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Tim Cook Met With Path's Dave Morin Over Address Book Debacle
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Wow. You think you can trust him with your personal details?
Probably not, but the only contact information that's on there is an email address, company I currently work for, and what city I'm in. Considering that much is practically public domain, I think I'm ok with it.
If I had addresses, phone numbers, list of exes and phobias (not necessarily mutually exclusive lists), I might then be more worried...
what is the point of Path, anyway?
I have installed Path and kept it on my phone merely because it is an exquisite-looking app and a testament to stunning app UI design... but I don't see it as filling a need that isn't already met by facebook, et al. At least with facebook, twitter and the like, it's your discretion whether to announce to your friends/connections/world that you're at a specific location and not at your home... perhaps with the entire family with you, so your house is now vacant for the looting. With Path, it's entire existence seems to be about where you go in real time - and only that.
I'd love to hear if any of you are using it on a regular basis and what you get out of it.
I have installed Path and kept it on my phone merely because it is an exquisite-looking app and a testament to stunning app UI design... but I don't see it as filling a need that isn't already met by facebook, et al. At least with facebook, twitter and the like, it's your discretion whether to announce to your friends/connections/world that you're at a specific location and not at your home... perhaps with the entire family with you, so your house is now vacant for the looting. With Path, it's entire existence seems to be about where you go in real time - and only that.
I'd love to hear if any of you are using it on a regular basis and what you get out of it.
I would not want to be in the hotseat in front of Tim Cook, let me tell you. The thing that makes this such a big deal for Apple is the government investigation over this. Apple isn't going to be penalized over this, but the mere fact of an investigation causes stress and resources wasted. I think Apple acted in the right way to this Path debacle by making Contacts controlled at an OS level, and that's the right way to approach Apps asking for permissions to look at contacts. The thing that bothers me about this the most is that one of Path's claim to fame is that they ostensibly protected user-privacy and this was the whole point of the network. The hypocrisy bothers me more than anything here. With stuff like http://www.dirtyphonebook.com out there and Google's servers storing all data in perpetuity and making it easy for anybody to find it I would think that startups that depend on goodwill like Path to get users would value their most precious asset. This calls into serious question whether or not Path has any future going forward. At the very least, Path will have to work very hard to start to regain some user trust because this is a serious incident given its potential implications. And Apple will be none too happy about promoting Path ever again in the App store over this, limiting their exposure somewhat. Bad news for Path going forward, and Apple improved user privacy and security because of this incident.
