On top of that, premium brands are the opposite of harmful. They push non-premium brands to iterate. The features that were in BMW/Audi/Mercedes in 90s are now in affordable cars. If nobody made premium cars back then, most that technology would have never made it to market. Same about Apple and cheap laptops. Cheap laptops nowadays are times better than what was available a decade ago. If there were no Macbooks to look up to, why abandon flimsy plastic laptops?

I didn't say Apple was obliged. I said Apple didn't care about that user.

> Have you seen any cases where Google has done this?

I haven't seen any case where Google has sent in the police to raid someone's house and confiscate their stuff. I haven't seen any case where Google has manipulated the legal system to claim rights over "black oblong with curved corners". Google doesn't have a history of taking things other people have done and then claiming that they were first to market. I haven't heard people complaining of Google designing planned obsolescence to drive future sales. I haven't heard of a case where Google designed their antenna incorrectly, and then blamed the users for "holding it wrong".

Apple is a very successful company and has broken a lot of ground, but calling them "honest" is horseshit. Don't mistake "a greater focus on user privacy" for "an honest business model". They're orthogonal things.

Honest in the sense that they are upfront about how they make the majority of their money - through phone/computer sales, and not through the sale of your personal data to 3rd parties, or targeting adverts at you.

Having a greater focus on user privacy adds to their honesty in this regard in my opinion, as they are protecting our personal data and not selling it, and even defending access to it.

When has google misled about how it makes its money? It's been pretty upfront about the tradeoffs and how googlestuff is paid for.

This kind of argument has been going on for well over a decade at this point - to suggest that google isn't honest and open about its business model at this point is simply choosing to be willfully ignorant.

I've given you plenty of well-known examples of Apple behaving badly. This isn't to say "Apple is the Devil", but that they're not this shining knight that some people paint them as. They behave dishonestly when it suits them as well.

Here's another example: tax evasion. Apple is the doyen of tax evasion. Is it legal? Yes, but stretched to the limit. Is it honest? Nope; it requires fiscal shennanigans, and they're not afraid to throw their weight around to keep things cosy for themselves. If they truly were honest, they'd pay their taxes, like the general public expects of good citizens.

I do not agree that google are upfront with the users of their services that they collect their data and use it to target ads at them.

How many regular consumers are aware that their android phone tracks their location and stores this data on googles servers nearly continuously? And that every single google assistant query is recorded and saved on googles servers? And that all this data is used to target ads and refine google services?

I don't disagree that Apple has unpalatable aspects to their business, as do all business of that size, but in my opinion they are more honest and upfront about how they make their money when they are compared to Google.