Fortnite played on a MacBook Pro. Not Sweeney’s
Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, has made an incredibly bad leap of logic and lambasted Apple for how its Find My service located his stolen MacBook, and violated the privacy of the thief.
You’ve got to really want it if you’re going to find something bad about Find My and especially when it’s just worked for you. Unfortunately, Tim Sweeney really wants it.
This is the man who intentionally flouted App Store rules so that Apple would remove Fortnite, then claimed this was a shocking surprise. He then boasted that he’d planned it all for months.
If you hate Apple, you’ve apparently got to fill your days somehow. So now Tim Sweeney has lambasted Apple for its “super creepy surveillance” when Find My fount his stolen his laptop for him.
Responding a news post on Tuesday from our friends at 9to5Mac about Find My not working in South Korea that we covered last week, Sweeney laid out his bizarre thoughts for all to see.
This feature is super creepy surveillance tech and shouldn’t exist. Years ago, a kid stole a Mac laptop out of my car. Years later, I was checking out Find My and it showed a map with the house where the kid who stole my Mac lived. WTF Apple? How is that okay?!
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 30, 2024
You know you should just walk away after reading this, but there are so many head-scratchers here. Questions such as why Sweeney presumably didn’t use Find My when the MacBook was originally lost. And, you know, use it for what it’s intended for and provide that to the police.
Then there’s the absolutely baffling leap of logic that the thief somehow deserves their privacy and anonymity after felony theft.
Also, it doesn’t sound as if Sweeney, traumatized by this Find My notification, has now either confronted the thief directly or even just gone to the police. It sounds as if he decided to be a mensch and let the thief keep the MacBook.
Hey, it’s his computer, he can do what he likes with it. AppleInsider would never recommend confronting a thief directly with Find My information, but presumably with his influence and money he can get the police to help, since that’s what they’re for.
Plus, gratifyingly, after posting all of this “WTF Apple?” nonsense on Twitter, the thread that resulted is chiefly people saying “So?” They point out that Find My isn’t surveillance of the thief, it’s a tracker for his computer.
“A lot of people are saying this here,” responded Sweeney in what looked for a moment like he was going to be persuaded. But of course he wasn’t.
“While technically true, it misses the point,” he insisted. “You can’t track the location of a device that’s in someone’s possession without tracking that person, and people have a right to privacy.”
“This right applies to second hand device buyers and even to thieves,” he continued — which it does not. US courts have upheld the use of device tracking as not a violation of any right to privacy for thieves for years.
You can absolutely track the location of a device without tracking the person. Otherwise we’d all be out of luck the next time we leave our iPad behind by accident.
Sweeney is brilliant, there’s no question. Under his leadership, Epic Games has grown into a juggernaut and published some of the best and most financially successful games ever released. If he were an idiot, that wouldn’t be possible.
But, this take defies reason, is an incredibly bad leap of logic, flies in the facts of established precedent, and a nonsensical point of view. It’s like he was looking for something about Apple to complain about, when he’s probably already got enough.
It’s not clear if he’s taken it the next step and granted that thief the anonymity that he so craves, though, and removed it from his iCloud remotely. It’s also unclear if he feels the same way about Google’s or Samsung’s similar technologies — but he doesn’t appear to hate either of those companies as much, so probably not.
Tim, if you’re reading this, it’s not too late to delete the post.
