The iOS6 beta brings much finer-grained controls to the privacy settings, letting you specify just what services any app will have access to. Previously you’d get an alert whenever an app wanted to know your location. Now you’ll see the same kind of alert when apps ask to use data from your calendars, contacts, reminders and photos.
Developers of photo apps will be especially pleased. Skim the App Store reviews on many apps which take or edit photos and you’ll see a bunch of moronic comments complaining that the app tried to access location data.
This is of course because photos can contain GPS data, and iOS would throw up the location alert when an app requested access to the photo library. Now, when you first use a photo app the dialog box is much more sensible.
The addition of warnings for contacts and calendars is great, too, especially after the Path debacle, where your entire contacts database was uploaded to the Path servers in plain text. Oops.
