It was discussed on HN a couple months ago. That one guy then went on Twitter to boast about his “high-impact PR”.

Now that impact farming approach has been mimicked / automated.

Another banking app has failed to identify me a couple of times (I attribute it to iPhone 17’s front camera distortion) and fell back to the snail mail id code as a 2nd factor. It arrived only several business days later. Instead of just letting me use my own 2nd factor such as a TOTP device or a physical security key. But maybe there are some legal requirements for that flow, I’m out of the loop.

So there’s a whole range between passkey-is-enough on one end and outsourced video id or snail mail for 2nd factor on the other. The latter can of course be misused to siphon as much personal information as possible out of you, even linking and scraping your other banking accounts for consumer profiling - designed as a requisite part of the authentication/authorization flow.

Sometimes it works with the front camera on one smartphone but doesn’t with another (iPhone 17’s distortion), sometimes it recognizes your face on one day, but desperately fails to recognize you on another. I had to repeatedly record videos for it only to fail over and over again. Anything their system flags as suspicious, anything, will trigger the same video identification flow again, which effectively blocks your money in the account.

I’m closing my accounts with a couple of banks with these video id flows. Simply because it’s way too easy to lose access to my money in the account with them. If their QA is not good enough for this vital requirement, I don’t want to know how they treat other requirements. They simply outsourced the id verification to some third parties that are way too unreliable.

I agree that the privacy controls on Apple systems are well-organized.

Still, it’s more important to have confidence that the privacy services are not smoke and mirrors with carefully carved-out loopholes. It’s one thing to provide something and hold the competitor as the litmus test, the other to sustainably live up to your promises, like the now pejorative “do no evil” slogan, with retroactive ramifications. There’s really little users can effectively validate about Apple’s privacy promises.

Then there’s a big disparity across all Android hardware vendors. Google must cater to that more or less federated topology of Android devices. It’s much harder.

Yet I don’t see any technical blocker for an opt-in for an Apple-grade ADP in Pixels and Galaxies.

It’s all quite weird. Even with Google Passwords, how do I know that it’s E2EE if I can unlock it from a browser with just a device PIN? Lots of loopholes.

Google pushes Gemini everywhere and wants to keep on to your interactions, with human reviews. While I applaud the transparency, having Gemini scrape my screen makes me uneasy. My frog’s not warm enough for that, yet.

And Gemini in Sheets and Docs is just a toy. Microsoft 365 Copilot is a step ahead but is wrong more often than not, at least from my interactions with them. Both very disappointing. No way to justify access to my personal or my company’s or clients’ information.

Apple promises something they call Secure Compute or so, don’t remember the exact name, which appears to be encrypted and randomized in their cloud compute, which is off-device. With iPhone being the most powerful to date (per GeekBench), Tensor Pixels will have to offload most of the edge compute to GCP, and Snapdragon Samsungs while being powerful (I have no idea but would assume) must follow the Pixel Android approach.

So AI features will exfiltrate even more personal information, occasionally, accidentally, or purposefully, and the user would have consented to that and the human reviews just to get access to the smart features.

That’s true. On Pixel Android, there’s several unrelated places in the various settings for the device and for the Google account to take care of and see that they do not collide. And for every function there’s always some sort of small print like “it’s all private to you unless you choose to share” - but to use any of the features/services you have to “share” like with Google Photos and Calendar and Tasks, you lose track of what you share with whom in the end. So essentially not only the metadata is collected but also the content and nothing’s private as a result, at least that’s what I got to understand. And even if you ask Google to delete your personal information, it will retain it for a while for compliance purposes.

As for

> - App developers are mandated to publish what they collect when publishing apps to the App Store.

I believe that’s still moot and rather a voluntary disclosure that no one vets. I’ve seen apps with no collection stated on App Store but deviating privacy policies, or app functions that contradicted their own privacy policy.

From what I heard and read, I understood that as a well-meant idea but still a misconception on the consumer part due to lack of enforcement by Apple.

Both promise security, Apple promises some degree of privacy. Google stores your encryption keys, and so does Apple unless you opt in for ADP.

Is it similar to Facebook Messenger (encrypted in transit and at rest but Meta can read it) and Telegram (keys owned by Telegram unless you start a private chat)?

There are things Pixels do that iPhones don’t, e.g., you get notified when a local cell tower picks your IMEI. I mean it’s meaningless since they all do it, but you can also enable a higher level of security to avoid 2G. Not sure it’s meaningful but it’s a nice to have.

What you’re describing about Windows is very reminiscent of what Pixel users describe on Reddit.

I’m totally with you, I wouldn’t use Windows voluntarily. I’m not in a position to tell whether it’s more or less ready though, just no recent experience with it.

This was the first time in two decades that my smartphone broke, and it could only be replaced.

In the end, to me it’s really too much maintenance with Pixels and Android devices in general. Really don’t get it why people prefer Android. It’s like desktop Linux. Not there yet.

What are all the use cases that let you avoid Play?

It’s great the battery improved but does it really matter? You still will charge every day.

The camera resolution, well, it’s still just a smartphone camera with some AI post-processing, which Xiaomi can do better with their Leica or Oppo with their Zeiss lenses. And either one is still bad compared to a proper camera.

ProMotion display, Pixel’s still better.

Your point about storage made me laugh, but let’s maybe leave it for another time.

That all is very minor and not noticeable to me. If you go from 10 to 15 it’s a 50% improvement, but if your competitors have been at 20 and won’t regress, you’re still behind.

So yes, to me, the aluminum case is the only tangible. My palms don’t burn anymore. And I’m grateful to Apple for letting me pay more again for this noticeable improvement.

Now I’m at a point where Android itself, even Pixels feel that way. I really tried to make the Pixel my daily driver. In hindsight, it was just too naive of me.