“Apple’s Tim Cook has been on tour, telling people who are worried about online privacy that he understands their angst,” Justin Fox writes for BloombergView. “‘I feel very close to the Germans,’ he told the German tabloid BILD am Sonntag in an interview published Sunday. ‘We don’t read your emails, we don’t read your messages, we find it unacceptable to do that. I don’t want people reading mine!’ ‘We all have a right to privacy,’ he told the U.K. Telegraph a few days earlier. ‘We shouldn’t give it up. We shouldn’t give in to scare-mongering or to people who fundamentally don’t understand the details.'”
“Apple can take this stance because it’s able to make more money than any company ever just by selling high-end devices and relatively expensive services,” Fox writes. “Google and Facebook in particular have business models that are based almost entirely on (1) learning about the preferences and needs of their users and (2) selling that information to advertisers. “It’s pretty awesome that Apple’s business model allows its chief executive officer to be an outspoken advocate for consumer (and citizen) privacy around the world. We need powerful people making that case.”
Full article, which pretends that Google Maps is so much more helpful than Apple Maps in order to advance its inexplicable conceit that we’re all silly, especially Europeans, for wanting our privacy protected and is therefore linked via donotlink, here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple delivers privacy and security to users that the wannabes, also-rans, and bottom-feeders of the world simply cannot match.
Related articles:
Apple CEO Tim Cook advocates privacy, says terrorists should be ‘eliminated’ – February 27, 2015
UK prime minister Cameron demands backdoors into messaging apps or he’ll ban them – January 13, 2015
Apple’s iPhone encryption is a godsend, even if government snoops and cops hate it – October 8, 2014
Short-timer U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder blasts Apple for protecting users’ privacy against government overreach – September 30, 2014
What if Osama bin Laden had an iPhone? – September 26, 2014
FBI blasts Apple for protective users’ privacy by locking government, police out of iPhones and iPads – September 25, 2014
Apple thinks different about privacy – September 23, 2014
Apple’s iOS Activation Lock reduces iPhone thefts, Samsung phone thefts skyrocket – September 18, 2014
Apple CEO Tim Cook ups privacy to new level, takes direct swipe at Google – September 18, 2014
Apple will no longer unlock most iPhones, iPads for government, police – even with search warrants – September 18, 2014
Would you trade privacy for national security? Most Americans wouldn’t – August 6, 2014
Apple begins encrypting iCloud email sent between providers – July 15, 2014
Obama administration demands master encryption keys from firms in order to conduct electronic surveillance against Internet users – July 24, 2013
U.S. NSA seeks to build quantum computer to crack most types of encryption – January 3, 2014
Apple’s iMessage encryption trips up U.S. feds’ surveillance – April 4, 2013
Strangely, unlike almost any other CEO I can think of, I am willing to believe Cook when he says that.
This just reinforces my sense that Tim Cook “gets in” (in a very Jobs-esque way) as well as being someone of good character.
I would agree, only if he finally starts to control this giant company by focussing on the real Apple values, quality, quality and guess what else!
Pushing halfway finished products into the market is not what Apple did for decades under Steve.
Now they do, WHY?
This is a clear example of selective (or abysmally short) memory at work.
So you don’t agree that Tim Cook is a person of good character who understands and believes in the Apple commitment to the customer because of some software issues? And you somehow believe that this type of thing never happened under Jobs’ watch?
IMO, you have a somewhat skewed perception of reality.
adfreak, you speak of “decades” of Apple under Steve Jobs. That is technically true, but barely. And, in actuality, only the few years of Machintosh development in the early 1980s and the fourteen year period after his return as iCEO count.
Steve Jobs co-founded Apple on April 1, 1976
Steve Jobs resigned from Apple in September 1985, but was functionally ousted months prior to resigning. Call that interval nine years.
Steve Jobs became interim CEO of Apple on September 16, 1997.
Steve Job died on October 5, 2011. That interval is approximately fourteen years.
I have great respect for Steve Jobs, but he was a human being with strengths and weaknesses. He was not perfect, and mistakes did happen under his watch. In addition, neither you nor anyone else has any idea of what would have happened at Apple since October 5, 2011, if Steve Jobs had not died. It is easy to be critical of others. But Tim Cook and his crew are doing a pretty fine job after losing a visionary like Steve Jobs. You might try to cut him a little slack.
In other words, the motivations of Apple and its customers are aligned. Mining customers’ personal data serves zero purpose in maximizing Apple’s profit. Keeping customers happy for the next round of hardware upgrades maximizes Apple’s profit.
In contrast, Google’s users are not even “customers.” They are Google’s “commodity.”
I would like to see Apple advertise this more aggressively.
Yes, not only unlike other companies but unlike other countries. It’s nice to see Tim Cook taking a tour of the free and civilized world, must be a breath of fresh air compared to whatever that fifth rate torturing nation has become.
The same nation whose judges are brutalising innovators, whose police are excoriating privacy advocates, whose legislators are threatening punitive taxes? Apple might well consider relocating all of its facilities to a fair and moral protectorate, if any exist on this ball of dirt.
Tim Cook for President.
I don’t mind when companies criticize another’s products when they actually have a viable alternative. However when Apple criticizes search engines, web email systems, social networks, etc when they themselves don’t have any viable alternative for consumers to actually switch to just seems rather petty. As with the iPhone, iPad, iPod, have your consumers tout how secure they feel using Apple’s search, web-based email, and social network.