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The lamest excuse ever: Apple blames iPhone tracking file on ‘bug’
(CNN) — After a week of silence, Apple on Wednesday responded to widespread complaints about iPhones and iPads tracking their users’ whereabouts by saying “the iPhone is not logging your location” and announcing an upcoming mobile software update.
The next version of Apple’s iOS will store data about a phone’s location for only seven days instead of for months, as was previously the case, the company says. Apple blamed the fact that so much location data had been stored on users’ phones and computers on a software “bug.”
“The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly,” the company said in a news release. “We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.”
…“When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes continue updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple’s crowd-sourced database?” the company asks itself in a Q&A posted on Apple’s media relations site.
“It shouldn’t,” the company says. “This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly.”
If “the iPhone is not logging your location”, how did the data base with all of those locations in get into the memory – immaculate inception? I realize that Apple thinks its user base is a group of morons who will buy anything with the company’s logo on it, but they are not going to “buy” an incredibly stupid and obviously wrong statement like that.
We already know that Apple included the feature so it could sell location-based advertizing. Apple says it is doing it in their user licensing.
There may be a bug that causes the data base to grow until it fills up storage, but the software was designed to track the user.
10 comments
The reason I haven’t made any big deal about this one on my own blog is because of *course* Apple is tracking me. I sort of assumed that. Google tracks me too — if I Google for, say, “hamburgers”, Google displays entries for hamburger restaurants around me. Sad to say, the only way to not be tracked by Big Corp today is to turn off your mobile phone when you’re not making a call — and even then it’ll track your location where you made the call, but at least it won’t be tracking every intermediate location inbetween.
Do I like it? Not really. But I put up with it because all the alternatives would track me too, so I might as well get the one that integrates best with the rest of my electronic infrastructure…
– Badtux the Geeky Penguin
Of course we are tracked, and every one does it. My only complaint is that they attempt to deny that they are doing it when it is so obvious.
Because of the way my IP address is reported I get a lot of worthless ads for Central Florida because that is the node where The Phone Company connects to the backbone. The whole purpose behind most cookies is to track your interests to sell targeted ads. It is the nature of the system, so why deny it?
It is only an issue because of the denial.
I realize that Apple thinks its user base is a group of morons who will buy anything with the company’s logo on it
Ummm… As someone who was Service Mgr for an Apple Svc Center here for a few years not long ago… I can say with some conviction that: That’s true, and they are (morons). 😆
I also worked for an Apple dealer for a couple years in the early 90’s. Apple actually gave a damn back then. Not now. We were told time and again that our *job* was to minimize the number of warranty claims, and the number of ways that a warranty could be voided grew. Apple stopped caring about the public and thinking of them as *customers* a while ago. Now they are all just suckers who will put up with anything. Most products are secretly upgraded throughout their life. I was there when the first Macbook Pro was launched in Jan 2006. It was a pile of garbage! I was giver a stack of service notices and notes on fixing certain problems, but *ONLY* if a sucker complained hard enough (like going to Consumer Affairs etc). By the end of 2006, the MacBook had undergone several revisions (to the point where by Xmas it looked completely different internally). It’s one reason why Apple make it so bloody difficult to get their stuff apart! 😉 Apple never announced any revisions or changes publicly, and it was a nightmare for us because as a svc Center, we had to stock parts for all these different revisions! I quit early 2007. I told customers with early revision MBP’s to demand the latest revision. Apple were really pissed at me. Screw ’em!! 😈
Apple is indistinguishable from Micro$tuffed as far as I can see. Gates & Jobs may as well be co-joint twins!
“It is only an issue because of the denial.”
Denial is where I sometimes feel like throwing my phone, but denial is not close to me and a Houston bayou just isn’t the same.
I expect occasional ads on any medium. I won’t say I like them, but I take them as the new normal. What I do not appreciate is ads that use up resources I pay for… minutes, text messages, etc. If there were a way to reflect those costs back onto the advertiser, I’d be a lot less exasperated with ads.
Kryten, as someone who crawled through the morass that was minicomputers before the microcomputers appeared I can state that vaporware has always been the most important product a tech company produces.
What was designed by the engineers is not what was built because “it was too expensive”, but no one altered the features list of the original design, and no one told the programmers that the instruction set they received is not the actual instruction set of the hardware because certain instructions require hardware that was deemed extraneous. This means that the product that is shipped cannot possibly do was the advertising says it will do and no one in customer support is told why.
If you want fun, have half of the boxes in a major order for a network arrive without boot PROMs. The joys of IT.
In the end the MBAs take over and everything goes to hell [without the hand basket as it was deemed an unnecessary expense that reduced profitability].
At least my cell phone provider doesn’t ding me for their text messages that I don’t read, Steve, but if I use the browser feature to connect to the ‘Net, I would be dinged for the time it takes the ads to load.
As someone who has been in the industry for a while, I can assure you that any time a new product is demonstrated at a technology trade show, it is the one and only of that item in existence and was hand-built by its head designer with the assistance of three or four other engineers and the user interface that appears to have all this wonderful functionality is in fact a mockup where only three or four things actually work, and those three or four things are whatever code could be cribbed from the *previous* product and shoved behind the scenes. Which is why the “new” features don’t actually work, Bryan, because they never actually existed — only whatever old features can be cribbed from prior products, and *maybe* one or two new things that can be implemented within a few weeks’ time which may or may not work…
No, I’m not bitter at being told, “we’ve announced it, now we need to design and implement it because they took thirty orders at the show and they need to be delivered within thirty days” so many times over the years :).
– Badtux the Geeky Penguin
In minicomputers, the demo “machine” was a terminal for the humping huge sucker behind the curtain running a simulation. The machine that was on display had a com port and I/O to muck about with the lights that were installed inside the case. there wasn’t even a real prototype to work with, only some design specifications [more of a wish list] that were used to design the simulation.
There was no start on any hardware until there was a sufficient demand for the new product.
I have begun to suspect that the “security settings” for some major pieces of software are nothing but a menu program that changes to reflect the choices the user makes, but doesn’t actually affect anything else. They are using the “placebo effect” on security.
In the modern world, Bryan, we mock up the new system by taking an off the shelf Dell server and putting our logo stickers over the Dell logo stickers, then loading the software off our old product onto it (which doesn’t actually *work* since the guts of a Dell aren’t the same as our old product’s guts, but as long as we can get the cgi.bin to display the login page and the main menu, all is good). 🙂
– Badtux the Geeky Penguin
What always exasperated me (back when I was working) was the obsession with the sacred calendar year budget, the determination of midlevel managers to “complete” a project by 12/31 no matter how many scope changes some committee had imposed on it after, say, 11/30. One month? whole new product? no problem! Or at least that was supposed to be our attitude.
Bryan, regarding unsolicited cell phone texts, I ended up (don’t know how) on two advertising lists and was receiving several texts a week. Fortunately, one can (at least for the moment) reply by texting “STOP” to them; that actually did shut off the flow of crap. I found the advice on an AT&T help site. I don’t know if it’s a matter of law, or just how the most popular text-spamming s/w works.
Well, that would certainly save time, Badtux, that might be wasted on designing and building something new.
Well, Steve, everyone knows that there is nothing going on in December 😉
I’ll store that texting tip, Steve, Tnx.