Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

Two problems with this assumption per the article: 1) the app previously worked fine without the location information 2) the app no longer works at all without location information.

The only legitimate use case for location I can think of would be to pull down cable/tv/radio channel/station listings. But this shouldn't be a requirement since the user could easily manually enter in the ones they want. My guess is that something like this might be used as the pretext for requiring location. However, if the app continues to require location to function longer term (i.e. that this wasn't just an oversight which gets corrected in a future update) then I would assume that the real use case is something that has nothing to do with helping the user.

At least they acknowledged it, responded to the feedback and fixed it.

Unfortunately I have a Sonos system which became effectively bricked unless I signed a new user agreement allowing the collection of data. There are no physical controls on Sonos so the system becomes useless without accepting.

They used to sell dedicated controllers/remotes years ago but these were also bricked as part of an upgrade about a year or two ago. Unhappy owners were offered a voucher (worth less than the value of a single controller - many users owned multiple in order to fully support multi-room - see https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/s...) for their next Sonos purchase rather than allow them to continue to use the hardware they had purchased and used happily for years.

All concerns, requests to be allowed to downgrade, etc. are met on the official forums with a passive-aggressive dismissal of users' concerns by staff backed up by a few cultist fanatics.

I've tried to avoid any further updates (and deny Sonos access to my listening habits) by having it run on a disconnected network but if anyone accidentally updates the app on the old ipad we use as a controller, your forced to update everything. I just wish I had the same system which I originally bought which I use exclusively to play my ripped CDs from a NAS.

Isn't the answer always the same? To optimize performance and offer services individually tailored to the user. Privacy is a myth from the past.

Is there a virtualization app/service that can sit between the OS and an app that allows me to see or restrict what an application actually sees? For example I may allow it to see my public contacts rather than all contacts. Or, I may provide it with a location once rather than whenever they request it.

For good reason! There's many online services where you can put in a wifi MAC and pretty much know within 100M where someone is.

Yeah, the message could be made clearer about what's actually being allowed, but in the end I'm glad it's there. Maybe a generic system for when you request a permission being able to provide an explanation string or something. I know some apps made a pop-up before the prompt but I found that rather verbose especially when it was incredibly obvious why they needed the permission.