"Let's completely forget that Microsoft 'upgrades' your OS without your permission, spies on you, embeds ads into the Start Menu, and their OEMs like Lenovo will listen in on everything you do at the hardware level. In my opinion, these are actual reasons a company should completely fail and dissolve." - an google and apple don't do this?
The general argument is that Apple, because their profit margin is in the hardware, has no motive to collect and sell personal information to advertisers. And in line with that, Apple has focused on the security and privacy features of their stack.
Google is, for better or worse, still an advertising company. Selling you a phone isn't how they make money; getting you to send information about yourself to them (in order to provide more accurate ad targeting) is how they make money.
Microsoft is caught in a weird place. Historically they've been dependent on OEMs to buy Windows from them and preinstall it, and OEMs have had such low margins that they have to pre-load the hardware with a bunch of spyware/adware in order to turn a profit. Microsoft could kick this by taking greater ownership of the hardware side and adopting a more Apple-style approach, and the Surface line seems to be an attempt to do this, but they aren't there yet.
>.... getting you to send information about yourself to them (in order to provide more accurate ad targeting) is how they make money.
This is a common and generally accepted interpretation of Google that I conjecture contrary to. To restrict such an unprecedented glut of data solely to marketing would seem prohibitively wasteful. Access to intellectual property[1], psychology/social trends, biometrics[2], political, economic, and myriad otherwise private/personal details, etc., collectively and individually comprise a colossal repository useful for predicting, manipulating and understanding (in entirely novel ways) all these very subjects. From intel (e.g. gov) to legislation (e.g. ALEC), the implied applications are many. Perhaps ads are the primary ostensive means of income for Google presently, but opportunity elsewhere abounds. And maybe I've got it all wrong and marketing is the root directory of humanity.
1. Considerations: Exchange of unencrypted prospective patent data pre-patent; google edu domains; unclaimed conceptual material, etc.
When was the last time you took a walk and came back to your Apple computer threatening to restart in 10 minutes to update itself? This happened to me several times in Windows 10 ever since the Anniversary update which removed the option to have windows merely notify the user to schedule a restart (even for the "Professional" edition -- https://gbatemp.net/threads/windows-10-anniversary-update-no...). Eventually I got tired of MS insisting it be in the driver's seat of my computer and switched to Linux. Fedora 24 works quite well and is fortunately quite adequate for my usual needs.
