Apple is prepping an iOS change that may hurt AR and VR advertising

“Advertising agency employees who work on augmented reality and virtual reality are worried that Apple is about to upend web-based AR and VR,” Tim Peterson reports for Digiday.
“Apple appears poised to make it more difficult for sites to track iPhones’ and iPads’ motions and orientations in order to power web-based AR and VR experiences,” Peterson reports. “According to a document published to Apple’s developer site, the next update to Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 12.2, will add a setting that will enable people using its mobile Safari browser to prevent sites from being able to access a device’s accelerometer and gyroscope in order to track the device’s motion and orientation.”
Peterson reports, “Tweets from two people whose Twitter bios list them as Apple employees who work on Safari indicate that sites accessed through the mobile version of Safari will need people’s permission before they can track an iOS device’s motion and orientation… It’s unclear whether Apple will introduce a way for sites to prompt people to enable motion and orientation tracking without people having to exit the browser… Asking people to exit the browser to toggle on motion and orientation detection would not only make it less likely that people will do so to try out a web-based AR or VR experience, but it may make it less likely that brands invest in producing AR and VR experiences…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Make perfect sense:
Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly. I’m an optimist; I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with your data. — Steve Jobs