Apple's developer website describe 3 types of background services an app can use, music, location and VoIP.
When they describe background location services they talk about 2 types of apps: critical and non-critical apps. A GPS navigation app falls into the 'critical' category, and location based social networks like Gowalla and Loops falls into the non-critical category.
I have several questions
I'm building a location based social network, like Google Latitude. this kind of app fall under the 'non-critical' category. these apps are woken up by the OS whenever the phone switches cellular towers. How often is that? how accurate is that? will 100 meter change wake up the app?
I was wondering if there is a way for an application to wake up every 2 minutes to sample the GPS and go back to sleep? 2.
I hear there are new Alerts feature that you can schedule in advance. can these alerts wake up the app, or are they only textual notification?
What if I register a thread as a critical-location thread, so I have full background activity and gps access. will Apple not approve my app?
Thanks!