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Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

I love when I launch an app and then get a bevy of requests to access my Camera, my Microphone, my Contacts, etc...

I nope out and if the functionality of the app is trashed, so goes the app....

Google Maps constantly hounding me to turn on precision location services, asking me if I am navigating for a friend and to allow access to my contacts... Wow, no.

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You don't think location is useful for a map ... ?

Well, a physical map certainly doesn't keep pestering me for my location...

It wants precise location — which I take to mean war-driving WiFi. GPS I am okay with for a map app.

IIRC, Non-precise location is cell tower level location or the like, possibly a 12 square mile area. It is also very cheap if the device is already connected to a tower.

Precise location may be from Apple's SSID database or from a GPS system.

Non-precise location may help with getting more appropriate search results but won't help you with turn-by-turn navigation.

Reading the documentation I can't figure it out. It sounds like there are a lot of things that feed into "Precise Location" that go beyond GPS. It could be true though that only cell-tower reckoning is used without "Precise Location". I generally only pull up Google maps on longer road trips that aren't really turn-by-turn, so maybe I have the only use case for a map with weak location services.

Precise location _is_ GPS, not the other way around.

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