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Transcript of Interview With Apple Executives on iOS Location Tracking

kdarling said:
As someone who has to track down things like this constantly, I'm pretty unimpressed at the (lack of) speed of their code checking. This was not an obscure bug or complicated. It was just a too-large buffer definition and an execution path that always downloaded info.

<snip>

Again unimpressed. There've been accurate explanations posted here before Apple spoke up, that took just minutes to compose.
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So with a large company that carefully crafts it's image, there's a lot of small delays, especially if nobody worked through the weekend on this.

Odds are that the investigation didn't start until Thursday and a report given on Friday. There may have been discussions on Friday as to what options there were to address this. This would be the lovely political debates on when to fix it, how to get it to customers, test resources, etc. The sign-off on this plan likely happened late Friday and possibly Monday. Keep in mind they are rolling out what amounts to an unplanned dot-release for this.

The signed-off plan would then be handed off to the high-level management on Monday, to be word-smithed, passed through their legal advisors and so on. They were probably ready to go Tuesday and decided to line up the interview and press release for early Wednesday so that they could see the reactions through the day instead of being at home trying to sleep when it was all getting released.

This of course assumes that nobody worked through the weekend on it (wouldn't surprise me that nobody did). This also assumes that they noticed that what was reported didn't seem right, and they decided to hold off on a "by design" e-mail before they knew for sure what was going on.

Sure, you can get an answer quicker, but how many of us need to have our words about Apple cleared by their lawyers? :)
 
Steve just does not look well in that photo - I even had to look closely to see if he'd been Photoshopped in or not as the colour of his skin is so different to the others'...
 
Full of Win said:
Why does it take a media storm for Apple to open up on an issue ? It would be so much better if they more forthcoming and frank before an issue snowballs.
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Because it was never an issue. It turned out to be a misunderstanding, however, largely because a certain segment of the consumer population isn't very smart and can't understand they're really not important enough for Apple to be interested about when they visit Target or get milk.
 
Last edited:
Not a stupid issue - this will bite Apple

d4rkc4sm said:
yawn. how many more stories about this stupid "location tracking".
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There's nothing stupid about this. Its a huge privacy violation to have your locations constantly tracked without your consent, even if the data is not used directly by Apple. This easily accessed location data on your phone was already widely known and used by police agencies since last year according to several articles, so you can just imagine what it is like for someone in a police state to have all their locations for the past year easily accessed when they are arrested. That's not to mention spying or abusive spouses, industrial espionage, and many other reasons to want to maintain some confidentiality.

The fact that Apple only bothered to care about this or look into it after it became a media storm shows that there is a simple lack of privacy controls and concern about privacy at the company.
 
DevHound said:
There's nothing stupid about this. Its a huge privacy violation to have your locations constantly tracked without your consent, even if the data is not used directly by Apple.
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For the 100000th time, it doesn't track your location.

dazzer21 said:
Steve just does not look well in that photo - I even had to look closely to see if he'd been Photoshopped in or not as the colour of his skin is so different to the others'...
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Really?? No way!

The man is undergoing cancer treatment. How do you expect him to look? He hasn't been looking well for a long time now. Probably because . . . he's ill?

How many more "Steve Jobs doesn't look well" comments do we need to read?

The point is, despite his not looking well, he's playing a very active role and making key decisions.
 
Full of Win said:
Why does it take a media storm for Apple to open up on an issue ? It would be so much better if they more forthcoming and frank before an issue snowballs.
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Why should they talk out of their butts without getting a clear picture about what is going on.

Obviously they immediately started gathering the facts.

Had they released a statement like: "We are looking into it!" the media would still not have been satisfied. They like blood and frenzy. The more half truth and the more lack of facts the better . Can we scare people? GREAT!!

May I suggest to be worried about the health effects of "negativitis" for yourself instead of what Apple is doing or not doing.

http://www.personal-development.com/chuck/negativethinking.htm
 
Like it was said in other forms (and also by myself), it was blown hugely out of proportion, and a week from now, no one will even care about it anymore.
 
Then writing it up and trying to make it intelligible when this is a very high-tech topic took a few days. And here we are less than a week later."


Translation: We are Apple. We know you're stupid.
 
Full of Win said:
Why does it take a media storm for Apple to open up on an issue ? It would be so much better if they more forthcoming and frank before an issue snowballs.
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your mind is a place i wouldn't want to inhabit. your thought process is sad. i feel sorry for you.
 
parapup said:
Try enabling Certificate Revocation checking on your fully updated Mac OS X install and see how long it takes for Mac App Store to show up and how long it then takes to go through the various tabs.

Also for fun - try enabling password for the screensaver and 60 minute idle logout. Then put your laptop to sleep and come back 60 min later only to have hung login window that accepts no input - works that way every time for me.

For all the jabs they took at Windows - Apple's is most untested OS after Linux distros. Looks like they only do surface tests - only the defaults are covered.
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just out of curiosity.. do you file bug reports?
i'm pretty guilty of not...
 
kdarling said:
As someone who has to track down things like this constantly, I'm pretty unimpressed at the (lack of) speed of their code checking. This was not an obscure bug or complicated. It was just a too-large buffer definition and an execution path that always downloaded info.

And people think Apple can check binary app store submissions for bugs or trojans in just a few minutes, when they can't even find their own bugs in a few days with commented source code.
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I think that is more proof of the fact that it was never a bug. Apple was doing it that way on purpose and the only reason they are claiming it was a "bug" is because they got caught big time.

The lie is the fact that it is a bug. It was done on propose and right now Apple is just doing CYA.
 
Al Coholic said:
Then writing it up and trying to make it intelligible when this is a very high-tech topic took a few days. And here we are less than a week later."


Translation: We are Apple. We know you're stupid.
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Having seen some of the incredibly misguided comments here and elsewhere about this issue, I'm inclined to agree with Apple on this one. You would think frequenters of forums like these would grasp the concept of a 'cache', but I can assure you, many don't
 
Rodimus Prime said:
I think that is more proof of the fact that it was never a bug. Apple was doing it that way on purpose and the only reason they are claiming it was a "bug" is because they got caught big time.

The lie is the fact that it is a bug. It was done on propose and right now Apple is just doing CYA.
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Given that the database is a local cache of some information that already exists on Apple's servers, what do Apple have to gain by designing it this way on purpose? Nothing.

The data in the file is not generated by the phone, it is retrieved from Apple and stored.
 
whoami said:
just out of curiosity.. do you file bug reports?
i'm pretty guilty of not...
Click to expand...

I used to do it - quite a bit actually. But except for one security bug I filed all of the others pretty much got ignored - that was a big disincentive.
 
parapup said:
Also for fun - try enabling password for the screensaver and 60 minute idle logout. Then put your laptop to sleep and come back 60 min later only to have hung login window that accepts no input - works that way every time for me.
Click to expand...

Good thing the screensaver password dialog is the login window itself (even the same exact process) in Lion then, huh?
 
Analog Kid said:
full, edited?

Thought those were mutually exclusive...
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You're mistaking "full" for "unabridged." A full, edited interview means the entire interview is included though edited for clarity. Nothing has been arbitrary removed or cut for editorial reasons.
 
webznz said:
if they are not tracking people then why have the feature? maybe the information is for someone else??... who knows but one thing is for sure its an invasion of privacy..... even if I do stay home all day and night.
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Not only that but if it only tracked you for a time and then deleted it self automatically then I could see it but my understanding this is not just one day or week so in theory they can track you for a long time.

For those who do not care fine I don't care what they think, this should be something that can be turned off without loosing other functionality.
 
Full of Win said:
Why does it take a media storm for Apple to open up on an issue ? It would be so much better if they more forthcoming and frank before an issue snowballs.
Click to expand...

Because it's not news. Plus it's a stupid issue in the first place. Every damn carrier in the world tracks your movement FAR more than Apple has. Google's Android tracks you even more than iOS does. This has been happening for well over a decade. Nobody cares, and only a few people have their tin-foil hats on tight enough to care.
 
kiljoy616 said:
Not only that but if it only tracked you for a time and then deleted it self automatically then I could see it but my understanding this is not just one day or week so in theory they can track you for a long time.

For those who do not care fine I don't care what they think, this should be something that can be turned off without loosing other functionality.
Click to expand...

Please take a few minutes to actually read the article.

If it was something that could be turned off with losing other functionality, it wouldn't exist in the first place. The existence of the file does not benefit Apple, it benefits you when you use the phone. If you don't understand that, then you really need to read the press release.
 
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