Lots of hype today over a new tool someone released that digs into a database iOS 4 devices create. I fired it up this morning, after decrypting my iPhone backup, and it did pretty much show the areas I've been in since iOS 4 came out. This included a nice streak across the US when I drove from Austin to Southern California late last year.

I've been looking into it deeper today, and figured some of the info might be of interest to others here. First up is a response Apple sent to the House of Representatives last summer. Page 6 talks about the data collection, basically Apple switched from using Google for cell triangulation and Skyhook for WiFi to their own database in iOS 3.2 and above.

People looking at the sqllite database directly have noticed the coordinates seem to be the locations of WiFi base stations or cell phone towers and not the location of the phone at the time. Some attendees of WWDC 2010 have commented that Apple talked a bit about this file, and the purpose is to cache location information for power savings reasons. The idea is that the phone has to do far fewer calls over the network to get this data, especially for people who use location services in the same areas frequently.

Not really sure what I think about this yet, beyond curiosity to see what the data reveals if I map it out with more precision. An update to iOS may start wiping this data from time to time depending on how severe the outcry is.