
Sometimes, Apple's decisions about content in the App Store can be petty and anti-competitive -- like
asking developers to remove any mention of Android. But sometimes, they make a call that seems to put users first. This time, it's a request that developers
use your location to provide useful information, rather than just serving you location-based ads. Here's the text of the warning to developers, posted in Apple's developer forum:
If you build your application with features based on a user's location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.'
Developers might balk at the removal of a possible cheap and easy revenue stream, but I think
Apple is doing the right thing, here. Apps like
Foursquare and
Gowalla, which allow business to advertise specials, should be unaffected, because they also your location for checking in, finding your friends, and other important game elements. The kind of app being targeted here has no reason to know where you are
except to show you ads, and I can get behind Apple trying to block that use of the feature.
Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb actually
seems pretty angry about the situation. His point is that if an app is going to show you ads, whether it has location-based features or not, it should be allowed to show you
local ads. Marshall seems to balk more at the idea that Apple wants to decide what constitutes "beneficial information." I agree that Apple may have worded that part of the warning artlessly, but I think what they mean is "non-advertising information."
What do you think, Download Squad readers? I'd especially love to get an iPhone developer's perspective on the situation.