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Apple took 8 days to give me the data it had collected on me. It was eye opening.
Fortnite is the biggest game on the planet right now because it's a living, breathing world
Guitar-maker Gibson files for bankruptcy to leave its electronics ambitions behind

Apple took 8 days to give me the data it had collected on me. It was eye opening.

Posted: 04 May 2018 01:24 AM PDT

Unlike Facebook and Google, Apple says it's stricter about what data it keeps and allows advertisers to see. Jefferson Graham reports on Talking Tech. USA TODAY

How much does Apple know about me? The answer surprised me.

Following Facebook's acknowledgement that it had let a political ad targeting firm scrape the personal data of 87 million users, I rushed to see what kind of personal data the social network and Google had gathered on me. Both had more information, reaching back longer, than I had envisioned.

So Apple was next. I use an iPhone, iPad and two Mac computers, and Apple also offers data downloads in the privacy section of its website. It's hard to find, and once you do make the connection, you can expect a hefty wait to get the results.

But don't expect to stay up all night reading what Apple has on you.

The zip file I eventually received from Apple was tiny, only 9 megabytes, compared to 243 MB from Google and 881 MB from Facebook. And there's not much there, because Apple says the information is primarily kept on your device, not its servers. The one sentence highlight: a list of my downloads, purchases and repairs, but not my search histories through the Siri personal assistant or the Safari browser.

First, the wait

It took eight days for my data to arrive from Apple, from a European office that is handling the privacy requests. After making the request, the iPhone maker first asked for my street address, phone number, the serial number of the iPhone, and other personal information before releasing it. This compares to Google and Facebook's data dump. They asked no questions, and the results arrived swiftly—Facebook within minutes, and Google within hours.

What I got

Apple's file on me took longer but was lightweight — a testimony, according to the company, of how little it collects and stores on its individual users.

According to the file, it had made time stamps of when I backed up my iPhone, when I uploaded photos to iCloud and really boring things like that. It had stored my e-mail and physical address, but not the phone number, which is odd, since the information came from the iPhone.

It kept a copy of every app and song I'd downloaded, every tune I'd added to my iTunes music library, and every time I needed repair on a multitude of Apple devices going back a decade.

What it didn't include

What Apple didn't share with me is all the questions I've asked the Siri personal digital assistant, queries it gathers to make the artificial intelligence smarter.

The company says the data wouldn't tell an individual user anything, since it's not associated with him or her. Your Siri requests —"Show me how to get to PF Chang's," or "What year was Steve Jobs born?" go back to Apple — but

it uses a random identifier to mask your identity. So a Siri search for the closest Chipotle restaurant will only tell Apple that a user requested the data, but not associate it with me.

The company says flatly that it doesn't want your personal information and doesn't store it.

On the Safari browser on my Macs, my browsing history goes back to July, 2017, but Apple says it doesn't track that information.

As a result, the personal download is very different from what I got from competitors Facebook and Google, which both track our moves, likes and queries in order to sell targeted advertising to sponsors.

Apple says it's in a different business, one based on selling you products, not selling advertisers access to your attention — for the most part.

On a far more limited basis than Facebook or Google, Apple does sell targeted ads based on our interests in the News and App Store apps.

To find what Apple has on you here, you need to go to the device. Click Settings, Privacy, Advertising. Then select "View Ad Information."

On my iPhone, Apple told me that the Washington Post and Politico are "targeting" me, which I guess should make me feel good as I actually read them.

More: You should pay attention to those privacy notices flooding your email

More: Facebook to let you delete data it tracks on you from apps and on the Web

More: 3 ways to clean up your online history on Facebook, Google and Apple's Safari

More: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says he's left Facebook over data collection

How to download everything Apple knows about you

You make the request at https://www.apple.com/privacy/contact and then choose from "Privacy Issues," in the contact form. Write a sentence explaining that you want your personal data and download histories.

Apple says it is moving to one-click requests — which would put it on par with Facebook and Google — in May, but only for European countries at first, to comply with new privacy regulations going into effect May 25th. It says it will have the easier and less confusing privacy requests here later in the year.

More: You should pay attention to those privacy notices flooding your email

Apple makes a big deal about its different approach to privacy on the company website, and it paints quite an effective selling proposition for buying an iPhone vs. a Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel phone.

Paul-Olivier Dehaye, who runs the PersonalData.IO website from Switzerland, gives Apple generally good marks for its approach to privacy "by keeping everything on the device, their incentives are better."

Overall, Apple keeps less data on me than Facebook or Google.Once you read it, it's more of a shrug.

But what Apple really needs to do now is not wait to take care of its customers in the United States, home to its biggest customer base, with easier tools to get our data back, it needs to do it now. Since there's so little to report back that Apple kept on us, why make it so hard?

Follow USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham on Twitter, @jeffersongraham, YouTube and Instagram, and listen to the daily Talking Tech podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to online audio.

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Fortnite is the biggest game on the planet right now because it's a living, breathing world

Posted: 06 May 2018 06:00 AM PDT

When Epic Games revealed the big surprise of Fortnite's fourth season earlier this week, fans could both see it coming and retain that giddy kid-on-Christmas-morning feeling. The developer planned the reveal for months: a meteor in the sky hovered over the game's map since January, and on Tuesday it crashed into the world of Fortnite to create a massive crater with gravity-defying extraterrestrial power-ups scattered about. In addition to the meteor crash, Epic transformed its map in subtle but powerful ways, adding new structures, secret underground lairs, and other goodies in service to its new superhero theme.

Most players expected something to this effect, and yet the Fortnite community has been effusive in its praise for how the build up and eventual execution was pulled off. It was a shared gaming experience like no other. And that's what makes season four of Fortnite feel like a crucial turning point for the battle royale game, which remains fundamentally about sending 100 human players to a deserted island to loot, build, and shoot their way to victory. The experience still revolves around that same satisfying survival cycle. But the holistic Fortnite experience is fast resembling something closer to a massively multiplayer online game, with a constantly updated narrative, a persistent world that changes all at once for every player, and a fan base with the means to customize and outfit an avatar in increasingly sophisticated ways.

Starting with season three and culminating with last Tuesday's reveal, Epic began crafting a narrative for Fortnite that felt giant and ambitious in ways few other online games have ever pulled off. Players theorized about an incoming alien invasion, and whether Epic was planning on destroying the controversial in-game metropolis Tilted Towers as a way to tell a story and adjust the game's competitive landscape at the same time. While it was Dusty Depot, and not Tilted Towers, that suffered deep impact, the effect remains the same. Epic crafted a narrative for an online multiplayer game exclusively out of contextual clues, in-game hints, and other forms of environmental storytelling. The end result is a game that feels richer, deeper, and more purposeful than its battle royale trappings would have you believe.

Epic didn't stop with the comet landing. The new superhero theme is also an ingenious way to build another layer onto the ongoing story and give players even more ways to express themselves. There are new costumes to unlock and goofy emotes, one even culled from a popular internet meme. But this season, Epic included two superhero skins that can only be upgraded by playing the game, performing challenges, and leveling up using in-game experience points. You can't buy your way to these upgrades; you have to earn them, just like in any hardcore role-playing game. The substantial upgrade paths, unlockable rewards, and the persistent but ever-changing game map make Fortnite a much meatier experience than Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, which has static, unchanging environments and otherwise boring customization options.

In this way, Fortnite feels like a more realized version of Bungie's Destiny, a game that ambitiously tried and never quite succeeded at blending the best of shooter and MMO game design. Like Destiny, Fortnite lets players engage in a shared world, customize characters, and, now, upgrade those customization options through in-game activities. But unlike Bungie, Epic puts its world-building and other update efforts toward the competitive multiplayer battle royale mode, without worrying too much about a traditional story or plot. Because Fortnite is free-to-play, players don't expect anything outside the core experience, and they pay money only for cosmetic vanity items and nothing else.

Epic's narrative and RPG-like focus isn't a thematic side project or something the developer is doing just for fun. Focusing on world-building and giving players a communal story to rally around is a business imperative for a free-to-play game like Fortnite. The game can only stay relevant so long as players feel invested in what they're doing. That doesn't just mean playing the competitive multiplayer every day to unlock challenges or try and win a match. Being invested in Fortnite also means caring more deeply about what story Epic is trying to tell, where the game is headed, and how that interplay between narrative and gameplay will help the title evolve over time, like just the best of MMOs.

Also consider the Battle Pass, which urges players to log in every day and complete challenges to unlock better rewards that can only be earned and not bought. Every single core pillar of Fortnite, from its growing narrative to its in-game store to its seasonal competitive multiplayer approach, feeds into a cycle that helps the game stay relevant, popular and lucrative. The players who are more invested then become more likely to spend real money.

So when people say the future of online gaming looks like Fortnite, they're not just talking about the battle royale genre, which won't feel so shiny and new a year from now. They're talking about the blending of every good idea from the last decade of online gaming, from both the East and West. Like most MMOs, Fortnite is free-to-play, constantly updated, and massive multiplayer. And like the most successful games of the last few years regardless of genre, it's free-to-play and cross-platform, makes money using vanity cosmetics, focuses on letting players tell their own stories, and incorporating community feedback on a regular basis.

All of these aspects will inform the way games are developed, marketed, and make money in the future. And Fortnite is leading the pack by illustrating just how to make this combination of genre elements, business model innovations, and raw fun factor have influential, industry-changing staying power.

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Guitar-maker Gibson files for bankruptcy to leave its electronics ambitions behind

Posted: 06 May 2018 07:02 AM PDT

Enlarge/ A Gibson Les Paul Standard with a "desertburst" finish from 2006.
Freebird / Flickr via Creative Commons

Other than the Fender Stratocaster, there are few electric guitars more steeped in blues and rock history than the Les Paul. It has famously been played by Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Pete Townshend, among many others. It might seem like cause for alarm, then, that that guitar's 116-year-old manufacturer, Gibson Guitar Corp., is filing for bankruptcy protection because its additive attempts to make waves in the consumer electronics business have landed it in as much as $500 million in debt.

Fortunately, there looks to be a viable path to survival for the Nashville-based company. That path involves liquidating the consumer electronics business, which is the work of a soon-to-be-defunct division called Gibson Innovation. The division's products have included headphones, speakers, and other audio equipment. If the company's plan is successful, Les Pauls and other guitars—along with the company's other professional studio audio equipment products and instruments, like Epiphone guitars and Baldwin pianos—could continue to be sold to future generations of musicians.

Despite Gibson's historic role in the music industry, chief executive Henry Juszkiewicz (who joined the company to save it from another bankruptcy scare in 1986) sought to turn the company into a "music lifestyle brand" in response to slowing guitar sales, according to a report in The New York Times. That's where the Innovation division and the tech products came into play. Juszkiewicz also began pushing new technologies like self-tuning guitars which didn't appeal to musicians who play in styles that are all about tradition. Ultimately, those bets have not paid off.

As part of its bankruptcy proceedings, the company will liquidate the consumer electronics division and focus on what it has been known for historically. According to The Nashville Business Journal:

The company, famous for its guitars, announced early Tuesday morning that it has received commitments for $135 million of debtor-in-possession financing from existing noteholders, which "will provide the company with the liquidity necessary to maintain its operations in the ordinary course during its reorganization proceedings."

Gibson claims that its consumers can be confident it will still making guitars after that reorganization is complete. Despite the company's occasionally troubled history, musicians the world over will probably breathe a sigh of relief if that is indeed the outcome.

We didn't need self-tuning guitars or Gibson-branded smart speakers anyway. There are probably enough smart speakers to pick from already.

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