As noted by my colleague Joe Tomasone in his sharp analysis of the situation, Apple earlier today responded to the controversy around their location data tracking. To further the company’s response however, Apple CEO Steve Jobs (along with SVP Phil Schiller, and SVP Scott Forstall) had a telephone interview with the folks at All Things Digital. Much of the same was stated on the call as can be found in the statement Apple released earlier. However, Jobs did deviate and make a few notable comments.
Here’s one:
“As new technology comes into the society there is a period of adjustment and education,” Jobs said. “We haven’t as an industry done a very good job educating people I think, as to some of the more subtle things going on here. As such (people) jumped to a lot of wrong conclusions in the last week.”
To my mind, this is Apple pulling out all the stops in an effort to get out in front of this thing, before it balloons into another “antennagate.” Apple traditionally stays pretty quiet, and allows criticisms to blow over, but not with something as serious as this, which could ultimately hurt their bottom line. This will most certainly be interesting to watch unfold.
As for my opinion- this doesn’t bother me. First, what would Apple do with the data they collect of your location? Sell it to advertisers or something? Apple really doesn’t have an incentive to do something like that. Secondly, I believe the official response. That is, this data collected is to speed up the GPS location process. Apple is just collecting hotspot and cellular tower data, to better locate your device, when you ask it to do so.
Image courtesy of All things Digital.
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