There has to be be some degree of tying purchases to an account. The real issue here is what is done with the data after it's been collected. Internal use is one thing; such as improving apps etc. When it's used to target individual in a bid to influence their thinking, that's when the real problem starts. Are Apple guilty of the latter?

Certainly. They use it in app store ads, to determine their own product development, and to market their products.

On other platforms, I can install apps on my devices without telling anybody.

Which platforms?

Most Android distributions, most Linux distributions, Windows, etc.

Pretty sure most of those would be sending telemetry including installed apps back to the company.

And we know for a fact Windows does this.

> Pretty sure...

Now you know that you were wrong. Windows allows you to disable telemetry and certainly doesn't report apps you install to Microsoft if you don't want it to. Same for Android and obviously for desktop and server Linux distros. This is simply not possible on iOS.

You can install apps on iOS without using the store.

And if you are willing to jailbreak then you have the full suite.

> You can install apps on iOS without using the store.

Not without reinstalling weekly unless you reduce your privacy even further by also give Apple your banking details.

> And if you are willing to jailbreak then you have the full suite.

On these other platforms, you don't have to rely on your device being so insecure that it has a rootable vulnerability.

“Willing to” is not “able to”.

> Doesn't Apple track every app you install, access and run?

Do you have a source on the them tracking every app a user runs? Obviously they have to collect every app I install for updates and subscriptions, but collecting every run might be too much.

They advertise a whole product which draws all this tracking data as nice graphs to developers: https://developer.apple.com/app-store-connect/analytics/

It's essentially Google Analytics, just for apps on iOS.

Where do you think those "Daily active devices" data comes from?

Users must opt in though. It’s part of the iOS set up to allow this and you can change it any time

This setting is opt out, not opt-in. It's unclear if opting out hides the data from Apple or just from the app developers.

It is opt-in now; when setting up iOS for the first time it asks you if you'd like to enable "iPhone analytics" (OS-wide analytics for Apple) and if you accept then it asks you whether you want to share the analytical data with the app developers.

It's opt out.

No, it’s opt in when you set up your device.

Don't they verify executables for this reason? Do they provide info about whether they log this process?

I believe iOS handles this process differently. Apps are signed in advance (when the app is approved and published to the Store) and the signatures are only checked locally against a hardcoded signing key. But even on Mac when it comes to notarization, I'm pretty sure the signatures are only checked on first run and then the result of that is cached (partly for performance reasons).

Same on Mac AppStore.

Why would they verify it everytime you run the app? It already goes through heavy review before it comes onto the app store.

On iOS under: Privacy -> Analytics & Improvements

They (a) show what data is being sent e.g. stack traces and (b) provide the privacy policies.

At least on my device I am not seeing a list of apps being sent to Apple.

Your device doesn’t need to send it. They know what apps you’ve downloaded already and on what device. The real question is, does it send when you remove an app? If so, they are tracking your apps you have installed.

If your device offloads apps, they know when you download it again and thus can infer usage.

That really does seem like whataboutism.

No one is claiming Apple is perfect, but this is a marked improvement of apps requiring tracking to function.

This is exactly whataboutism.

I think we're arguing semantics about business philosophy.

whataboutism: n. An accusation of hypocrisy designed to deflect from bad behavior on the part of another party.

Ha! Ive never actually looked the definition up. This is definitely whataboutism (I still havent looked the definition up so Im trusting this the actual definition)

well, I did make that up.

but here's dictionary.com on the subject, and I think it's congruent, you'll have to judge for yourself:

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/whataboutism