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I'm not convinced that Apple's secrecy has anything to do with Siri and Maps lagging behind Google's offerings. I suspect a large part of it has to do with the

by eridius 11y ago

I'm not convinced that Apple's secrecy has anything to do with Siri and Maps lagging behind Google's offerings. I suspect a large part of it has to do with the fact that Apple is not willing to compromise user privacy in order to do this stuff. Siri does require the internet[1] to parse your spoken words, but all of the data that Siri actually operates on is only local to your device and is not known to Apple. Similarly, Apple doesn't know anything pertaining to your mapping[2], that's all device-local too. Meanwhile Google aggregates everything it can, and AFAIK all of its email-related capabilities (e.g. finding invitations in email and whatnot) actually require you to be using Google email too, so they already have all of that. Because Google has such comprehensive knowledge about the user's personal information, they can do more intelligent things. But this comes at the cost of the user having given up any semblance of privacy. Also, I imagine that Google can run more powerful algorithms if it's all happening in the cloud, instead of being restricted by what can reasonably run on a mobile phone. [1] Although I'm not sure if it does everything over the internet or if it's moved any of that to the device now that we have more powerful devices. I'm guessing they haven't, but it wouldn't surprise me if they've changed aspects of this. [2] IIRC Apple said that they take routes, chop off the beginning and end (so you can't identify the addresses), and upload those using a unique anonymous identifier (i.e. UUID) and no device-specific info, possibly with information on the actual driving (e.g. traffic) but I'm not sure, and they use that info to help improve the product. But that sounds like pretty thorough anonymizing (no way to associate routes with each other or with a device, and the routes don't include the potentially private source/destination) so I'm happy to give them that, and even then I assume it only uploads this if the user has already opted in to sending Apple data to improve their products (which it asks about during initial device setup, and there's a switch in System Preferences for this).

petra 11y ago
>> chop off the beginning and end (so you can't identify the addresses), and upload those using a unique anonymous identifier (i.e. UUID) and no device-specific info, Actually since they know your IP address ,it's not anonymous - it's easy to connect to your identity. Also , in general the way they gather location(from another post) [1] , is they gather list of cellular and wifi hotspots around you(and i wonder about whether they gather signal strength).And since for example , wifi signals are heavily blocked by walls, they are very space limited in many situations. So maybe(IDK, the field of anonymization is tricky) combining this data with the data sent when asking for a route is enough get pretty close location ? altough sure, some data is definetly is lost in this process and that's a good thing. [1]http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/04/27/finally-apple-speaks-out-about-iphone-location-data/ http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/04/27/finally-apple-speaks-...
- danudey 11y ago
  But on most (probably all?) mobile carriers, you're NATted anyway, so your IP address doesn't really tell you much about who specifically you are compared to, say, your home address.
  - petra 11y ago
    even while being NATted , don't your port remain stable at least for some time ? and that coupled with Apple's other services which do identify and use that port , gives enough info ?
- eridius 11y ago
  > Actually since they know your IP address ,it's not anonymous - it's easy to connect to your identity. Only if they record that information. When a company is going to lengths to deliberately throw away identifying information, it seems kind of ludicrous to suggest that they're still going to try and track you by using a mechanism that is significantly worse than the information they already had access to and chose not to use.
  - petra 11y ago
    Apple aims to maneuver between two goals - between selling privacy , but creating great services(who often depend on data). My suggestion could be one mechanism to optimize both. Or maybe not. we don't know.
    - eridius 11y ago
      How does tracking users by IP address optimize for anything? Apple has shown repeatedly that they believe privacy is very important (Tim Cook has even gone on record as saying he believes privacy is a fundamental right), and they exert a fair amount of effort in trying to preserve that privacy (e.g. all of the data they refuse to collect, and all of the anonymizing they do on the data they do collect, which still requires the user to opt-in before that anonymized data is sent to Apple). The only way in which your argument makes sense is if you think Apple doesn't actually care about privacy, but only cares about the appearance of caring about privacy, and therefore would anonymize data it collects while still leaving loopholes for it to try and recover some of that data anyway. But that contradicts all of the evidence.

by eridius 11y ago

petra 11y ago

>> chop off the beginning and end (so you can't identify the addresses), and upload those using a unique anonymous identifier (i.e. UUID) and no device-specific info, Actually since they know your IP address ,it's not anonymous - it's easy to connect to your identity. Also , in general the way they gather location(from another post) [1] , is they gather list of cellular and wifi hotspots around you(and i wonder about whether they gather signal strength).And since for example , wifi signals are heavily blocked by walls, they are very space limited in many situations. So maybe(IDK, the field of anonymization is tricky) combining this data with the data sent when asking for a route is enough get pretty close location ? altough sure, some data is definetly is lost in this process and that's a good thing. [1]http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/04/27/finally-apple-speaks-out-about-iphone-location-data/ http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/04/27/finally-apple-speaks-...

danudey 11y ago
But on most (probably all?) mobile carriers, you're NATted anyway, so your IP address doesn't really tell you much about who specifically you are compared to, say, your home address.
- petra 11y ago
  even while being NATted , don't your port remain stable at least for some time ? and that coupled with Apple's other services which do identify and use that port , gives enough info ?
eridius 11y ago
> Actually since they know your IP address ,it's not anonymous - it's easy to connect to your identity. Only if they record that information. When a company is going to lengths to deliberately throw away identifying information, it seems kind of ludicrous to suggest that they're still going to try and track you by using a mechanism that is significantly worse than the information they already had access to and chose not to use.
- petra 11y ago
  Apple aims to maneuver between two goals - between selling privacy , but creating great services(who often depend on data). My suggestion could be one mechanism to optimize both. Or maybe not. we don't know.
  - eridius 11y ago
    How does tracking users by IP address optimize for anything? Apple has shown repeatedly that they believe privacy is very important (Tim Cook has even gone on record as saying he believes privacy is a fundamental right), and they exert a fair amount of effort in trying to preserve that privacy (e.g. all of the data they refuse to collect, and all of the anonymizing they do on the data they do collect, which still requires the user to opt-in before that anonymized data is sent to Apple). The only way in which your argument makes sense is if you think Apple doesn't actually care about privacy, but only cares about the appearance of caring about privacy, and therefore would anonymize data it collects while still leaving loopholes for it to try and recover some of that data anyway. But that contradicts all of the evidence.