I've heard (2nd-level -- ie, people that talked to people in Apple, in confidence) rumors that they want to use the data themselves to sell more stuff. All under the guise of "privacy," it's the best marketing ploy ever... if true.

I like what Apple is doing, but I've heard that rumor enough times from former employees who worked on this stuff, and people who've come out of meetings with the Safari guys, that I continue to be wary of Apple.

Apple has not that many products. The opportunities for sophisticated marketing based on purchase history are pretty slim. If they wanted to run a strategy like “market iPads to people who already have iPhones and Macs” starting a credit card business is a pretty roundabout way to do that.

I think it was clear from the beginning of Apple Pay that they’re running a very long term embrace-extend-extinguish on Visa and Mastercard, and everything in their product roadmap to date has been consistent with that, especially opening up native tap-to-pay acceptance on iPhones.

> The opportunities for sophisticated marketing based on purchase history are pretty slim.

Not really? Apple sells ads and directly profits from recommending high-margin, exploitative apps on the App Store. Seeing as their 30% cut is a multi-billion dollar market, I wouldn't just call it a "slim opportunity". More like "a better way to optimize the money printer without the SEC shouting at us" or something.

This is plausible. Apple is blocking methods used by more aggressive/invasive ad networks (at the App Store policy level, the iOS level like with IDFA, and the Safari level with ITP), which makes using Apple's ad network more advantageous (since Apple's anti-tracking strategy favors first-party tracking).

https://digiday.com/media/apple-skadnetwork/

> Apple Ads Attribution API (used by Search Ads campaigns) provides visibility into clickDate, adGroupId, creativeSetId. “This is a massive, and unfair, advantage Apple is giving to its own systems and advertisers,” said Sergio Serra, senior product manager at supply-side platform InMobi.

https://www.adexchanger.com/mobile/3-ways-apple-is-throwing-...

> Which is particularly interesting considering that late last week, Eric Seufert, a mobile strategist and editor of Mobile Dev Memo, discovered a settings option in the forthcoming iOS 14 that would give preferential treatment to Apple ads personalization.

(IDFA tracking is opt-in, Apple's tracking is opt-out)

It’d be the dumbest marketing move ever, Apple makes billions from selling their devices and the rest of the ecosystem, the location data they could gather under the table would be worth small change compared to the risk they’d be taking.

It’d be an embarrassment to emphasize their privacy advantage in their announcements only to throw away that trust in pursuit of a few pennies.

Even if there is little upside reward, they might just want to decrease downside risk. It's inexpensive for them to limit data gathering. But letting data gathering fester outside their control and they are 1 PR disaster away from damaging their brand. Which is extremely valuable.

It is possible they don't get 30% cuts of any of that sale of info so want it out to avoid contagion ("but they dont pay 30% on X" spreads to "I don't want to pay 30% on Y and maybe we'll go to court over it").

Based on the emails that have come out from various trials, they want a 30% cut of everything, eventually including real world services mediated through the phone.

App Store is 14 years old. If Apple wanted to take a cut of literally everything that was facilitated using the phone e.g. Amazon or eBay they would've done it a long time ago.

The benefit to Apple is the same reason that Google invests in Project Zero.

Higher consumer confidence that a product is safe = higher engagement = higher revenue.

Here are a few of the emails I was mentioning:

https://www.twitter.com/techemails/status/148133934582287974...