Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Always some new scandal - Update

See the previous post

And there you have it folks, Apple admits that they where doing it and will fix it in an upcoming software update.

It seems a little convenient that its a "bug" that caused the phone to keep so much info, but Mr. Jobs hates to get called out for anything so I assume this is a face saving measure.  Call it what you will, it was and is a concern so don't be to blasé about the importance of customers information Apple.  Also, I'm curious for those with capped data plans, how much and how often the data that is sent to Apple in an "anonymous and encrypted form."  It seems that this should be an opt-in given that you are using iPhone owners data (and data plans) to build services.  Don't assume that because most people will want this that everyone will want to participate in making your traffic service.  iPhones are not just millions of data nodes for the company to utilize as they see fit, the devices are owned by customers and Apple needs to respect that.  This isn't just another part of the Fiat Jobso.  Just ask, your customers are very loyal (sickeningly so), but don't assume you have can just take it.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Always some new scandal

In case you've been living under a rock recently there has been some hubbub over the tracking information a researcher found in some unprotected file on the iPhone.  Google and Microsoft have come out and said how they collect this data and what it is used for, Apple is taking a bit more time to answer why there is an open ended collection of location based data from where the user has been.

The trouble I have with Steve Job's "we don't track anyone" line (the same trouble I have with Google's "accidental" war driving) is that features of software don't just happen.  Someone wrote that piece of code, that piece of code was checked in and added to the test and then approved and moved into production.  Software isn't magic.

------Follow up post----------

Monday, April 18, 2011

Sleep and boning

The internet being the wide open field that it is, I was reading a Cracked article on the things I am probably doing wrong.  I typically don't click on these type of footer link spam, but serendipity is fun sometimes so I followed through to the article, and at the bottom of the first page was a link to a New York Times article on binomial sleep.  More interesting was the part about how the time of wakefulness that occurs in between the two blocks of sleep is knows for being the best time for getting it on.  The rational being that after a few hours of rest your are more focused on what you are doing and rested to boot.  Just one more damn thing in my life to change I suppose, go to bed early.