Love how Apple requires App Store free trials to last the full duration even if you cancel, but Apple's own free trials cancel instantly. Rules for thee but not for me...
When I buy an iPhone and use iOS, I’m making an active choice to be an Apple user.<p>When I install a third-party app and use it, I’m making an active choice to be their user too.<p>When that third-party app embeds the Facebook SDK which tracks me, I don’t know about it and do not have the ability to consent to Facebook tracking me.<p>ATT brings Facebook to the same level as Apple and the third-party app developers by giving me the visibility and choice I would otherwise be deprived of. It should be possible to opt out of being a Facebook user. Being silently opted-in without consent is what ATT fixes.
Maybe because opting into tracking via "Music" or "Photos" when I've already consented to tracking at the OS level is redundant? There's no unknown 3rd party here - it's all Apple. In the case of apps from the App Store, there are/were 3rd party trackers - I download "Candy Crush" and it sends data to Meta or Google or somebody else.
> strict ... rules do not cover Apple's own practice of combining user data across its ecosystem – from its App Store, Apple ID and connected devices – and using them for advertising purposes.<p>It is not obvious to me that Apple is doing this, at least in any meaningfully industrialized sense. The biggest third party advertising platform Apple runs is App Store ads, and I think it would be surprising indeed if Apple were using any data to influence these ads beyond "what have I downloaded from the App Store" (actually, they might not even use that, I seem to recall at some point they spoke on the extreme privacy of these ads. they might just be related search term ads).<p>The other major one is Apple News, which is such an underused, weird service that I can't bring myself to care about it.<p>There's a few other minor things that sometimes look like third party ads, like... the banners on Apple TV sometimes advertising an Apple TV+ show that might have been made by a non-Apple Studio? I've never gotten the sense that is personalized, at all, its always just some new show. Maybe there's some incentive payments on the backend of Apple Music that surface certain artists, like Spotify does? Grasping at straws.<p>First party advertising is a bit more prevalent, but I don't feel this is what the article is speaking on, because at the end of the day the ATT system is designed to stop the proliferation of personal data. For example, the ad in the Settings app to upsell customers on AppleCare+; the Fitness+ notifications some customers get; the Apple Store app recommending accessories for products it knows you own. I'm also not going to lose sleep over any of these things.<p>Weak argument. I don't see any evidence of Apple not holding themselves to an even higher standard than ATT and most other companies when it comes to security and privacy. The EU just hates American tech.
Thankfully iOS is pretty complete without apps. I don't use apps, I don't find them more convenient than websites. I use my phone like a basic computer. I only really use more advanced things outside of news/calendar/maps on a home desktop PC.<p>I'm not particularly old-fashioned as I had a 12 year career in FAANG mostly working with sensitive PII and business data which is quite boring if you're not a criminal. But I understand that there is no real way to enforce the kind of privacy standards people seem to assume exist.
> The Federal Cartel Office claims that Apple's ATTF defines "tracking" in a way that only covers data processing for advertising purposes across companies – but that these "strict ... rules do not cover Apple's own practice of combining user data across its ecosystem – from its App Store, Apple ID and connected devices – and using them for advertising purposes."<p>...yes. Apple defines "tracking" here as sharing your data with other companies, and then <i>doesn't do that itself</i>. Because that's the opaque and objectionable thing.<p>If you launch an Apple app then you probably expect Apple to know what you're doing. If you launch a Meta app, similarly you expect Meta to know what you're doing. But you might not expect Meta to immediately go and tell, say, some random company called Cambridge Analytica everything you're doing.<p>Meta absolutely <i>could</i> do exactly what Apple's doing without needing to warn users -- collect user data across its various apps, and use it to advertise its own products.<p>I do agree that Apple has carefully chosen a thing to object to that aligns well with their own business model. But I also think the thing they're objecting to is worth disclosing to users, so: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
While there is always room for improvement, i think the lack of of proper (crash & debug) analytics being sent home are the only remaining explanation explanation for the abysmal software quality at Apple.<p>How else could they repeatedly fuck up the basics? Every second release has awful battery life because half the daemon processes are running wild in 100% CPU parties. The only reasonable explanation for this nonsense is that Apple doesn't know about all the problems (or cannot fix them) because they refrain from collecting the required data...