You’re absolutely right, but the knuckle-draggers are too busy with their FOMO to hear it.

iMessage supports a dense layer of features in excess of what’s possible with the RCS standard. RCS is a decent fallback, and maybe progress could be made towards supporting it as a fallback. But the issue is that not even all Android phones enable RCS by default, meaning iMessage would have to have a fallback and a second fallback.

And honestly, the bottom line is that Apple is unlikely to prioritize implementing RCS until their customer base is asking them to do so, which they largely aren’t. The vast majority of the anger towards Apple regarding RCS is from people who don’t buy Apple phones, or from Apple’s direct competitors seeking to improve their products. Apple users (myself included) don’t really care because a marginally better SMS experience is still going to be worse than iMessage, and if I’m really looking for rich cross-platform messaging, I can use any of the dozen widely-used apps that do exactly that.

*outside of the US

Unfortunately I found that AM did a very poor job of generating an enjoyable personal radio from my “liked” (added to library) songs.

Really wanted to use it, and I tried for about 6 months, but I ended up going back to Spotify. First day going back to Spotify made me even more disappointed in AM because of how spot-on the music discovery is there.

Android app sideloading utilized something called a “privacy budget,” where the system does give sandboxed apps access to “limited” device data. The idea is that Google “doesn’t want to break the app functionality,” so Android provides details about the device as long as the app isn’t requesting “too much.”

Of course it’s possible to to completely sandbox an app without breaking it, but, again, Google is an adtech company and providing their customers with users that they can target with ads is literally their only goal.

I stopped reading your reply after your first paragraph because you’ve established a very predictable pattern of having no idea what you’re talking about.

No. Sandboxed apps only prevent some fingerprinting, but notably provides a ‘reasonable budget’ for data that can be gathered.

What you said about the advertising ID is true and is basically what I said, but disabling the advertising ID does not stop profiling or fingerprinting, just limits the most obvious applications of it.

Using a VPN is a start, but we’re comparing the privacy of Android and iOS. You can use a VPN on both. iOS includes an opt-in pseudo-vpn baked into the OS with private relay, for $0.99 per month. And besides, using a VPN does nothing to block the the fingerprinting done by native apps.

Are you sure you work in security? Like, mall security?

I’m talking about blocking cross app tracking, not “restricting” it. Still, Google does not even restrict cross app tracking. They’ve announced a planned muli-year (their words) initiative to restrict cross app tracking- but, importantly, they’ve very clearly expressed that they’re going to work with advertisers to make sure that what they plan isn’t too disruptive. Which should be obvious anyway, because advertisers are literally their only real paying customers.

All that Google is interested in doing is finding the absolute minimum that they can do to give the illusion that they care about privacy, all without having to do anything that meaningfully protects user data. And only after Apple makes a huge change that devours even more of Google’s market share.

If you’re thinking about the current feature in android that allows users to “disable” cross app tracking, it actually doesn’t. It just disable Google’s advertising ID, but still let’s any app who wants to fingerprint your device using IP address and device serial.

Google’s entire profit model is offering software for free so that they can gather data and sell ads.

Granular app permissions are a start, but barely. Cross-app tracking is a bigger deal, and Apple is miles ahead of Google there; and Google is never going to catch up, because it would destroy their revenue search.

I’ve used both platforms extensively, I actually love Android. Google assistant is so much better than Siri that it’s obnoxious, custom roms are a ton of fun, having a way to get root access on a device is so important it should be legally required.

But, if you think that a company that exists to build an advertising profile and sell ads will ever produce a device that meaningfully blocks the ability to build an advertising profile, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Great story man, we are browsing the apple_enthusiasts subreddit because we want to know what your Motorola phone can do.

Dude it’s sad how obviously desperate you are to be personally offended by apple. Nobody here is claiming that they’re a company with morals, or that they do anything out of the goodness of their heart.

Apple targets a market segment that prioritizes data privacy. They’re under a ton of scrutiny from their users, and stand to lose considerable business if they start compromising on privacy.

Likewise, they’ve been gaining more and more market share in the US, largely from people who are switching because of Apple’s stance on privacy.

The best way for them to maximize profits is for them to continue to prioritize user privacy, which is why it’s easy to believe that they’ll do so.

You’re acting like you don’t realize that there is a difference between end user privacy, and security from targeted attacks.

I don’t really care how hard it would be for a motivated attacker to target me and breach the security of my device.

I do really care about how hard it is for every website on earth to know intimate, personal details about my life.

iOS is the only sane choice.

Same here, haven’t had a case since 2019 and I don’t have that issue, I think it’s something you just get used to