Slashdot Mirror


Apple Took Out a CES Ad To Troll Its Competitors Over Privacy (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader shared a report: Historically, Apple hasn't had an official presence at CES. It's not surprising given the company's success at hosting and hyping its own product launch events -- long before the iPod and iPhone brought Apple to the top of the technology mountain, Steve Jobs keynotes were can't miss events. The company is also very deliberate about its marketing campaigns; when I see Apple billboard ads, they focus on new product close-ups with minimal messaging. This is why the giant ad banner I saw when I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday for CES 2019 caught my eye. Positioned not far from the convention center where CES takes place, the sign is a cheeky riff on the old "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" slogan -- and with just a few words, it casts an Apple-shaped shadow over the convention.

7 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone by Darinbob · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's the slogan used, for those who don't want to have to actually click on the story and supply advertising revenue to a clickbait site.

  2. Re:Free pass over privacy by thomst · · Score: 5, Informative

    b0s0z0ku applauded:

    Well said -- Apple practically invented the walled garden and computing as a prison.

    Not even. Not at all, in fact.

    Once upon a time, there was a company called Wang that owned the word processing market. If you wanted to use computers to process words, there really wasn't any choice, at least in a corporate environment at the departmental level or above. And, much like Oracle's sales model, buying into Wang meant hiring ridiculously-overpriced consultants to create document templates and teach your staff how to use their proprietary, terminal-based network and software. You even had to buy printers from them, because there were no third-party products that worked with Wang's hardware ecosystem.

    Oh, and you didn't actually get to buy Wang systems - you could only lease them. And, boy, were they expensive to lease, even discounting things like support contracts and having to pay Wang technicians to install upgrades and patches.

    Before that, there was IBM and its competitors in the mainframe market, with their proprietary hardware and software systems and their own legions of consultants and product support engineers.

    Steve Jobs learned about closed computer ecosystems from the real pioneers in the field. In fact, it's only because in 1981, or thereabouts, the same IBM that kept such an iron grip on its mainframe environment inexplicably decided to open its PC architecture to third-party vendors that we've gotten used to open standards for personal computing hardware and the OSes that control it. Otherwise, closed gardens would be the rule, rather than the exception for the consumer and small-business computing markets.

    I don't have a lot of good things to say about the current version of Apple, but Steve Jobs isn't to blame for the walled garden concept - it existed long before he was even conceived ...

    --
    Check out my novel.
  3. Re: Free pass over privacy by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you don't like those apps then just take them out of your home screen and don't use them.

    "Uninstall updates" doesn't recover the gigabyte of space that the outdated copies of these apps occupy in an Android device's read-only system partition.

  4. Re:Free pass over privacy by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here you go. You don't have to use Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any of those if you want a smart phone with a secured, hardened OS. You can strip pretty much all Google tools out of Android, you don't need to use any of the social/data gathering platforms.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  5. Re:Free pass over privacy by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Every method you've suggested so far involves transferring your files via a third party. There is absolutely no reason anyone should have to do that to transfer data between their personal devices that are sitting next to each other on a desk right in front of them, and your whole approach goes against the generally good principle of security and privacy by design and by default.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  6. Re:I just switched back to iPhone for this reason by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

    In about 2012, I switched to Android, mostly cause I run linux everywhere else and like it.
    I thought I'd have more privacy, then slowly realized how stupid that was.
    Looked into Cyanogenmod and LineageOS over and over, but ran out of time to ever actually do it.

    If you were considering Cyanogenmod (phone has unlocked bootloader and is rooted), you didn't look hard enough.

    AFWall+ lets you block apps from sending data over the network. Let's you selectively allow/deny access to the LAN, WiFi, and/or cellular networks for each app and service on your phone. (NetGuard claims to do the same without root, but I haven't tried it.)

    XPrivacyLua takes a different approach. It allows the apps to send data back, it just turns the data they see into fake data. So your location will be spoofed as being in the South Pacific, they will see a fake contact list instead of your real one, This works better if an app you need needs network access to function or crashes if you simply block its network access.

  7. Re:I hate Apple but.... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Informative

    How is this trolling?

    It might be true but it's clearly done in a way to wind up the companies at CES. In other words, it's a troll, and an excellent classy one. Even people here seem to have forgotten that trolling is winding up, not just shit posting.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.