I don't understand what this new functionality is.
I'm still on 17.x, and if I ask it to show me pictures from Angels Stadium, I get pictures from Angels Stadium. Mind, I have no idea how it "knew" I was at Angels Stadium when I took the picture. Apple Maps certainly knows where Angels Stadium is.
So I'm just not quite sure what this new function is bringing to the table?
dialup_sounds 16 days ago [-]
As far as I can tell, "Enhanced Visual Search" is the same thing as what Google Photos calls "Estimate missing locations"[1]. In absence of GPS coordinates added by the camera, it "estimates your location from information such as landmarks and locations in your other photos".
The worse part of this is that since I am in a developing country, where laws on privacy are quite lax, Apple can just abuse us - I was going through all the privacy settings again today on my mom's iPhone 13, and noticed that Apple / ios had re-enabled this feature silently (enhanced visual search in Photos app), even though I had explicitly disabled it after reading about it here on HN, the last time.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened - her phone is not signed into iMessage, and to ensure Apple doesn't have access to her SMS / RCS, I've also disabled "Filter messages from unknown senders". Two times, over a period of roughly a year, I find that this feature has silently been enabled again.
Obviously, this sounds like a crazy rant, and that's how Apple gets away with it. (After all, it's just my word - how exactly can I prove this? And no, unless Apple is installing silent updates, this isn't happening during ios updates because I check the Settings with a fine comb after every update to see if Apple has reset it. When pushed, "bugs", ofcourse, will be the ready made excuse offered, just as they did when they broke all application firewalls, like Little Snitch, on macOS, to allow macOS and Apple programs to again silently contact and transfer information without the users knowledge.)
The way Android and ios (and even Windows and macOS) are designed today, Google, Apple and Microsoft can remotely access and control our devices. One would think that Mozilla's widespread abuse of its users by running silent "studies" on Firefox browser, without its users knowledge, would have lead to some real outrage and meaningful political action to prevent this behaviour (https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught... - https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught... ) ... Sigh.
mingus88 16 days ago [-]
I quit Facebook in 2014 for the same reason. Their privacy settings were regularly reverted and it became clear that their business model and my privacy were not compatible.
Apple “gets away with it“ because people pay them for it. Apple is not a data broker. Their business model is to sell expensive hardware that people want to buy.
It’s a fundamentally different relationship than the likes of Equifax or Doubleclick/Google who will abuse us and our data and we never agreed to it or have any control over it.
I'm still on 17.x, and if I ask it to show me pictures from Angels Stadium, I get pictures from Angels Stadium. Mind, I have no idea how it "knew" I was at Angels Stadium when I took the picture. Apple Maps certainly knows where Angels Stadium is.
So I'm just not quite sure what this new function is bringing to the table?
[1] Settings > Privacy > Location Options > Estimate missing locations
This isn't the first time something like this has happened - her phone is not signed into iMessage, and to ensure Apple doesn't have access to her SMS / RCS, I've also disabled "Filter messages from unknown senders". Two times, over a period of roughly a year, I find that this feature has silently been enabled again.
Obviously, this sounds like a crazy rant, and that's how Apple gets away with it. (After all, it's just my word - how exactly can I prove this? And no, unless Apple is installing silent updates, this isn't happening during ios updates because I check the Settings with a fine comb after every update to see if Apple has reset it. When pushed, "bugs", ofcourse, will be the ready made excuse offered, just as they did when they broke all application firewalls, like Little Snitch, on macOS, to allow macOS and Apple programs to again silently contact and transfer information without the users knowledge.)
The way Android and ios (and even Windows and macOS) are designed today, Google, Apple and Microsoft can remotely access and control our devices. One would think that Mozilla's widespread abuse of its users by running silent "studies" on Firefox browser, without its users knowledge, would have lead to some real outrage and meaningful political action to prevent this behaviour (https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught... - https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught... ) ... Sigh.
Apple “gets away with it“ because people pay them for it. Apple is not a data broker. Their business model is to sell expensive hardware that people want to buy.
It’s a fundamentally different relationship than the likes of Equifax or Doubleclick/Google who will abuse us and our data and we never agreed to it or have any control over it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42533685
Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15(https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/12/3.html)
1298 points|latexr|4 days ago|965 comments