Apple is known for having a user base that is very loyal and enthusiastic about their products.
But there is an equally enthusiastic hatred toward Apple from other people in the tech community who have trouble understanding why anyone would choose Apple devices over their competitors.
In this article, I’m going to give you the number one reason why you should choose Apple products over anything else.
It is a reason I think should be discussed a lot more often.
So what is the number one reason to choose Apple products?
Could it be their beautiful industrial design, their approachable user interface, their optimized operating systems, or perhaps their seamless user experience?
In my opinion, those are all legitimate advantages of using Apple products.
But there is one huge reason that is rarely mentioned by news outlets or users themselves.
And that is privacy.
Apple has maintained such an uncompromising stance on privacy that it actually led to a lawsuit from the US Justice Department.
Now we will discuss that in detail later.
I want to begin by acknowledging a question most of you are probably thinking.
Which is: why does privacy even matter?
After all, it appears the importance of privacy is declining these days.
With social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, people are comfortable sharing more of their data to the public than ever before.
In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had this to say on the subject: "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information in different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."
And while I think that is true, I do not think it suggests privacy is not important.
Individuals can choose to make as much about themselves public as they want.
It is how their data is used that becomes deceptive.
If I share my email address, work location, and personal interests with Facebook, it is because I want my friends on the platform to have access to that information.
Not because I want Facebook to sell it to companies in exchange for targeted ads.
But it is not just Facebook who engages in this practice.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed how extensively companies collect data; Amazon and Google similarly collect huge amounts of data on their users to sell to advertisers.
And it is easy to understand why.
The business of selling user data is very lucrative.
It is why Facebook has grown into a 138 billion dollar company without selling any hardware or premium services.
And as you have probably heard before, if you are not paying for a product, you likely are the product.
But despite these privacy violations, we continue to use services from Facebook, Amazon, and Google.
Likely because the vast majority of us do not even know these privacy violations are happening.
Typically, companies do disclose this information, but it is often buried in their terms and conditions which very few people actually read.
In fact, your right to privacy is violated by simply browsing the web, since your internet service provider and government agencies can see what websites you visit and are likely logging that information in their systems.
And that is why many people, myself included, use a VPN when browsing the internet.
VPNs act as a kind of virtual invisibility cloak that mask internet behavior from ISPs by encrypting data and shielding your location from websites.
And this leads me to a question I hear a lot, when arguing in support of digital privacy.
And that is: why should I care about privacy if I have nothing to hide?
And the answer is: privacy is not about hiding something because you have broken the law.
Privacy is about having the right to withhold information in certain circumstances to prevent misuse and misappropriation.
For example, most people prefer to keep personally identifiable information like their social security number, address, and bank information private.
Not because they are doing something bad, but because something harmful like identity theft could be done to them if that information were public.
And in more extreme circumstances, data has been used against citizens by totalitarian governments.
From 1950 to 1990, East Germany had a so-called security agency that consisted of 90,000 spies and about 200,000 informants.
The agency kept detailed records on hundreds of thousands of their citizens and used this information to psychologically harass, blackmail, and discredit people who opposed the despotic regime.
Keep in mind, this was all before the internet existed.
That is why today, the system of mass surveillance happening in countries like the US is extremely dangerous.
No one can predict how this information will be used by future administrations or by foreign governments who successfully steal data from the US.
Such breaches have occurred with U.S. government data in the past.
And if you think your data is safe with corporations since they operate outside the government, you would be mistaken.
Here is a list of 21 of the biggest corporate data breaches, most of which occurred in the past ten years, and affected billions of people.
- Chinese Surveillance Network (June 2025) – 4 billion records exposed
- Yahoo (August 2013) – 3 billion records
- National Public Data (December 2023) – 2.9 billion records
- Real Estate Wealth Network (December 2023) – 1.5 billion records
- River City Media (March 2017) – 1.4 billion records
- Aadhaar (January 2018) – 1.1 billion records
- Alibaba (November 2019) – 1.1 billion records
- First American Financial (May 2019) – 885 million records
- LinkedIn (June 2021) – 700 million records
- Sina Weibo (March 2020) – 538 million records
- Facebook (April 2019) – 533 million records
- Marriott International (September 2018) – 500 million records
- Adult FriendFinder (October 2016) – 412 million records
- MySpace (2013) – 360 million records
- Exactis (June 2018) – 340 million records
- NetEase (October 2015) – 235 million records
- Zynga (September 2019) – 218 million records
- Court Ventures/Experian (October 2013) – 200 million records
- Dubsmash (December 2018) – 162 million records
- Adobe (October 2013) – 153 million records
- eBay (2014) – 145 million records
So chances are, some of your personal data is already being used by hackers to access certain accounts.
But this goes further than data being leaked.
It is how data is used by corporations to infer things about you that have not been shared.
For example, Target can accurately predict when one of their shoppers is pregnant based on the items they buy.
This led to the company accidentally exposing a teenage shopper’s pregnancy to her father by mailing coupons for baby clothes and cribs to their house.
Now I give all these examples just to prove the ways unwanted data collection can negatively affect everyday, law-abiding people like you and me.
It is why privacy is so important and should be taken seriously.
And Apple has proven to be the only major tech company in the world that not only refuses to sell their users’ data to advertisers, but is willing to stand up and fight for digital privacy on behalf of their users.
Just last year, Tim Cook expressed his support for Europe’s data regulations and called for a comprehensive federal privacy law in the US.
And this position on privacy is nothing new for Apple.
Steve Jobs shared the same beliefs when he was CEO.
As Jobs stated: "We have always had a very different view of privacy than some of our colleagues in the valley. We take privacy extremely seriously. And so as an example, before any app can get location data, we do not make it a rule that they have to put up a panel and ask because they might not follow that rule. They call our location services and we put up the panel. Privacy means people know what they are signing up for. And some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you are going to do with their data."
So it is clear that Apple is satisfied making money from hardware and services rather than advertising.
The privacy policy is so strict that some people think it actually stunted the growth of Siri.
Reportedly, after it was introduced, Siri improved rapidly and was on track to outperform competing voice assistants entering the market.
But after some time, Apple realized Siri was sharing data with multiple third-party apps, which they decided was dangerous and violated their users’ privacy.
So Apple re-engineered the voice assistant and that is when it began to lose ground to its competition.
Now if this story is in fact true, it demonstrates just how committed Apple is to protecting users’ privacy.
But perhaps an even more convincing case happened in 2016 when the FBI asked Apple to unlock an iPhone that was used by a terrorist in the San Bernardino shootings.
The FBI sought this access in an attempt to find more information about the terrorist’s contacts or affiliations.
But Apple declined, stating: "The implications of the government’s demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data."
The FBI subsequently sued Apple for non-compliance.
The FBI claimed that the software would only be used to unlock one iPhone.
But it was later discovered that the agency had over 200 iPhones ready to be unlocked using the tool.
Which actually proved Apple’s point when Cook said: "The U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a back door to the iPhone."
In the end, the FBI found another way to unlock the device and did not need Apple’s help after all.
And if you are wondering why other tech companies like Microsoft or Google have not had similar run-ins with the FBI, it is because they are known to have incorporated back doors into their services for government access.
Something Apple refuses to do.
In fact, one of the reasons why Apple does not collect identifiable user data like iMessage conversations is because if they do not have the information themselves, then they have nothing to turn over to the government.
And when they do collect data, Apple uses techniques like differential privacy, which prevents them from identifying the particular device data it is coming from.
And by combining this anonymous data sourced from thousands of devices, Apple is able to recognize patterns and behaviors that reveal how people are using their products without revealing the users themselves.
So while it may not be an obvious benefit of the Apple ecosystem, privacy is the quality that differentiates them the most from competitors.
And it is not something Apple just implements once for bragging rights and then moves to the back burner.
Privacy is integrated in just about every feature of every product.
iMessage and FaceTime are fully encrypted end to end, so only you and the person you are talking to are hearing the conversation.
Apple was one of the first companies to include native OS disk encryption with FileVault and Mac OS, which prevents anyone from accessing the data on your Mac without the proper credentials.
Apps use on-device data to collect and store information like search terms and route navigation, so where you have been and where you are going is not stored on Apple’s servers.
And for apps that do feature advertising like the App Store, Apple News, and Stocks, access to your data is limited to behavior inside each respective app.
And you can even turn on limited ad tracking in your Apple device’s settings to stop receiving targeted ads.
Now I mentioned earlier that this issue of privacy is not discussed very often.
But in the past couple of years it is getting more media attention since personal data from various social media sites and tech companies have been weaponized in some very serious ways.
And Apple seemed to have caught on to this.
Since they are now promoting their stance on privacy very publicly with things like ad campaigns and an updated privacy page on their website.
But I do not think they are doing this solely for good publicity.
I think Apple is trying to mount as much pressure as possible on companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in order to force them to make a tough decision.
Either end the mass collection of user data, which would likely cost them billions in lost revenue, or change nothing and concede that Apple is a superior company when it comes to protecting user privacy.
