The latest luxury product of Apple is the confidentiality

Apple wants to sell you all kinds of new services: music, magazines, TV show about the Russians who are landing on the Moon first. But with the announcement of iOS 13, it seems that the company is turning one of its classic features into a service of its own. Privacy at the next level is about to become the best thing you get by paying the Apple tax.

A new "Connect with Apple" service is about to change the way iOS users access applications. Instead of giving your email address to a developer or using a social account like Facebook or Google, you will soon be able to sign in to apps with your Apple ID. By pressing the Connect with Apple button, you authenticate with a face ID or a touch ID. This feature creates a unique random identifier that prevents developers from accessing your personal data. If the developer of the application requests an email address, the connection with Apple will also give you the ability to generate a unique random email address that will keep your real email confidential. Any e-mail correspondence that the application decides to send you will then be transferred from that random e-mail to your actual inbox.

This new service will be deployed with iOS 13, which is somehow free. You will of course have an iOS device that supports the new operating system. This includes the latest iPhone, as well as the latest iPod touch and the iPhone 6 or newer. This means that if you want to access the new private club Apple, you can do it for a new device that costs only $ 200. It's even cheaper if you take the route, although it's usually silly to refer to everything Apple sells as cheap. Some enthusiasts will be eager to point out that you can remove the Apple tax and spend your money on a higher Android phone at a lower price.

But making mobile computing on an operating system created by Google has a different cost. What makes Sign in with Apple such an attractive alternative to social connections is that it prevents companies like Google and Facebook from following you. Facebook and Google offer connection services because it gives them access to valuable user data. In other words, users have one-click access to applications, but they also sacrifice their privacy. It is an expensive tax in its own way.

There is a good chance that developers hate to connect to Apple. For starters, Apple says in an update of its App Store Review Guidelines that the connection with Apple "will be a mandatory option for application users supporting third-party sign-on when they are not connected to Apple." it will be available commercially later this year. " In other words, if a developer wants to offer the social login options of Facebook or Google, he must also include the Apple option. It may be bad for developers, but it's definitely good for iOS users, who have never really had a completely private and secure way to connect to apps.

Nevertheless, some skeptics are already wondering if Apple is only reinforcing its offers of confidentiality to try to convince more people to buy iPhones. Of course that's it! Apple is still positioned as a technology company concerned about user privacy. This selling point has become increasingly compelling as data breaches become more serious and companies like Google, hungry for data, increasingly gobble up our personal information. As a result, targeted ads are becoming more and more scary. So scary that many people think that Facebook is recording our conversations in the real world for better targeting of ads. This conspiracy theory is probably not true, but it's scary what companies like Facebook and Google know about us, in part because their network connection services have provided them with a personal data conduit. So it's not outrageous to think that some people would be willing to pay a little more for an iPhone to avoid the sparkling look of Big Brother Google.

Connect to Apple. A public version has not been released before the fall and there is still a lot we do not know yet how it works. For example, there was no question of whether the new service would work on the Web. It is also unclear whether a version of Sign in with Apple could be offered to people with an Apple ID, but not having an iOS device. Given the fact that the connection with Apple is listed as an iOS feature, this seems unlikely in the immediate future.

We know that Apple is striving to intensify the protection of privacy as a new service provided with certain products. In addition to the "Connecting with Apple" announcement, the company unveiled two new HomeKit initiatives allowing third party manufacturers of security cameras and routers to take advantage of Apple's privacy features. HomeKit Secure Video works with new third-party cameras from Arlo, Logitech and others, so video streams are encrypted by Apple and sent directly to iCloud. And it's better to bet that Apple will charge iCloud storage to these camera users, although the company has not yet released the details of these plans. We know even less about new HomeKit compatible routers, but Apple said it would make third-party routers such as Eero and Linksys more private and secure.

Confidentiality as a new service seems like a good idea. It is quite clear that companies with data activities or incentives to collect as much user data as possible have little incentive for enhanced privacy protection. Just look at Amazon and the endless nightmare of privacy that is Alexa as evidence of that. As Tim Cook likes to say, Apple has no interest in selling user data, so it doubles its commitment to privacy. The company is also doubling its commitment to selling iPhones and, of course, new services. Apple has not become a trillion dollar company by giving things.