Tech Note: iPhone Tracks Your Every Move

Google has made no secret of the fact that they hope to use their phones to track your activities so that they can better market to you. Maybe you like a local restaurant and go their often. Your phone can track this information and perhaps one day when you're driving by your phone notifies you of a special the restaurant has going. That's the vision that Google has for their phones and marketing.

Knowing this it shouldn't come of a big surprise to find out that the iPhone is tracking all of your movement. You can read a story about it here. What is surprising is that the iPhone doesn't tell you it's doing this or give you an opportunity to opt out. Google apparently does give you an opt out option when you are setting up a new phone. I've got a Palm Pre, not sure whether it's tracking my information or not, and I certainly don't remember a question asking me about this.

It's going to be curious to see how this stuff plays out over time. There are big fights brewing between privacy advocates and Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. At some point we as a culture will have to make a clear decision as to whether or not we are willing to give up our privacy in order for these companies to provide us cheaper services with better marketing. We already do it in grocery stores and drug stores when we sign up for their store discount card, and that data reveals much more about our personal lives than does our locations, so it's hard to believe we won't give in to this intrusion as well.

Tech Note: Apple Aims to Crack iPhone Subscritpion Services

I love how Apple sells their latest maneuver to maintain control of the iPhone, "We believe that this innovative subscription service will provide publishers with a brand new opportunity to expand digital access to their content onto the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, delighting both new and existing subscribers."

Here is the breakdown of their new subscription service and why it is not a service, but a way of slamming the door in the face of their competition to the iPhone marketplace.  Let's say you are Rhapsody and you have an iPhone app, and let's say you allow people to sign up for your service through the iPhone app.  Well if you do, then you must pay Apple 30% of all revenues this subscription brings in. So if you have a $10 monthly subscription fee, then $3 of that goes to Apple every month.

How many companies do you think can afford to give up 30% of their subscription revenues?  Obviously this is not a service Apple is providing to content providers.  It is merely a wall to keep as much purchased content as possible on Apple devices, purchased through Apple's iTunes Store. 

The obvious way around this for subscription services is to require all new subscribers to go through their web site to subscribe instead of through the iPhone App.  Apple is also making this more difficult by setting the restriction that these apps are not allowed to provide a link to the external site. 

It will be very interesting to see how these companies like Rhapsody and Amazon react.  Will they pull their apps completely?  Will they only allow for subscription sign up to occur on their web sites?  Or will they give in and plunk over the 30%?