Obviously nobody thinks they are literally claiming that they manufacture it using magic.
Then why would you get so upset over their use of the term "magical" to describe the device?
Again: Only the most literal-minded simpleton would read "It's magical," and assume that it's made with 100% Grade A Fairy Poop. Regular people understand that, when Apple says, "it's a magical device," they're saying - "It's really great. It'll surprise you, it'll delight you, it'll make you want to keep playing with it. You're really going to like using this thing, it's pretty special." Now they could have said all of that... or they could have just said, "it's just magical." Guess which one fits better in ad copy?
You're claiming that you DO understand that their use of the term isn't intended to be literal, and then you're saying that their use of the term makes you angry because they use a term that's... not literally what they mean, as if you've been duped or misled by their claims that it's "magical". Do you get this upset when somebody uses a metaphor around you? Or sarcasm? Or simply chooses a word that does not literally suit their meaning with 100% accuracy?
And by using the term *magical* they are being insulting, and trying to divorce reality from the device.
I see. Tell me, did having to read poetry in high school english class also work you up like this? I can only imagine how angry you must've been to learn that some people use their words to say things in a less-than-literal manner.
I don't think there's been any significant hiding of "technical qualification" with the iPad... the tech specs were pretty clear, and pretty widely available from day 1 on the apple web site for those who were interested enough to look. If you get off on reading lists of features and standards, then you can rub one out to the tech specs of the iPad just as easily as you can rub one out to the Motorola Xoom's specs. Apple simply chose to focus its advertising on the actual usage scenarios for the device, instead of jizzing on about how many hertzabytes and gigaroms the device has. That doesn't mean that they've "hidden" the technical specs, it means that they understand their target market far better than the typical geek getting upset over their ads can ever hope to.
Reading your post, it's quite obvious that you do "care if someone likes something different," so why pretend that you don't?
Really? When have the goalposts been moved? Android fans seem to have set the single arbitrary goalpost of "our platform is the most popular smartphone platform, therefore we win!" As far as I can see, that's pretty much the ONLY metric that Android fans have even been paying attention to, so pray tell - where is this goalpost-moving happening, exactly?
If you want to actually *compare platforms,* and not just engage in a dick-measuring contest in a narrowly defined segment, then you need to look at the entirety of the install base, because when something is available "for iOS," it's available for all of the millions of iPod Touches & iPads as well.
If they do that, they can expect to be in court for unfair market practices.
And if they end up in court, you can bet the case will be tossed out amidst howls of derisive laughter. If you have one of the largest outlets for music available, you have a lot more leverage when you go into a negotiation with your suppliers. If you have a proven history of making online music sales convenient, accessible, and profitable, your plans are going to have a lot more credibility. This is not "unfair market practices." You might as well suggest that WalMart is going to end up crushed by the courts because they negotiate bulk discounts with suppliers of paper products and housewares that a single store simply doesn't have the leverage to make happen.
I guess what I don't get is, why does somebody else's appreciation for something bother you so much in the first place?
I'm not a particularly big fan of wine, but I don't get worked up into a lather when wine tasters talk about the sweet tannins and smoky aftertaste of the oak, chocolate and honey notes - I just shrug, and say "I'll have a Guinness, please." I'm not a particularly big fan of Scandinavian death metal, but I don't get overly worked up when people talk about some sort of operatic death metal album as "the best album, hands-down, ever made," I just shrug and say "Oh, so they found a way to improve on At Folsom Prison?"
There's this odd foreshortening of perspective in some geeks where they seem to get terribly emotionally involved in whether or not somebody else likes something that they don't. See: vi/emacs; Linux/Windows/MacOS; BSD/GPL; Apple/Google; etc. etc. It's not even that somebody is *criticizing the things they love.* It's that *somebody else likes something different,* which seems to just rock their whole universe off its foundations.
It seems that only the most literal-minded of idiots would hear Apple describe the iPad as "magical," and think, "My god, they actually are trying to tell people they manufacture it out of unicorn farts." Marketing speak is marketing speak: nobody *really* believes that they're going to get the bikini model pictured next to the Toyota Camry. Nobody *really* believes that the iPad is, literally, a magical device, operating under its own set of physics unlike anything else in the world.
Be honest: do you really expect any company to announce a new product or service, and say something like, "It's kind of boring, really, and you'll probably hate it, but we hope to sucker a few people into spending their hard-earned coin on it. Thanks for coming by today."
If you make a new product that you want to sell to the world, then yeah, it's sort of Marketing-101 that you behave as if you're excited about it. If your competitor makes a new product that you wish you had made, then yeah, it's sort of Marketing-101 that you behave as if it's no big deal and it'll never succeed in the market - all while furiously trying to finish your own offering that does the same thing.
I've never understood why Apple's use of basic marketing strategy seems so *outrageously* offensive to some people - every company does it. So is it just that Apple tends to back up their marketing with fairly solid products, rather than saying "It's amazing!" while they wink and hand you a fresh turd and a DIY polish kit?
I don't know anything about the service that doesn't come from speculation I've read in news reports, so your guess is as good as mine. But, here's some points to consider:
1) It might be a compelling alternative if it's simpler to use, integrated out of the box with your iTunes account and Apple device(s) - iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple TV, and Macs running iTunes - not just iPhones.
2) Android has a ways to go before it overtakes *iOS* in terms of users. We're talking about the entire platform, not just the smartphone segment.
3) Amazon's "open" platform might not be so "open" after the recording industry gets done with their legal challenges to the Cloud Drive service.
4) Google may be a big company, but they don't have the one really big stick - namely, the iTunes music store - that Apple does. Apple may actually be able to get the music industry to agree to non-extortionary terms that Google & Amazon simply don't have the leverage to negotiate.
A trivial google search suggests (and the first two links are to *ANDROID* community sites, so please no whining about this being "apple press releases") that:
-- Samsung went on to say that they need to "seriously rethink" their tablet strategy & pricing in the face of the iPad 2, which certainly suggests that sales are far lower than anything they would have liked to see: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20040072-1.html
The simple fact is, if either of these devices were legitimately selling as well as the iPad, we'd hear it trumpeted from every rooftop. Samsung & Motorola would NOT be bashful about saying, "We're selling as many as Apple! Our device is great and you should buy it!" Or did you think that Motorola and Samsung were trying to keep their fabulously successful tablets a secret, because they want people to give their money to Apple?
Which would be my guess as well. The point I'm making is that if two separate mobile OS'es are collecting and storing some level of location data, the reasoning for why one platform is collecting it may provide some insight into why the second one is, as well.
Then the question becomes: Is the longer-term retention by design? If so, what functionality is enabled by this longer-term retention? Is there a way to disable collection, if I don't value that functionality? If it's not by design, is it simply an oversight, that somebody forgot to write the program that purges old data? If not an oversight, is it a bug, that the purge isn't functioning as expected?
There's a host of questions that won't be answered until Apple issues an official response, but the only thing I can even remotely consider worthy of "OH NOES THINK OF THE CHILDREN" hysteria is that they should have forced encryption of iOS backups by default. I turned mine on, and have been doing encrypted backups since the feature was available - it would seem to me, especially with the personal information that is being backed up, that Apple should have turned this on by default to keep the contents of the backups secure.
No, it's called "apple is innocent focus on android I'm an apple fanboy", to some degree (and not always). The "oh but android!" argument is seriously getting old.
I'm not sure what your point is. I agreed with h4rr4r that it doesn't "excuse" the retention of the data - but it certainly suggests that there may be a technical reason (most likely related to Location Services) for collecting & storing some location data. So the logical question, until we receive a response from Apple, is to ask, "If Android does it, what do they use that data for?" Because maybe iOS does it for the same reason.
No, it's not simply a semantic argument, I examined my own data and it's remarkably inaccurate, and certainly not enough to "track me" on anything smaller than a city scale. There is precious little to suggest that there's anything being "tracked" that would do anything more than give you an idea of "areas I frequently visit." And even those aren't accurate - there are data points of places which I have *never* visited, or can say definitively that I was NOT at the location marked at the time it's marked at.
About the only conclusions you can draw definitively from looking at my aggregated data is that there's a few places I spend most of my time in, and that those places are each within some 20-30 mile radius. The rest is simply "roughly accurate" location information. I'd be a lot more concerned about losing my phone with all of the contact info, email, and phone numbers in it than I would be about somebody getting ahold of my consolidated.db file.
Well guess what? If you own an iPhone, it's happening. So your choices appear to be, take a hammer to your iPhone to shut it off, or ask questions about why the data is being collected, who has access to it, and what the tradeoffs are of turning off the collection of this data. My guess is that it's part of the location services functionality, and if you disable Location Services, you'll probably also halt collection of this data. Now, if you like and value the Location Services functionality, disabling the collection might not be an option. But perhaps you'd want to lobby Apple to encrypt this data to prevent against unauthorized intrusion.
So its ok until it gets used in a bad way? Damn you're gullible.
Ah yes, the deliberate misrepresentation. I said - "is it the end of the world, or worth getting hysterical over?" And the answer is no, it's not. There's no evidence to suggest that the data is being made available to anybody except you, using your phone. If I lost my iPhone, I'd be a lot more irritated over the fact that it has emails, photos, phone numbers, addresses, and a host of other personal data that I'd rather not lose than I would be over the fact that "oh no, somebody can see the areas I visit frequently, with variable and inaccurate tracking data!" If there's evidence that Apple is using this to build some sort of master profile of all your movements and activities, I'm willing to examine that evidence and pronounce the situation to be worthy of hysterics.
As I said, it's absolutely worth asking about the collection of this data, and understanding why it's being collected, and what it's being used for. It's not worth getting breathlessly panicked over, which is what a lot of the news coverage of this "discovery" amounts to. And for what it's worth, it's not exactly "new" news to begin with: specifically, see points 2 & 3,.
No, but it is interesting that another platform is doing similar things. Understanding why it happens on Android may provide insight into why it's happening on iOS, as well.
If it's not tracking your every move, then it would be inaccurate hysteria to claim that it is, in fact "tracking your every move."
More anecdotal data, which suggests that TFA's anecdote has some validity: I looked at my iPhone data, and I saw very similar information. I took a trip with some friends back at the beginning of December; During that time, we spent our time at a ski area, or within about 5 miles of the hotel we stayed at for dinner/drinks in the evenings. My iPhone tracking data is so wildly inaccurate that about the only conclusion you can draw from it is that "sometime during the weekend of December 3, 2010, I spent some time in central New Hampshire and/or coastal Maine." The points it collected for that weekend are spread all over a ~100 mile radius from the point I actually stayed. And yes, my phone *was* on the entire time, because I was in fairly regular contact with my girlfriend throughout the weekend via SMS & the Facebook app.
Also, since my backups are all encrypted, I had to specifically turn off encryption to even view this data, and there is zero evidence to suggest that this data is being phoned-home to Apple for any reason.
Is it worth understanding why this data is being collected, and what - if anything - it's being used for? Absolutely. Is it worth fixing if the long-term collection of this data is a bug, or an oversight? You bet. Is it the end of the world, or worth getting hysterical over? Nope, not without significantly more evidence of some sort of nefarious intent.
Agreed. I'm certainly not an investment advisor, but I find the people crowing "Sell Apple, short it short it, it's going to crash!" to be a curious bunch. Apple's strong product lineup, strong sales, strong revenues, and solid balance sheet all point to a company that is doing remarkably well, and with a very-reasonable P/E of ~19.5 (from Google's stock quote), that doesn't seem like they're overvalued. They could totally botch it tomorrow, or the company could be obliterated by a meteor, but I just don't see much reason to think they're going to decline (or experience a huge spike) in value any time soon.
And on yesterday's call, they also said that their Mac sales increased 76% in the Asia-Pacific segment, versus an overall IDC forecast of 6% growth in that segment of the market. It's pretty clear that they have a lot of room to grow overseas, and a lot of the data over the past couple years suggests that they are doing exactly that.
Again, this doesn't mean that "everybody will be using Macs in the next couple months," but 20 consecutive quarters of outperforming the growth of the PC market (which means they are steadily growing their market share), and numerous year-over-year sales records all suggest that there's a lot of room still for growth.
Here's why your argument is disingenuous: When you're comparing platforms, the usual reason for doing so is to compare the robustness of the platforms in terms of where a developer/company should focus its efforts at producing apps. And iOS, as an app platform, is much larger than Android, because you can't simply disregard the fact that many (most?) apps work just fine without phone hardware, and can work either disconnected, or over wifi-only, on iPads and iPod touches. If you develop for iOS, you have access to millions of non-iPhone devices.
So, yes, the aggregate market share of all Android devices is a few % larger than the market share of the single line of phones that Apple produces. So what?
If your goal is to use that number to convince people that Android is a compelling platform to develop for (i.e., enhancing the value & appeal of the platform with third-party applications that will entice users to buy), then you cannot disregard the fact that iOS is much larger than "only iPhones," just as Android is much larger than "only Motorola Droids."
And it's interesting to note, with the arrival of legitimate Android competitors to the iPad, that people flogging Android seem eager to overlook the low market share of these devices while touting Android as a total winner for any shop looking to develop apps for a mobile platform.
Yes, just look at the huge dent the Galaxy & Xoom tabs have made! It's INCONCEIVABLE that the iPad will continue selling well in the face of this competition!
On their Results call yesterday, they said that: 1) Mac sales continued to increase year-over-year; 2) Analysts have predicted a ~3% decrease in the PC market this year; 3) 50% of Macs sold were sold to first-time buyers;
What does this mean? In plain terms, they are slowly winning a larger portion of a slightly-shrinking pie, and 50% of their sales are going to people buying their first mac. As I recall, the story has been pretty similar for the last few years. The iPhone/iPad/iPod halo effect, I suppose.
Will everybody be using a Mac tomorrow, or next month? No, of course not. But there's very little reason to conclude that Macs are dead, or even feeling a little under the weather.
Yeah, I wish we lived in a world where writing code was the only thing required to actually ship a product, and that code always worked the first time it was written, and that it was also possible to write code that required no testing and no maintenance, too! That would be totally awesome!!
In the real world, you are suggesting that four 40-hour weeks (160 man-hours) are all it would take to create Angry Birds from scratch, and you call that a "gross over-estimate," meaning what - that you really think it could be done in 2 weeks / 80 hours?
For any software engineers reading this, who can't seem to understand why your projects get cancelled due to cost overruns, delivery problems, or simply failing miserably because you couldn't get all the features put in... here's your answer as to why.
1) Creating one 50,000 per year job requires a lot more money than 50,000. Rule of thumb is that 2x yearly salary gives you a better estimate of how much an employee's position costs a company.
2) Cash reserves don't take the form of briefcases full of 20 dollar bills. That money is invested back into the market where it is loaned to other companies which use that capital to expand, grow their capacity, perform research and development and yes, even hire.
3) Official unemployment numbers place the unemployment rate at ~8.5%, and falling, if slowly. There is always a lag in hiring during a recovery as companies bring their idle capacity back online before they begin hiring. Forcing companies to spend down their cash reserves when there is no demand for the increased capacity that the spending would give them is simply going to cause more problems. Creating jobs for the sake of creating jobs, just because "you've got some money, you better spend it right now," is ultimately a self-defeating proposition and will only serve to slow any recovery.
First, is that "10 trillion" number even remotely accurate? The only recent info I can find suggests somewhere on the order of ~1.2 trillion in cash reserves, suggesting that "10 trillion" is overstating the case by an order of magnitude.
Second, do you really think that these companies keep their cash reserves in the form of gold coins sitting around in a giant vault doing nothing? Of course not - they're invested back into the market, where they provide capital for other companies to finance growth, research & development, capacity expansion, and yes, even hiring.
And, you have to consider that "Android" is a platform, not a specific device. Comparing "Android devices" to "iOS devices" is the more accurate measure, and the smartphone sales numbers conveniently leave out the tens of millions of iPads and iPod touches that have been sold to date.
If you want to look at smartphone market share, Apple is the largest single manufacturer of smartphones by volume, by a wide margin, and also the most profitable. "All Android smartphones together (how many dozens of models is that?)" are only a few % ahead in market share over Apple's single line of phones.
But of course, that's inconvenient for the meaningless "Platform X wins in smartphones" metrics. In the smartphone space, you don't buy "an Android," you buy a Droid, or a Nexus, or a Galaxy, or a... just like you don't buy "an iOS," you buy an iPhone.
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Let me see if I can paraphrase that back for you:
"We get upset because we clearly have better taste than you, and you still dare to disagree with us."
Thanks for clearing that up.
Then why would you get so upset over their use of the term "magical" to describe the device?
Again: Only the most literal-minded simpleton would read "It's magical," and assume that it's made with 100% Grade A Fairy Poop. Regular people understand that, when Apple says, "it's a magical device," they're saying - "It's really great. It'll surprise you, it'll delight you, it'll make you want to keep playing with it. You're really going to like using this thing, it's pretty special." Now they could have said all of that... or they could have just said, "it's just magical." Guess which one fits better in ad copy?
You're claiming that you DO understand that their use of the term isn't intended to be literal, and then you're saying that their use of the term makes you angry because they use a term that's... not literally what they mean, as if you've been duped or misled by their claims that it's "magical". Do you get this upset when somebody uses a metaphor around you? Or sarcasm? Or simply chooses a word that does not literally suit their meaning with 100% accuracy?
I see. Tell me, did having to read poetry in high school english class also work you up like this? I can only imagine how angry you must've been to learn that some people use their words to say things in a less-than-literal manner.
I don't think there's been any significant hiding of "technical qualification" with the iPad... the tech specs were pretty clear, and pretty widely available from day 1 on the apple web site for those who were interested enough to look. If you get off on reading lists of features and standards, then you can rub one out to the tech specs of the iPad just as easily as you can rub one out to the Motorola Xoom's specs. Apple simply chose to focus its advertising on the actual usage scenarios for the device, instead of jizzing on about how many hertzabytes and gigaroms the device has. That doesn't mean that they've "hidden" the technical specs, it means that they understand their target market far better than the typical geek getting upset over their ads can ever hope to.
Reading your post, it's quite obvious that you do "care if someone likes something different," so why pretend that you don't?
Really? When have the goalposts been moved? Android fans seem to have set the single arbitrary goalpost of "our platform is the most popular smartphone platform, therefore we win!" As far as I can see, that's pretty much the ONLY metric that Android fans have even been paying attention to, so pray tell - where is this goalpost-moving happening, exactly?
If you want to actually *compare platforms,* and not just engage in a dick-measuring contest in a narrowly defined segment, then you need to look at the entirety of the install base, because when something is available "for iOS," it's available for all of the millions of iPod Touches & iPads as well.
And if they end up in court, you can bet the case will be tossed out amidst howls of derisive laughter. If you have one of the largest outlets for music available, you have a lot more leverage when you go into a negotiation with your suppliers. If you have a proven history of making online music sales convenient, accessible, and profitable, your plans are going to have a lot more credibility. This is not "unfair market practices." You might as well suggest that WalMart is going to end up crushed by the courts because they negotiate bulk discounts with suppliers of paper products and housewares that a single store simply doesn't have the leverage to make happen.
I guess what I don't get is, why does somebody else's appreciation for something bother you so much in the first place?
I'm not a particularly big fan of wine, but I don't get worked up into a lather when wine tasters talk about the sweet tannins and smoky aftertaste of the oak, chocolate and honey notes - I just shrug, and say "I'll have a Guinness, please." I'm not a particularly big fan of Scandinavian death metal, but I don't get overly worked up when people talk about some sort of operatic death metal album as "the best album, hands-down, ever made," I just shrug and say "Oh, so they found a way to improve on At Folsom Prison?"
There's this odd foreshortening of perspective in some geeks where they seem to get terribly emotionally involved in whether or not somebody else likes something that they don't. See: vi/emacs; Linux/Windows/MacOS; BSD/GPL; Apple/Google; etc. etc. It's not even that somebody is *criticizing the things they love.* It's that *somebody else likes something different,* which seems to just rock their whole universe off its foundations.
It seems that only the most literal-minded of idiots would hear Apple describe the iPad as "magical," and think, "My god, they actually are trying to tell people they manufacture it out of unicorn farts." Marketing speak is marketing speak: nobody *really* believes that they're going to get the bikini model pictured next to the Toyota Camry. Nobody *really* believes that the iPad is, literally, a magical device, operating under its own set of physics unlike anything else in the world.
Be honest: do you really expect any company to announce a new product or service, and say something like, "It's kind of boring, really, and you'll probably hate it, but we hope to sucker a few people into spending their hard-earned coin on it. Thanks for coming by today."
If you make a new product that you want to sell to the world, then yeah, it's sort of Marketing-101 that you behave as if you're excited about it. If your competitor makes a new product that you wish you had made, then yeah, it's sort of Marketing-101 that you behave as if it's no big deal and it'll never succeed in the market - all while furiously trying to finish your own offering that does the same thing.
I've never understood why Apple's use of basic marketing strategy seems so *outrageously* offensive to some people - every company does it. So is it just that Apple tends to back up their marketing with fairly solid products, rather than saying "It's amazing!" while they wink and hand you a fresh turd and a DIY polish kit?
I don't know anything about the service that doesn't come from speculation I've read in news reports, so your guess is as good as mine. But, here's some points to consider:
1) It might be a compelling alternative if it's simpler to use, integrated out of the box with your iTunes account and Apple device(s) - iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple TV, and Macs running iTunes - not just iPhones.
2) Android has a ways to go before it overtakes *iOS* in terms of users. We're talking about the entire platform, not just the smartphone segment.
3) Amazon's "open" platform might not be so "open" after the recording industry gets done with their legal challenges to the Cloud Drive service.
4) Google may be a big company, but they don't have the one really big stick - namely, the iTunes music store - that Apple does. Apple may actually be able to get the music industry to agree to non-extortionary terms that Google & Amazon simply don't have the leverage to negotiate.
A trivial google search suggests (and the first two links are to *ANDROID* community sites, so please no whining about this being "apple press releases") that:
-- Xoom has sold ~100,000 units: http://phandroid.com/2011/04/06/more-insight-on-xoom-sales-100000-since-feb-24th/
-- Samsung have claimed, then backtracked, then clarified, then re-clarified that they've sold 2 million Galaxy tablets. Of course, that's sales to the retailers & carriers, not sales to customers: http://androidcommunity.com/samsung-backtracks-on-galaxy-tab-sales-figures-shipments-not-sales-20110131/
-- Samsung went on to say that they need to "seriously rethink" their tablet strategy & pricing in the face of the iPad 2, which certainly suggests that sales are far lower than anything they would have liked to see: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20040072-1.html
The simple fact is, if either of these devices were legitimately selling as well as the iPad, we'd hear it trumpeted from every rooftop. Samsung & Motorola would NOT be bashful about saying, "We're selling as many as Apple! Our device is great and you should buy it!" Or did you think that Motorola and Samsung were trying to keep their fabulously successful tablets a secret, because they want people to give their money to Apple?
Which would be my guess as well. The point I'm making is that if two separate mobile OS'es are collecting and storing some level of location data, the reasoning for why one platform is collecting it may provide some insight into why the second one is, as well.
Then the question becomes: Is the longer-term retention by design? If so, what functionality is enabled by this longer-term retention? Is there a way to disable collection, if I don't value that functionality? If it's not by design, is it simply an oversight, that somebody forgot to write the program that purges old data? If not an oversight, is it a bug, that the purge isn't functioning as expected?
There's a host of questions that won't be answered until Apple issues an official response, but the only thing I can even remotely consider worthy of "OH NOES THINK OF THE CHILDREN" hysteria is that they should have forced encryption of iOS backups by default. I turned mine on, and have been doing encrypted backups since the feature was available - it would seem to me, especially with the personal information that is being backed up, that Apple should have turned this on by default to keep the contents of the backups secure.
I'm not sure what your point is. I agreed with h4rr4r that it doesn't "excuse" the retention of the data - but it certainly suggests that there may be a technical reason (most likely related to Location Services) for collecting & storing some location data. So the logical question, until we receive a response from Apple, is to ask, "If Android does it, what do they use that data for?" Because maybe iOS does it for the same reason.
No, it's not simply a semantic argument, I examined my own data and it's remarkably inaccurate, and certainly not enough to "track me" on anything smaller than a city scale. There is precious little to suggest that there's anything being "tracked" that would do anything more than give you an idea of "areas I frequently visit." And even those aren't accurate - there are data points of places which I have *never* visited, or can say definitively that I was NOT at the location marked at the time it's marked at.
About the only conclusions you can draw definitively from looking at my aggregated data is that there's a few places I spend most of my time in, and that those places are each within some 20-30 mile radius. The rest is simply "roughly accurate" location information. I'd be a lot more concerned about losing my phone with all of the contact info, email, and phone numbers in it than I would be about somebody getting ahold of my consolidated.db file.
Well guess what? If you own an iPhone, it's happening. So your choices appear to be, take a hammer to your iPhone to shut it off, or ask questions about why the data is being collected, who has access to it, and what the tradeoffs are of turning off the collection of this data. My guess is that it's part of the location services functionality, and if you disable Location Services, you'll probably also halt collection of this data. Now, if you like and value the Location Services functionality, disabling the collection might not be an option. But perhaps you'd want to lobby Apple to encrypt this data to prevent against unauthorized intrusion.
Ah yes, the deliberate misrepresentation. I said - "is it the end of the world, or worth getting hysterical over?" And the answer is no, it's not. There's no evidence to suggest that the data is being made available to anybody except you, using your phone. If I lost my iPhone, I'd be a lot more irritated over the fact that it has emails, photos, phone numbers, addresses, and a host of other personal data that I'd rather not lose than I would be over the fact that "oh no, somebody can see the areas I visit frequently, with variable and inaccurate tracking data!" If there's evidence that Apple is using this to build some sort of master profile of all your movements and activities, I'm willing to examine that evidence and pronounce the situation to be worthy of hysterics.
As I said, it's absolutely worth asking about the collection of this data, and understanding why it's being collected, and what it's being used for. It's not worth getting breathlessly panicked over, which is what a lot of the news coverage of this "discovery" amounts to. And for what it's worth, it's not exactly "new" news to begin with: specifically, see points 2 & 3,.
No, but it is interesting that another platform is doing similar things. Understanding why it happens on Android may provide insight into why it's happening on iOS, as well.
If it's not tracking your every move, then it would be inaccurate hysteria to claim that it is, in fact "tracking your every move."
More anecdotal data, which suggests that TFA's anecdote has some validity:
I looked at my iPhone data, and I saw very similar information. I took a trip with some friends back at the beginning of December; During that time, we spent our time at a ski area, or within about 5 miles of the hotel we stayed at for dinner/drinks in the evenings. My iPhone tracking data is so wildly inaccurate that about the only conclusion you can draw from it is that "sometime during the weekend of December 3, 2010, I spent some time in central New Hampshire and/or coastal Maine." The points it collected for that weekend are spread all over a ~100 mile radius from the point I actually stayed. And yes, my phone *was* on the entire time, because I was in fairly regular contact with my girlfriend throughout the weekend via SMS & the Facebook app.
Also, since my backups are all encrypted, I had to specifically turn off encryption to even view this data, and there is zero evidence to suggest that this data is being phoned-home to Apple for any reason.
Is it worth understanding why this data is being collected, and what - if anything - it's being used for? Absolutely. Is it worth fixing if the long-term collection of this data is a bug, or an oversight? You bet. Is it the end of the world, or worth getting hysterical over? Nope, not without significantly more evidence of some sort of nefarious intent.
Agreed. I'm certainly not an investment advisor, but I find the people crowing "Sell Apple, short it short it, it's going to crash!" to be a curious bunch. Apple's strong product lineup, strong sales, strong revenues, and solid balance sheet all point to a company that is doing remarkably well, and with a very-reasonable P/E of ~19.5 (from Google's stock quote), that doesn't seem like they're overvalued. They could totally botch it tomorrow, or the company could be obliterated by a meteor, but I just don't see much reason to think they're going to decline (or experience a huge spike) in value any time soon.
And on yesterday's call, they also said that their Mac sales increased 76% in the Asia-Pacific segment, versus an overall IDC forecast of 6% growth in that segment of the market. It's pretty clear that they have a lot of room to grow overseas, and a lot of the data over the past couple years suggests that they are doing exactly that.
Again, this doesn't mean that "everybody will be using Macs in the next couple months," but 20 consecutive quarters of outperforming the growth of the PC market (which means they are steadily growing their market share), and numerous year-over-year sales records all suggest that there's a lot of room still for growth.
Here's why your argument is disingenuous: When you're comparing platforms, the usual reason for doing so is to compare the robustness of the platforms in terms of where a developer/company should focus its efforts at producing apps. And iOS, as an app platform, is much larger than Android, because you can't simply disregard the fact that many (most?) apps work just fine without phone hardware, and can work either disconnected, or over wifi-only, on iPads and iPod touches. If you develop for iOS, you have access to millions of non-iPhone devices.
So, yes, the aggregate market share of all Android devices is a few % larger than the market share of the single line of phones that Apple produces. So what?
If your goal is to use that number to convince people that Android is a compelling platform to develop for (i.e., enhancing the value & appeal of the platform with third-party applications that will entice users to buy), then you cannot disregard the fact that iOS is much larger than "only iPhones," just as Android is much larger than "only Motorola Droids."
And it's interesting to note, with the arrival of legitimate Android competitors to the iPad, that people flogging Android seem eager to overlook the low market share of these devices while touting Android as a total winner for any shop looking to develop apps for a mobile platform.
Asking for this information is like asking what color, make and model my car is when it's parked right there in front of you!
(Does that help?)
Yes, just look at the huge dent the Galaxy & Xoom tabs have made! It's INCONCEIVABLE that the iPad will continue selling well in the face of this competition!
On their Results call yesterday, they said that:
1) Mac sales continued to increase year-over-year;
2) Analysts have predicted a ~3% decrease in the PC market this year;
3) 50% of Macs sold were sold to first-time buyers;
What does this mean? In plain terms, they are slowly winning a larger portion of a slightly-shrinking pie, and 50% of their sales are going to people buying their first mac. As I recall, the story has been pretty similar for the last few years. The iPhone/iPad/iPod halo effect, I suppose.
Will everybody be using a Mac tomorrow, or next month? No, of course not. But there's very little reason to conclude that Macs are dead, or even feeling a little under the weather.
Yeah, I wish we lived in a world where writing code was the only thing required to actually ship a product, and that code always worked the first time it was written, and that it was also possible to write code that required no testing and no maintenance, too! That would be totally awesome!!
In the real world, you are suggesting that four 40-hour weeks (160 man-hours) are all it would take to create Angry Birds from scratch, and you call that a "gross over-estimate," meaning what - that you really think it could be done in 2 weeks / 80 hours?
For any software engineers reading this, who can't seem to understand why your projects get cancelled due to cost overruns, delivery problems, or simply failing miserably because you couldn't get all the features put in... here's your answer as to why.
"I don't really have any understanding of the work that goes into something like that, so it must be easy, and take no time at all!"
1) Creating one 50,000 per year job requires a lot more money than 50,000. Rule of thumb is that 2x yearly salary gives you a better estimate of how much an employee's position costs a company.
2) Cash reserves don't take the form of briefcases full of 20 dollar bills. That money is invested back into the market where it is loaned to other companies which use that capital to expand, grow their capacity, perform research and development and yes, even hire.
3) Official unemployment numbers place the unemployment rate at ~8.5%, and falling, if slowly. There is always a lag in hiring during a recovery as companies bring their idle capacity back online before they begin hiring. Forcing companies to spend down their cash reserves when there is no demand for the increased capacity that the spending would give them is simply going to cause more problems. Creating jobs for the sake of creating jobs, just because "you've got some money, you better spend it right now," is ultimately a self-defeating proposition and will only serve to slow any recovery.
First, is that "10 trillion" number even remotely accurate? The only recent info I can find suggests somewhere on the order of ~1.2 trillion in cash reserves, suggesting that "10 trillion" is overstating the case by an order of magnitude.
Second, do you really think that these companies keep their cash reserves in the form of gold coins sitting around in a giant vault doing nothing? Of course not - they're invested back into the market, where they provide capital for other companies to finance growth, research & development, capacity expansion, and yes, even hiring.
And, you have to consider that "Android" is a platform, not a specific device. Comparing "Android devices" to "iOS devices" is the more accurate measure, and the smartphone sales numbers conveniently leave out the tens of millions of iPads and iPod touches that have been sold to date.
If you want to look at smartphone market share, Apple is the largest single manufacturer of smartphones by volume, by a wide margin, and also the most profitable. "All Android smartphones together (how many dozens of models is that?)" are only a few % ahead in market share over Apple's single line of phones.
But of course, that's inconvenient for the meaningless "Platform X wins in smartphones" metrics. In the smartphone space, you don't buy "an Android," you buy a Droid, or a Nexus, or a Galaxy, or a... just like you don't buy "an iOS," you buy an iPhone.