This functionality, while welcome, also brought problems for the company. This is because many users noticed that the system was still showing the location icon even with the feature turned off.
To make matters worse, the functionality has also annoyed some developers as it may scare away privacy-conscious users. In an open letter, many claims that repeated background location alerts can “tarnish” the image of their apps.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the developers’ complaints did not please Apple. In a response published on Friday (3), the company went straight:
Apple has not built a business model for knowing a customer’s location or the location of their devices.
According to the company, the user’s location access alert should be kept in the system. This is because the idea is to encourage developers not to collect this kind of information when it is not expressly required.
This new alert does two things: it ensures users know which apps are tracking their location, and keeps developers honest by preventing them from tracking people when they don’t need this information or sell that data to others.
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With Apple’s answer, the only alternative for developers is to follow Apple’s guidelines.