Apple vs Google Ecosystem - Intro

I've wanted to write about this topic for years.

Regardless of how you feel about Apple or Google, what are the security and privacy benefits of each approach? Is Apple truly more "privacy"-aware? What are the risks of each ecosystem? How has each attempted to minimize those risks as they further expand? And what does that mean for the emerging smart home ecosystem? Does it help to have a (almost) thin-client, like a Chromebook, vs that of a thick Macbook?

This will purely focus on the security approach, based on my 20 years of cyber security including doing Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) at Microsoft.

I'll explore this in a 3 part series, including YouTube video as we illustrate the strategy, the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and analyze strategically the pro's and con's of each approach.

Why this post?

It's amazing to me, but I still see no references to this at all. There is a lot of marketing jargon, sure. However, there is no good resource talking about the high level architectural decisions made by each vendor, the downstream impact to users based on actual risk. As consumers, it's confusing. I watch Facebook groups I belong to butcher the narrative, and honestly, its hard to blame them when there is no content out there at all that explains it. The Internet is a Google vs Apple (vs Microsoft) die-hards, who already made up their decision on the security & privacy story before the conversation has ever started.

So... will Apple's device-centric model take the win, or would it be Google's cloud-first approach? And what can you do to minimize those risks?

Stay tuned. In addition, expect a lot more articles in the new year...

Stay safe & happy hunting,

Andrew