Though we've been doing Blogawhallop for a little over a week it is nonetheless a tradition that Thursday's news are Apple-related. We just decided it! Traditions have to start somewhere! And, to be perfectly honest, it gives us Packawhallopites a respite from whatever bat s**t crazy thing our current governor has been up to... we want to say "this week," but the guy and his band of merry men are on a roll, it seems, and usually the antics come each and every day.

Back story: Packawhallop is based in the great state of Maine, and unless you've been like the poor saps in the funny Geico commercial living under rocks you might be aware that Maine's biggest export right now is a seemingly endless stream of material for Comedy Central courtesy of the state's executive branch. It's good stuff. In an "ah geez ess", teeth grinding, hand wringing sense. 

So... Apple. The first news bit is Apple's response to their saving user location data in their mobile devices (a.k.a. iPhones). Here 'tis: 

http://bit.ly/l7UEHZ 

And here is the story, tiny by more objective - it not coming from the Apple Battlestar, from NYT: 

http://nyti.ms/jgPRdG

The Android also tracks where you've been:

http://bit.ly/h5lCUi

I wonder which one tracks where you've been and what you've been doing without letting you know it's doing it and saves that data in a less secure manner... better. Smells like a selling feature. Would that be your "smart" phone?

Here's the Guardian story on the iPhone's "remembering" where you've been:

http://bit.ly/eHbUz5

This is almost as problematic as Firefox remembering, in clear text, all the passwords you've ever entered into any password-protected web site and told Firefox to save it. Funny, but Firefox is web browser, not a password database. But perhaps I'll write about that "feature" another time.

Location, location, location... apparently.

The problem with the iPhone's collecting this info is that, per sources for the article: "[T]his data is stored in an easily-readable form on your machine. Any other program you run or user with access to your machine can look through it."

There are a couple apps, like Untrackered, that'll prevent your iPhone from remembering this info.