Following on from our post on Using Beacons with iOS 13 and Estimote’s post on Get ready for iOS 13: Bluetooth and location changes explained, TechCrunch has an article on how Developers accuse Apple of anti-competitive behavior with its privacy changes in iOS 13.
The gist of the problem is that the ‘Always’ option for allowing the location-tracking permission has become ‘Allow Once’ with the ‘Always’ option being
buried in iOS Settings. People who use location (and beacon) oriented apps, are likely to select the ‘Allow Once’ option and the app will only work correctly once. This will create extra support, customer confusion and general loss of customers. The anti-competitive part comes through Apple’s own in-built apps (currently) not having to live with these restrictions.
To mitigate against the problem we recommend app authors update their apps and online instructions to explain to users to at least initially select ‘Allow While Using App’ and possibly provide more detailed instructions how to set ‘Always’ in Settings.