What's really scary is the entire industry is doing their best to make this normal and they've enjoyed phenomenal success so far. This is almost Microsoft playing catch up.
As others have already mentioned, it's a trade off. They remember it for you, wholesale. This works out great when you need to install an app that you bought already onto a new device, etc. The people who really care/need about this type of privacy are surely not "scared". They already know how to avoid these helpful service, right? It's not rocket science. If it matters to you, then you figure out how to do it. The paid app vendors (Apple, etc) really are trying to be helpful here, not nefarious, imo.
Begging the question a bit here, so much so that I was tempted to just post '?'. I assume you mean Apple, but Apple's checks locally for code-signing, it doesn't phone home. Which is what the problem is.
I'm not specifically meaning Apple although they're certainly part of it:
- iTunes and App Store
- Steam
- Windows Phone marketplace, MSDN, upcoming software marketplace
- Amazon App Store and Google's Play Store
- Chrome Web Store and Firefox's add-on marketplace
- Ubuntu Software Center, packet managers in general
- Facebook's App Center
- Github, Google Code and SourceForge
I doubt there's anyone on HN who doesn't have a long history with a lot of names on that list. Almost every piece of software and game I have on every device I use has come via this list.
But I'm sure all of these .. centralized installation hubs I guess .. are reasonably vindicated by their privacy policies - where everyone's idea of 'reasonably' is different and most of them aren't like ours.
Centralized software distribution channel != phoning home every time any software is installed on a computer. You are citing examples of the first, the second is what the article is about.
