All the privacy issues Apple didn’t talk about at its annual event, and why they matter

All the privacy issues Apple didn’t talk about at its annual event, and why they matter

A watch that actually tells time, all the time. Portrait mode for pets. Slofies. Apple’s annual shiny-new-toys event last week was packed with glitzy news from Apple as usual. These features are fun, but something’s been troubling me for the last few days since those announcements: something that was almost completely ignored for the entire 90 minutes.


Apple, which regularly touts its user privacy and security credentials, was surprisingly silent about this topic during its event. The only time privacy came up was in relation to using data from Apple Watch to support health research. That seems incongruous for a company that ran a giant billboard ad proclaiming, “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone,” particularly given that consumers value personal data protection more than ever amidst the seemingly never-ending stream of leaks, hacks, and missteps.


Here are some important things I wish Tim Cook and his team had said:


“The new U1 chip in the new iPhone offers granular location tracking, and here’s how we’ll prevent that from being misused.”


Has Apple learned any lessons since it last introduced a micro-location technology, iBeacon? It was a disaster for privacy, quickly adopted by companies wanting to track our every move, potentially down to the inch. Apple’s own privacy issues apple about annual event matter