Apple offers Private Cloud Compute up for a security probe

There has been a lot of hand wringing online by people who wail that Apple is late to the AI party.

I'd rather see this type of cautious, measured approach rather than toss caution to the wind and push out consumer-facing AI features that are barely early beta quality.

And yes, I'm talking about every single LLM-powered AI chatbot service for consumers. They are all alpha or early beta quality. There is nothing that remotely resembles release quality software.

Security should be first and foremost. We have seen a massive braindrain at OpenAI because the current senior management did not prioritize this. We also saw Microsoft delay their CoPilot desktop rollout after a disastrous response and the original unveiling.

There are too many people scrambling to be "First" without taking any care to do things securely.

One thing for sure, I will wait until June 2025 to install iOS 18 and Sequoia on my main devices. And then I will ensure to turn off all AI functionality initially. I plan to trial desktop AI on a separate throwaway non-admin account on my Mac.

I actually bought an iPhone 16 and have yet to make it my primary phone; it mostly sits unused on a counter. I am strongly inclined to do a factory wipe and go through setup using an alternate identity to trial the Apple Intelligence features without putting any of my personal information on the line.

Trust is earned.

Apple needs to prove to me (and security experts) that they have been thinking carefully about security in Apple Intelligence.

I agree trust is earned and going forward. Apple seems to have put more thought into what they want to do in comparison to their competition at this time, I also like the sound of Apple Silicon Server…..

mpantone said:

One thing for sure, I will wait until June 2025 to install iOS 18 and Sequoia on my main devices. And then I will ensure to turn off all AI functionality initially. I plan to trial desktop AI on a separate throwaway non-admin account on my Mac.

I actually bought an iPhone 16 and have yet to make it my primary phone; it mostly sits unused on a counter.

To be blunt, this sounds a bit tinfoil-hat to me.

There aren’t any Apple Intelligence features present on the current version of iOS 18 and Sequoia that I’m aware of, so why wouldn’t you install it now and simply skip the updates until you’ve separately studied the AI features?

Secondly, once you do start testing the AI features arriving in future updates: what do you expect to discover that Apple hasn’t already told you? They have already explained how Private Cloud Compute (and anonymous ChatGPT requests and so on) works, and included saying that users will have a choice to use or not use those services.

What do you imagine that you’re going to find that Apple hasn’t already explained to you? Okay, you want to be skeptical, that’s an admirable quality — but let’s look at Apple’s track record on this, and then compare it to your ONLY. OTHER. OPTIONS.

I think Apple has already earned some measure of trust. It’s healthy to keep checking to be sure nothing has changed, but your odds of discovering that Apple has lied in public statements to shareholders are going to be awfully long.

iOS 17.7 and Sonoma 14.7 are way more stable than the new OS releases are. That’s why for years I’ve postponed upgrading for months.

As I’ve said before I see all consumer-facing AI features as alpha or early beta “quality” -- not just Apple’s.

I know I will eventually use some of them. I know I can turn them all off just like I disabled Siri after an extremely short period.

We already know Apple software engineering struggles to ship quality code. They paused development for a week last fall to tackle their bug list.

I was on iOS 16 and macOS Ventura so again running mature and stable OSes; so all of those bugs they cleared late last year I never had to endure since I upgraded a week before WWDC 2024. Apple’s software QA started declining about 10 years ago which is when I started delaying upgrades, first by a month or so, but the postponements got longer and longer as the code quality continued to slide.

For what it’s worth there has been a Mac in my house for over 30 years. The only OS that I never installed on my daily driver was Crapalina. Tried it several times on an external test drive, but it was always rubbish so I went from High Sierra to Big Sur.

I have no doubt that Apple will eventually get it right, the key word being "eventually." Here in 2024, my opinion is that iOS and macOS releases are beta quality up until about the x.5 release. Since Apple offers security updates for the previous two versions of their operating systems, it's not like I'm putting myself at risk staying on the previous release. I can enjoy both stability and security by being patient for code maturity from Apple.

And it's not like I'm discriminating Apple here. I do the same thing with Microsoft Windows. I'm running Windows 11 23H2 on a couple of systems and one on Windows 10 23H2. I'll likely upgrade one system to the recently released 24H2 sometime around June 2025. Like Apple Microsoft offers security patches for the previous two releases (22H2 and 23H2).

I don't think that Apple is willingly misleading shareholders (like most American adults with a retirement plan, I am an indirect shareholder), but mistakes can be made. Waiting for software maturity is one way to reduce chances of being caught in a situation that threatens personal privacy and security. There's no way anyone in 2024 can reduce that to zero percent but for sure holding back on iOS and macOS upgrades is a choice that Apple customers have at their disposal. On the vast beach of risk assessment everyone draws a different line in the sand. For me, stability, security and privacy far outweigh being the first on the block to run the new features. 

It's worth pointing out that I am most certainly not alone or even an oddball exception. There is always a sizable percentage of people who stay behind on the previous operating system for months even if their devices are eligible to run the latest and greatest code. Every single operating system survey shows this.

Anyhow returning to the discussion topic, I appreciate Apple's willingness to let third-party security researchers kick the tires. I'm not a security expert myself so I have to rely on third parties to assess Apple's prowess in maintaining a high level of security and privacy. Apple Marketing can toot its horn but third party verification is more useful.

iOS 17.7 and Sonoma 14.7 are way

 more stable than the new OS releases are. That’s why for years I’ve postponed upgrading for months

Based on what metrics? And I thought you haven’t run the betas yet, so it can’t be anecdotal. Methinks I smells a concerned troll.

I’ll tell you what my experience has been, living on the bleeding edge (by comparison). Both iOS 16 and 17 betas, then the releases caused configuration, automation and communication issues for a wide range of HomeKit devices. (For reference: I don’t generally test on the home setup, and the office/home networks are physically separate — two different vendors even. Mostly for billing purposes, but also for security.)

As for general stability, I’ll note that it’s really depended not just on the OS version, but the hardware platform. iPhones X through… I’d say 14, maybe 15 always had notable tendencies to hang and reboot, mostly with betas but also with releases. Less so with iPads. With the M Series iPads, that seems to have disappeared also. Ditto for the dreaded heat loop, where either a discharge or recharge phase causes heating to the point of uncomfortableness for an extended period or a dim and shutdown. Temperature also seems less a factor, particularly cold. Heat dissipation is still an issue for phones in cradles held in sunlight. Ventilation helps, different cases help. Mounting where an AC vent can reach a unit definitely helps.

But as for other types of stability issues … I think the only one I’ve really noted in the 18, 18.1, and 18.2 releases is the occasional Camera exception that leads to a quit. Previous software/hardware combos had this also, but more often than not you’d lose the image you just shot. Not so with recent iterations.

I suppose this is all a way to say, in my experience, iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/ 18.x has been waaaaaaaay more solid than any others I’ve had to test. Ditto for macOS 15. 

As for any quality slips … well, the industry in general has had a lot of growing pains around QA. I see no general trend downward from 2014 (?) on. My guess is you weren’t testing or broadly using the company’s products from the ‘70s thru the Aughts (despite having a token Mac), as there are some real quality doozies in there.

So. My anecdotal and abundant experience has been that Apple’s quality has remained around an expected range that leads the industry as a whole. That’s also in line with general consumer opinion. If there’s a production specialist in the house, I’d be curious to hear from them on hardware build qualities as they see it.

Anyway, the last thing we need is the opinion of yet another weak-kneed, change averse, safety curmudgeon. I think there’s plenty of those — devs that won’t move off their circa 2015 hardware and software and the like. 

What we’d need is actual company metrics, which I don’t think we’ll get. Transparency is nice to have — getting sued over what the data shows by opportunists looking for a settlement ain’t. Correct me here anyone — is there any company that does detailed public reporting on their state of quality?