> I am not one for conspiracy theories but it's not hard to notice the sudden appearance of these devices
I think sadly there is a much sadder and boring explanation. Google already tried Google Glass 12? years ago
its not sudden, its just the tech has matured enough. And Google and Fb are ad companies, their market is telling companies "we know everything about your customers, pay us so we can give it to you". For them to grow the arms race of privacy invading information collection is inevitable. But you cant keep asking more of consumers without giving them something in return, so they wrap the data collection in "features", which they then tell everyone you are falling behind if you do not have them.
So if you are not into data collection you either fall behind in feature parity or you find a way to have the minimum required info in terms of spillage. And Apple seems to fall on the second one
(Whether having gigantic corporations whose entire business model is selling advertiser information that users do not know was collected should be allowed to operate, and have hardware businesses, an dpolice connections and defense contracts is perhaps a much less interesting but easier moral question where the answer seems like an easy NO)
I think sadly there is a much sadder and boring explanation. Google already tried Google Glass 12? years ago
its not sudden, its just the tech has matured enough. And Google and Fb are ad companies, their market is telling companies "we know everything about your customers, pay us so we can give it to you". For them to grow the arms race of privacy invading information collection is inevitable. But you cant keep asking more of consumers without giving them something in return, so they wrap the data collection in "features", which they then tell everyone you are falling behind if you do not have them.
So if you are not into data collection you either fall behind in feature parity or you find a way to have the minimum required info in terms of spillage. And Apple seems to fall on the second one
(Whether having gigantic corporations whose entire business model is selling advertiser information that users do not know was collected should be allowed to operate, and have hardware businesses, an dpolice connections and defense contracts is perhaps a much less interesting but easier moral question where the answer seems like an easy NO)