Good analysis by Ben Bajarin, who sums up various discussions I’ve read in my Twitter timeline lately about the quality of Apple’s services and the company’s approach to not collecting lots of data:

However, getting useful and good behavioral data is essential for Apple to make better products and services and, more importantly, compete with those services down the road. I’d almost prefer that, instead of Apple’s stance being not only to collect as little data as necessary and also to universally anonymize that data, they would simply say, “Trust us with your data. We will keep it safe and secure and we will deliver you superior products and services because of it.” I could also be satisfied with a hybrid approach where, for the most security conscious customers, Apple gives them the option to keep the existing privacy protocol as well as their differential privacy techniques, but also allow others to opt-in to giving them more data so that things like Siri, News, Apple Music, etc., benefit from that data and thus, deliver those customers a much more personalized and useful service. With some of the recent changes in iOS 10.3, I feel they are getting closer to exactly this scenario.

Ben refers to iOS 10.3’s upcoming iCloud data sharing option – a new (opt-in) setting to share iCloud-related data with Apple.

This is a complex problem: it’s still too early to understand the impact of Differential Privacy, and I don’t think Apple’s services are inherently terrible; but I also agree with the premise that by not collecting data, other companies may capitalize on Apple’s users in the future thanks to smarter services. I’d love to get more details on what Apple is working on for iCloud analytics.