iOS 4.3.3 Coming Soon to Address Location Tracking Bugs

I kinda liked the fact i could look at where I've been with my phone.

I can see how this update will have "battery life improvements" now that the phone is not going to be tracking our movements 24/7 even when all location services are shut off.

The phone tracked movements through cell towers, not GPS. And your phone is always connected to cell towers anyways so nothing is changing in terms of battery life. Also, nothing is really changing in this update except the fact that you won't be able to access the location file.

Screenshot fail :) build number in Quicklook titlebar.

I find it hilarious that Steve Jobs claimed Apple was not tracking users, but now all of a sudden we find Location tracking being completely removed from this version of iOS, that is honestly something that annoyes me..

I find it hilarious that you don't understand what is being done here!

Oh the conspiracies!!!!

As a software developer, the explanation that Apple gave seems far more plausible than "they are tracking your every move".

It makes total sense to keep a cache of cell tower positions to speed up positioning through trilateration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateration). It also makes sense for Apple to maintain this as a crowd-sourced database and download part of it to your phone. Further, it makes sense for a developer to make an arbitrary decision to say "let's make the cache size 2MB -- that's smaller than a single song". Finally, it makes sense for QA to miss this since the file is not readily visible through the user interface. A very good article on this is here (http://www.macworld.com/article/159528/2011/04/how_iphone_location_works.html).

I for one cannot remember a single iAd ever popping that was more appropriate based on my location (e.g.: a restaurant ad showing up when I was near a location for that restaurant chain). I seriously doubt that Apple cares where I have been for the past year -- especially with the huge degree of error that trilateration offers. But they definitely care about the crowd-sourced data to understand what regions iPhones are being used most heavily.

Certainly, if Apple wanted to record my personal position it would make MUCH MUCH MUCH more sense for their servers to simply record the query my phone makes to obtain the portion of the crowd-sourced database that my phone wants to cache. That query could easily include a more exact GPS position (i.e.: give me the part of the cache near this location). It could also include a phone identifier. Of course, a timestamp could be associated with the query. They could keep the information on their own servers where I would NEVER EVER see it and they could easily access it. Keeping it on my phone simply does not make sense if Apple really wanted this information -- it makes it easy for me to find and it is of less use to Apple that way.

I wonder if Google records my Wifi/GPS location on Google Maps or what locations I searched when using Google Maps. Hopefully, my identity is anonymized before the query is sent to Google for what part of the Maps database to pull down and cache. But again, it would be really easy for anybody to do this on the server side.

Some facts for the learning challenged.

1. The original DB was set at 2MB. Of ASCII text. As "engineers" you would think Apple would understand and know how "large" that cache is. They claim they didn't realize how much data could be stored in 2MB.

2. This was brought to their attention over a year ago - not a week ago.

3. The file should have always been encrypted.

4. Those getting pissy at people who are calling Apple out on this or are blaming the customer since Apple has it in their EULA that they collect data so it's no big deal should consider that if the switch to turn of Data Roaming FAILED and people were charged up the wazoo - people would be demanding refunds for that data and would demand a fix.

So don't get all pissy for people who just think that the Location Services on/off switch should actually work. Having it NOT work is actually a violation of the EULA so many of the posters here are using as a defense.


I'm glad that the OS is being fixed. I'm glad Apple got caught/are responding to "bugs" that they obviously missed during QA.

I should hope that this update will allay any of the concerns and fears that some panic-stricken people have had lately.

Now that people know what they're up to, it's "unintentional", and "bugs". :rolleyes:

To you and other conspiracy theorists:

At first I was skeptical at calling it a bug as well. I was convinced by the fact that Apple had nothing to gain by "secretly" slipping it in.

They weren't sending themselves copies of the consolidated.db file-no actual advantage for apple to have extended logs of the location data. And they're not in the business of data mining, so following the money leads to a dead end.

The absolute worst case scenario is that this was a careless oversight. There's simply no evidence or motive for malevolence. Sorry.

Since the 3G is considered end of life, no. I also believe that the 3G doesn't have GPS, just used triangulation solely.

iPhone 3G has GPS, and it has the same "problem" with location tracking as this update addresses.

I find it hilarious that Steve Jobs claimed Apple was not tracking users, but now all of a sudden we find Location tracking being completely removed from this version of iOS, that is honestly something that annoyes me..

Well that's just wrong... they aren't completely removing location tracking in anything. Just fixing "bugs" that stored to much information in a file on your phone.

FAIL