• Bloomberg Businessweek, Wednesday, April 27, 2011 12:25 PM

With broad implications for the future of mobile media and advertising, Apple is finally fessing up to recording consumer locations. "The company explains in an FAQ ... that it is not stalking its iPhone customers, but is instead trying to get more accurate location information," reports CNet. "It also admits that there is a bug in the software that is making the iPhone store too much information."

"Facing scrutiny from consumers and lawmakers over the collection of data on its iPhone, [Apple] said it isn't tracking the users' location and plans to reduce the amount of data the device stores," writes Bloomberg Businessweek. "The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone's location," Apple said in a statement.

"At the same time, though, the company effectively admits that retaining such a lengthy and comprehensive location record on the phone ... is unnecessary," PCMag.com points out. "Also, backing the file up to a user's computer is clearly not needed either."

What's more, "One big mystery of this whole location-data saga has been this question: Why does Apple want to log all of this location info in the first place?" CNN writes. "The company did not so much apologize to users for this snafu as tell them that they just didn't understand how complicated this situation is."

Meanwhile, "Reading Apple's Q&A post again, there's a huge and surprising hint hidden in plain view -- 'traffic data,'" writes Fast Company. "Apple's collecting data on traffic... as in cars on roads, based perhaps on anonymous location data and relative speed? We're assuming it's this kind of traffic, rather than Net traffic. And if that's true, it's big news that suggests Apple's going to make good on its extensive patent portfolio and release its own advanced navigation apps."

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