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If this is really the case, then Apple would forbid the use of Mobile Analytics. I attended a presentation on this topic at Mobile Portland a while back; all t

If this is really the case, then Apple would forbid the use of Mobile Analytics. I attended a presentation on this topic at Mobile Portland a while back; all three speakers emphasized that their SDKs were free of charge for app developers. But one of them showed a photo of her employer's data center. That wasn't just one server - it was thousands of servers. Data centers cost a lot of money to outfit and to operate, yet their service is free to developers. That analytics must be woth quite a lot of money to someone. After quite a lot of thought I started blocking analytics servers with my hosts file: 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com that works OK on conventional computers but requires jailbreaking on mobile devices. It would be helpful were Apple to enable me to opt out of analytics; even better would be to disable it by default. While I can see the point of mobile analytics during beta testing, for it to be used in production systems without the end-users knowledge is IMHO much the same as cyberstalking.

stephenr 11y ago
Frankly I see this as specifically why they offer iAd for App developers - they (apple) control it so they can ensure it still respects user privacy (i.e. not using your previous history to build a "profile" about you and while showing you ads). They know that without it, app developers would just use one of the "for profit" ad networks (i.e. a network whose primary profit base is serving ads, in comparison to iAd which possibly doesn't even break even?). While I would love for Apple to have some kind of "block tracking sites" in Safari, I doubt it's likely to happen as a a first-party option. Safari 9 for OS X and iOS seems to have better support specifically for content-blocking extensions, so hopefully something like Ghostery or similar will be available for iOS later this year.

stephenr 11y ago

Frankly I see this as specifically why they offer iAd for App developers - they (apple) control it so they can ensure it still respects user privacy (i.e. not using your previous history to build a "profile" about you and while showing you ads). They know that without it, app developers would just use one of the "for profit" ad networks (i.e. a network whose primary profit base is serving ads, in comparison to iAd which possibly doesn't even break even?). While I would love for Apple to have some kind of "block tracking sites" in Safari, I doubt it's likely to happen as a a first-party option. Safari 9 for OS X and iOS seems to have better support specifically for content-blocking extensions, so hopefully something like Ghostery or similar will be available for iOS later this year.