You are correct about the culture of privacy at Apple and that is the awesome thing about Apple. The big "Allow Apple to collect anonymous data to help improve..." screen you get when setting up your device is the master opt-out switch where you can turn all data collection off.
For those that leave it on I think Apple have become very good about finding means to acquire user engagement data in a privacy-compliant way. For starters, by identifying user data with a cohort identifier when they can (which will cluster hundreds or thousands of user's data into arbitrary groups). Or if specific user engagement is wanted in order to see if usage patterns change they might create a rotating random identifier (that is regenerated to a new random identifier every 11 months so as to not build up an identifying profile).
I think the bigger question for me is if they have the tools and teams in place that can take full advantage of that data to improve user experience. Or if it is just a firehose of data points that are left instead to just curdle in a large vat.
You are correct about the culture of privacy at Apple and that is the awesome thing about Apple. The big "Allow Apple to collect anonymous data to help improve..." screen you get when setting up your device is the master opt-out switch where you can turn all data collection off.
For those that leave it on I think Apple have become very good about finding means to acquire user engagement data in a privacy-compliant way. For starters, by identifying user data with a cohort identifier when they can (which will cluster hundreds or thousands of user's data into arbitrary groups). Or if specific user engagement is wanted in order to see if usage patterns change they might create a rotating random identifier (that is regenerated to a new random identifier every 11 months so as to not build up an identifying profile).
I think the bigger question for me is if they have the tools and teams in place that can take full advantage of that data to improve user experience. Or if it is just a firehose of data points that are left instead to just curdle in a large vat.