[zelon88]

The author gives Apple credit for solving a problem Apple created.

Apple doesn't care about protecting you. They care about protecting their own advertising market share. They don't want to stop tracking your iPhone. They want competitors like Google to stop tracking your iPhone (for free). Apple wants to get paid for that.

If Apple cared about you then tracking functionality would not exist.

[gordon_freeman]

You didn't get it. Apple is not making any decisions on whether to allow apps to track or not. They are simply delegating that choice to their users (and rightly so). The user has power to chose which advertisers he or she can trust showing them the useful ads and allow those apps to track. If ads are not useful or are exploitative of their data then they can chose not to allow tracking. As simple as that.

[zelon88]

I believe it is you who has a misunderstanding. Let's word this differently.

Apple gives apps the ability to track and users the option to disable that feature, but they built it with dark patterns.

Now they've removed the dark patterns, but you can still have this awful feature that nobody wants. Why?

And why is Apple getting credit for removing dark patterns that they created earlier? Why does this feature exist if 99.999% of people don't want it in the first place?

[Fezzik]

You seem to be implying that when Apple opened their App Store, just 13 years ago in 2008, that it was an intentional decision to allow “dark patterns,” but this really does not seem to be born out by Apple’s practices. After releasing a gigantic/global app store in 2008 Apple has done nothing but reduce and limit the ability of third parties to track iOS users, amongst other actions that are purely protective of users. Furthermore, I see some beneficence in their actions, in that it’s not like there is a huge public uproar directed at Apple compelling them to make these changes (though my hunch is it’s more about cutting away at FB and Google profits than anything else).

[Nextgrid]

It wasn't a dark pattern per-se. They assumed good faith and relied on morals and compliance with the law to be sufficient.

Keep in mind that when the GDPR went in effect (and maybe before that with the "cookie law", as the advertising ID is equivalent to a tracking cookie), using the system-wide advertising ID (which is enabled by default - the dark pattern you were talking about) would be in breach of the regulation; apps should still ask for consent before using it and allow users to decline.

I can't fully fault Apple for expecting that the GDPR would actually be enforced and clean things up. It clearly wasn't the case however and they're thankfully making changes to mitigate that.

[dialtone]

Except Apple is putting its own ability to track you under a different opt-out (default opted-in) that isn't set when you first launch the iphone.

[asiachick]

You don't get it. Apple doesn't allow you to opt out of THEM tracking you. You have 2 options

1. zero tracking (not even sure you can do this)

2. apple tracking, and the ability to chose others who track you

To be equal Apple would have to allow blocking Apple's own tracking while still allowing user selected 3rd parties to track. Apple doesn't give this option. If you don't want them to track you you're required to turn off all tracking, not just Apple's tracking.

[procombo]

Apple provides core services that forces all 3rd party apps to run "on top" of. I don't see how the toggling of options could work better considering this.