Apple's Craig Federighi says it wants others to copy its App Store privacy labels

Craig Federighi Wwdc 2020 Privacy
Craig Federighi Wwdc 2020 Privacy (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Apple's Craig Federighi says the company wants others to copy the privacy labels it recently added to the App Store.

Apple recently rolled out the App Store privacy labels that it spoke about during WWDC 20 and senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, says others are welcome to follow suit.

In an interview with Fast Company, Federighi said that the project was the "start of something really ambitious" and went on to say that the new labels are "critical" in a modern world.

Federighi said that Apple transparency efforts are critical in a world where more of our personal data is collected than ever before, and the new labeling is something Apple will iterate on and perfect as time goes on. The ultimate raison d'être for the privacy labels is to help users be better informed about how their data is being used—and Apple thinks the new labels are going to be something users really come to appreciate when deciding which apps to download.

Apple wants everyone to benefit from this approach and Federighi even said that others are welcome to copy Apple's work.

But unlike most of Apple's innovations, Federighi says he hopes Apple's competitors and others in the industry will blatantly copy this one. "The work we're doing here we view in the context of providing leadership to the industry, raising users' expectations of what they should expect and demand in privacy, " Federighi told me when I asked if he'd like to see the Google Play store roll out similar labeling. "And we absolutely expect that others in the industry will respond to the heightened expectations and demands of customers and improve privacy—and we think that's great.

Apple rolled the new privacy labelshttps://www.imore.com/apples-new-privacy-page-goes-live-alongside-new-app-store-nutrition-labels out across its App Stores yesterday alongside an updated Privacy page on its website.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.