Michael Grothaus, FastCompany:

The best product Apple offers is intangible, yet far more valuable than a flagship smartphone. The best product Apple has–and the single biggest reason that consumers should choose an Apple device over competing devices–is privacy.

And:

It has only been in the last few years that the perils of online privacy have made their way to the forefront of national conversation, thanks to the Cambridge Analytica scandal and a seemingly unending string of data breaches and hacks. Such events have left consumers rightly worried just how the data tech companies are collecting about them are being used and abused. Yet Apple seems to be the only major tech company that had the foresight–and the will–to begin tackling these issues before they reached a crisis point.

And:

In iOS 12 Apple is also introducing anti-fingerprinting technology in Safari. Fingerprinting is a tracking technology advertisers and data firms use to identify your movements online. They do this by recording characteristics about the device you are using–such as hard drive size, screen resolution, fonts, installed, and more–and then recording a log of that device’s movements.

And:

Apple makes its hundreds of billions every year by selling physical products that have a high markup. Facebook and Google, on the other hand, have a business model built around advertisers who want as much data about users as possible so they can better target them. This is why, for example, Google would never build the types of anti-tracking and privacy protections into the Android OS that Apple has done with MacOS and iOS. Google–and Facebook–aren’t going to cut off their access to all that black gold.

This is a terrific article. The callouts above are just the tip of the iceberg. One key point, to me, is that Apple is able to offer privacy because it makes its money from high margins and money gained from services. Though I wish we could have Apple’s great design and ecosystem for less money, I truly appreciate Apple’s, and Tim Cook’s privacy stance.

Fascinating read.