The tech world went mental last week when it turned out your iPhone is a digital stalker, recording your every move, and that the file that held the location database could be accessed by a third-party desktop application. People got terribly angry about the whole thing, tweeting about it (with geo-located tweets), while checking into Foursquare, and then additionally yelling about Apple on Facebook (next to the bit where they’d left their personal details online for everyone to see).

And, yes, I’m being flippant (again), and, yes, this iOS problem is clearly some kind of stupid bug where cache isn’t being flushed, and, yes, Apple should perhaps make the ability to turn off such data collecting more discoverable (tip: if you’re the kind of person to wear a tin-foil hat, turn off Location Services in the Settings app). But Marco Arment makes a few really good points about this Apple privacy snafu in his piece Privacy and incentives.

His main argument is that Apple largely doesn’t give a crap about your data, because it doesn’t make (much) money out of it, and that Apple’s always been good at protecting privacy. You might PFFT loudly at that, but bear in mind what’s happening in digital publishing on the iOS platform: publishers are mostly pissed off at Apple not providing access to user details, not the 30 per cent cut Apple takes.

Arment continues, arguing hugely popular websites are far worse than Apple when it comes to privacy. He cites Google and Facebook, but adds that many other web services

make money overwhelmingly from advertising. Advertising can be far more lucrative when it’s targeted well, so there’s a huge incentive for these services to collect as much data about you as possible, store it forever, and indirectly sell it to advertisers by selling targeted services and “eyeballs” to them.

People forget that the customers of Google and Facebook aren’t the users as much as the advertisers; but Apple’s customers are the people who buy the kit. Apple sees content providers as facilitators, adding value to the things Apple itself then sells to its customers. This is a big difference, and a big part of the reason why I don’t think Apple’s suddenly decided to become Big Brother; like Arment, I think the location database issue is a bug, and it’s one that will be squashed in an upcoming iOS release.

Nice quote from James Cameron on TMZ, referring to us managing to escape destruction by Skynet and machines then taking over:

With everybody going through their lives bent over their Blackberries all day long, you could even argue the machines have already won.

A wave of paranoia has been unleashed by discoveries that your iPhone is tracking your every move (Guardian), prompting some to assume Apple is sending the data to the mothership, in order to have you beaten to death if you don’t look at enough iAds every month. MAN, THOSE APPLE GUYS ARE EVIL.

But wait!

Alex Levinson reports some shocking discoveries:

• Apple is not collecting the data;
• The location data is used by software such as Maps and Camera, in order to operate;
• The hidden file is neither new nor secret (it’s just moved);
• The ‘discovery’ was in fact published in 2010.

But hang on… If this is all the case, then this is the media whipping up a bullshit frenzy about Apple, just because that’s more newsworthy than:

Location data still on Apple device, so location-oriented apps still work. Bloke writes app to pull data to desktop. World doesn’t explode. No-one really cares. Well, apart from editors who know they can fire up the link-bait machine. Oh, and people going ARGH, THEY KNOW WHERE I’VE BEEN while tweeting their geo-location data, checking into Foursquare and Gowalla and posting to Facebook that they’re “away from home, in a pub on the Thames, if you want to join me,” which of course has NO SECURITY IMPLICATIONS WHATSOEVER.

Oh.

Poor Apple. It must be really hard for the company right now. As reported by yours truly (in a suitably bleary late-night manner), iPad sales ‘disappointed’ during Q2 and were ‘below expectations’—assuming you’re an analyst and don’t really have a clue, but like to play games with Apple stock by flinging your guesses at the internet, like a monkey throwing poo at a zoo.

But what about the iPhone? Henry Blodget already told us on Business Insider that Apple’s device was dead in the water. According to Apple’s Q2 report, here’s what ‘dead in the water’ looks like:

The Company sold 18.65 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 113 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.

“Fuck,” said Steve Jobs, surprisingly candidly. “Apple really is totally doomed. Despite second quarter revenue of $24.67 billion and record second quarter net profit of $5.99 billion, and us selling every iPad we can make, those analyst guys are always right, so we must be heading for a pretty big fall in Q3.” Jobs also added that the iPhone, having sold 18.65 million units in the previous quarter, was to be immediately cancelled “because that Blodget guy seems like he knows his stuff, and so I guess he knows something we don’t”.

Oh dear—my apologies. I appear to have accidentally tapped into a collective-consciousness wet-dream of Blodget’s and every analyst who reports on Apple. I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS.

Here we go again. Before bed (I’m writing this gone midnight, because I need help), I checked into the BBC and saw a slightly odd standfirst on the Apple Q2 earnings article:

Latest profits for the computer giant Apple beat most hopes with a 113% rise in iPhone sales—but iPad sales disappoint.

From what I can tell, iPad sales have been insanely swift over the past few months, but, no, there it was in grey and white (the BBC doesn’t like contrast in its text): the sales ‘disappoint’. Clicking through, there’s a little more detail:

Apple’s figures were not uniformly positive. It sold 4.69m iPad tablet computers in the quarter, below expectations.

Clearly, I’m an idiot, because 4.69 million iPads sold seems pretty damn good to me (and Apple commented: “We sold every iPad 2 we could make”). So whose expectations were these sales below? Our chums the analysts, of course—those happy campers who pull whatever figures they fancy out of their arses, and then yell at Apple for being rubbish when the company fails to match their pie-in-the-sky estimates.

If you care, CNN Money provided an exciting overview of analyst analysis (i.e. guesswork) regarding iPad sales. The range was from 8.8 million and bottomed out at 5 million. This is, presumably, why Apple selling 4.69 iPads is somehow ‘disappointing’ and ‘below expectations’, despite the fact any competitor selling anywhere near that many tablets in a quarter would be cause for a year-long celebration.

Update: it’s also worth noting that these are the exact same analysts that initially predicted doom and gloom for the iPad, suggesting Apple would sell about 17 in total, if it was lucky. As The Macalope said to me on Twitter:

Apple disappointed the analysts who suck at estimating.