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But this is a failure on Googles part to not have a streamlined api for detecting external devices, a feature which is becoming more and more popular with smart

But this is a failure on Googles part to not have a streamlined api for detecting external devices, a feature which is becoming more and more popular with smart devices. Apple has protocols like WAC that you can conform to and be visible to an iOS user without anything special. Inside your app you hand off control to the user to identify and pair that device so that you as a developer don't need special permissions and custom code to link things up. Our iOS app is able to run without any special prompts for the user on first run, whereas our Android app has to ask for location services with lengthy explanations before they can get past the first screen.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Google desperately wants location services enabled and will use any wedge possible to force it on. They even disable the center on my location button in the maps app even though the app knows very well where your current location is.
bbulkow 8y ago
This seems the classic 'ease of use' vs privacy. Google has done the right thing for privacy, because an app that can scan for ssid can determine location and report it if it has any outside connection. Good for google to equate the two, this was always a well known hole. One suggestion- please update your blog, if this thread convinces you that Google did the right thing. Those posts hang around and impact product engineering. What kind of api would you propose? The only one i can think of is one that says 'connect to x' instead of 'list all ssid', which still tells you about location but not a lot. I occasionally think about g+ shutdown, and how Google engineered quite a bit for privacy, and removed things like games that leak location and quizzes, and forced people to create groups, which is the right thing but people liked the rich experience of facebook. Now that many are fleeibg from fb, they can't go to g+. Sorry to thread-jack. Clearly i have a blog post pent up.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

Google desperately wants location services enabled and will use any wedge possible to force it on. They even disable the center on my location button in the maps app even though the app knows very well where your current location is.

bbulkow 8y ago

This seems the classic 'ease of use' vs privacy. Google has done the right thing for privacy, because an app that can scan for ssid can determine location and report it if it has any outside connection. Good for google to equate the two, this was always a well known hole. One suggestion- please update your blog, if this thread convinces you that Google did the right thing. Those posts hang around and impact product engineering. What kind of api would you propose? The only one i can think of is one that says 'connect to x' instead of 'list all ssid', which still tells you about location but not a lot. I occasionally think about g+ shutdown, and how Google engineered quite a bit for privacy, and removed things like games that leak location and quizzes, and forced people to create groups, which is the right thing but people liked the rich experience of facebook. Now that many are fleeibg from fb, they can't go to g+. Sorry to thread-jack. Clearly i have a blog post pent up.