Apple unveiled “App Privacy Report”

An astonishing feature to track the privacy applications of third parties looking for users’ details were unveiled during the annual developers’ conference, WWDC. With this, Apple device users can have a close watch over those who will be able to see all individual apps requesting to access features such as the microphone, camera, and phone gallery, plus which third parties they have connected with in the last seven days.

With their continual interventions with privacy trackers, Apple has prioritized privacy lately, including a war on ad-tracking, which was made feasible with earlier speculation rather than of new hardware announcement.

The new privacy report exceeds Apple’s existing “nutrition labels” by allowing users to dive deep into when exactly an app used the permissions it has been granted and also can know-how on the attempt or approaches by third-party websites for collating those data by precise privacy report showing what exactly they are contacted by an app. “Apple continues to double down on privacy,” said Thomas Husson, an analyst at Forrester. “In this area, no doubt Apple is leading the pack and setting the tone for the rest of the industry”, he added.

Apple’s privacy-focused updates also include:

Privacy Update:

• The shift of audio processing to the device only- Apple’s smart assistant Siri will never get uploaded to central servers.
• Apple Mail’s feature to hide the IP address of the device it is accessed on can prevent marketing emails as they cannot track the location or genuineness of an email.
• Apple Safari feature to prevent third-party access to user’s IP address and facilitate blocking the tracking.
• iCloud subscribers will have the option to route Safari traffic through two internet relays, similar to a VPN, to hide your identity; and the “hide my email” feature, first unveiled in 2019, will be extended to hide email addresses when used to sign up to several online services.

Though the move was highly appealing was subject to the user’s discretion to choose or not, it was criticized by major firms, including Facebook and other free-to-use services, for whom ad tracking is a rich source of revenue.

FaceTime update

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• Face time video calling platform features appear to compete with apps such as Zoom which exploded in popularity during the pandemic.
• Multiple speaker view gallery modes, blurred background mode, scheduling FaceTime calls and web links, etc. are also added in the updated features.
• Face time calls can be performed while playing a movie or music on a laptop, iPad, and iPhone.
• Share Play feature enables you to watch movies or listen to music together over a Facetime call, which could allow android and windows PC users to join calls. However, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said. Until now, the platform has only worked between Apple devices.

Operating system, iOS15 features

• The new feature helps to invite Android and PC users to FaceTime call via a browser acknowledges the pandemic has sparked explosive growth in group video calling,” said Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight. “Apple risked being left behind services such as Teams and Zoom – but browser-based calling won’t be enough to close the gap.”- He added.

Apple Wallet and digital records

• The new digital keys to Apple Wallet have been announced by Jennifer Bailey. Auto giant BMW and hotel chain Hyatt will be among the first to offer the keys – and it will be available for homes as well. Though the update on collaboration with BMW was announced at WWDC 2020 but is yet to get launch.
• The new interface for scanning a driver’s license and some other forms of ID through the wallet app is also published in their latest news release. As per Ms. Bailey, in some US states, with the lineup done with transportation security administration, iPhone users can store their ID and driving license.
• The live text feature will help scan the user’s library of photos for a text that can be turned in as a searchable key and facilitate better copy and paste between images with text or numbers.
• Optical character recognition (OCR) for note-taking, within the phone’s operating system.

Health app

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• Apple health app will help users to track walking steadiness and issue alerts if a user appears less steady, along with exercise suggestions as to how it might improve.
• The health app facilitates data sharing with doctors, and between family members upon user consent, whereas the encrypted data is not visible to others.