81–90 of 157 posts
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Why would there be server costs for an app that tracks local app usage on the phone?
It didn't actually directly track app usage locally, it tunneled all traffic through a VPN and tracked usage by monitoring network connections.
As an end user, am I happy that Apple took your idea and built it in the OS, stripped of ads, premium features, tracking and analytics, etc? Yes, yes I am.
This type of app would have been possible to build without a VPN on any other OS. Apple has chosen to make it difficult for anyone other than themselves to build such apps. This is an abuse of market position in one market to expand in another, and has a long term negative effect on the health of the industry if only the large players that own the ecosystem can profit from it.
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It's an invasion of privacy if the tracking is unsolicited. It's not an invasion of privacy if the tracking is the point of the app. The app had paying users, it clearly had value to some people.
The average user will not understand the implications of the tracking. And even if the tracking is benevolent today, who's to say that won't change when the company is acquired in six months?
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This type of app would have been possible to build without a VPN on any other OS. Apple has chosen to make it difficult for anyone other than themselves to build such apps. This is an abuse of market position in one market to expand in another, and has a long term negative effect on the health of the industry if only the large players that own the ecosystem can profit from it.
Do you really want 3rd party developers to be able to write apps that can introspect all other apps running on a phone?
As an end user, am I happy that Apple took your idea and built it in the OS, stripped of ads, premium features, tracking and analytics, etc? Yes, yes I am.
This type of app would have been possible to build without a VPN on any other OS. Apple has chosen to make it difficult for anyone other than themselves to build such apps. This is an abuse of market position in one market to expand in another, and has a long term negative effect on the health of the industry if only the large players that own the ecosystem can profit from it.
On the flipside, this app looks like it was kind of a hack to get working. "Tunnel all of your traffic through our VPN to get tracking of social media use." It doesn't surprise me that Apple would want to offer first-party support.
Agree with the sentiment here. Whilst I have all the deepest sympathies for the guy, it does seem like a hack to tunnel it through a VPN to get it working. One could argue, the right approach would be if Apple opened up the hooks to measuring app usage for any 3rd party app, but I don’t think that will happen any time soon.
b) Advertisers could use it to personally identify you.
c) Criminals could use it to blackmail you e.g. using Tinder app whilst married.
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This is because this would have been the only method to "block" access to the apps. Apple provides no API for other apps to "moderate" the opening of other apps, like Screen Time can do. This is a workaround because they were working in the sandboxed environment that is iOS.
I have an app on Android for ad blocking that simply runs the VPN server locally. Works perfectly fine. Of course that means all the juicy data isn't flowing through your startup, on the upside you won't wake up one day with an angry mob asking the attorney general to federally charge you for hijacking their communication under the false pretense of app usage tracking.
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I think that's fine. What's not fine is removing the app itself from the app store as it was generating $45k a year, the same week of releasing its competing app. Either you remove it because it's against the TOS, anytime in the 1.5 years that the app existed, or leave it be. Don't 'coincidentally' remove it the same week you release a competing app. That's just nonsense.
The problem is that the moment iOS released Screen Time, their app instantly sat in violation of the TOS. You cannot recreate built-in functionality.
There are even Siri Intents for most of them and many more in iOS 13.
That's an incredibly fast build time!