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Steve Jobs Interviewed on Location Tracking Issues

Wednesday April 27, 2011 11:12 am PDT by Eric Slivka

Earlier today, Apple officially responded to recent concerns regarding significant amounts of location information being stored on users' iPhone and in system backups, noting that the information is actually a database of nearby Wi-Fi and cellular access points used to provide quick location fixes when needed.

While we noted earlier this week a claimed brief email response from Apple CEO Steve Jobs regarding the issue, he has now spoken more thoroughly about the issue in a new telephone interview with All Things Digital. In the interview, Jobs reiterated many of the same statements made in Apple's official Q&A on the issue, but offers a bit more perspective on things.

Jobs said that the tech industry hasn't done a good job of educating users on what has been a fairly complicated issue.

"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."

Jobs declined to comment on the practices of other companies such as Google that have also been included in the controversy, noting only that Apple intends to participate in discussions with federal legislators and regulatory agencies to reassure them about Apple's practices.

"I think Apple will be testifying," Jobs said. "They have asked us to come and we will honor their request of course."

Jobs also said it will be interesting to see how aggressively the press tracks the issue and looks at what other players in the industry do.

"Some of them don't do what we do," Jobs said. "That's for sure."

Jobs was joined on the call by Apple executives Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall, and All Things Digital will be posting a more thorough recap of the interview shortly.

Top Rated Comments

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Small White Car

113 months ago

Apple's attitude about this stuf has always been very positive. I'm totally willing to believe that all this stuff was an oversight since believing that matches what they've said in the past.

Rating: 12 Votes

NebulaClash

113 months ago

We iPhone and 3G iPad owners are plenty upset by this as well.

Well, to be fair, you express hate toward Apple constantly. And given the conspiracy ideas in your signature, you are plenty upset about lots of things in your life. So I would hardly consider you a typical case. Apple could offer free computers tomorrow and you'd instantly post a message expressing your hatred of Apple for doing that.

Rating: 9 Votes

LagunaSol

113 months ago

All the while the real Big Brother, Google, gets surprisingly little scrutiny from the American press.

Rating: 6 Votes

NebulaClash

113 months ago

Apple's attitude about this stuf has always been very positive. I'm totally willing to believe that all this stuff was an oversight since believing that matches what they've said in the past.

Agreed. More often than not, Apple has tried to side with the user's interests. It's good business practice for them since an angry customer is not a good customer. And since their business model depends on people spending hard-earned cash for products, they need to make their users happy.

Wall Street and the marketplace seem to think they are doing an overall good job.

Rating: 5 Votes

err404

113 months ago

I am not defending Full of Win. I sincerely am not...

Problem is that his information is not factual. It's FUD.

Rating: 4 Votes

toddybody

113 months ago

I'm very glad Steve is feeling well enough to be out and about. God bless

Rating: 4 Votes

Vegasman

113 months ago

Apple's attitude about this stuf has always been very positive. I'm totally willing to believe that all this stuff was an oversight since believing that matches what they've said in the past.

Weren't they made aware of this almost a year ago? That's a long time to address an oversight.

Rating: 4 Votes

mrgstiffler

113 months ago

Well, as I said before

NUTTY FOLKS: OMG Apple keeps a copy of some wifi stations on my phone. It's a huge privacy violation!

FACT: Apple doesn't access the database cache, emails, passwords, photos on your phone either.

Except, Apple says that they actually do access the location database:

5. Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
No. This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data.

8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

Rating: 3 Votes

rtheb

113 months ago

Reading these posts it is obvious that Futurama hit the target...

iPhone 4 Futurama (//www.youtube.com/watch?v=dikaQjMO388)

:eek:

Rating: 3 Votes