The setting in question is, from within the "Privacy" tab in the Safari Preferences window:

Block cookies:

• From third parties and advertisers
• Always
• Never

By default, the first one is selected. What it does is make Safari reject any cookie not originating from the domain of the currently opened page URL. This includes requests from iframes, images, and any other resource requested from an external domain.

That's it. By design, this should prevent, say, a cookie from "webtrendslive.com" or from "googleanalytics.com" unless the user is at a site hosted by those domains.

This is a good default, for this would be what most users would be expecting. The assumption is that any resource hosted on an external URI is most likely for advertising and tracking purposes (which, as it turns out, is true).

It would be understandable if the work-around was applied to a web site that depended on third-party resources which required the setting of cookies from said party in order to function--admittedly a rare edge case.

However, it's the advertisers themselves that are working around this feature; and this shows their intent on ignoring user preferences.

The user can always change it to "Never" and receive cookies from any, all, and sundry.

        -dZ.

Apple does not give one shit about making Apple products usable in a corporate setting, it's all but accidental or incidental to making a good consumer product. They not only don't give a hoot about the IT department, but they don't give a hoot about people trying to use it as a business tool at all.

And there is another insightful point that you are missing. There is nothing magical about "business tools." Humans are humans and have certain requirements and methods for interacting with machines. These interface can coincide whether you're applying them in a tool for business or leisure.

The same note-taking application that I use for capturing some random thing I saw on the TV, can support my creative outbursts at the office.

The e-mail and communications applications I use to chat with friends and the browser I use to look-up what movie to watch tonight, do not suddenly stop being useful when I apply them to my office communications or research.

The iPad and the iPhone offer an extensible platform that starts with a very usable interface to the machine's capabilities. The user feels comfortable with this environment and could be more productive if applied to other uses such as business work-flows.

For this, many developers of real business tools are using it for office and productivity applications.

So, you were very right, it is all accidental or incidental to making a good consumer product.

However, you missed the forest by the trees. This is precisely why it eventually is adopted to other purposes--because it is such a good consumer product, and humans are the same and operate with machines in the same way whether they do it for fun or profit.

            -dZ.

Actually, that's how it works. Yes, where I worked executives, managers and employees started using whatever they wanted, mainly iPhones and iPads. This was in spite of IT's resistance, which then was forced to adapt.

Those executives, managers, and employees were the ones attempting to try to use the devices as a business tool; IT was resisting because the adopted standard for years were different. Not only that, there was a push to evaluate other seemingly "business friendly" platforms like MS tablets of yore, or even BlackBerry or HP tablet devices. Those efforts did not bare fruit in the face of employees doing real work on Apple devices and clamoring for support.

I hear this is how it started in many other work places.

            -dZ.

I understand your frustration. It sucks and sometimes it hurts, but you must trust me when I say that it does get better.

I know how you feel, I've been there myself. Eventually, you'll just realize that it is really not all that important that your old perception towards something as insignificant as a technology product, was wrong; and that arguing against it is not only futile, but emotionally destructive.

It truly is not the end of the world, and with time you'll come to accept it and recover from it.

Peace, my friend, and good luck.

        -dZ.

You didn't get it, did you?

Apple cares not a hoot for the IT manager trying to integrate Apple devices into their infrastructure. They care about the end user of such devices, whom feel empowered and more productive using them.

So this integration is not happening "in spite of Apple," but precisely because Apple devices help the end users be more productive. The integration is the result of this adoption.

You can say that the integration is not Apple's focus. They don't care if you figure out how to integrate the devices into the corporate work-flow or infrastructure--because consumers are buying using the devices, and therefore it's happening whether you integrate or not.

          -dZ.

Haven't we been there before?

Not only that, but Microsoft themselves have been there before. At the start of the decade, they were the ones pushing for "tablet computing" as a work-enabling tool.

I'm sure you know how that ended.

        -dZ.

Can you elaborate? I am a programmer, and I read the PDF provided in the article. My conclusion is that they did a very clever job in creating a mechanism that could statically analyse the code and determine with some degree of certainty that some functions where accessing what they considered to be personal information; and then transmitted this over the wire. It is clever because, due to its complex and dynamic nature, the Objective-C runtime does not make static analysis easy or practical.

They also mention that, at least to some extent, they corroborated these results with actually using the application in question, invoking the functionality identified by their scanner, and analysed the network traffic resulting from it.

What alarm bells were going off on your side?

          -dZ.

You didn't read the PDF of the experiment, did you? In there they explained the risk of the capturing the UDID.

The identifier by itself does not say much. However, most of the companies offering the frameworks are either advertising brokers, or affiliated to them, which then use the captured identifiers to correlate them with additional personally identifying information captured through other applications and services in order to build a profile of the user.

They give as an example AdMob, which is owned by Google. Wherein Google can easily capture the device ID of a GMail or Google+ user and associate it with their account. Then all apps using AdMob's advertising framework can report the device's ID, which can then be mapped in this database against a real user account.

          -dZ.

It's also because it's a novelty, a gimmick. I tried Dippin' Dots once. The experience was just like you would imagine eating a super-cooled liquid would be: a bit uncomfortable and absolutely tasteless.

      -dZ.

The funny thing is, I know exactly which printer UI you're talking about, for I've had to learn it too.

On second thought, that's the sad thing.

        -dZ.