Facebook And Location Tracking In iOS 13

September 19, 2019
2 min read

As we’ve seen last week with Spotify, the use of location tracking can be explained with business interest – they want users to stop abusing the Family Premium plan. What Facebook is doing after all the scandals it had with our data, is unexplainable.

In the recent Newsroom article titled “Understanding Updates to Your Device’s Location Settings”, the social network company explains how updates to Android and iOS will prevent them from abusing the constant location tracking.

Facebook is better with location. It powers features like check-ins and makes planning events easier. It helps improve ads and keep you and the Facebook community safe. Features like Find Wi-Fi and Nearby Friends use precise location even when you’re not using the app to make sure that alerts and tools are accurate and personalized for you.

Just read the fucking quote. Facebook tracking your location to keep you safe. How delirious are they? Article further explains, that now there will be the ability in OS to allow location sharing with the app only once and if the app is tracking your location in the background with the app closed, iOS will prompt you with notification, showing map of the location data and explanation why the app uses it (to keep you safe, of course).

This article shows how bad these changes are for Facebook. Right now location tracking is the best data they can get on users. Knowing where you’ve been can give a lot of insights. Which neighborhood do you live in, where do you work, which type of restaurants you go to, if you are sick, how often do you travel. All of this information can be gathered using the background location tracking, without users even noticing.

I’m glad both Google and Apple are making changes to the location tracking in theirs OS’s. I’m sure Facebook will find a way to track it anyway, they say so in the article:

We may still understand your location using things like check-ins, events and information about your internet connection.

This article shows how out of touch Facebook is, but the more scary thing is – people believe them. I hope those changes will educate people more on the type of data they are sending to those companies.

My thoughts on smartwatches

September 4, 2014
4 min read

You know you have a problem, when one of the best designs in the category looks like this:

image

Or almost round Moto 360. As most of the people don’t use their watches to see time, your product should look good on the wrist, there is no other way around this.

It’s not the best practice to draw some kind of conclusions based on personal anecdotal evidence, but I’ll do just that right now (you could feel it will be this way, by reading the begging of the sentence). I do wear a watch, it’s analogue, pretty big watch by Tomy Hilfiger. I love watches, I use them (I don’t even notice what time it is when I pull out my smartphone), I also wear the Fitbit Flex on the other hand and like a watch, it is an accessory for me, I have a couple of different color bracelets. If they’d looked ugly (like most smartwatches), I wouldn’t even consider wearing them. So that’s my thoughts on design.

The other important thing is what do you use the watch for. On IFA Samsung showed Gear S, which is mini smartphone strapped to your wrist. It’s bulky, 2’’ screen is just too big to wear on a wrist. It has standard wristband and you can change it, which is good, I guess, but won’t help you much. Here is a promotional video of the device.

Let’s look at possible uses for the device from this ad and some hands on from different blogs:

  • Notifications – there are two types of people, in my opinion, those who have too many notifications, so their wrist will constantly buzz (many tech journalists complain about that) and then, there are those, who don’t have as many notifications, so you can just pull your phone out of the pocket. I’m in the latter category and I don’t see a point in this idea of getting notifications on my wrist.
  • Accept or Make calls – this one looks cool, from my understanding, you can’t do that on many smartwatches, but if you watch the promo video, you’ll see, you have to keep your wrist close to your face and in that case – why even bother? – just use a phone with loudspeaker turned on, or better yet Bluetooth headset.
  • Easy text input – let’s repeat this one more time. Easy. Text. Input. Using the QWERTY keyboard on 2 inch screen. Do you even hear yourself Samsung? After using bigger screens I can’t type on the iPhone, let alone the smartwatch.
  • Navigation – this one is interesting, but again, you could just as well use your smartphone. Also, using my phone for navigation, you just see how it drains battery, what about the smartwatch? Will it drain the battery as fast? My guess would be – yes.
  • Music and Tracking Activities – I’ve combined these two, just because it makes sense. Here again, will it be able to keep charge while Bluetooth and GPS are on? If it can, it would be one good use for this watch.
  • UV information – this is just ridiculous, but maybe someone needs it, I just won’t even comment.
  • Tracking Sleep – when I first got my Fitbit Flex and started tracking sleep with it, for about a week I felt uncomfortable wearing it while sleeping, I can’t even imagine wearing 2’’ phone on my wrist.

I think the best you can do with the category of devices you wear on your wrist is some kind of health and fitness use. Without this watch and notification bullshit.