Why they were doing it doesn't matter. The fact it was hidden and can't be disabled however does matter.BishopOfBattle said:My guess is its probably used for GPS tagging photos. The iPhone and many other smart phones these days will tag your pictures with a GPS location. So you can browse your album by photos taken at a location (say, all photos you took during a trip in Boston, or while you were at the club the other night).
Rather than adding a GPS location into the data file for every picture (which I would imagine would be a lot more data if you took a lot of pictures), its probably more efficient for them to just make a log that says "At 10:00 PM on 20 April 2011, you were at X, Y coordinates" then just compare the photos time stamp to the GPS list.
For that functionality to work when you migrate phones or (possibly) with applications on the computer that can also sort photos by GPS location, that file (obviously) has to be copied as well. I doubt its an intentional "We want to know where you are!" move by Apple.
If you're honestly that concerned about privacy and concealing your movements and locations that you enraged over a file on your phone (and computer) tracking your location that 99.9% of the population will never know about and never would go looking for in the first place, then there's still holes in your logic. Why haven't you password protected your computer login so someone trying to spy on you can't get access to your data? Why have you left your phone, also not password / keypad protected, where someone can get to it? Both of those things, regardless of the GPS tracking file, give people WAY more personal access to your activities and misbehaviours than this one file.
Personally I wouldn't bother turning off the feature if I had an iPhone (I don't even own a mobile anymore, but that's because I can't go anywhere anymore, health issues, and didn't see the point of having one and a home phone), however forcing it on people is just rude, and pisses people off.