For years, Manzana focuses on the privacy of its products, be they devices or online services. This does not mean that the company is without controversy. In fact, this year has seen one of the periods of greatest public scrutiny for its new child protection measures, which have now been delayed. However, it must be recognized that those in Cupertino have been among the first to place privacy at the fore. And Steve Jobs has been the great responsible.
To get a full sample of this we have to go back to the 2010 edition of the conference All Things Digital. In what may have been one of his last big public interviews as CEO of Apple, Jobs spoke about privacy and the focus his company had around it. The concepts of the then executive director of the Cupertino firm are really interesting, since they expose a position quite advanced for the time.
Steve Jobs talking about privacy
Silicon Valley is not monolithic. We always had a different look than our colleagues when it came to privacy. We take privacy extremely seriously. For example, we care a lot about location on phones; and we are concerned that a 14-year-old boy is bullied and something terrible happens because of our phone. So before apps access your location data – and we don’t make a rule that says it has to show a warning and ask, because we know they might not comply – they communicate with our location services, and that’s us who shows the notice that says “this app wants to use your location data, do you agree?” every time they want to use them.
We do a lot of things like this to make sure people understand what these apps are doing. […] We have rejected a large number of applications from the App Store that want to take a lot of your personal data and send it to the cloud. A lot of people in Silicon Valley think we’re old-fashioned, and maybe we are, but we worry about this kind of thing.
Steve Jobs
An advanced stance for the time
What was said by Steve Jobs could be considered a standard response for any major company that processes personal information of its users today, in the middle of 2021. Therefore It is important to note that he said it in 2010, at a time when there was still no real collective consciousness about what the collection of personal data entailed.
Consider that at the time, it was barely three years after the iPhone was launched, and Android was even younger on the market. Clearly, smartphones as we know them today had not yet become globally popular. Even the tablet market was nascent, with the first generation of the iPad appearing on the scene that year.
This means that the main interactions with the web were through a computer, and for many the concept of “privacy” simply implied have a good password email, on Facebook or on Twitter.
However, Steve Jobs and Apple agreed that there were many other things that were important to work on, especially as we began to offer more cloud-based services. AND achieve explicit consent of the users It was another of the concerns of the cofounder of the apple firm.
Privacy means that people know what they are subscribing to, in clear words, and repeatedly. I am optimistic and I believe that people are smart, and some want to share more personal information than others. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them, if they are tired of you asking them. Let them know precisely what you are going to do with their data. That is what we think.
Steve Jobs
A commitment to privacy, before privacy was talked about
As we said before, Apple has not been without problems or controversies around privacy. What we are raising here is not a question of being infallible, but of sticking to an ideal. Steve Jobs saw added value in privacy, at a time when no one was talking about the subject.
With successes and errors, those in Cupertino can say that they had a clearer and more advanced picture in direct comparison with the competition. When many began to pay attention to the use and abuse of users’ personal data after the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, Apple had a significant advantage in the area.
10 years after the death of Steve Jobs, those of the block have the peace of mind of having taken advantage of the vision of their main figure to make privacy a trademark.