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In October, Apple CEO, Tim Cook he gave a speech regarding the need to combat the "industrial data complex" and create new federal regulations in the United States to protect consumers' digital privacy. During this speech, Cook looked like one of those paranoid bitcoins.
Apple's drive to improve user privacy in recent years is very different from how Google took advantage of the acquisition of Android over the years, which makes one think of what kind of phone would be better for bitcoin-conscious users privacy. While Google is trying to gather as much information as possible about its users, Apple is putting users in control of their data.
So Apple's privacy position makes them the best choice for bitcoin users, who usually want more control over their data and do not want internet companies to follow their every move? It may not be that simple. Let's take a closer look.
Push for Apple privacy
Not too long ago, Bitcoin users were intentionally destroying their iPhones in reaction to the removal of the Blockchain portfolio from the App Store. We advance rapidly to today and iPhone users will be able to use a variety of digital resources on the platform.
Despite the early hesitation to accept the bitcoin app, one of the first major bitcoin wallet portfolios, Breadwallet (now BRD), was initially developed for iOS. When their reasoning was asked to start with iOS, BRD CEO Aaron Voisine told Coindesk in 2014 Apple's products have enabled greater security through the use of Safe element, which is a separate and specialized chip in the iPhone where cryptographic keys can be stored.
This additional security is now also available on Android devices, but it is worth noting that the first mobile bitcoin portfolio that used a secure enclave was on iOS.
In his recent speech at a privacy conference in Brussels, Cook noted that users are the ones who should have complete control over their data. Thanks to this philosophy, Apple tends to store more data on the user's device rather than on the cloud. This should seem familiar to anyone interested in bitcoin because complete control over their money is a bit of the whole point in creating digital resources.
Apple's position on privacy was notoriously tested in the high profile case of the gunslinger involved in the San Bernardino shootings, in which the tech company refused to unlock the FBI shooter's phone. Apple has continued to add new security features to its devices like asking app developers for a privacy policy in their apps, advanced privacy settings, is bug fixes that allow order forces or hackers to penetrate encrypted devices.
Obviously, Apple is notoriously proprietary. This is a direct contradiction with the open source nature and without Bitcoin permission. When Bitcoin's point is to remove trust from finance as much as possible, it is quite a contradiction to run Bitcoin software on hardware and software that is all but transparent. In short, users are not able to verify that Apple is doing what they say they do when it comes to privacy.
Android, but without Google
While Apple focuses on selling hardware, Google focuses on learning as much information as possible on all (see creepy quotes by Eric Schmidt). They are in the business of ad sales and highly targeted ads are more efficient for advertisers and publishers. As the old saying goes, in many cases Google users are the product rather than the customer.
If the debate were simply between an Apple iPhone and a Google Android phone, it might make sense to go with Apple, even if only from a philosophical point of view. After all, at least Apple is say they are respecting your privacy.
That said, Android phones can also be modified to remove Google apps and services from the operating system. The long-awaited Silent Circle Blackphone also used an Android-based operating system.
However, putting a new operating system on a smartphone is not a task that everyone can handle. In addition, privacy-based smartphone companies, based on Android, like Silent circle is CopperheadOS, I encountered serious problems.
Android is generally preferred to iOS by privacy-conscious people because of the open source nature of the operating system owned by Google; however, the tangible benefits become unclear when it is quite difficult for the average person to remove Google from their phone and move on to something like free and open source LineageOS.
Also, installing a custom ROM on an Android device it could end up providing the user with more privacy and security if they do not understand what they're doing, it's also the problem of proprietary baseband firmware existing in all these Android phones, which could include backdoors that allow remote access to phone data. This is not a theoretical concern, like such a backdoor had previously been found in Samsung Galaxy devices.
As a side note, someone who decides to use an Android device should make sure that the phone has a secure "enclave" that will drastically increase the security of all the bitcoin private keys stored on the phone.
At the end of the day, neither Apple smartphones nor Android-based smartphones are practically perfect devices for bitcoins. For now, privacy-sensitive smartphone users may want to consider Purism's Librem 5 as the best option in the future (see our post on why bitcoin users should use Purism devices).
