeoff?
Maybe other corporations consider it unethical to charge their customers a premium for a false sense of privacy and security?
> Samsung, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft don't sell privacy
And neither does Apple, they just sell you on the promise of privacy. The reality is quite far removed from the perception most customers are given by their marketing and PR campaigns.
Apple might be a bit more stringent on enforcement of data sharing with third parties compared to other large tech corps, but that doesn't magically mean your privacy is invulnerable through their devices and services.
There have been multiple cases of them being caught out being hypocritical in regards to privacy, there have been multiple data breaches of Apple services and platforms to varying degrees of severity. Since the recent Epic lawsuit, it's also been revealed that Apple decided to not notify some 150 million of their customers who were victims of a data breach.
Anyone who actually thinks Apple cares even remotely about their privacy is living in a fantasy land. Unless you think being not alerted of your personal data getting exposed in a data breach of their systems is somehow not in your privacy's best interests.
> they just sell you on the promise of privacy.
> there have been multiple data breaches of Apple services and platforms
What makes Apple different, is the decision to design all their products and services in a way that limits (or avoids all together) collection user information. For example, almost all of the "smarts" of the iPhone are executed on the device, without sending your data like location and pictures to Apple's servers for processing.
Apple also enforces through App Store review that app developers are mindful of user's privacy and every instance where data is collected needs to be explained and properly justified.
Regarding the story about the 128 million infected devices, it was a virus which infected developer Macs, resulting in some apps also including malicious code. No user data was leaked and it seems end-users suffered no ill-effects cf. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/07/xcodeghost-malware-2015...
Of course, no product and service can be 100% secure forever... hacks and malware happen sometimes. That's when practices like app isolation or sandboxing (which is very strict on the iPhone) and explicitly asking users for permissions (so apps can't just choose to get any sensor telemetry they want) comes into play. If an app has been compromised, then the malware is limited to the permissions already granted to the compromised app. Nothing more.
Maybe other corporations consider it unethical to charge their customers a premium for a false sense of privacy and security?
> Samsung, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft don't sell privacy
And neither does Apple, they just sell you on the promise of privacy. The reality is quite far removed from the perception most customers are given by their marketing and PR campaigns.
Apple might be a bit more stringent on enforcement of data sharing with third parties compared to other large tech corps, but that doesn't magically mean your privacy is invulnerable through their devices and services.
There have been multiple cases of them being caught out being hypocritical in regards to privacy, there have been multiple data breaches of Apple services and platforms to varying degrees of severity. Since the recent Epic lawsuit, it's also been revealed that Apple decided to not notify some 150 million of their customers who were victims of a data breach.
Anyone who actually thinks Apple cares even remotely about their privacy is living in a fantasy land. Unless you think being not alerted of your personal data getting exposed in a data breach of their systems is somehow not in your privacy's best interests.