I don't think I'd ever consider a 16:9 5.5" phone as I think that display size would be too big even if there was zero bezel.
I have a real hard time believing they'll go that big. I'd bet somewhere around 4.6, 4.7. I'm still quite surprised at the popularity of the Note 2, and 3, and I'm even more surprised at how many women have taken to it. TBH I hated my phone at first, but I grew accustomed to it. Btw I typed this entirely with one hand, and I don't have large hands. Yes there's a learning curve, but you'll master it quite quickly.
(My apologies but on iPhone so can't reply to your thorough response with the same completeness.)
1) Don't Apple's guidelines only allow for 10 iBeacon IDs to be saved per app? I don't know if you can swap out beacon IDs as easily as you can with geofence locations, like when choosing your PassBook pass stores, so I don't know how hard of a rule that would be if an app could get your GPS-based location and then swap out new beacon IDs for iOS to look for.
2) The way it reads to me is that the system (iOS) looks for the beacon IDs, just as it has always done with any BT radio signals, and only when an ID matches an ID given to it by an app that also has location services enabled is that beacon ID data ever passed to the app, so only then will the system wake the app if there is a match. It will not mean all beacons will be sent to all apps with location services enabled.
3) I wouldn't mind seeing Enable buttons for the various types of location services for each app in iOS 8 Settings.
4) I'm a firm believer is asking questions and voicing your concerns (which is why I appreciate your comments despite being frustrated with them at the same time. ). My suggestion to you is to email Tim Cook with your concerns, your wishes for more clarity, and perhaps some of the ideas presented in this thread. He may or may not answer you but I am pretty sure it will be read.
I'm on a real keyboard, but I need to dial it back a bit too. It's too easy to get too deep; it's obviously a topic I'm passionate about - I truly despise virtually anything to do with tracking and profiling, of any kind. Beacons are just a small part of this, but when Apple makes a change that I think is unnecessarily less-than-transparent, it sticks in my craw a bit. I just expect better from them.
Briefly,
1) If that's true, at least it's better than no limits. Maybe. I am a developer (for many, many years), but very little on iOS (and none at all in the past couple years), so I really haven't dug into the APIs/guidelines. 2) Yes, the bigger issues are not around the actual beacons, but the apps. And the problems I see certainly aren't limited to beacon use. 3) UX decisions about what to expose via preferences are always tough. You don't want to end up looking like the prefs for Handbrake or some of Microsoft's old work ;-), but this is one time where it goes against the grain of what most users will think is happening, so I really think it should be there. 4) I probably won't, for personal reasons, but that's a good idea. Perhaps someone else reading this thread will take that on.
I guess it's probably time to check out on this topic here, as I think it's mostly run its course and I need to get back to work! Until next time...
Ultimately, this is the problem I have. Apple needs to be absolutely forthright and transparent about how stuff works, and a simple setting should be exposed to give users control. A user might choose to install something to give it a quick try, say a Starbucks beacon-enabled app. They decide they don't want to use it now, but maybe they'll keep it around to check it out in the future, so they quit the app and forget about it among the hundreds of apps on page 10 of their phone. AFAIK, with GPS-tracking, when you quit the app, you're no longer providing location data to the app, but with beacons, the app will continue to track this person's Starbucks visits forever. Is this a minor thing? Maybe in the scope of all the other tracking crap that's happening, but it doesn't mean it's wrong to point it out and push for a change.
Apple cannot explain this all to users as it is just too complex. The simple answer is that if you don't want the Starbucks app to track your location via any means including iBeacons, do not enable it to use location services. If you don't want it to be able to do stuff in the background, don't enable background refresh for the app.
Apple puts a little icon on the system bar when location services are being used. You can go to the location services section of settings and see what apps are enabled for location services and which of those applications has accessed location data within the last 24 hours. Apple is actually doing a very good job of giving this stuff user visibility and as detailed as it needs to be level of control.
Apple cannot explain this all to users as it is just too complex. The simple answer is that if you don't want the Starbucks app to track your location via any means including iBeacons, do not enable it to use location services. If you don't want it to be able to do stuff in the background, don't enable background refresh for the app.
Apple puts a little icon on the system bar when location services are being used. You can go to the location services section of settings and see what apps are enabled for location services and which of those applications has accessed location data within the last 24 hours. Apple is actually doing a very good job of giving this stuff user visibility and as detailed as it needs to be level of control.
I think you missed some of the conversation above. You say "don't enable background refresh for the app", but the point being discussed is that iOS 7.1 changes the behavior of apps, so it doesn't matter if the user has that enabled or not, the app will still listen for beacons in the background. That's unexpected (wrong) behavior.
From the article: But with iOS 7.1 your application will listen for beacons even if it was hard closed. The user can still opt out by turning off “location permission” under settings, can turn Bluetooth off, or can delete your app entirely.
It's a subtle point, and it appears users can take extra steps to prevent the app from using any location-related services, but as is, the OS is doing something unexpected behind the scenes, and that's not cool. Requiring someone to completely disable bluetooth is unreasonable in most cases, as is deleting an app entirely when you might want to occasionally use its location services. There is the mostly reasonable option of disabling location services entirely for a given app, but users currently understand that when you hard-quit your app it's completely off, and it's not supposed to be doing any more location tracking. That is misleading at best, and needs to be very clearly transparent to users, either by heavy education or with an option to change that behavior back to a more reasonable one.
I think you missed some of the conversation above. You say "don't enable background refresh for the app", but the point being discussed is that iOS 7.1 changes the behavior of apps, so it doesn't matter if the user has that enabled or not
Right from Apple's developer site:
Before attempting to monitor any regions, your app should check whether region monitoring is supported on the current device. Here are some reasons why region monitoring might not be available:
The device doesn’t have the necessary hardware to support region monitoring.
The user denied the app the authorization to use region monitoring.
The user disabled location services in the Settings app.
The user disabled Background App Refresh in the Settings app, either for the device or for your app.
The device is in Airplane mode and can’t power up the necessary hardware.
So how can you say "it doesn't matter if the user has that enabled or not."
the app will still listen for beacons in the background.
Again, and for the final time, apps don't listen for beacons, the system does.
Comments
Sounds like you could use a big screen iPhone.
I agree… so long as it's not a much bigger phone.
Funny how I'm more confident that Apple will get it right than many on here.
I don't think I'd ever consider a 16:9 5.5" phone as I think that display size would be too big even if there was zero bezel.
4.7" seems like it's pushing it. Based on my rough estimates 4.4" with a smaller side bezel would probably be close to ideal.
I have a real hard time believing they'll go that big. I'd bet somewhere around 4.6, 4.7. I'm still quite surprised at the popularity of the Note 2, and 3, and I'm even more surprised at how many women have taken to it. TBH I hated my phone at first, but I grew accustomed to it. Btw I typed this entirely with one hand, and I don't have large hands. Yes there's a learning curve, but you'll master it quite quickly.
(My apologies but on iPhone so can't reply to your thorough response with the same completeness.)
1) Don't Apple's guidelines only allow for 10 iBeacon IDs to be saved per app? I don't know if you can swap out beacon IDs as easily as you can with geofence locations, like when choosing your PassBook pass stores, so I don't know how hard of a rule that would be if an app could get your GPS-based location and then swap out new beacon IDs for iOS to look for.
2) The way it reads to me is that the system (iOS) looks for the beacon IDs, just as it has always done with any BT radio signals, and only when an ID matches an ID given to it by an app that also has location services enabled is that beacon ID data ever passed to the app, so only then will the system wake the app if there is a match. It will not mean all beacons will be sent to all apps with location services enabled.
3) I wouldn't mind seeing Enable buttons for the various types of location services for each app in iOS 8 Settings.
4) I'm a firm believer is asking questions and voicing your concerns (which is why I appreciate your comments despite being frustrated with them at the same time.
I'm on a real keyboard, but I need to dial it back a bit too. It's too easy to get too deep; it's obviously a topic I'm passionate about - I truly despise virtually anything to do with tracking and profiling, of any kind. Beacons are just a small part of this, but when Apple makes a change that I think is unnecessarily less-than-transparent, it sticks in my craw a bit. I just expect better from them.
Briefly,
1) If that's true, at least it's better than no limits. Maybe. I am a developer (for many, many years), but very little on iOS (and none at all in the past couple years), so I really haven't dug into the APIs/guidelines.
2) Yes, the bigger issues are not around the actual beacons, but the apps. And the problems I see certainly aren't limited to beacon use.
3) UX decisions about what to expose via preferences are always tough. You don't want to end up looking like the prefs for Handbrake or some of Microsoft's old work ;-), but this is one time where it goes against the grain of what most users will think is happening, so I really think it should be there.
4) I probably won't, for personal reasons, but that's a good idea. Perhaps someone else reading this thread will take that on.
I guess it's probably time to check out on this topic here, as I think it's mostly run its course and I need to get back to work! Until next time...
Apple cannot explain this all to users as it is just too complex. The simple answer is that if you don't want the Starbucks app to track your location via any means including iBeacons, do not enable it to use location services. If you don't want it to be able to do stuff in the background, don't enable background refresh for the app.
Apple puts a little icon on the system bar when location services are being used. You can go to the location services section of settings and see what apps are enabled for location services and which of those applications has accessed location data within the last 24 hours. Apple is actually doing a very good job of giving this stuff user visibility and as detailed as it needs to be level of control.
Apple cannot explain this all to users as it is just too complex. The simple answer is that if you don't want the Starbucks app to track your location via any means including iBeacons, do not enable it to use location services. If you don't want it to be able to do stuff in the background, don't enable background refresh for the app.
Apple puts a little icon on the system bar when location services are being used. You can go to the location services section of settings and see what apps are enabled for location services and which of those applications has accessed location data within the last 24 hours. Apple is actually doing a very good job of giving this stuff user visibility and as detailed as it needs to be level of control.
I think you missed some of the conversation above. You say "don't enable background refresh for the app", but the point being discussed is that iOS 7.1 changes the behavior of apps, so it doesn't matter if the user has that enabled or not, the app will still listen for beacons in the background. That's unexpected (wrong) behavior.
From the article: But with iOS 7.1 your application will listen for beacons even if it was hard closed. The user can still opt out by turning off “location permission” under settings, can turn Bluetooth off, or can delete your app entirely.
It's a subtle point, and it appears users can take extra steps to prevent the app from using any location-related services, but as is, the OS is doing something unexpected behind the scenes, and that's not cool. Requiring someone to completely disable bluetooth is unreasonable in most cases, as is deleting an app entirely when you might want to occasionally use its location services. There is the mostly reasonable option of disabling location services entirely for a given app, but users currently understand that when you hard-quit your app it's completely off, and it's not supposed to be doing any more location tracking. That is misleading at best, and needs to be very clearly transparent to users, either by heavy education or with an option to change that behavior back to a more reasonable one.
Right from Apple's developer site:
So how can you say "it doesn't matter if the user has that enabled or not."
Again, and for the final time, apps don't listen for beacons, the system does.