Better late than never :)

Could you please explain why you don’t think Brave is privacy friendly?

I think Brave Search has a really good privacy policy.

Brave Search is designed to be private by default. We don’t collect personal information about you, your device or your searches. We also don’t transmit information to the web that could be used to profile you or track you or learn anything about you. Your searches are private to YOU.

It’s also worth noting that Brave has its own search index… as opposed to DuckDuckGo which uses Bing, and StartPage which uses Google.

Although admittedly this does mean that the search results from Brave Search isn’t the best at the moment. Hopefully this will improve with time.

Are you referring to the time when the DuckDuckGo browser was blocking all known trackers except Microsoft trackers? After that information was made public and users complained, DuckDuckGo was able to renegotiate its agreement with Microsoft so that it can block their trackers.

Furthermore, DuckDuckGo now publish their blocklist on GitHub.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/duckduckgo-microsoft-tracking-scripts

It’s worth clarifying that this issue affected the DuckDuckGo browser, not the search engine itself.

So if you were refusing to use DuckDuckGo browser on the basis that they allow Microsoft tracking, then that issue has been resolved now. But if you were saying that this incident has made you lose trust in DDG and that’s why you refuse to use it… well, that’s fair enough. It’s your choice, but I personally would trust DDG more than StartPage, just because StartPage is owned by an ad company.

Look how they massacred my boy…

For real though, if it bothers you that much, I think it’s possible to change the shortcut icon on your desktop. You would have to download the old Firefox logo as an image on your computer, and then edit the properties of the Firefox shortcut to use the downloaded image of the old icon instead of the regular app icon. This won’t help for the mobile app though.

Well the privacy/security enthusiasts will prefer open source browsers, as these are viewed as more trustworthy.

Safari is closed source (although WebKit, the rendering engine that Safari uses, is open source).

Apple devices are only more “private” in the sense that the prevent third parties from collecting your data (don’t get me wrong, this is great), but then proceed to go and collect the same data for their own uses instead.

While I accept that Apple are far from perfect, my understanding is that even their data collection for their own purposes is still less than the data collection that Google use for their own purposes. And since their are only two major phone OS (Android and iOS), we can only choose between the lesser of the two evils.

After all, do you want to give your data to a company which is the world’s biggest ad company? Or instead give your data to a company whose business model is convincing people to buy $1000+ phone every year?

But yeah, I agree that Apple’s anti-consumer practices are awful. I wasn’t aware of the aftermarket parts re-using chips just for the serial numbers and I’m not even the least bit surprised. We need governments to bring in legislation to protect right to repair, because companies like Apple can’t be reasonable.

Great point. I can’t think of another company in the phone/computer industry that has such a cult following, that it allows them to get away with awful business practices without criticism from its loyal fan base.

I would also love to see a competitor to Apple make equally great products without all the awful business practices… Although I think the sad reality is that Apple’s anti-consumer practices earns them so much money, that it allows them to spend more on UX design, R&D, hardware etc and create better products.

As for the “overpriced” description, I’d say it’s a bit more debatable for a MacBook, but it’s a lot more noticeable on Apple’s other products (The most egregious example, of course, is the infamous $999 monitor stand). Even the accessories, such as a simple charger or adapter, will require you to pay the Apple Tax too.

Well said. I agree with your point. I love Apple designs/products but hate Apple business practices.

I guess my point is that people who buy an Apple product know that it’s a package deal. For instance, you know that you will get a beautiful high-end iPhone but you can’t side load apps. So it’s a case of weighing up the advantages and disadvantages.

And yes, I agree that the Magic Mouse is poorly designed, which is uncharacteristic of Apple. I was given one from work to use with my work-issued MacBook. And it was only when my mouse battery ran out for the first time that I discovered that you can’t charge and use the mouse at the same time! So frustrating!

I hate the tribalism regarding Apple products. There are loyal fanboys who won’t hear a bad word about Apple, and then there are Apple haters who criticise everything about them.

I wish we had some more nuance in this debate. The reality is that there are advantages and disadvantages to Apple products. I’ll outline a few:

Advantages

• Long iOS support. Typically you can expect an iPhone to be supported for 5-7 years, which is well above the average in the industry.
• No bloatware or adverts on the iPhone
• Better privacy than Google Android/Microsoft Windows
• High-end hardware, e.g. M1 chip in MacBooks.
• User friendly design. Nice user experience.

Disadvantages

• Overpriced. Seriously all Apple products are more expensive than the competition.
• Anti-consumer business practices that influence the industry. They normalised removing the headphone jack and using non-removable batteries, which other manufacturers followed. Another anti-consumer practice is using their proprietary Lighting port, rather than USB (luckily the EU should be forcing them to adopt USB-C and removable batteries soon). Also, no SD card slot because they want you to use iCloud
• Walled garden. No support for side-loading apps
• Required to use iTunes to add/remove music to the iPhone, which is a problem if you use Linux (you’d have to use Wine to install the Windows version as a workaround)

However, this is of course annoying for people who don’t mind holding the phone vertically or who are watching videos on a widescreen device

I think you meant to write “horizontally” here :)