Those guarantees are currently provided by Apple and you seem to trust them. What would stop you from chosing alternative browsers from other companies you trust to provide the same guarantees ?
Apple were heavily relying on Google and Yahoo from maps, integrated web search, to weather data for a long time. At no point they asked you if you wanted to give your location to Yahoo.
Would you give a pass to Apple for how they handled privacy in the past and not to Mozilla who comparatively had only a few hiccups ?
Let's leave the goalposts where they are. Besides, I'm extremely confident that Apple only ever used Google for mapping in the early days of iOS/iPhone OS. In which case, if you took the time to read the ToS, it's there.
They stayed on Google Maps for 4~5 years until the writing was on the wall that it wouldn’t help them in the future (android being the elephant in the room). They still happily relied on whoever service they could rely on. Do you remember the facebook and twitter accounts setup directly in the system preferences ? Or right now they’re still sending data to Weatherchannel, until they complete Dark Sky’s integration I assume.
Service providers where mostly in the deal to get user data, and Apple’s push on privacy only started well into Cook’s tenure.
But you have trust in them in their current business position (it only was “the early days”). By that token I don’t think it’s unrealistic to assume at some point you’ll find other companies that are either new or show they changed enough to get your trust.
And they tell you this is happening. The links I shared illustrate Google and Mozilla doing things without asking or informing the user. Apple do indeed have form in this area too, battery/processor throttling springs to mind.
With regards maps, although what this has to do with your original question is beyond me, Apple informed the user very clearly on where the data is from and what data they were collecting, they still do. It was originally a combination of TomTom and OpenStreetMap, by the way.
Also, Jobs was pushing privacy in 2010 - "Privacy means people know what they're signing up for, in plain English and repeatedly. I believe people are smart and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you're going to do with their data."
I agree that companies can change. Big companies rarely do. I'm concerned that it's only a matter of time before Mozilla make the decision to switch to blink, which would be the end for them and the open web.
Interestingly, of the complaints made in this article, 6 are Editors Drafts, not agreed upon standards, or Working Drafts, again experimental un-agreed 'standards'. I'll concede that a working draft is close enough to being standardised. The rest, bar one, are implemented in WebKit. So the complaint in the article is that the WebKit project is holding up the web by not including Google's experimental features in a bid to say Apple should be allowing other, less secure rendering engines on a platform where users store a ridiculous amount of PII. It's being framed as 'freedom' - I'm sceptical. They'll be caterwauling about 'choice', but by enforcing 'choice', there is very real, and frankly sinister, risk that it will be lost irrevocably along with any semblance of an open web. Careful what you wish for.
