@[email protected] Apple gathered the data from scraping data from Wi-Fi APs and cell towers and they scrape a lot of the web to train search, AIs, etc. so they’d have a lot of trouble arguing we’re doing anything wrong using open access public data provided by them with no authentication. It’s unlikely they’ll care. We do plan to move towards having people submit data in the future but it’s not a short term viable approach especially with a privacy focused userbase who aren’t going to want to send data.

@[email protected] Yes, either Wi-Fi needs to be enabled or Wi-Fi scanning needs to be enabled to allow doing Wi-Fi scans regardless of the Wi-Fi state. There’s a new network location option added in the menu for it. We’re going to be adding cell tower support too as a fallback approach it can use if there aren’t enough nearby Wi-Fi networks. We’ve also already essentially fully scraped Apple’s cell tower data and it will be much easier to provide that for a fully offline mode than the Wi-Fi AP data.