Background Location-Based Services on iPhone?
loopt
To date the iphone has only allowed certain built-in Apple apps to run in the background – mail and messaging for example – that basically listen for new events to come through and update you in real time. Apple doesn’t allow third-party apps to run background processes – basically when you quit the app it is completely closed.
A big area where this lack of background processes is problematic is location-based services (LBS). If an app like Maps can’t run in the background, it can’t receive notifications as the user changes location. So even though the iPhone has the ability to know where you are at any given time via built in GPS, apps can’t take advantage of this information until you actually start an app. What that means is that cool services like being notified when you are near othe people or places doesn’t happen automatically – you have to intentionally have to check.
The social networking app Loopt, with the help of AT&T has somehow gotten around this problem. For $4/month you will be able to have background location enabled – for the Loopt application that is. So basically this will enable the iPhone to update the users’ location information even when the Loopt app proper isn’t running. That’s cool, but I say a) this functionality should be available to any developer building an LBS-based app, and b) it should be free. There are rumors that Apple may provide such an option in a future OS update, but for now they are tightly controlling this access.
Other mobile OS’s such as Android and Palm’s WebOS provide this ability built-in. This is one differentiator to makes me less of a fan of the iPhone OS and more open to moving to one of these other platforms. But it is clear that Apple has the capability to make this happen, so maybe they are just holding back and slowly releasing this functionality on a limited basis. Either way, background LBS-based services, especially tied to social networking apps, is going to become more and more ubiquitous and important on mobile. This IS one of the key differentiators between the mobile device and a desktop computer – it should be wildly taken advantage of.
