- This is deepen our calculus about what a good
experience is for a customer and what's healthy for the future of our industry and the
future of the world. - Okay, so stop me if this
isn't the first tech executive you've heard wax on about how their product
can save the world. Except this isn't just any tech executive. This is Apple's Craig Federighi. He sits right below Apple CEO Tim Cook on the org chart. Does Tim Cook really call you Superman? - Certainly not to my face. - Okay. Does he call you Hair Force One? - Lord no. (both chuckling) Usually Craig. - [Joanna] The software on
your iPhone, iPad or Mac, Federighi oversees the
development of it all. He's got a lot of power and he's been putting it
behind a new privacy feature called ATT, App Tracking Transparency, being released today in iOS 14.5. Apps now have to ask to track
you in a popup like this. Apple only gave me 15
minutes with Mr. Federighi to talk about the new feature. - Joanna, am I just a
voice or do I have a face? - So I've got my stopwatch. I did not trust the Apple Stopwatch app. I'm going to give you 30 seconds to explain what App
Tracking Transparency is. - All right, I think I can
do it in eight seconds. - And go. - App Tracking Transparency
gives users the choice of whether they wanna be tracked
across apps and websites. - 8.69. - Oh, sorry. I could do it again faster. - [Joanna] Well, it's
a bit deeper than that. - It also affects
something called the IDFA, which is an identifier that
iOS has had for many years. - [Joanna] Every iPhone has
this unique tracking number and it's used to track
your activity between apps. So say you're thinking about buying, I don't know, Craig's blue shirt in this shopping app. The shopping app has your
unique tracking number. Then you open your
favorite social media app and what do you know? A shirt ad. That's because the two apps
shared info using the IDFA. In iOS 14.5, this number
isn't automatically shared. If you wanna let the app share it, you'd have to tap Allow here. - We needed to make sure both that the user had a clear understanding of the decision and that we gave the
developer an opportunity to explain themselves as to the purpose for which they were
potentially asking to track. And so the developer, of course, can present messaging even
before they ask the system to prompt the user. And then they also get a little area on the panel itself to explain that they're using this for
presenting more effective ads or whatever the case may be. - Why the verbiage ask not to track? Why not just do not track? - There are other techniques that developers over time have developed, like fingerprinting, there's
a bit of cat and mouse game around other ways that an app might scheme to create a tracking identifier and it's a policy issue for us to say you must not do that. And so we can't ensure at the system level that they're not tracking. We can do so at a policy level. - Will there be any Apple
Apps with the ATT popup? - No, not at this time. I mean, there's no Apple
app or service that tracks. There's no app that's sharing information with external data brokers. No app or service of ours that is tracking you across other vendors, apps and websites. If we ever did do something that fits the definition of tacking, we, of course, would
have to show that prompt. - So I wanted to read a quote
from Steve Jobs back in 2010. And he said, "I believe some people." - Wanna share more data
than other people do. Ask 'em. Ask 'em every time. - We the people of the internet, we're sort of sick of popups. I don't wanna speak for
everyone on the internet but I think most are. How did you think about that? - I share your frustration
with sometimes being bombarded with every website usually telling you that they're going to track you with a big blue Accept button and no real choice at all. We had to make it a meaningful choice. And we had to make it a clear choice and one that had effect and that I think is in deep contrast to most of what you see on the internet. As people get today's update and begin to launch apps, they'll see it at first and pretty soon, this will become a pretty
infrequent occurrence, both because some apps will stop tracking or maybe never did. And the apps that you use that do track, you'll make that decision once and that'll be it. - [Joanna] You also have a choice to turn off all these popups and completely opt out of
any tracking in all apps. You can go to Settings, Privacy, Tracking and switch off Allows
Apps to Ask to Track. What will Craig do? - For me, ask app not to track. - [Joanna] And well, that's
what the industry expects the majority of people to pick too. And all sorts of companies, apps and social media networks that rely on data for
personalized advertising aren't happy about it. Facebook specifically has
called Apple's move hypocritical and anti-competitive. - We've been on this road of
improving privacy protections in our platform really since
the beginning of iPhone. Before that truthfully. And so we're accustomed to
initially some panicked responses from some quarters. It wasn't surprising to us I think to hear that some people were
going to push back on this but at the same thing, we were completely confident that it's the right thing
to give users a choice here. - But what's in all of this for Apple? Is this all altruistic for
this trillion dollar company? How much is privacy factoring
into buying decisions? Do you have a sense of that? - I don't know. It's a value that is so deep in us. Personal information can be used and abused and even weaponized in ways that can be
really, really destructive, often in a way that's not at all apparent to the person who might be
giving up that information. Years ago, people were
saying oh, privacy's dead. Everyone's given up their privacy. And so we just kept doing it because to us, regardless of
whether it was a selling point for a phone, we thought
it was the right thing. - A lot of the criticism right now about Apple is about control. And that it has too much control, specifically over its
platforms and the App Store. What's the conversation like right now amongst you and other top
brass at Apple about this? - Well, I think we've always felt that customers have a real choice in terms of what phone they wanna buy, what ecosystem they wanna be a part of. And we think we're
offering people a choice to buy into an ecosystem where there is a degree of curation, where there is protection for privacy, where there are certain standards. We don't think everyone's
going to prefer that choice. - Do you feel like there will need to be from Apple a lessening
of some of the control? - I don't know. I feel like we're making
the right choices now. We're always considering
the right things primarily from a customer perspective. So as long as we're keeping our eye on that North Star, I think we feel good
about the course we're on. - And of course, I had to sneak in a few
non-privacy questions. Wireless charging, corded charging? - I am primarily a cord guys. I have enough devices that it works out for with
my stacking arrangements. - Tim said, I believe it
was a couple weeks ago, that he says that he won't
be at Apple for at least in the next 10 years, he
will not stay at Apple for the next 10 years. Your name's being floating. - Insanity. Yeah, no, that would be irresponsible. - How's the software going
in the mixed reality headset? - I don't know anything about
what you're talking about. - What do you think of mixed reality? - I think it's got a lot of potential. I think it deserves exploration. - [Joanna] Whatever that next
big Apple product looks like, it's a pretty safe bet that Mr. Federighi is gonna be pushing
hard for privacy in it. - These devices are so intimately a part of our lives and contain so much of what we're thinking
and where we've been and who we've been with that users deserve and need control of that information. Abuses can range from creepy to dangerous.
