It's the same with location data. iOS allows you to restrict apps to only approximate location, but apps like YouTube TV and ESPN require precise data just to do region checking. I wish iOS just wouldn't allow apps to figure out if they're getting precise vs. approximate location.
It’s incredibly confusing when apps do this. Often, the symptom is that GPS looks broken.
GrapheneOS’s location services have a similar issue, but 100x worse. There, apps can definitely have lat/long, but not full Google location service, and all sorts of proprietary software ends up with no/wrong location dots on their maps.
Open source apps, and Google maps competitors work well, so I know it isn’t a hardware or radio issue.
It’s a failure both on the app and Apple side to convey this information properly. Approximate location should be shown with a large circle and the user could be told explicitly about this.
Some apps really need exact location (think Uber and Google Maps) but many don’t (any social network)
Yeah, I had Snapchat location map enabled with imprecise locations during iOS beta, but they disabled that...like, why! just show the error bar on the map if you care.
It’s a hook for the system’s built-in image picker sheet — as such, it allows the user to browse their entire library, however the the app only gets (one-time) access to the individual piece of content they pick. Nice thing is that the app doesn’t need to ask any photo permissions at all (as far as read access is concerned).
With some exceptions like Messages, which presents a custom picker UI, this API gets dog-fooded by almost all Apple’s stock apps (Safari, Notes, Mail, the “iWork” office suite etc…).
An example of a 3rd party app implementation is MaskerAid by Casey Liss [1]. However, the amount of apps I’ve encountered that use this interface is suspiciously low.
The realistic answer is probably that the sheet looks pretty barebones, and most developers seem to prefer a sleeker, custom-designed integrated gallery view, and/or need write access.
But the paranoid part of me raises the question: why do so many apps insist on continuous access to at least a portion, but preferably the entirety of the user’s photo library?
They really need to implement this for contacts. The main reason I’ve never bothered using WhatsApp or any other third party messaging service is that they all refuse to work unless you give them access to your entire contacts database. No thanks.
I feel like this was introduced within the last couple years and did not get a ton of attention when it did.
But like many things with iOS Apple did this and apps had no choice but to work with it since (seemingly) as far as the app is concerned it is the same situation as before.
I do wish though it was easier to grant more images without needing to go to settings. I have had one app that somehow gave me the ability to add more images, but I am not entirely sure how it did it.
