Apple sued over transmission of personal information by mobile apps
December 29, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Credit WJS blog
Last week on December 23rd, a lawsuit was filed against Apple for allowing the transfer of personal information through third party iPhone and iPad applications to advertising networks without the consent of the owners of the mobile devices. The complaint was filed by a Jonathan Lalo in a San Jose, California federal court according to reports from Bloomberg.
According to Mr. Lalo’s lawsuit, Apple’s mobile devices are equipped with “identifying devices” that allow advertising networks to track how users use available applications on their devices, which applications, and for how long. The lawsuit further claims that:
“Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views”.
Earlier in the month, the Wall Street Journal had also released reports relaying the prevalence of the information some applications are tracking and transmitting about their users. The WSJ had tested 101 applications for the occurrence of information tracking and transmission. What quickly became concerning was how many of the top, most popular apps fall into this category. (For a more detailed breakdown of the apps in question, see the WSJ blog.)
Apple’s iPhone manufacturer, Foxconn, tries another bandaid solution
June 10, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Photo credit: arstechnica.com
In a recent report by Reuters, Apple’s iPhone manufacturer, Foxconn is offering its workers at the Shenzhen plant an opportunity for a 66 per cent wage increase in reaction to the recent wave of suicides and deaths. It’s an “opportunity” for wage increase as employees would need to pass a three-month performance review for the opportunity to earn 2,000 yuan ($300 CDN) a month. Employees would also be provided the option to work overtime, “making it more voluntary than in the past”.
The wage increase comes in addition to a universal 30 per cent pay increase on the cash portion of wages that was recently announced, as well as the installation of safety nets at the factory as a preventative measure to suicide attempts. All of which are notably tactical reactions. « Read the rest of this entry »
So you want to create an iPad app. Some guiding principles to consider.
June 2, 2010 § 1 Comment
On Wednesday, January 27, 2010, the tech world was abuzz. Apple had just announced their latest shiny new toy: the iPad.
At the time and for the weeks and months following, the announcement has been met with mixed reviews. In one camp, people have labeled it as being just an oversized iPhone that was not quite phone, not quite computer. In another, it has been heralded as something that can be expected to revolutionize the gadget industry and way we interact with technology in ways we’ve seen Apple products do in the past. Within Critical Mass, we also had many discussions about the potential impact of Apple’s new iPad. However, regardless of our discussions and each person’s opinion around the iPad, one thing was sure. There was a lot of excitement – especially at the prospect of designing some of the first iPad apps for our clients.
Rather than talk about the impact of the iPad on our industry and market (if you want a great read on the subject, see Neil Clemmon’s post on Experience Matters), this post discusses some of the things we’ve learned about iPad app design and development through our own experience with some of our savvy clients. Through the course of our work with iPad apps, six main guiding principles have surfaced.
Apple’s social responsibility nightmare
May 24, 2010 § 1 Comment
Sun Danyong committed suicide last year. (Photo credit: Brisbane Times)
Apple is making the headlines again lately, and this time, it’s not with good news. Foxconn, a major electronics manufacturer that assembles Apple’s iPhones and iPads, has seen yet another employee suicide: the eleventh suicide attempt in the last year, and ninth successful one. Nan Gang, a 21-year old employee of the company, died after jumping off the four-storey building. But wait – this isn’t new. We’ve seen this before. The question is why is it still happening, and happening so frequently.
