Kara Swisher, “Silicon Valley’s most feared and well-liked journalist”, is back with another interview, part of the Sway podcast, produced by The New York Times Opinion Audio.
This time, she spoke to one of the most powerful men in the world, who isn’t a Disney character, Tim Cook. The majority of the conversation revolved around data privacy and security, but the two also discussed tech, politics, Steve Jobs, Apple’s failed social media platform, Ping, as well as Tim Cook’s successor.
The important news for the end-user, at least in the short term, is that iOS 14.5 is definitely coming out in just a few weeks (before the end of April), as promised by the company’s CEO.
Cupertino is expanding on their already existing security features with ‘Privacy Nutrition Labels’, which will come to third-party apps. Cook explained what Privacy labels are, by comparing them to a nutrition label on foods, except Apple’s will tell you what kind of data the app developer wants to gain access to, instead of how much sugar it contains.
His rationale was based on the fact that all privacy agreements are a few pages long, and people never read them. Privacy labels are supposed to solve this inconvenience, and we are fully on board for that!
In fact, PL already exists within Apple’s own apps. You’ll see them upon setting up your iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, or Apple TV, as well as before you start using an app for the very first time. Here’s a full list of them on Apple’s official website.
Cook also talked about Apple’s relationship with Facebook, and app developers. He stated that he doesn’t see the social media giant as competition, and laughed when Swisher reminded him of Apple’s failed social network platform, Ping, which lasted two years between 2010-2012.
In case you didn’t know, Apple’s being sued by a few big companies, such as Facebook, and Epic Games. Mark Zuckerberg and the company are suing in relation to the above-mentioned privacy features, which will become part of iOS very soon.
Facebook isn’t happy with the fact that users will be ‘encouraged’ to turn off tracking, upon launching the Facebook app. Cook said he views privacy as ‘a basic right’, and wants to let people choose which information to share, and which not to.
