In the past few weeks I’ve been thinking whether Privacy can be advertised as a feature.

We are all too familiar with Facebook’s tracking, Google’s emails scanning and the countless services that have sketchy privacy policies.

Then you watch Apple’s WWDC 2014 keynote and realize that the word privacy was used by Apple’s engineers as a functional requirement rather than as an afterthought.

Rich Mogull at MacWorld:

• iOS extensions were designed to prevent them from being able to circumvent a user’s privacy settings. No keyboards sniffing keystrokes and sending them off to the Internet (as has happened on Android).
• Both HealthKit and HomeKit are designed so users control their own data, and must explicitly allow it to be shared with outsiders.
• With Touch ID, not only does your fingerprint never leave the device, but apps can never see anything stored in the Secure Enclave.
• The privacy-minded DuckDuckGo search engine will be a default option, right next to Bing and Google.

and again:

With every iteration of OS X, iOS, and iCloud, we see Apple add increasing the privacy protections it provides its users. It has consistently enabled customers to protect their personal information from advertisers, governments, third-party developers, and even Apple itself.
…
Apple is leveraging their business model and technologies to create a difficult, if not insurmountable, gap for competitors to cross.

With its pile of cash in the bank, Apple is really in the position to ditch the easy advertising money and create an added value for its consumers through privacy features.

Apple obviously doesn’t do this because they’re good, there is always a revenue-based logic behind these decision. What matters here is that Apple is willing to apply this logic to benefit its users. With its different business model, Apple is clearly saying hey, here is a multinational that plays by different rules and is ready to protect your data.

In a world where our data is open to everyone’s scrutiny, I applaud – and support through my purchases – Apple’s choice.