If I had known that people that make $250k/year would be bad mouthed by the time I got here I wouldn't have fucking done it.
Right, I'm sure you would have just kept working that $18k a year job forever. I mean, who wants to be comfortable or well off if you can't be obscenely wealthy, right?
Nice how the summary and article left Apple off the list for some reason (can never guess why . . . ). Next time editors (and submitters), try finding a more informative article. Took me all of two seconds to find that. Fucking hypocritical fanbois.
The Reg article you link to, while related, is not about the letter that was sent and therefore the point you're apparently trying to make fails miserably. If you check out the actual letter which is linked in the Ars article, you'll see that Apple actually did not sign onto it. It is, however, hilarious that you rant about fanbois and in the same breath admit that you immediately googled the controversy in an effort to try to prove Apple was involved. A little obsessed are we?
It was, based on location, downloading to the phone a list of nearby cell towers and wifi networks (from a crowdsourced database run by Apple)
Clearly "based on location" in the above is a loaded statement as it implies that something like GPS coordinates were being used to determine where you were at the time. More likely it was using the nearest hotspot or cell tower to then request a list of hotspots/cell towers in the vicinity. While this would give an approximation of your location, it's a far cry from sending out your actual specific location. That being said, Apple never actually clarified this aspect of it so who knows what's true and what isn't. I'd personally tend to err on the side of "Apple is not trying to screw everyone," though I know others would disagree.
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.