The best part is where the author admits to using google analytics himself to track who visits his blog. At some point we all have to say enough is enough.
Wacom tablets track every app you open
21–30 of 469 posts
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is getting voted down, but is this not true? My iPhone knows all my top apps and shows them on whatever that screen is called, with the search, and adjusts them over time as usage changes. Maybe it’s not “more important,” but why vote this down? How do I know that data doesn’t go back to Apple with “telemetry”?
A Wacom tablet is not the same as a phone, it is a peripheral. This is like your Dell keyboard tracking your keystrokes and what application they go into.
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Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is getting voted down, but is this not true? My iPhone knows all my top apps and shows them on whatever that screen is called, with the search, and adjusts them over time as usage changes. Maybe it’s not “more important,” but why vote this down? How do I know that data doesn’t go back to Apple with “telemetry”?
A Wacom tablet is not the same as a phone, it is a peripheral. This is like your Dell keyboard tracking your keystrokes and what application they go into.
A specialized keyboard using different button layouts and settings per app. Also, not tracking keystrokes at all but rather "used special keyboard with app foo".
As a better example, suppose it were a game controller. Then the question "what games are people using this controller with?" seems quite reasonable. Filter to games only and anonymize the data and that would be fine.
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#24On Linux you'd be using the community-maintained drivers[0], so I assume this wouldn't be a problem (correct me if I'm wrong).
But as far as I can tell, there's not equivalent Open Wacom drivers for Windows. People with more Windows knowledge than me: any thoughts on why? Is it just that someone using Windows probably doesn't care about Open drivers, so the demand isn't there? Or is there something about Windows that makes substituting drivers harder?
Wacom doesn't provide their own Linux drivers, but looking at the state of drivers around GPUs, printers, I vaguely suspect that somebody in Linux would be working on Open alternatives even if they did. I'm trying to think off the top of my head what Windows-compatible hardware has 3rd-party driver options. Maybe some printers?
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#25While this implementation obviously has privacy issues, the anonymized aggregate data would be quite interesting, e.g. how many people use photoshop, illustrator, etc. with their wacom tablets. The problem then seems to be more about the false positives. If you use "Half Life 3 Test Build" that is useless info for wacom because it (presumably) doesn't care about pen input. Q: If the data were filtered to just art/gra…
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Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#26"their device, which - remember - is essentially a mouse" ... that has per-application configuration settings that change how the tablet can be used. They aren't just wantonly collecting unrelated data. They have features tied to this. I read the whole article to see if there was any mention of app-specific config. Doesn't come up once.
It also has quite a few quirks depending on the app so it’s logical they want to know which compatibility work is most pressing. Not that they have done much lately, but that’s a different subject. Wacom is an extremely frustrating company to deal with.
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is getting voted down, but is this not true? My iPhone knows all my top apps and shows them on whatever that screen is called, with the search, and adjusts them over time as usage changes. Maybe it’s not “more important,” but why vote this down? How do I know that data doesn’t go back to Apple with “telemetry”?
It's downvoted mostly because bringing up iOS and Android in a discussion about Wacom tablets seems pretty off-topic and whataboutist.
I didn’t understand what a Wacom tablet is. Now I do!
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is getting voted down, but is this not true? My iPhone knows all my top apps and shows them on whatever that screen is called, with the search, and adjusts them over time as usage changes. Maybe it’s not “more important,” but why vote this down? How do I know that data doesn’t go back to Apple with “telemetry”?
It's an attempt at technical whataboutism (alternately it's just confused and thinks a wacom tablet is comparable to an iPad or something). The operating system obvious has to know what apps you're running, and can store metrics to the same -- locally -- to improve your experience. There is no reason Wacom needs to know, much less share it externally. It adds zero value for the end user.
Yep. Sorry, was confused about what Wacom tablet was.
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#29The best part is where the author admits to using google analytics himself to track who visits his blog. At some point we all have to say enough is enough.
I'm going to go on a limb and say that tracking people who visits your blog is a little better than tracking app launches for the entire computer.
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#30Wacom has application specific settings for compatibility. You can't have that feature without tracking individual processes and that data would be important for any sort of troubleshooting. It should be anonymized and they should be clear about what they are collecting, but the data does have a legitimate and benign use at least.