Monday, April 25, 2011

Jobs Fires Back Against IPhone/IPad Location Tracking. Is this an Official Statement?

I wonder why the Apple PR machine isn't the one launching into damage control mode instead of Jobs perhaps sending out a personal email.

"We don't track anyone. The info circulating around is false," reads an email from Jobs to a customer complaining about reports that the iPhone transmits users longitude-latitude coordinates to Apple.

Tech bloggers are taking the emails at face value because Jobs has a history of replying to customers from his corporate email account and MacRumors says the headers of the email match with previous Jobs emails. The remarks are being interpreted as particularly blunt. At one point, the customer wonders why he shouldn't switch to Android because Google doesn't track his every move. "Oh yes they do," responds Jobs.

I guess they are simply going to coast based on their reputation. This sort of screw up would doom Microsoft to years of litigation and destroy whatever rep they have left. In any case they seem to not care too much about having your location in plain text stored on their devices. So I guess Android and the Xoom might be getting my tech money in the near future.

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