Apple’s ad network gets ‘preferential access to users’ data’ vs Facebook, Google

Apple exempts all their iOS software from their own privacy scaremongering. iOS never pops up a scary dialog warning you that Camera has accessed your location twice in the last week, even though Camera accesses your location every time you start it. There is a completely separate iOS privacy regime for Apple's own apps.

Duh? What's up with all the recent assertions that there is any sort of trust equivalency for 3rd parties vs Apple within the iOS ecosystem? Apple is part of the core trust foundation for any iOS user. They are present in the entire freaking stack, from the SoC everything runs on up. As a technical matter, they can do absolutely anything they want. By definition if you run iOS you trust Apple's stuff, from the hardware to software. If you don't, you shouldn't be running iOS. There is absolutely a "completely separate privacy regime" for Apple on Apple platforms, and it's not "Apple's own apps" it's "Apple's own processor and microcode and firmware and other chips and cryptographic keys and operating system ...and apps".

For human facing privacy and security information overload is a genuinely huge issue. What value do you assert exists for a "scary dialog" for Camera, software from Apple? After all, for that to even mean anything you must by definition be trusting iOS, software from Apple. On the other hand it's perfectly reasonable to not have the same level of trust in 3rd parties. 3rd parties do not share the same financial relationship or incentives that Apple has with its customers. Nor the same culture, nor necessarily scrutiny or technical acumen or even controlling legal regime.

You certainly do not need to trust Apple at all in general, you can run Linux, the BSDs, Windows, ChromeOS, Android or (happily!) various improving Linux phones that are extremely open. But if you decide to run Apple specifically, then you must indeed trust them.

Edit: Also, "fearmongering" is a ridiculous bit of bait. I mean, 2020 on HN and you're suggesting random 3rd party apps accessing camera/location/whatever is not the slightest issue? Ok.

The framework for this is called “Transparency, Consent, and Control”, and providing these options for system apps would check the box for all three of these things. Of course, you have to trust Apple to do it right, but like you said you already did that when you bought the phone. This, this isn’t about trust, but the reasons I just mentioned.

System apps are right there with every single 3rd party app in terms of control though. They have an explanation just like Apple requires in general, and you can turn off location or whatever else usage. If I go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services, "Camera" is right there with the standard indicator for that it has been used, a "While Using the App" set, and "App explanation: 'Photos and videos will be tagged with the location where they are taken.'" The options for Never and Always are there.

The only complaint here seems to be that the bootstrapping for granting permission is part of the initial device setup screen and location services, but that seems perfectly reasonable in line with user expectations for default system services on fresh system. I strongly disagree that "fairness" somehow is a valid complaint here in the way GP suggested. On the contrary, insisting Apple is equivalent to 3rd parties is itself "unfair" as well as wrong.

My complaint is not about the initial permission, it's about the thing that regularly appears in iOS to suggest that you might have changed your mind and would you like to disable location access for some app. This never pops up for Apple's apps.

There's also another way they exempt themselves, by allowing you to disable microphone for third-party apps but not offering to disable microphone access for Voice Memos, Camera, etc. On Android I can disable the microphone for any first-party app, even the Phone app which obviously needs it.

Yeah: I get this prompt over and over again for the Tile application, and it is ridiculously annoying; if/when Apple launches their own Tile competitor, obviously their app will not be subject to the same handicap, and people might very well choose Apple's version simply because they won't get nagged constantly "are you sure you like Tile?!". That's clear anti-competitive behavior, in the same space as "tying" and "bundling": when Apple builds products that can be built using their platform, they need to be forced to not take advantage of the fact that they are the developer of the platform to give themself preferential treatment vs. the products, as if you allow that then you essentially always annoint the platform providers as the winners in any battle they are want to enter... the result of which being that you always end up with an oligopoly of giant companies owning every important market (and if you want to compete you have to take them on as network effect platforms) instead of separate oligopolies (let's face it: economy of scale effects pretty much always cause oligopolies in free markets :/ the only time that doesn't happen is if you hold a market space no one considers important) for every major market built on that platform (and then as a cross-cutting concern of said platforms; like, the market for bluetooth location dongles and voice assistants and browsers shouldn't be exactly the same game as the market for mobile phones and computers).