[Boldened15]

Headline buries the lede imo, should be "Xcode slows down builds by constantly phoning home". Given the walled garden nature of Apple and the app review process it's not really surprising that Xcode would be full of forced telemetry

Also not the worst thing for Apple to measure average build times or whether developers are discovering some new feature they added, that can be actually helpful for improving the product.

[pjerem]

> Also not the worst thing for Apple to measure average build times or whether developers are discovering some new feature they added, that can be actually helpful for improving the product.

That have always been the point of telemetry. The issue is when it’s hidden and /or the collected data is misused.

[3eb7988a1663]

Or even used at all. Feels like a lot of telemetry is getting collected simply because it can. "What if there is value we could unlock?!" Never mind that all decisions will be made on a manager's gut instinct.

[threeseed]

a) There is no correlation between a walled garden and telemetry. I use plenty of open source software that asks for analytics and crash reports. In fact I take it as a positive sign as it means they are committed to making a better product.

b) In this case the provisioning profiles are essential to the build process so it makes sense for Apple to check for updates as you are building.

[lapcat]

> Also not the worst thing for Apple to measure average build times

There's no evidence that Apple is measuring average build times. As the screenshot in the article shows, gather provisioning inputs is actually one of the earliest build phases. Moreover, build time is not a useful measure, because it depends crucially on the number of source files, the programming languages, clean vs. incremental builds, run script build phases, and various other factors that vary almost infinitely from project to project.

The article does not even claim that the connections are telemetry. Gather provisioning inputs is without a doubt exactly what it says it is. Nonetheless, it's not necessary for Xcode to gather provisioning inputs on every build, especially not for non-archive builds, and a side effect of doing it on every build is that Apple receives personally identifiable data about developers and their everyday activities, regardless of whether that was Apple's intention.

There appears to be a common assumption that every privacy violation has to be intentional, some kind of conspiracy, but that's not true. A lot of privacy violations are just thoughtlessness, laziness, or incompetence. That doesn't excuse them, however.

[0x1ceb00da]

Why does it have to slow down builds. If it's pure telemetry, it can be done in background right?