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.
- Apps can refuse to work with that, like Google Photos (it used to work during the beta and it was perfect for me)
- Apps still offer their awful photo picker on top of your already-picked photos, so selecting new ones requires a lot of taps.
I wish Apple would reign in some of these apps. In-app browsers and custom photo pickers should be banned unless they have demonstrated advantages.