tinus_hn

As you say, it’s a method to get a coarse location and then refined using GPS which by the way does not really take time to acquire once you have downloaded the almanac and have the coarse location.

So this ‘allows applications to track location’ actually allows applications to track coarse location which then does not allow them to refine using GPS.

If you follow that logic the rest of the complaining, which is just your complaining, is just irrelevant whining.

And if Apple is responsible for noting who owns the devices next up you will come whining about how that mean Apple doesn’t allow you to sell your devices without informing them.

Whine whine whine from a non paying customer. You don’t like the products, you’re supposedly not going to buy them. What are you whining about, that a product exists that you don’t like? Nobody cares.

That doesn’t mean seeing an SSID means you are at exactly that location.

If you are in a city you see 50 SSIDs at any given moment. Are you at those 50 locations at the same time? No. Is there a way to triangulate where you are exactly? No, its unreliable and not an exact science.

Back in the real world SSIDs are a very coarse and not very reliable way of locating devices. You are exaggerating.

One should realize that what they call ‘track user locations’ is actually ‘get a list of visible SSIDs’.

Should be behind a permissions check, but not the end of the world.

If you think copying an authorization library is ‘obfuscated code which serves no other purpose’ you’re just wrong and this discussion is pointless.

Ultimately either Apple will successfully block Beeper permanently or they will DMCA them and the courts will have their say. We’ll see.

No, you’re fantasizing about your philosophical position again. It’s all announced and advertised in advance, if you don’t like the way the products are advertised to work, don’t buy the products and don’t complain the products work the way they are advertised to work.

Whining about keys with Apple and thieves doesn’t change a thing about that, it’s just your philosophy. Registering the device to the owner is the responsibility of the owner. It would be nice if Apple would be more insistent, even though then you would whine more ‘because Apple is shoving advertising for its services down peoples throats’ or ‘because Apple is forcing people into accepting iCloud’ but we can just disregard your whining. As you agree it would be better and would have prevented the problem in the article. But that doesn’t change the fact the responsibility is with the owner. Not with Apple. The owner made the mistake, and he agrees with it.

And requiring Apple to be perfect just because they don’t subscribe to your lofty philosophy is ridiculous. If you buy the devices you accept the agreement which, just like the agreement that comes with any similar device, plainly states that the devices and the software they run are not perfect, the product is as-is, don’t like it return it.

If companies were beholden to your philosophies we would get nowhere. That’s why no company does that. It just doesn’t work.

No, you’re missing the mark. If there is to be any kind of theft protection it is going to be a protection of the device from a user, either the proper owner or a thief.

There is no way for the device to make the distinction if the owner does not register himself as the owner and the thief does. Then the thief is the owner and the device will protect itself from the real owner. There is just no way around it. That is a mistake made by the person writing the blog, they admit it and they say Apple should have made it more obvious which is a reasonable request. Not Apple should have not made the protection, that is an unreasonable request.

You might have philosophical problems with this kind of protection, fine, then don’t buy the devices because they have it, they are advertised to have it and you can’t get them without it.

Don’t buy a device that you know doesn’t do what you want and then go whining on the internet that it doesn’t do what you want. That’s a you problem.

While obviously the true Hacker News opinion is ‘hurr durr Apple bad’.

Beeper is requesting money for illegally distributing Apples copyrighted code which they then use in a questionable way. Cry me a river.

The person is praising Activation Lock and criticizing the fact you can skip setting it up. Yet you want to turn it into a claim Activation Lock is a bad thing.

Nothing more than the typical ‘hurr durr Apple bad’ commenting common on this site. Dull, pointless, not interesting.