Tim Cook Says Apple's Customers Are Not Its Product, Unlike Facebook (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an interview with MSNBC and Recode on Wednesday that Silicon Valley, and notably Facebook, should be far more careful with its customers' data in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica disclosures. "I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation," he said, according to Recode. "However, I think we're beyond that here." Cook reiterated points that he and former CEO Steve Jobs made previously, that Apple's business model -- unlike Google, Facebook, and many other tech companies -- is predicated on selling physical products rather than capturing data about customers. "We've never believed that these detailed profiles of people that have incredibly deep personal information that is patched together from several sources should exist," he said, according to The Wall Street Journal. "The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer -- if our customer was our product," he added. "We've elected not to do that."

Comments

Apple just does it differently...

[slew]

By locking their customers in a walled garden and charging outside companies 30% to sell things to those customers, they have little need to sell the information about their customers outside of their walled garden.

The other ecosystems don't charge 30% to outside companies and instead get them to pay them money for information about their customers...

Basically, Apple is making money taxing exchanges in eco-system where other eco-systems are relying on value-add sales...