Craig Federighi hopes competitors will emulate Apple's 'ambitious' privacy labels

Craig Federighi

Now that Apple's new privacy or "nutrition" labels have appeared on the App Store, the company's Craig Federighi says that the current system is only the beginning.

"[Labels] are the start of something really ambitious," Apple's senior vice president of software engineering told Fast Company.

Federighi did not specify any further details about Apple's plans, but said that the intention was to iterate on the labels idea. Ultimately, he wants the labels to be embraced by users, and to help them make informed choices when picking apps to download.

"The work we're doing here we view in the context of providing leadership to the industry, raising users' expectations of what they should expect and demand in privacy, " he said.

"We absolutely expect that others in the industry will respond to the heightened expectations and demands of customers and improve privacy— and we think that's great," Federighi continued. "This is one category where if they want to copy some of our best ideas toward improving user privacy— we embrace that."

App Store privacy labels are now a requirement for all iOS 14 apps being either uploaded for the first time, or updated. At launch, though, very many major developers failed to provide the required information, and will have to before they can update any apps.