Bud Tribble, Apple's vice
president of software technology, will testify at the Congressional
hearings on mobile privacy next week, according to the witness list
released on Friday.
Tribble will represent Apple at the hearings of the U.S. Senate
Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. The
hearings, entitled "Protecting Mobile Privacy: Your Smartphones,
Tablets, Cell Phones and Your Privacy," is scheduled to take place
next Tuesday in the wake of an iPhone location database controversy.
Tribble is one of the industry's top experts in software design
and object-oriented programming, known for helping to design the Mac
OS and user interface. He is considered as the right-hand man of
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and has been with Jobs since they developed the
original Macintosh. When Jobs was forced to resign from Apple in
1985, Tribble followed Jobs and co-founded another computer company
NeXT Computer. He rejoined Apple and Jobs in 2002.
At the upcoming Congressional hearing, Tribble will be joined by
Alan Davidson, Google's director of public policy for the Americas.
Apple has been under heavy fire after it was alleged last month
that its iphones and other smart phones had been collecting
customers' location information. In the wake of the controversy, U.
S. senator Al Franken, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee
on Privacy, Technology and the Law, scheduled the mobile privacy
hearing and asked representatives from Apple and Google to testify.
Apple has denied the alleged practice and released software
updates to make iPhone store less location information to quell
public concerns over privacy.
