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iOS 8.1 "Dictation"
- Thread starter lookatchu
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Focus on the privacy issue
I agree with all the posters who are disturbed by having to open to Apple information that should be private (i.e. Contacts list, health info, nicknames, relationships, etc.). Many replies from users in this forum point out that the terms for using dictation are essentially unchanged, but this shouldn't be the issue. I would argue that Apple should never have had access to such disclosure. Can anything be done to get Apple out of our private lives?
I agree with all the posters who are disturbed by having to open to Apple information that should be private (i.e. Contacts list, health info, nicknames, relationships, etc.). Many replies from users in this forum point out that the terms for using dictation are essentially unchanged, but this shouldn't be the issue. I would argue that Apple should never have had access to such disclosure. Can anything be done to get Apple out of our private lives?
Disable Siri. That option has always been available. Nothing new or shocking in any of it.
On this point others have noted that the dictation feature in Siri and other apps is useful. I think so too. For some reason or reasons, it recently comes to the attention of Mac users that taking advantage of the dictation feature requires a wholesale sacrifice of privacy. I became aware of this when I opened the Paperless app for the first time yesterday after installing iOS 8.1 on my iPhone. When I opened the app to create a grocery list, the "Enable Dictation" notice made its debut, and when I went to the "Learn More" option, I read the terms that made it clear I would be required to share with Apple not only private information about myself but also about those in my Contacts list.
If there are some who have no concerns about privacy issues, more power to them, but I'm thinking most people are not so willing to share all this information with vendors, marketers, and software manufacturers, regardless of their insistence that it's in the interest of enhancing the user experience. Is the obliteration of privacy going to be an obligatory condition of using computerized devices in the world of the 21st century?
If you have a some amazing way of doing accurate and fast dictation without a server component it sounds like you should create and sell that technology as you'd probably make a lot of money.
I'm not a techie but don't we take advantage of lots of online functionalities that have a server component without automatically opening our Contact lists and other personal information?
So the personal information from anything dictated is all good as far as going to servers then? Seems like rather selective worrying about privacy.
I'm selectively worried about spilling the contents of my contacts list to an indiscriminate market. I guess the reality is that consumers' privacy is being eroded at an alarming rate, and many consumers like you and other responders to this thread are unconcerned.
Phone numbers or emails of my contacts are already available all over the place from many other means. They are about as private as steer addresses that are clearly labled outside of houses. And those numbers or emails aren't exactly things that will lead to some sort of privacy breaches or problems on their own.
If anything what someone would write to their significant other or family or coworker would seem more private and personal than anything like their essentially public contact information. Yet it seems that's not really concerning to some who see fairly inconsequential things like email addresses being shared with a company that already basically knows about them and doesn't bother much with them anyway.
It's about being concerned about things that are actually concerning rather tha just about anything and everything for the sake of it.
In any case, if something like that is bothersome in some way, the only course of action that would be remotely productive would be to contact Apple about it.
Going back to the actual thread topic, dictation hasn't changed as far as what it needs or might send, it's the same as it has been before any recent minor changes to where some related settings might be.
I find both Siri and Dictation horrendous and near useless vs Google Now.
Until it improves there is really not much of a reason to "opt-in" from the average user standpoint.
Of course the more people send voice clips, the more Apple can improve. That's how Google used all the voice searches collected from the their now-shuttered free 411 service.
Until it improves there is really not much of a reason to "opt-in" from the average user standpoint.
Of course the more people send voice clips, the more Apple can improve. That's how Google used all the voice searches collected from the their now-shuttered free 411 service.