citpeks

I miss going to MacWorld Expo.

Trade shows are passé, blah blah blah, Apple Stores give us more exposure, etc., but they can't replace the experience of the massive Apple booth, exposure to real Apple managers and developers (not the hipster retail droid experience in the Stores), and all the vendors who make up the Apple ecosystem on one show floor.

The period stretching from Power Computing's "Fight Back for Mac!" campaign to the iPhone introduction spans the lows of a rudderless company to one at the height of its powers and capability.

Apple is secure now, but it's not the same hungry, risk taking company it was.  Maturity, success, and massive growth alone can dilute, if not erode the core values of a company.  Many of its employees now probably never know Apple as anything but a success, which results in a different company and world view.

Jobs was a noted admirer of Sony, and it will be interesting to see if Apple follows the same path to a faded, if not moribund, brand in the future.  Or similarly worse, that of HP or IBM, which have turned from innovators into servicers.

Apple may position itself as the privacy/user advocate choice in the market, but that doesn't necessarily apply to others who inhabit the platform and are allowed within the system.  The company still collects an large amount of data, even if it pledges to anonymize it, and anyone who has even run a connection monitor like Little Snitch knows the numerous connections made to Apple servers in the course of seemingly benign, normal usage.

I actively try to avoid specialized apps in general, especially when they don't offer any benefit above and beyond what is replicated by visiting a website.  Even visiting with a browser can reveal a myriad of data, but at least it's a more recognized and defined set, as opposed to who knows what an app sends back and forth.

Anyone who expects this (non) revelation to prompt Apple to take any action only has to be reminded of how Tim Cook personally handled Uber's surreptitious tracking of users, intentionally designed to be hidden from Apple's notice.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was summoned to Cupertino, and merely scolded by Cook, and only threatened with expulsion from the app store.

No other action was taken.  No ban, not even a temporary removal from the store until the fix was enacted, which wouldn't have impacted users who already had the app in use.  In short, Cook let them get away with it scot-free when any regular consumer of Apple news knows that others have had their apps flicked for much lesser offenses.  Too big to ban?

Words don't carry weight without action, and the leader of the company only punted when presented with the opportunity to act according to the company principles he espouses.