The eye of my Apple

A week ago, before some people getting married and a loony being shot in the face distracted us from it, the big issue was Apple and it's creepy plans to watch everyone going to the toilet if they'd left their iPhones on. At the time I blogged on the possibility that it was a consequence of people wanting smart-phones to do stupid things I had a vague feeling that something had happened before, but couldn't remember exactly what it was. Just now while looking for something completely unrelated here on my own blog I found that I hadn't imagined it and had even blogged it at the time.

For the price of an iPhone I could have my Nokia and a separate GPS and a brand new Melway for when the GPS instructions turn out to be wrong. And not only that, I wouldn't have to worry about making  a tinfoil hat so that Apple couldn't see my thoughts, or failing that see where I am.

A thief, Horatio Toure, who stole an Apple iPhone from its owner’s hands was arrested by American police within minutes after being tracked by global positioning system (GPS) software.
The 31 year-old snatched the highly-sought after phone from the hands of a software company employee who was testing a new application in San Francisco earlier this week.
But the hapless thief was arrested by police just nine minutes later after the iPhone tracked his every move.

Now, granted this was new software being tested and which happened to be on at the time, and Apple have said that if he'd turned the phone off it would have been game over as far as nicking him so quickly was concerned. But it occurs to me that with a bit of code here and there surely it would be possible to have a phone that turns itself on at regular intervals to give a little 'Here I Am' wave in the direction of Cupertino, or whoever pays them for that information. To be honest I really can't think of any reason why they would do that, but if it can be done then it is a concern.

And the sky did not fall in and iPhone users did not shit bricks and newspapers did not make headlines out of it and politicians did not make threats and demand answers from Apple. Ten months on and the world is worrying about smart-phones being potentially capable of something rather like what was actually demonstrated last year.