...on the other hand, this is the exact same technology Apple lets China use to hunt down their religious and political minorities. Maybe they don't intend harm to Americans, but one thing is for certain; Apple doesn't treat privacy as a human right. If you can live with that, then more power to you.
QR codes? HTTP requests? I’m not sure what technology you’re referring to.
> one thing is for certain; Apple doesn't treat privacy as a human right.
They have put a huge amount of effort into privacy technology; more than any comparable company I can think of. I don’t think your certainty is even remotely justified.
Do you expect your images to be scanned on disk and the links in them to be opened, leaking your ip? What if you do something as simple as screenshot an address bar in a browser? Save a menu QR code?
Now you are sending out traffic, accidentally, with your full ip to random places due to a service Apple inserted that you have no knowledge of.
Do you know every site that has received your ip address?
I think the honest answer to both of these questions has to be no.
Throw that to disk for me so I can map where you are, where you go, when your machine is up and how often your search indexing runs.
I could send you a QR code that I've setup specifically to get your IP address.