New App Store Tip from Apple - ‘Use Core Location’

In what has become routine at Apple, the company has posted a new App Store tip over at the iPhone Developer Center, telling developers to enhance their apps using Core Location, a framework that enables their apps to retrieve local information about its users. The feature is not aimed at providing the developer with key details about its users, but at serving the users as they are employing the app. Devs are also advised against using the feature to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads.

“The Core Location framework allows you to build applications which know where your users are and can deliver information based on their location, such as local weather, nearby restaurants, ATMs, and other location-based information,” Apple explains in the latest App Store tip.

“If you build your application with features based on a user's location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store,” the Mac maker warns.

Developers are also advised to go through the CLLocationManager Class Reference, and download the LocateMe sample code available in the iPhone OS Reference Library, in order to learn more about using Core Location.

Apple recently used the News and Announcements section of the iPhone Dev Center to confirm that iPhone SDK 3.2 was available for those enrolled in its iPhone Developer Program. The company encourages code-savvy individuals to waste no time, and download the new tools right away to start developing for the iPad. Available free of charge, SDK 3.2 also contains the iPad simulator, which allows developers to test their apps against iPad-specific features, on their Macs, before the device is even out.