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On the other hand, the nature of Apple’s BDFL ownership means that they could very easily add a permission prompt in an iOS release, allowing them to default to disabled, then tell app developers to update their code or go to hell. They’ve done it before with other APIs.

In fact they’ve already done this on the web: the DeviceMotion API is behind a permission prompt. I’m surprised the same isn’t the case for apps.

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If Apple did that, giant app developers would whine about it.

Google was basically responsible for locking down the DeviceMotion API.

Giant app developers do complain about it (see the ad tracking debacle). That hasn’t stopped Apple in the past.

IIRC Apple locked down the Contacts API precisely because giant app developers were abusing it. And look at the recent ad tracking stuff that Facebook hates: I don’t think Apple is all that afraid of angering developers, big or small.

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