On some level you already know your Apple gadgets are linked nodes on a network with your most sensitive data coursing through it. If you\u2019re like many users, your app states, documents, health information, photos\u2014possibly including nudes\u2014and maybe your payment and banking codes, along with the passwords that unlock them, all exist nowhere and everywhere, because their real home is an Apple server. Incorporate a new device into the network, and with a few button presses all that data will be accessible on the replacement, and you\u2019ll try not to think about how you didn\u2019t exactly open up a safe and retrieve it manually.<\/p>\n
But Apple reportedly considered a feature that would have skipped even those meager button presses\u2014delivering a device with your life already accessible on it as soon as you unboxed it.<\/p>\n
According to Bloomberg\u2019s Mark Gurman, a forthcoming gadget-leasing plan (because remember: the future of tech is owning nothing<\/a>) may allow users to pay monthly fees for all eternity and receive perpetually new gadgets in cycles from 12-36 months long. An option to pre-load new devices with the users data won\u2019t be available, but Gurman says it was in the works for a while<\/a>.<\/p>\n He says it would have been called a \u201cwhite-glove component,\u201d and if the user opted into it, it would have arrived\u00a0 \u201cpreloaded with all of your data via your iCloud backup.\u201d<\/p>\n Gurman says this would take away the burden of setting up new devices, which he calls a \u201cpain in the neck.\u201d Do people really feel this way? I find setting up new devices to be therapeutic, but I don\u2019t get new devices very often like I assume Gurman does.<\/p>\n However, Gurman adds, the white-glove component surfaced uncomfortable \u201cprivacy questions,\u201d and Gurman says the \u201coptics\u201d of an electronics company in possession of all your data shipping a brand new device to you with all that data already on it as it\u2019s being shipped \u201cmight have been disturbing.\u201d<\/p>\n I can see why Apple was (reportedly) considering this\u2014since it\u2019s seems like all the technology is right there\u2014but I can also see why Apple might have shied away from rolling it out. It would have been welcome in the time of \u201cprivacy nihilism<\/a>\u201d which seemed to describe public attitudes at the end of the 20-teens, but as a society, we seem to have exited our privacy nihilism era, and entered more of a tech privacy backlash phase. While we\u2019re not exactly locking down our devices and it doesn\u2019t look like there\u2019s a fad for things like air-gapping<\/a> and NAS home data storage<\/a>, trends like the smashing of Flock cameras<\/a> and consumer outrage over surveillance pricing<\/a> suggest that we are at least starting to care about privacy.<\/p>\n