How I spent my winter vacation, courtesy of iPhone
If the iPhone location-tracking mess has you alternately muttering, “How dare they,” “Who the hell cares,” and “You tell ’em, Apple,” there’s good reason.
This particular blip in iPhone history is being fueled by three different forces.
For starters, there’s the growing national/global paranoia about our personal information falling into the wrong hands.
Then we have the never-ending obsession with Apple — with anti-Apple forces eager to pounce on any perceived chink in the armor and admirers eager to leap to the company’s defense.
Last, we have Apple tossing out its own statement yesterday — too late for some people’s tastes — and with enough fodder to give both sides some good ammunition.
Personally, I find it odd that people would get bent out of shape that their approximate location history has been stored somewhere in iTunes. (A) I could care less who knows where I’ve been, and (B) I thought we Mac users were so smug about our computers being safe and secure.
If someone did break into my computer, the iPhone location file is the last thing I’d care about them finding. My computer contains everything: my contacts, credit cards, bank accounts and information about the secret second family I have in Wisconsin. (Damn, I didn’t mean to say that out loud.)
The story gets bigger mostly because it involves Apple. In the last few weeks, there have been two far more serious threats to our confidential information, neither of which seems to have gotten as much press as LocationGate.
Just days ago, the Playstation Network was hacked. About 77 million had their email address and possibly credit card number stolen.
A short time ago, the marketing company Epsilon was hacked in the largest name and email heist in history. You’ve probably received a number of warnings from big companies who relied on Epsilon, advising that your email address has been compromised as a result. They’re very sorry for the inconvenience.
So excuse me if I don’t get upset that a hacker who hasn’t yet broken into my computer might one day sneak in and find out that I drove down to Florida a couple of months ago.
But now Apple blasts into the news with an official explanation. They say they’ve been silent because, basically, they’ve been working on it. They should know that the most frustrating part of air travel is when the pilot leaves us in the dark. A simple “we’re experiencing a delay, and I’ll get back to you when I have more information” would have sufficed.
Reportedly, Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall worked on the response together because they wanted to get it right. Unfortunately, parts of their explanation sound more like spin than they should. For example:
The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location…
Kind of the same thing, isn’t it? I look at my own iPhone location map, and I’m sorry — those are in fact the locations I visited.
They say that saving a year’s worth of data is a “bug,” because it should only save a week’s worth. It’s also a bug that data collection continues even when you turn off location services. To common folk, bugs are things that make software crash or perform improperly. In both of these cases, the software is doing exactly what Apple told it to do. They seem to be more errors in judgment than bugs. Especially when we know that this information is collected on purpose.
In the end, I don’t think it’s a big deal. Apple could have been more straightforward, but I take them at their word that the collected data is anonymous and used only to improve future services.
In fact, this could be a huge moneymaking opportunity if you have the hacking skills. Imagine: Location Maps of the Stars. How fun it would be to see the 12-month location maps of the rich and famous — starting with Jobs, Schiller and Forstall.
Tags: apple, apple iphone, iphone location, ken segall, locationgate, steve jobs
