Apple puts limits on location-based advertising in the App Store

@Sean - No NDA problems exist as the info was included in Apple's (public) ADC iPhone rss feed and is actually just part of a few tips to bear in mind when using corelocation.

The quote is from near the end of the page: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/news/archives/2010/february/#corelocation
"If your app uses this information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on 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."

Which I completely agree with and think they were just pointing out that you'd be wasting your time submitting such an app as it's already a policy to reject them.

Think multitasking and background apps that serve little purpose other than to constantly push location based ads to the user.

It's all about battery life.

if you have a match 3 game with no use of location then you can't add location awareness to your ads. That's just a giant battery drain for that game.

If you build a Yelp application that needs location awareness for core functionality, then location based ads are okay because you are already running the GPS for the real use of the program.

While it's wild speculation... doesn't mean it might not be what Apple actually *is* planning all along. None of these companies are necessarily out for what's best for their users first ^__^;.

To be fair, the wording in the Apple email is pretty vague, and does leave room for interpretation. And come on, this is TUAW, not the New York Times. Yes, they have a reputation to maintain as a credible news source (which they are), but that doesn't mean you can't throw a little opinion in there to spice it up. Its those opinions and personalities that keep us coming back for more.

"Whatever happened to placing a call and confirming with a source instead of just regurgitating a story that itself was incorrectly reported?"

The problem is i don't think Apple will comment on this because it's under NDA, so everyone can speculate away with no interference from them.

I'd rather see ads target to the area I'm in than see ads that have absolutely nothing to do with any interests I may or may not have.

And was the jab at MacNN really necessary? It comes across as petty to me.

Why any application cannot provide this service? Especially if that will make the application free or cheap. I guess problem here is that 30% of 0$ is 0$ and Apple doesn't like that. So they are, one more time, ready to change the rules and enforce their monopoly over other developers.

Agree with all the previous posters about the innaccuracy of this story.

That said, if you think about what Apple is actually saying here, banning apps who use location services just to target ads, it seems entirely reasonable to prevent a huge drain on device resources just to serve a more profitable ad.

Oh, I forgot to add into my comment an example of stopping the flow. A few days ago, the iphonosphere was awash in "Apple restricting USB to fight Amazon" posts after Stanza removed USB syncing. Finally, one blog looked into it. It turns out that Apple was not plotting against Amazon. It had mentioned to all devs months before, and devs were finally responding to, the use of this particular folder was not for anything and everything. Could this be a similar situation?

To me, it seems more like Apple is preventing apps that have nothing to do with locating you(games, Pandora, etc.) from delivering location based apps. That doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I think a bunch of people are making a mountain of a molehill here.