A few days ago, Apple held its yearly WWDC event, during which, they announced a lot of software updates and only one piece of hardware unlike what leakers predicted.
Among all the software announcements, iOS 14 was the first because it touches more people or most of Apple’s clients compared to any other software they do.
In this blog post, I will go in-depth of my favorite new features in iOS 14 that concern privacy.
Privacy has become Apple’s headline in almost everything they do, to me, that is the bestselling feature and I would choose Apple every day just knowing they care enough to implement more and more privacy features yearly.
At the top of it all, any time, any app, including Apple’s first-party apps, starts using your camera, you will see a small green light on the top right part of the screen that stays there until the app is closed or is not using your camera. The same with your microphone but the light shown is orange.
cross-platform tracking
iOS 14 brings new privacy features; first, data tracking on websites. Safari, Apple’s native web browser, can now prevent websites from tracking you when you are on other websites that don’t belong to them.
This new feature shows you who is prevented from tracking you on a specific website and also as you browse the internet more, it will generate a report for you about overall blocking and what websites were blocked from tracking you.
LOCATION
Other privacy features can be accessed from settings or when you use an app for the first time, specific prompts will be shown to you. Now, for location services, if you are allowing location services for certain apps that need to know your location but they don’t need to know your precise location, you can do just that and not allow them to know your precise location.
Apps will be given an approximate location and not the precise one; it’s very comforting to have this feature. Keeping in mind that only the fewest of the few apps can serve you better if they know your precise location.
Photos
Another AMAZING feature is sharing access to photos with apps! In the past, I used to allow access to my photos for a certain app and when I am done sending a photo or saving one, I would block the app from accessing my photos.
That pain is now over! On iOS 14, when you are accessing your photos from an app, iOS will ask if you want to allow the app to read and write all of your media, or just SELECTED ones. I find this feature INNOVATIVE and also the one before it! Innovation on privacy is the innovation we need! We need corporates to say, YOU, OUR USER, you control what apps and websites see and know about you.
Those are the features that are on my list of best features in iOS 14. Apple implemented privacy updates on its Maps, App Store, and other things like their new Translate app and more.
I genuinely hope this becomes an international trend that all companies follow. Users pay for services with their money and not their data! Data should be thought of as a currency and one must realize, one piece of information could be worth 1 BTC, or 1 KG of gold, or whatever number you wish of fiat currency.
The construct of money is created and not inherited into the objects we assign value to, our data is the most valuable of assets and if we choose to give it away, we shouldn’t do that for free or without knowing where it is going and for what reason.
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