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iOS 7.1 to Fix Geolocation Issue That Broke Location-Based Apps

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MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
63,523
30,811



life360.png
Apple has reversed a change it made to how users quit location-aware apps in iOS 7. In the new OS, Apple changed how location-aware applications work when they are force-quit by users. In iOS 7.0, users who force quit an app -- by double-tapping the home button and swiping up -- also disable all location-aware functions which previously would continue to run in the background.

One app in particular, Life360, uses background location abilities to allow family and friends to locate each other. In iOS 7, when a user force quits the app, all location-aware background services were disabled. This caused the company to have a sudden influx of negative reviews and disappointed customers. Some apps even saw 30-50 percent drops in users following the change, according to Life360 CEO Chris Hulls who spoke to MacRumors yesterday.

Now, in iOS 7.1 beta 5, released a week ago, the change has been reversed and Hulls attributes that to a letter that Life360 and a number of other developers sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook on February 1. In the beta, background location services remain running when an app is force quit, same as in iOS 6.

VentureBeat has the first several paragraphs of the letter:
Dear Apple iOS Development Team,

We are a group of Apple developers who rely on iOS geolocation services for core parts of our businesses. iOS 7 was hugely exciting to us, as new features such as Location Beacons, Background Networking, and Multi-Peer Connectivity give us the ability to do things we never thought were possible.

In previous versions of iOS, if a user killed an application in the app switcher, developers were still able to get geolocation in the background. With iOS 7, once a user kills an application, all processes are terminated until the user manually restarts the app. We appreciate the intent behind this change, which we realize was done to give users more control over what is running on their phones, but it has caused major unintended consequences. ... Many developers who rely on background geolocation have seen their app ratings fall by over 3 stars.
Click to expand...
Life360 is a free download on the App Store. [Direct Link]

Article Link: iOS 7.1 to Fix Geolocation Issue That Broke Location-Based Apps
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/02/11/ios-71-fixes-location-apps/
C

CrzyP

macrumors 6502
Mar 14, 2012
337
145
I assume this will fix the native reminders app and Find My Friends too?
 
R

recklesslife85

Cancelled
Sep 17, 2012
462
170
User should have total control over location based apps. If I want to kill an app that should be my choice. Simple solution, don't download apps like theres.
 
Jack Delgado

Jack Delgado

macrumors regular
May 11, 2012
138
347
Hmm... I mean... if someone force closes an app, I wouldn't necessarily say the old behavior was... wrong.
 
B

bluespark

macrumors 68040
Jul 11, 2009
3,097
4,010
Chicago
People continue to misunderstand when and why to force-quit apps. I know many people who incorrectly think they need to do this routinely to manage their phone's memory use.
 
nagromme

nagromme

macrumors G5
May 2, 2002
12,546
1,196
Force-quitting is not just a imaginary placebo from our desktop computing past!

It's also SUPER useful when a failed app freezes but doesn't exit, meaning that it's still frozen when you come back to it.

Which happened to me once in 2012.
 
CoreForce

CoreForce

macrumors regular
Aug 28, 2003
167
66
Zurich, Switzerland
Feel the Force, AppDevelopers!

That will be painful with apps like Foursquare and Flickr as they are right now. I kill them just because they don't terminate location based services for no reason, draining my battery.
 
F

firewood

macrumors G3
Jul 29, 2003
8,108
1,345
Silicon Valley
recklesslife85 said:
But you wouldn't download a location app to start with to do that. Kill an app should mean kill an app.
Click to expand...

If a user really wants to kill an app, they can outright delete it off their device. That's absolute control!

Users often download location apps and other apps to try them out. If one turns out useless or bothersome, just delete it.
 
Z

Zxxv

macrumors 68040
Nov 13, 2011
3,558
1,104
UK
this is crap. when i kill an app I mean to kill it, entirely. If I want its features running I will open it again. Kill means stop what your doing not stop half of what your doing.
 
1

179202

Cancelled
Apr 14, 2008
939
217
firewood said:
If a user really wants to kill an app, they can outright delete it off their device. That's absolute control!

Users often download location apps and other apps to try them out. If one turns out useless or bothersome, just delete it.
Click to expand...

Don't just ignore the problem.

The behaviour requested by these devs and granted by 7.1 beta 5 doesn't make any logical sense.
 
I

iVoid

macrumors 65816
Jan 9, 2007
1,145
190
Huh? "In iOS 7, when a user force quits the app, all location-aware background services were disabled."

Well, DUH.

When I force quit an app i *EXPECT* all processes used by that app to stop running.

If i want it to keep running, I don't force quit an app.

I'm amazed that people can't figure that one out.

So basically, with 7.1 any app that has location services running in the background can't be stopped without disabling location services for that app or rebooting the iPhone.

Bad idea Apple.
 
Last edited:
M

MikhailT

macrumors 601
Nov 12, 2007
4,582
1,325
  1. The change in iOS 7 didn't break the apps, the developers broke it themselves by not educating the users as to what happens when the app is forced to be closed.
  2. If I'm force-quitting an app, I expect all processes related to the app to be terminated. By reverting this, it now breaks the whole consistency of explaining things to users, how apps should work, and so on.
  3. Apple, really? Caving in to developers because they're whining about getting bad ratings when it's just a matter of educating users rather than changing something that could hurt the battery life?

Everybody here who disagrees with this should send an email to Apple to undo this revert because it is not right.

Now, I'm definitely going to leave bad reviews for those developers who requested such a change.
 
M

meydey

macrumors newbie
Feb 11, 2014
2
0
Regular users are trained to kill

For years and years, PC / Mac users have been told that by all the experts that when you are done with an application, you should close it or you will run out of memory. Therefore, many users "close" these application without realizing that they are terminating them "with prejudice" and that doing so will prevent many of the features they expect to work and may even be why they downloaded them in the first place.

What Apple *really* needs to do is create a paradigm that lets you "close" an app (but let its services run), vs. killing an app which would also warn the user of the consequences of doing so. Killing an app with prejudice is probably not what most general users want to do or realize they are doing it.
 
J

jonasdamn

macrumors 6502a
Mar 4, 2013
549
1
"In previous versions of iOS, if a user killed an application in the app switcher, developers were still able to get geolocation in the background. With iOS 7, once a user kills an application, all processes are terminated until the user manually restarts the app. We appreciate the intent behind this change, which we realize was done to give users more control over what is running on their phones, but it has caused major unintended consequences. .."

Hmmm wasn't background refresh feature made for this? Let users decide what application can be executed in the background even if the app is killed?
 
Carlanga

Carlanga

macrumors 604
Nov 5, 2009
7,132
1,409
meydey said:
For years and years, PC / Mac users have been told that by all the experts that when you are done with an application, you should close it or you will run out of memory. Therefore, many users "close" these application without realizing that they are terminating them "with prejudice" and that doing so will prevent many of the features they expect to work and may even be why they downloaded them in the first place.

What Apple *really* needs to do is create a paradigm that lets you "close" an app (but let its services run), vs. killing an app which would also warn the user of the consequences of doing so. Killing an app with prejudice is probably not what most general users want to do or realize they are doing it.
Click to expand...

its already there, the app should be left running in the background, it's not apples fault that people want to force kill due to old habits.
 
M

meydey

macrumors newbie
Feb 11, 2014
2
0
Carlanga said:
its already there, the app should be left running in the background, it's not apples fault that people want to force kill due to old habits.
Click to expand...

No, its not Apples fault. However, you and most other people on this forum are "power users" and not general users. And, when Apple made this change, they did not do a good job informing people that the paradigm of closing an app had changed. You can complain that general users are "stupid" all you want, but Apple is designed to be intuitive for general users and the change they made in iOS 7 was not.
 
S

saudor

macrumors 68000
Jul 18, 2011
1,506
2,079
Subject

I get the whole free memory is wasted memory but sometimes it's better to have free memory. Especially when dealing with huge memory hogging apps. The process of writing data into memory directly is going to be faster than making room for the app and then writing into memory. The speed is fairly substantial when you play infinity blade 3 for example.

And then there's the whole location/battery devouring hung up processes that don't always play nicely in a perfect world. Imagine if you couldn't force power off your computer when it got stuck. Lol
 
StyxMaker

StyxMaker

macrumors 68020
Mar 14, 2010
2,046
654
Inside my head.
recklesslife85 said:
User should have total control over location based apps. If I want to kill an app that should be my choice. Simple solution, don't download apps like theres.
Click to expand...

I totally agree. The main reason I use the Quick Launch to kill apps is to make sure they aren't using Location Services in the background.
 
P

Peebot

macrumors newbie
Feb 11, 2014
2
0
StyxMaker said:
I totally agree. The main reason I use the Quick Launch to kill apps is to make sure they aren't using Location Services in the background.
Click to expand...

Most users don't use the quick launch view for this and they don't realize what they are doing. My mom kills all the apps in the launch view because someone in the ATT store told her it saved battery and she doesn't expect things to stop working.

I think everyone agrees that people should have control over what is running on their phone, but the average non-power user has no clue what happens when they kill apps. Eventually I hope Apple makes some sort of permission set that let's user decide what happens when a specific app is killed.

This is the best thing Apple could have done for now. I have a small geo app myself and this was a big problem. I'm glad more prominent developers were able to get Apple's attention to fix this.
 
J

jjardim

macrumors newbie
Mar 19, 2008
26
0
Location Fix

I think this is great news, as a developer and a user.
All Apple is doing is reverting back to how it always worked pre iOS 7.
 
P

Peebot

macrumors newbie
Feb 11, 2014
2
0
jonasdamn said:
"In previous versions of iOS, if a user killed an application in the app switcher, developers were still able to get geolocation in the background. With iOS 7, once a user kills an application, all processes are terminated until the user manually restarts the app. We appreciate the intent behind this change, which we realize was done to give users more control over what is running on their phones, but it has caused major unintended consequences. .."

Hmmm wasn't background refresh feature made for this? Let users decide what application can be executed in the background even if the app is killed?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately this is not the case. Even if background refresh is on, if the app is killed, background refresh stops. This confusion is why Apple needed to do this change - even power users sometimes get confused, so think about the average joe.

Eventually they should have a permission setting that is more clear.
 
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