And yet, Macs will still send usage and performance data to Apple so they can incorporate that information into future product versions and find out about system software issues.
Your SaaS or webpage probably gathers 80% of what Google Analytics does in your log files. It could without doubt provide deeper insights that GA is capable of by adding your own behaviour tracking code (which can be written with the understanding of your specific problem dom ain, rather than be an "everything to everybody" generalised solution).
Nobody is suggesting we shouldn't collect usage and performance data, the thesis here is that we shouldn't send all that directly to the worlds most profitable advertising agency, just because they'll draw us some pretty graphs for free.
> Nobody is suggesting we shouldn't collect usage and performance data
This thread degenerated into an argument because somebody stated outright:
> Don't use analytics at all but focus on your product.
That’s what people in this thread are arguing against – don’t use analytics at all – not the subject of the article, don’t use Google Analytics.
I guess the point is not that crash reports and slowdown data aren't useful (they are), but that they tend to give you incremental improvements.
That being said, incremental improvements over a decade can make a big difference, as Apple also demonstrates.
Where exactly do we draw the line to what's core for a company to track in order to run their business and what can be opt-out?
As another example, consider that in 2007 Apple developers were begging for an iPhone SDK, and Steve Jobs crushed their hopes by telling them to just make web apps. A year later Apple came out not just with an iPhone SDK, but with an entire App Store. (Though I suppose some developers [Epic] and users [HN] wish they had just come out with an SDK, and that the iPhone wasn't locked down.)
That being said, they do a lot of user testing of the next big thing before it is revealed publicly.