You've got to take your hat off to Apple's PR team. What better way to take the attention of your own company than to point the finger at someone else. When the iPhone was being harassed for its dodgy antenna Steve jumped up on stage and accused just about every other smartphone manufacturer in the world of having the same problem. Now they've done the same thing with the tracking fiasco. Last week it was, shock, horror the iPhone has been secretly logging its users locations and now a few days later, Google (Android) are getting sued for tracking their users locations.
To be fair Apple’s already being sued in Florida for the latest iPhone blooper but Google are also on their way to court after two residents of Oakland County in Michigan filed a claim against Google seeking class action status and at least $50 million in damages. If everyone sues Google and Apple are going to go bankrupt. Is this a conspiracy by Microsoft and Nokia?
Though Apple will love that the Android OS is also under fire, Google maintains that its users are notified about what Android devices with do location data (which is anonymized) and that there is a way to disable all tracking as opposed to the iPhone which keeps it location data keeping top secret.
And in case you missed it, here's Apple's excuse in the form of a 'question and answer session they posted on their website-
Why is my iPhone logging my location?
The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements.)