One of the frustrations people have with Google is that they're making it increasingly closed and problematic to make modifications. Given that nowadays some banks for example are mobile only and everyone is waiting for Google to completely shut down modified boot systems(probably in response to Qualcomm TrustZone being untrustworthy), people are re evaluating whether it makes sense to invest in the Android ecosystem.
EDIT: google could have capitalized on this and made it a part of their offering.
Caveat: It's been almost 4 or 5 years since I used it. I used to prank colleagues on Facebook by posting from a local prison or other weird places. Have had no use for it since I deleted my fb account. So I don't know if it can still do what you want.
On iOS the app installs and works and THEN it might ask you for GPS permission and you can deny that and the app keeps working, just without the feature that needs GPS.
I just installed Mi Home, a chinese app which requested every permission there is. I just denied all of them, could still use the app and am 0 afraid that the app somehow accessed my data.
A phone that would truly value the user would allow the user to provide a fake GPS location. Then you could use features that need GPS and not give up your privacy. But Apple doesn't allow that since it would make the phone less useful for companies who want to use phones for tracking.
A phone that truly valued the user would allow users to install multiple copies of an app, and allow the user to log in with different accounts. But Apple doesn't allow that, because they don't want people to share devices.
So you, I suspect, don’t want to “avoid tracking” so much as you want to avoid geo-gating of apps and content.
Content distributors rely on such features to satisfy legal obligations about what content they can show where. If the OS started adding features like “pretend I’m in location X” or “download movie regardless of app restrictions” (as an example of another feature that could be argued is pro-user) then at some point you’ll have a platform that isn’t commercially supported or viable.
Honestly, Apple is by far the most pro-user company in this field and there are countless examples of this.
But a very small minority chafe against the restrictions that are actually in most users interests (eg not allowing side loading of apps, which for most people would simply be an attack vector).
Many apps require location data for access to features. If you can't provide a fake location, your only choice is to either accept tracking, or not use the service.
Lots of companies use phone apps for tracking (eg. for tracking location of agents). The company will immediately realise when you turn off GPS access. If you had a way to spoof a location (eg. tell the phone to pretend you stayed in the current location), you could go to the toilet without your employers knowledge and without leaving your phone behind.
Abusers often use phone apps to track their victims. If you are in an abusive relationship, you may be too scared to turn off Find My Friends. If the phone was actually on your side, you would be able to enter a fake location, and your abuser wouldn't have to know that you visited your parents on your way home from work.
Apple wants location data from iOS users to be hard to fake, because it is more valuable this way. Apple's most important asset is the value of their ecosystem. It's why they can charge companies 30% to access it. The user's needs are secondary.
That's not to say I wouldn't want it either but I'm pretty privacy conscious, and a tech enthusiast. I just don't think you can say Apple is putting user's needs second, I don't imagine most users need this.
This exact same feature you are asking for would be useful for people abducting children, who could make it look like the child was still at school while they took them away.
This is far more likely to be why Apple hasn’t implemented it.
Oh and as for tracking, at least for the company they can already track you by what towers you’re connected to. So there’s no technical limitation on this being provided to apps regardless of what you might spoof.
Strava refuses to let you track your ride if you don't allow always-on background tracking. (They changed this about a year ago. Previously "while using the app" was sufficient)
A lunch menu app that I used before Covid allowed you to show nearby restaurants based on location. But there was no way to manually enter a location (without GPS it was just a huge unsorted list).
These are two examples that come to my mind (I'm not a person who uses a lot of different apps, I'm sure there's more out there. Try rejecting location access for a few apps and see what happens)
Edit: I'm also not sure why you are so hung up on geo restrictions. I don't really care about geo restrictions, and even if, you could avoid them trivially with VPNs that are widely available. That just has nothing to do with keeping my GPS coordinates private.
Are you an Apple employer with access to confidential memos or meetings?
I can’t see how you would know this otherwise.
But it is true that Android won't reject apps that refuse to work without a permission while iOS mandates that basic functionalities of an app work even when permission is denied.
https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/03/22/android-12-isnt-sim...
Think of it like this: if I'm actively using an app that's giving me turn-by-turn directions, then of course I'm not going to want to spoof GPS, since it would make the app useless to me. But if your app demands GPS data just for ad analytics, then yes, I would absolutely and without any remorse spoof GPS data for that app. In that latter case, I don't care that a developer might be unhappy with it, because as a user I'm unhappy that the developer is slurping up data they don't need!
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/gnss on android now apps can access the raw gps data, which is much harder to fake
That's the issue with augmented reality games like Pokemon Go.
If the app wants to force a user to not modify their phone just so they have a secure enclave for which they can implement DRM, then i can't agree to it. This includes things like spoofing, but also things like memory edits or hacking save files, or anything else client side. If the app needs secure storage that's unchangeable, they can save it on their servers.
Considering that most of the world has some form of travel restrictions over the past year, and I believe that being able to interact with friends in the game requires you be be in very close proximity. Can you explain how spoofing GPS data so that people are allowed to play together even though they are not close is bad?
You could attack a pokemon gym at your convenience (from your couch, whatever time of the day). This negatively impacts other players because a legit, non-cheating spoofer will have to expend far more effort to do the same thing.
>Can you explain how spoofing GPS data so that people are allowed to play together even though they are not close is bad?
Friend interaction or just interaction in the game has to do with raiding and trading. You can already league battle (pvp) over any distance.
Niantic has made some changes along these lines - main one is the remote raid pass. One person close enough to a gym can invite friends to raid, no spoofing needed. They also upped the trade distance, how close you need to be to interact with a gym/pokestop, etc.
So the answer to your question is the game itself has made changes to address actual in-game scenarios. That leaves spoofing GPS as a way to asymmetrically cheat against gyms, or perhaps trivialize collecting pokemon (some are region locked and so on).
If you can just spoof, the whole nature of augmented reality falls apart and someone could simply spoof themselves anywhere and take those positions. It was a big problem before the android os made it harder to spoof.
There's no point/ fun in playing augmented reality games if enough people simply cheat and the real world limitations aren't a factor.
not to say how it you are anywhere not in a medium size city you need either spoofers or endless grind to unlock significant parts of the game
[1] to be fair I left before the pandemic, so I cannot comment on how they handled that
It really stopped being a large scale issue after Android started making it harder to spoof.
If your app needs to get info that benefits the user (as the mapping app GPS example), nobody will deny it because it makes sense.
If your app wants to get info that benefits you but not the user, it only makes sense for that data to be denied (preferably) or faked (as a backup plan). You have no right to it.
That's the whole issue - it's not the case anymorez now it's the ads that pay