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"Best" Mac browser: Your view (self.technology)

submitted 7 months ago by schmurnan to c/technology

58 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I know “best” is subjective, but as someone who’s entrenched in the Apple ecosystem I always used to use the stock apps: Reminders, Calendar, Mail, Podcasts and, of course, Safari.

But over time I’ve moved away from some of those apps, towards things that work better than the stock apps but also still sync with my other Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Watch): Things and Todoist (because I can’t decide on one over the other), Fantastical, Mail (still), Overcast… but I tend to hover between browsers.

I mainly use Safari, and try to use profiles to separate personal and work stuff. But over the years I’ve also tried Firefox, I’ve tried Brave and more recently I’ve tried Arc. But I just can’t make my mind up.

So I was curious what your browser of choice is (and also, if you have any other views on the best stock app replacements - including alternatives to the ones I listed above for GTD, calendars, email and podcasts (don’t get me started on the “best” search engine!), I’d be interested to get your opinions.

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[–] IchNichtenLichten 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Do you have a source on Apple selling user data?

[–] abhibeckert 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I've done iOS/Mac app development — Apple doesn't "sell" data to me, but they absolutely provide me with extensive user tracking data for free (well, for $99 per year, but that's effectively free). As far as I know they also provide data to other third parties, such as in the news app But app developers is the big one.

The data is anonymised, but I assure you it's very detailed. Detailed enough that some companies probably cross reference it with other tracking and are able to link the data they get from Apple to real people.

Thankfully the tracking is opt-in, but users are forced to make a choice and encouraged to enable tracking and I'd argue they really aren't being educated properly on what they're handing over before making a decision. I can't really blame Apple for that, who wants to spend hours learning how Apple's tracking methods work? But it is a fact that Apple does collect a lot of data and they do share it.

Personally I have spent hours doing that research and I'm not OK with what they track — I opt out. And while my own software does have some tracking, it's a lot less detailed than the tracking Apple does. It's just basic analytics (roughly how many users do I have and what country are they from?) and crash reporting which is (thankfully) rare with my software and therefore useless for any invasive tracking. The vast majority of people using my apps never experience a crash (and that's only possible because I track crashes).

[–] IchNichtenLichten 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for this. I did ask OP for a source on Apple selling user data. It sounds like you're saying that they don't.

There's always a rush to include Apple with the other big tech firms that certainly do harvest and sell user data, I guess some people just love to hate on Apple. I get popups on a fresh install of an Apple OS and on first launching certain apps that asks me outright if I want to send usage data to Apple. It's pretty upfront about this. Like you said, it's anonymized so it can't be used to target me with ads based on my browsing history. They also have the Private Relay feature on MacOS and Hide My Email, they didn't have to do that. There's also something called Advanced Data Protection that I haven't messed around with.

Detailed enough that some companies probably cross reference it with other tracking and are able to link the data they get from Apple to real people.

Do you haven't any evidence for this? I doubt that's something Apple would be happy about.

[–] abhibeckert 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It sounds like you’re saying that they don’t.

Honestly, I think you're really arguing over the technical definition of "sell".

get popups on a fresh install of an Apple OS and on first launching certain apps that asks me outright if I want to send usage data to Apple

Yeah but do you know what data is being sent? Most people have no idea (you might, I'm just saying most people). My position is if people don't know what's in the data, then they aren't really agreeing to it with full knowledge.

Do you haven’t any evidence for this?

I've seen the data (from my own apps), and I can see how easy it is to link crash reports to users. Crash reports include a unique device identifier and also loads of information about the device the moment it crashed. It's trivial to compare all of that data to other data the app collects and find out which user the crash report belongs to.

I doubt that’s something Apple would be happy about.

I'm sure it's a violation of the terms of service, but developers violate those all the time and enforcement is almost unheard of. When Apple catches an app breaking the rules, they usually just tell the developer to stop. Damage is already done by then.

Have a listen to this to get an idea how widespread this is: https://subclub.com/episode/app-store-ethics-dark-patterns-and-rule-breakers-steve-p-young-app-masters