why everyone needs to stfu about iphone 'tracking'

Collecting the information obviously makes sense; they are tracking not *you* but the cell phone towers you are using. The target of the tracking gives a hint to what information they are trying to gather, namely, how towers are being used.

As for Apple not deleting it.. get over it? Maybe delete it yourself? As long as you are running a full stack of software that you neither understand, nor trust people that claim to understand it you will forever run into situations like this.

It was probably an over-site; Apple could easily track this information off-device; and if it's vital to their business plan (which it probably isn't) they almost certainly *will* do that, after removing the consolidated.db file.

Now you know, so you can just delete the file and it's not a problem. To get all enraged is pointless, this doesn't look malicious to me; it was just negligent, not properly considering the impact the decision would have on the user.

Run software written with the user's best interest instead of a companies best interest in mind if you want to avoid situations like these.

Lastly, even IF Apple did this (which maybe they did) at the request of the FBI or whatever, wtf do you expect?