The iPhone 5s’ M7 Processor Is Already Watching You

When the iPhone 5s was announced to the masses a few weeks ago, Apple heralded the arrival of the new M7 processor: a nifty little gadget buried in the A7 CPU that tracks stuff that fitness apps might be interested in without waking the whole chip. Saves power, works more efficiently, right? Turns out that it certainly does its job right: looks like the M7 chip is watching you even when you don’t have a compatible app installed for the data to go to.

First spotted Rupert, a Sydney iOS developer, the M7 seems to be recording your behaviour without having an app to actually report to.

Rupert noticed that, upon installing fitness app Argus, that the steps fields were being populated as soon as the software had permission to use the M7 chip.

We’ve since tested it and found that the data goes all the way back to 24 September: the day I started using the 5s in earnest as my daily-driver.

I reckon that this is actually pretty nifty, but I can see others not sharing my view.

[@rpy]


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