Apple’s obsession with secrecy strikes again, but this time in an unusual way. Yes, the company that is only able to sell devices by misleading people with this disgusting “marketing” that no other company actually does. forget commercialize a feature!
What is this feature? Well, according to developer Guilherme Rambo, the iPad Pro M4 is:
…the first device to support and use Apple’s new Secure Indicator Light (SIL) mechanism. When using the microphone or camera, the corresponding indicator point is actually rendered in hardware (using the screen), making it much less likely that malware or an application will user space can access these sensors without the user’s knowledge.
Guilherme Rambo
Apple implemented it without fanfare. Or any type of fare. In fact, he implemented it without even talking about it during the product rollout.
This is very strange behavior from a company that (many believe) only uses privacy as a marketing tool. Did you create privacy and forget to market it? What is it talking about?
Now you may be thinking, please, Mr. Macalope, sir. (Why so formal?) Your strawmen burn so beautifully, but spare us your arguments concocted by fabricated Apple enemies!
But this is not a straw argument at all! As it turns out, You are the only strawman here, a fictional reader who claims not to think anyone is saying this about Apple.
Ironic, right?
One entity th at suggests that privacy is a marketing smokescreen for Apple is a small company known as… let’s see here, let me pretend to look this up… oh, yes! The US Department of Justice. Apple’s focus on privacy was brought up several times in the DOJ’s lawsuit against the company.
The DOJ suggested that by not allowing third-party app stores, the company was reducing privacy options by not allowing a more privacy-focused store to open on iOS. Yeah. Because it’s going to happen. Excited is sure there is a long line of potential privacy-focused App Store overlords. It’s certainly not groups like Meta who have been trying to sneak various privacy-hijacking apps into the App Store for years. No. Nuh uh.
The DOJ argued:
In contrast, Apple allows some businesses and government customers to offer app store versions with more organized apps to better protect privacy and security.
US Department of Justice
Like most DOJ filings, this is a poor explanation of the situation. These enterprise app stores are intended for employees and are designed to protect the privacy and security of the entity operating the store, not the end user. In fact, many of them, because they are run by companies that want to spy on their employees (or, to be honest, have to if they are regulated industries), are absolutely terrible at of private life.
The only privacy argument the DOJ makes that makes sense is that Apple is degrading privacy by making Google the default search engine. And Apple does it because Google pays them money ridiculous amount of money to do it, but most people were probably going to use Google anyway. (Still, they should stop.)
There are many good reasons to force Apple to ease restrictions on the App Store. There are so many, really. Privacy isn’t in the top 20. Privacy doesn’t even know about the items in the top 20. She’s never invited to their parties.
Does Apple use privacy to market its products? Of course That’s done. It does this because privacy is a benefit of its products. These are not mutually exclusive things. But you could also argue, based on the above, that privacy is so ingrained at Apple that it’s the default (unless someone wants to give them billions of dollars a year to forget about it A little). Is it perfect? No, but it’s still better than anyone else.
