Apple released iOS 14.5 to the public earlier today. The iOS 14.5 update ships with much-awaited app tracking transparency, over 200 emojis, the ability to unlock iPhone with Apple Watch, and a lot more. Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi discussed iOS 14.5’s new privacy features in a new interview.
In an interview with Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal, Craig Federighi discussed iOS 14.5’s app tracking transparency and its implications on users and advertisers. If you don’t know what the App Tracking Transparency does, it basically forces every iOS app developer to ask users if they want their activity to be tracked, so that they can target ads to him/her.
In the interview, Craig Federighi said that the mere goal of the feature is to give users an option over the sharing of their user data. Adding to his comments, he said that the user data abuses range from “creepy to dangerous.”
“We really just want to give users a choice,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, told me in an exclusive video interview. “These devices are so intimately a part of our lives and contain so much of what we’re thinking and where we’ve been and who we’ve been with that users deserve and need control of that information.” He added, “The abuses can range from creepy to dangerous.”
Commenting about the feature’s delay, Craig said that it was actually Apple that caused the feature to be delayed. It was earlier speculated that the backlash from advertisers, such as Facebook, had caused the delay but it seems that Apple was the one delaying it at their end, fine-tuning the update.
“It wasn’t surprising to us to hear that some people were going to push back on this, but at the same time, we were completely confident that it’s the right thing,” Mr. Federighi said. While the feature’s rollout has been delayed, Mr. Federighi said that was caused not by backlash but because Apple had to make sure app developers could comply when a user opted out of tracking. Mr. Federighi said Apple worked hard on the clarity of the prompts and has created privacy-respecting ad tools for developers.
“People have their own sense of privacy and how important it is to them,” Mr. Federighi said. “So we will all make our personal decisions.”
Apple also released a video explaining how App Tracking Transparency with iOS 14.5 update.
https://youtu.be/Ihw_Al4RNno
Have you updated to iOS 14.5 yet? What features do you like? Let us know in the comments section below!
[Via Wall Street Journal]
