I’m an iPhone user so I don’t have much to say about Google Pay, but what is wrong with Apple Pay? I personally find it to be one of the best niceties added to the iPhone in the past few years (or at least widely adopted in the US in the past few years, not sure when Apple Pay was launched).
I don't use Apple Pay but I suspect the same is wrong as with Google Pay --- it requires you to surrender your identity and financial info to a company that is monetizing your privacy for profit.
There are privacy laws that prevent your bank from selling your financial history and details to those who might want to target you.
These laws don't apply when Google, Apple and cohorts literally extort you to provide access to this info.
Ticketmaster now charges an extra fee if you don't store some event tickets in your Google Wallet --- where Google has full access to them. I suspect something similar is going on with Apple.
> it requires you to surrender your identity and financial info to a company that is monetizing your privacy for profit.
As someone who has never owned an Apple device (apart from my work iPhone SE, which I rarely use): I always thought of Apple as a company that I can rather trust with my data. It might be marketing white-washing my brain, but Apple seems to be settled in the selling devices business, not in the "selling data" business.
My point being, "monetizing" my privacy is something that I feel very uneasy about with Google but not with Apple, somehow. The former screams "give us your data, so we can use it --- also you get to use this cool app, that relies on it" whereas the latter seems more like "Give us your data so you can use this cool app that relies on it, but honestly your data isnt that profitable to us".
> The former screams "give us your data, so we can use it --- also you get to use this cool app, that relies on it" whereas the latter seems more like "Give us your data so you can use this cool app that relies on it, but honestly your data isnt that profitable to us".
One reason I "trust" Google more than Apple is: I know that Google uses basically everything about me, but they are also kinda open about it. Apple on the contrary always likes to tout that they are oh so privacy friendly while still harvesting data en mass.
(Also, basically Googles entire business is about your data, so they better have it safe. Cuz if it starts crumbeling because of EU Laws and similar they basically have no business anymore unlike Apple)
And yes, I know it's not the best idea to "trust" even Google.
Ads are one of the fastest growing revenue sources for Apple[1], they are as much of an advertisement business as any other large tech firm. Ironically enough, you probably see more ads on an Iphone than a Pixel.
It's not in the logic of any capitalist firm to be settled on selling anything. They will sell everything they can to maximize value. Arguing about whether they'll settle for anything because you're already paying them a premium is mistaking a company for a person. When they stop Facebook from selling you ads, they do it because they want the slice of that pie.
A few years ago streaming services promised you to not see ads again for a flat free, now they all have an ad plan that costs as much as the old one and the ad-free plan costs more. Don't ever think one company is going to protect you from another one.
>There are privacy laws that prevent your bank from selling your financial history and details
There aren’t really. Banks and Visa/MasterCard are monetizing your data too. Even your phone and internet provider is selling whatever data they have on you.
How do you use Apple Pay without connecting a method of payment --- either a debit or a credit card? How do you store a boarding pass in Apple Pay without revealing your identity?
You do understand that all of this data gets stored on Apple's servers? Once they have this info, they know exactly who the owner of your particular iPhone is. Your identity has been surrendered --- willingly.
Every Apple device has a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) assigned at the factory. This UUID is constantly relayed to Apple --- along with location and lots of other data.
As a result, they can easily track you personally --- everything you do, everywhere you go, everything you buy with your iPhone --- both on the internet and in the real world. If they really wanted to, they can probably take pictures with your camera and listen in on your iPhone's microphone.
Bad news dude, you've been LoJacked -- your privacy is now fully in Apple's hands!
Wow you must be important. Hun, I don't buy my iPhone with cash at some underground dungeon. I buy it with my credit card with my name on it at an Apple Store. They already know "who I am". And then I associate my Apple ID with my name with said phone. Oh look, they "know who I am" again. Now what?
I'm a nobody. And not paranoid to the extreme. Neither am I some important spy guy like you.
I buy it with my credit card with my name on it at an Apple Store.
Good. So now we know how you willingly "surrender your identity" to Apple for tracking purposes.
You do realize not everyone does this? You can buy an iPhone at Walmart --- using cash if you prefer.
I'm a nobody.
Really? Just a guess but "ulfw" is not your real name is it?
Imagine that --- even though you try to deny it in order to defend Daddy Apple, it turns out that you're an "important spy guy" too --- just like me.
But Apple knows exactly who you are and where you are right now, where you live, work, shop, eat, play, travel, who you spend time with, where you post anonymous comments and how much you earn and spend.
Apple probably knows you better than Mrs. ulfw. Speaking of which, they probably have photos of the two of you, maybe even audio of you doing the nasty. Hopefully you're not fooling around on Mrs. ulfw or hiding money from her. You know she can subpoena your Apple data file for the divorce proceedings.
I'm sure Apple will send you a "thank you" for surrendering and allowing them to make a few extra bucks each month subverting your worthless privacy. They really need the extra cash.
I get the sentiment but I don't really like the denigrating tone that people commonly levy towards this issue.
I don't think its unreasonable to have a strong skepticism and even hearty distrust of these platforms which have been invited into our lives, ostensibly for the benefit of mankind, only to be treated rather callously in the best instances and negligently in the worst.
No, the op is not important. I am not important and on a grand scale individuals are rarely influential in general. I reject that somebody needs to have some kind of spy's double life to demand basic decency wrt their literal moment-to-moment physical status and location.
Really? I admit that this is anecdotal, but as an American when I studied abroad in Europe I was consistently pleasantly surprised by how much less expensive eating out was. In particular I felt like it was much more affordable to get healthier food at restaurants compared to the US, and also much cheaper to get alcohol drinks at restaurants. There were a few exceptions (Copenhagen, Paris) but even major cities like Rome, Munich, & Barcelona had pretty well priced restaurants (which included tip).
I’m talking groceries, not eating out. Eating out in cities has high costs due to high cost of living in cities. Average wage of a waiter or waitress in the whole of New York State is $23/hour (including tips), vs about $8-10/hour in Spain/Barcelona. So no doubt you’d have a cheaper experience eating out in Europe, the wages are much lower! And this is also why it’s bad to use eating out as a benchmark, because it’s dominated by labor costs and by its very nature (and sociocultural expectations), it’s labor-intensive. So as overall wages increase, so will the price of eating out. So Americans, with our much higher average wages, are able to get a much better deal eating out in European nations with their lower labor costs.
But actual food (grocery) prices tend to be overall higher in Europe than the US. Milk (easier to compare than most things) costs $1.03/liter in the US compared to $1.14/liter in France, $1.35 in Italy, $0.96/liter in Spain, $1.28 in the UK, and $1.85 in Norway. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings...
I really like this idea! I definitely think this product has some potential. A few quick questions:
1. Does this integrate with the filesystem (specifically with MacOS) or iCloud Drive?
2. Are there any future plans to integrate with iMessage? While perhaps less important to enterprises, I feel like this could be very useful for “prosumer” productivity tool users like myself.
3. Are there any future plans for a mobile app (specifically on iPhone).
I’m excited to try this product out. Congrats on your launch!!
Yes! We integrate with Local, though iCloud is much more locked down. We can index local files that are then offloaded to iCloud, but can't directly index iCloud.
iMessage is something we've explored, also locked down like iCloud with no API but there are some workarounds by using what's locally stored. No plans for a mobile app, though or web app works surprisingly well on mobile https://app.needl.tech/.
If more stuff comes up as you're using Needl, would love more of your thoughts and feedback. Can always reach me at max@needl.tech
Completely agree. Once I discovered Java Streams it became so much more frustrating for me to write Python code that manipulated collections in anything beyond the most trivial of operations.
