> We may also use local, on-device processing to select which ad to display, using > information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open.

But who's counting?

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...

But summary is they use a bunch of stuff about the device (past purchases, location, fingerprinting-like data such as carrier and so on) and your usage of a bunch of apps like apple news and stocks.

https://www.theverge.com/22296979/us-offshore-ships-wind-boo...

The author of the NYT piece is a member of the editorial board so he should be held to a higher standard than employees of a business that protest its practices, while probably having no power over setting them. A member of the editorial board is certainly in a more powerful position, relatively speaking, to make changes in their newspaper and surely he could have talked about the example set by the business he works for. If Google came out with PR that pointed at Apple tracking users of its phones, something that is factually true, they would be rightfully laughed at because they are the last ones that can complain that someone tracks people.

There's nothing surprising with Apple doing this, what's surprising is that they are applying different standards to everyone else and most people still fail to see this, and are surprised or disappointed by the behavior, when it's all been in plain sight.

So your argument is maybe valid (I don't think so, tracking is tracking and this isn't just contextual targeting) only now, as time goes by and Apple accumulates more power your argument is back to being invalid again.

But IP alone is imperfect as well anyway for tracking.

There needs to exist a way to identify you in other ways and in the future cookies won't be one of those. So a site that has your information because you shared it with them will be able to see your cohort changing, otherwise you'll look like a new user each time.

And yeah I'm extremely familiar with FLoC, more so than the EFF.

It's pretty obvious Apple doesn't have financially valuable properties on the web but they have plenty in their application ecosystem.

In Apple's view Apple News is how people consume news, not go to the web where the user experience isn't custom tailored by Apple. Apple News is barely different than Google AMP that everyone rages against, try to get someone to share a link to a piece of news from Apple News and it will come with the ask to subscribe or download it.

So in Apple's ideal plan almost every place where today ads are displayed will be inside Apple News.

And hey, I wasn't aware there exist another App Store where people can buy applications or in-app purchases on iOS.

And yeah you can turn FLoC off too both today and when it will be in production.

Lastly, when did the argument move from "advertising bad, tracking data always bad, targeted advertising terrible" to "if Apple does it then I'm good with it"?

Cohort membership changes pretty frequently instead. So the system may put all people that browse mostly golf sites together in cohort 12345 that only the algorithm knows it's about golf sites, people enter and leave that cohort on a daily basis and you can only be a member of a single cohort at a time.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223