This is Technology Bytes, episode 122 for July 6, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bites on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So this week I’m not really talking about any specific technology.
I’m really talking about a company.
You know that if I’m doing that and I’m talking about technology, I’m talking about Apple.
And that is correct.
And one of the things that has come up over the past week and a half maybe is a little bit of the shine leaving Apple.
A little bit of the luster being rubbed off.
It’s not quite the company that people thought it was.
And while I’m not here necessarily to defend them, because I think maybe some of that is true, I’m also here to have a different point of view.
So many times in the podcast I’ve listened to, people are like, well, maybe us, you know, pundits feel this way, but the general public doesn’t feel this way.
And, you know, it’s interesting because I’m not sure, everyone has their own way to feel about things, especially about a company as big as Apple.
But it’s very rare that I hear dissension when multiple people are on a podcast.
There’s a lot of agreement with the host or whoever is spouting the given feelings that they have.
And maybe that’s because people don’t want to hear pundits argue on a podcast.
I’m not sure.
But let’s see where this one goes.
So a couple things jumped to mind, and I’m going to bury the lead a little bit, but it all ties together.
So years ago, it was really 2014, so yeah, quite a few years ago, Apple gave away a U2 album and put it on every iPhone in existence that is owned by someone that was tied to a network, whatever.
And I remember that, and I didn’t think that much about it.
I’m like, okay, good, U2, that’s fine.
I don’t know if I listened to them that much.
But my father-in-law got all bent out of shape, and he didn’t even listen to music on the iPhone.
He listens to the radio, sometimes a cassette player, and it’s funny, he’s like, I don’t want this trash on my iPhone.
And they shouldn’t have done that.
Well, you have that opinion, and that’s fine, you can do that.
But it also didn’t impact his life at all.
No one told him, you’re a sinner because you have U2 on your iPhone.
Or no one said, you have to listen to it because they put it on your iPhone.
But Apple got a lot of flack for that, and people started thinking of them a little bit differently.
And now here we are 11 years later, maybe 11 plus, and the latest uproar is because they put a Fandango offer in your wallet for the new F1 movie, which Apple has made.
And Apple wants it to be successful.
And I didn’t get that offer in my Apple wallet, but others did, and even people who didn’t are all bent out of shape because that’s something that Apple did.
And they think there’s a sacredness about Apple wallet that is private, and I put stuff in there, credit card numbers and other credit cards and insurance cards and all kinds of things that you put in your digital wallet.
And they think that that is hidden from everybody’s eyes.
And I really think it is.
But it doesn’t mean that Apple can’t put something there without knowing who you are.
And that almost feels like that’s what they did.
I’m not sure why they put it on certain people’s and not other people’s.
Maybe if you had the Fandango app, then maybe you got that offer.
But it’s really an offer for a pretty good movie from what I hear for a little bit of a discount.
And so, I don’t know.
I may be missing something there.
But in both of these instances, I don’t see it as being that big a deal.
Something else we’ve talked about is kind of maybe the biggest thing that Apple has kind of failed at in the last year, and that’s Apple Intelligence and Siri and trying to make their own large language models work and all kinds of things like that.
And I think this is an area where Apple needs to be held accountable because they promised things that they were not able to deliver.
In the other instances, they never said they were giving you anything.
They never said they weren’t giving you anything.
I don’t know.
There’s something a little bit different.
But the idea of Apple doing these kind of things, is it taking a little bit of the shine away from the company?
Is it causing people to think of them differently?
Is it causing people not to trust Apple anymore?
So let’s get it straight.
Apple’s a $3 trillion company.
They’re here to make money.
They are a corporation.
They are not someone who is looking maybe first at their users of their product or their software, although I think they keep that pretty high up on their list of to-dos.
But they also have stockholders and the market to answer to, even though, I don’t know, that whole thing’s a mess in my opinion anyway.
But the idea there is that Apple is a company, and companies are amoral, as people say.
But I think that may be giving them a pass.
I think companies can do bad things.
But maybe it’s not the company.
Maybe it’s people that run the company.
I don’t know.
But Apple has sold itself as a company who puts privacy and security first.
So when they don’t live up to their word, when they put things on people’s phones that people didn’t ask for, have they broken trust in the privacy and security range?
Are they doing something that makes people feel like they are not being treated properly in the environment that Apple has provided?
And so I think that is the question at hand.
So the quick answer is maybe a yes.
But I think when you look at the things that they’ve done, they are not saying that they gave things to people because they know who they are.
They just know that they have devices that are Apple devices.
The information about who you are, Apple knows a lot about that, and they have access to that unless you’ve told them that you don’t want them to have that access.
But the things that they’ve done in putting things on phones that people don’t want, it is not part of them knowing something about you that you feel they shouldn’t know.
Maybe it is a security risk, but I don’t get that either.
But Apple is telling people that they put privacy first.
And giving someone an opportunity to save money on something that Apple produces is something that every company does.
It’s called advertising.
Now the fact that it went into your digital wallet, maybe that makes a difference.
The fact that it went into your Apple Music list, maybe that makes a difference.
But it’s not because they know who you are or they’ve broken any privacy or security rules.
It’s just that they have decided that is the way to do advertisement.
And maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s not.
That’s up to each individual to decide.
But I think there has to be some views that differ from others when we’re talking about these kinds of things.
I don’t know if Apple should have done it or not done it.
I don’t care about the U2 album.
I don’t care about the Fandango thing.
Maybe I don’t care because that one didn’t happen to me.
I do care about Apple Intelligence because I was looking forward to what they could provide.
But I think they’ve done a pretty good job when they’re looking at the 26 offerings of their software of bringing Apple Intelligence along and making sure that it will perform to the expected level.
So where does that leave us?
So I think when we look at trust and the future, we look at privacy and the future, I think Apple still sells themselves as the secure and private software company, that they have things built into their operating system to help protect people from others.
But a lot of time it’s from third party and not from Apple.
The fact is that you own a phone that knows so much about you and someone has access to that.
Apple has access to much of that.
And we give them access to maybe even more, location data, timing data, calendar data.
They always ask for it, but oftentimes we give it to them because we trust that they won’t give it to anybody else.
And to this point, I think they’ve lived up to that promise.
I think they’ve lived up to keeping your data yours, even if they know it.
And that is what they have always said they would do.
So when they do something that you don’t like and they put something on your phone that you don’t like, have they broken your trust?
I don’t know.
I think they’ve still done exactly what they said they were going to do.
And I think many people, many pundits that are all up in arms about this are reading it entirely wrong and leading the not so pundit public astray.
So the fact is that every phone manufacturer knows much about the person that’s using their device.
Every iPad, every Mac, I mean, all of that ties together.
I’m logged into every single one of those things and I give Apple a lot of freedom to know what I’m doing on their devices because I hope in the future that they’ll be able to help me do more with the information they have about me.
But I also am fully expecting that they’re not giving that information to anyone else unless they’ve specifically asked for my permission.
And I think we need to relax just a little bit because there are a lot of things way worse.
Not that this gets a glaze or icing and make it smell good, whatever.
If it’s wrong, it’s wrong, I guess.
But I think things are getting way out of shape when we look at what Apple has promised to do in the area of privacy and security.
And I think they maintain that at a high level because that is what they’ve promised their users.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you
