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Comment by robinson-wall | Hacker News Reader

I don't think iOS is to blame for the binary choice that you get with Uber / Waze. I have some apps which have three choices in the location services settings (Always, While using the app, Never) so it seems like a choice by the developer.

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Well Apple could have made the list unmodifiable so that application can't "opt out" of the "while using the app" setting.

But then every app would just go for "Always" in case they ever wanted to change it in the future and we'd all lose.

You misunderstand. The list is for the user to choose, not the app developers. As it is now, Apple allows app developers to disable the middle choice for users, instead of forcing them to support it if the user so chooses.

> As it is now, Apple allows app developers to disable the middle choice for users, instead of forcing them to support it if the user so chooses.

TBF they also allow disabling the final choice, most of my applications (including many built-in applications like Calendar or Maps) only have "never" and "while using the app".

Ah, you mean apps should always have to support the options of "Never", "While using", and "Always" rather than the app specifying which it supports? Sure, makes sense, and I would be on-board with that.

Removing "always" could make sense for an application not needing it, but that aside yes, the "never" and "while using" choices should always be present.

Er… what? The application can't "change it in the future" in the first place.

Uber went from allowing "While using the app" + "Always" to only "Always".

I was perhaps misunderstanding the parent as suggesting that once an app has allowed "While using the app" as a choice, that could never be removed - ie Uber would still have to allow "While using the app" as a choice.

If that was the case, apps might avoid offering the "While using" choice in the first place if they might ever consider the need to remove it, no?

I was suggesting that no application should be allowed to remove "while using" ever, regardless of what they initially offered.

that is the current permutations which an application can provide are:

* no, using, always

* no, using

* no, always

I do not think the latter should be allowed.

I would definitely be on-board with this proposal (or "for one hour, until the end of the day" similar to "Find Friends".)

That wouldn't achieve much, apps already tend to give rationale for those settings, the apps could just say "If you dont choose Always, we're done here" (they already do that for "Never") and people would just be conditioned to accept Always

The application wouldn't have a way to see that. If you select "When Using" it would just not get any geo info (or even backgrounding time) when not in active use.

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