From a recent HN article:

http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/06/what-is-diff...

"Starting with iOS 10, Apple is using Differential Privacy technology to help discover the usage patterns of a large number of users without compromising individual privacy."

To paraphrase, Apple has been collecting telemetry all along and is announcing that they're starting to a new proprietary algorithm to obfuscate it a bit.

You and I are reading that a different way. I see it as they're going to be able to collect this data for the first time since they've found a way to do so without compromising privacy.

Their privacy page seems to agree with my interpretation:

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/

Though since iOS is closed source - we can't know for certain.

Cannot find specifics now(my N900 doesn't render many pages anymore), but it was widely known prior to 2010 that snApple slurps data every 45 min, or 16 x's a day. When I read that I thought it was an interesting coincidence that the ISS circles the Earth at the same rate.

Possible discussion from 2011, cannot open the page:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3200399?start=0&tstart=...

Don't think that's the right link, but it is complaints about data usage.

Specifics are hard to come by, perhaps it was a presentation or IRC revelations. Either way, search is no longer optimized for finding info for non-consumption results and Apple is accomplished at forcing NDAs and hiding specifics behind vague legalese... until circumstances arise that can no longer be vehemently denied and the flowery marketing speak flows: they seem to address the specific concerns without actually being definitive. Oh yeah, they often promise not to do questionable tasks, like accidentally tracking all iphones for over a year, too.

Links from the past:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/06/apple-loc...

http://lifehacker.com/5864518/is-my-phone-spying-on-me-and-w...

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-lawsuit-idUSTRE6BR1Y...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/iphone-developer-progr...

PS: I know, I know, *everybody's doing it". That doesn't necessarily equate to being just, only that it is within our technological means. Some more relics from the past...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-the-nsa-spies-...

https://www.aclu.org/cell-phone-location-tracking-request-re...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2986988/privacy/the-price-of-...