Apple has joined the Data Transfer Project, an initiative launched in 2018 to develop an open-source service-to-service data portability platform to allow people to easily move their data between online service providers.

As The Verge notes, Apple is now listed as a contributor alongside Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and others.

datatransferproject
Apple will build systems that will make it easy to add and remove data from iCloud, similar to Google Takeout and Facebook's Access Your Information tool, which are compatible with one another and allow data to be downloaded to your hard drive.

Data Transfer Project is an open source initiative to encourage participation of as many Providers as possible. DTP will enhance the data portability ecosystem by reducing the infrastructure burden on both service providers and users which should in turn increase the number of services offering portability. The protocols and methodology of DTP enable direct, service-to-service data transfer with streamlined engineering work.

Eventually, the Data Transfer Project hopes that data will be able to be transferred directly from service to service with no need to download the data first.

Since the Data Transfer Project launched in July 2018 with Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft on board, 18 contributors from a combination of partners and the open source community have inserted more than 42,000 lines of code and changed more than 1,500 files, and new framework features and APIs have been added.

Top Rated Comments

CarlJ Avatar
54 months ago
The first person that tells me how to delete messages from iCloud messages gets a cookie.
Before giving the cookie to the user, you'll have to put up one of those banners advising them of your use of cookies.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ApfelKuchen Avatar
54 months ago
The first person that tells me how to delete messages from iCloud messages gets a cookie.
iMessage doesn't use cookies. ;)

You delete individual messages from iCloud the same way you delete them if you don't use iCloud.

If you're asking about deleting the entire iCloud messages database...
On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, tap Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Manage Storage > Messages. Then tap Disable & Delete.
Chocolate chip, please!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AlliFlowers Avatar
54 months ago
The easier it is to move data around, particularly between Apple, Google, and Microsoft - the better for everyone.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
trusso Avatar
54 months ago
The easier it is to move data around, particularly between Apple, Google, and Microsoft - the better for everyone.
Portability and user control of their data is a good thing.
Hmm...

I can't be the only one that actually smells something fishy here. o_O
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
trusso Avatar
54 months ago
There is no Big Brother. Paranoia and hysteria don't solve anything.
No - you are correct - but there are human beings in positions of immense power, often hidden from view, who are capable of great good as well as great evil.

Hysteria and paranoia solve nothing, I agree. However, one can and should exercise healthy critical judgement as a matter of course. To do less, it seems to me, is to abdicate one of the very things that make us agents of our own life.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Mr. Retrofire Avatar
54 months ago
The easier it is to move data around, particularly between Apple, Google, and Microsoft - the better for everyone.
Especially for the goverment. :D
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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