Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Apple, security, and control of your life


Wired magazine tries to explain 'Why Apple Devices Will Soon Rule Every Aspect of Your Life'.

The biggest thing Apple showed off Tuesday wasn’t a product, or even a product line. It was the way all of Apple’s products—and thousands more from other developers, manufacturers and services—now mesh together. It is like a huge ubiquitous computer now, all around us, all the time. The interface is the very world we live in.

“The product isn’t just a collection of features,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said, announcing his company’s new iPhone, “it’s how it all works together.” And really, this is true of the entire Apple line, the entire Apple experience.

Tuesday’s announcements laid open the scope of Apple’s ambitions in making everything in your life work together. A computer on every desk? Chump change. With the new iPhones, Apple Watch, Apple Pay, HomeKit, HealthKit, iBeacon and even CarPlay, Apple is building a world in which there is a computer in your every interaction, waking and sleeping.

A computer in your pocket. A computer on your body. A computer paying for all your purchases. A computer opening your hotel room door. A computer monitoring your movements as you walk though the mall. A computer watching you sleep. A computer controlling the devices in your home. A computer that tells you where you parked. A computer taking your pulse, telling you how many steps you took, how high you climbed and how many calories you burned—and sharing it all with your friends. A computer in your car. All of it the same computer: The computer in the sky that connects to the computer in your pocket and on your wrist and in your car, your office, and your home.

This is the new Apple ecosystem. Apple has turned our world into one big ubiquitous computer.

There's more at the link.

The problem remains, as I pointed out at the time, that Apple has deliberately built security backdoors into its iOS operating system.  The software foundation of Apple's ecosystem is intrinsically untrustworthy.  Given that reality, why would anyone in their right mind actually trust that company with control over so many aspects of their lives?  I certainly won't!

There are, of course, other problems with the Apple ecosystem.  I'll give Gizmodo the last word.







Peter

3 comments:

Unknown said...

not a lof options left, Microsoft does, Google does it, now Apple does it. They've all got Big Brother enablers.

You can use Linux on your computer - and while android is linux based, it's still a Google product.

Unknown said...

So how long do we have before Skynet becomes self aware, and decides we are not needed? John Conner, call your office.....

Borepatch said...

And of course their "iCloud" is now the biggest hacker magnet on planet Earth. Exploit once, exploit everywhere.