Wait, are syou serious? I didnt know anyone could be _that_ delusional about Apple. You _really_ think Apple cares about privacy? They aren't "that kind of company"? Where the hell do you get the idea that Apple cares about the morality of their decisions? Could it be that you are a fanboy? Wait, I know the answer to that already.

..."shit HN says", right here.

The accusation is that Apple INTENTIONALLY gave the FBI a database with twelve million records. That is what my comment refers to. It is preposterous to propose that Apple --or any company for that matter-- would willingly do that. The liability hole this would open up would be massive. They are a business and you can bet your ass that every decision with potential liability consequences is well considered by managers and their legal teams.

No, I am not an Apple fanboy, quite the contrary. As a developer I am very critical of their attitude and decision making. I think they really suck at some things and have been very vocal about it on HN and elsewhere. That does not mean that I would automatically vilify them for everything.

HN is very interesting at times. Most of the time you get positive feedback when you are for Apple and for politically Liberal points of view. However, sometimes the poles reverse and North becomes South. This is rare when Apple is the subject. I guess in this case it was as simple as not understanding what the comment was referring to, which can happen if someone doesn't actually read the original article in the first place.

Precisely what liability do you think Apple should be afraid of? I'm having trouble imagining what they could be sued for here.

Note that the FBI is the supposed source of the leak here. So let's say Apple claims they gave up the data at the request of the FBI to supposedly help with a classified terrorist threat that the government won't have to reveal at trial. Who's going to sue Apple, and for what?

> " It is preposterous to propose that Apple --or any company for that matter-- would willingly do that."

Unless Apple-or-any-company was seeking assistance from the FBI to track down fraud or something similar.

TBH, I doubt that Apple gives a shit- they would just declare it a leak, if they even get prosecuted. But that could be just my tinfoil hat talking.

"Could it be that you are a fanboy?"

With the reply you've just sent and you seriously question if the parent is unbiased? Do you frankly consider yourself biased? Could it be that you're an anti-apple fanboy?

>Could it be that you're an anti-apple fanboy?

I indeed am, sometimes. And my post was biased, it was a bit of a bait. I can do the apple-fanboy as well though, if the topic calls for it.

On a more serious note though, I think Apple doesn't give a fuck about privacy- things like saving geolocations, the DRM in iTunes, unique device identifiers and stuff like that really makes it look like that at least.

Apple has everything to do with this. They're the ones who decided to put UDIDs on all their devices to begin with. And they know they've royally screwed up too - that's why they've deprecated UDIDs in iOS 5 and have started rejecting applications that access it. But that hardly fixes the problem since everyone will just use the Bluetooth or wireless MAC addresses instead - its not guaranteed to be unique, but close enough

So, essentially, you're saying whatever Apple does or doesn't do is a bad decision in the end since it would always fall back to the hardware identifiers, then. Right?

Not quite. Part of the point was that "hardware coded IDs for devices concept should be erradicated from any device on the market in the future." I'd place MAC addresses in that bucket as well. A company like Apple that's been changing the status quo for years should be striving to do the same when it comes to their user's privacy and anonymity

MAC addresses too?

How do you propose to make networks work?

Why not use temporary short-lived MACs, in a way somehow like IPv6 temporary addresses?