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Apples Makes Fast iTunes Music Store "Spy" Fix
This week the Jointblog has discussed the importance of media design. If design includes form and function, then Apple's issue response team gets high marks in form and function. In brief, their response was nimble, quick...and perfect, long before a possible problem could snowball out of control.
Responding to concerns first raised by Apple user/bloggers less than 10 days ago, Apple Computer quick updated its iTunes software to fix the problem. Privacy concerns over a new spy-like song-recommendation feature in the music jukebox program met with fast negative concerns.
Apple switched its "Mini-Store" so users now have the choice of turning it on the feautre, rather than having it automatically activate with its new version update of iTunes. The intention was to help customize the product offerings seen by each online Music Store user.
The feature requires that the information on the songs being played be sent back to Apple, which in turn churns out related music titles. It's a type of customization that an increasing number of digital services are adopting.
This differs, however, from, say Amazon.com, where product recommendations emerge as users shop the site, and they presumably understand that whatever data they are inputting online is being sent to Amazon.
What is so interesting about this story is when it is compared to the Sony rootkit controversy from last year, where purchasers of Sony CDs unknowingly had rootkit files installed on the computers designed to block file sharing. It took Sony months to address and fix the problem. With Apple, only a few days.
The big fear was the concern Apple might be collecting information about a user's private listening session. Apple says it was not storing any of the user data.
According to the Apple press release, Apple says "We've listened to our users and made access to the MiniStore an opt-in feature,"(Tom Neumayr).
full story
posted by Unknown @ Thursday, January 19, 2006,
