Apple: Core Location Is Meant To Be "Beneficial", Not For Ads

Apple posted this week some guideline precisions concerning in-app advertisement and core location. The note, which innocently comes as a "tip", emphasizes on the fact that the use of location must be "beneficial" for the customer and not primarily there to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads:

If you build your application using Core Location, make sure your app first asks users for permission before you use their location to provide targeted information. Once granted, the information you provide must be beneficial. 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.

As you can see, the idea here is to protect you from developers who drag your battery through the GPS purely for ads. You might hear all around the web today commenters saying that Apple just banned location targeted ads from the App Store. Some even claim that they're trying to kill admob and launch their own location-aware ad network, it's not the case for now. It's a nice move actually, but watch out Apple, "Don't be evil".

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