31–40 of 58 posts
So, wait, it's possible for me to actually download inefficient apps on my iPhone? Onoes! Seriously, why is "iOS" in the title? Boo.
As a word of unsolicited advice, It's best to set your emotional attachments to a platform aside if you want to engage or broaden the discussion on legitimate technical matters.
As a developer, I am guilty of using flurry too much. But its just so damned useful to be seeing what your users are up to with your app! I am addicted to checking my flurry console every day and watching the event logs, looking at session lengths.. even the world map of users is something I can look at longingly every morning.
Actually, I find that to be creepy. You are basically stalking your users.
In August I ended up using 100MB in one day for whatever reason (I imagine Netflix even though I was home) and started to think about having a proxy service to help me cut down on bandwidth use as well as being able to monitor how much each individual app uses. I don't know if that's at all possible or if that exists but I realized that it'd be hard to make that a paying product since, with AT&T at least, it costs on…
They have an iOS app that configures your device to use their proxy servers. I haven't tried it myself since I'm a bit hesitant to route all my traffic through a third party, but it does sound promising.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course I could. I could do a lot of other things that wouldn't be as effective, too. When you use something for free that requires money to produce and maintain, of course every damn aspect of your life and buying habits is going to be cross-correlated, as long as this is legal and profitable in aggregate. (Often it isn't profitable. People dramatically overestimate how interesting and/or valuable they are.) Serio…
When you use something for free Are you talking about the app here? Because the price of the app has nothing to do with it, since I'm sure many paying apps use analytics tools as well. The problem is not the use of analytics to improve the app either, but the fact that Flurry can track you specifically over multiple apps. If you're talking about Flurry being free, the major problem is that, as a developer, you get th…
Many analytics tools exist that don't have an advertising arm - in fact, most don't. They charge developers directly. Mobile device analytics are a bit of an aberration, mainly for historical reasons, although paid solutions there also exist.
For the user to 'pay' by giving away behavioral information, they'd have to suffer some sort of economic loss. They don't. (As an aside, a lot of the arguments made in favor of music or application piracy are surprisingly relevant to the collection of behavioral targeting data.)
I believe that ideas should stand on their own, so I generally don't disclaimer up my posts. For example, I'm always irritated when someone dismisses a politician's stance because of his donors, as if to suggest he was bought. In the politician's case, he has the donors he does because of his ideas, not the other way around. In my case, I have the economic interests I do because of my ideas - again, not the other way around.
I wish I could force this guy and his ilk to forever use the unoptimized first version of every product that benefits from user analytics.
http://www.flurry.com/about-us/merger/welcome.html
(Thanks Timothee for pointing it out further down the thread)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, I find that to be creepy. You are basically stalking your users.
Isn't knowing and understanding what your users are doing with your app the cornerstone of making a better app?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course I could. I could do a lot of other things that wouldn't be as effective, too. When you use something for free that requires money to produce and maintain, of course every damn aspect of your life and buying habits is going to be cross-correlated, as long as this is legal and profitable in aggregate. (Often it isn't profitable. People dramatically overestimate how interesting and/or valuable they are.) Serio…
> People dramatically overestimate how interesting and/or valuable they are. Regardless of how "uninteresting" or "worthless" my interests, browsing habits, purchases, etc. are, they point is that they are mine and I never gave my consent.
I'm not familiar with every mobile platform's current agreements with its users, but back when I was, most had you agree to a pretty broad policy regarding third-party apps to spare their developers the need to write their own terms of service and privacy policy. That's generally where the consent happens. In the exceptions, the developers do provide terms of service, which you consent to as a condition of installing the app.
You almost certainly didn't give your fully informed consent, mind you, unless you enjoy reading legal documents - but that's the current state of the industry both online and off, and in my mind far superior to an extensive batch of lengthy in-your-face disclosures you'd have to agree to before viewing any website. You may disagree, and you may wish that things were different, but that's just how the world works right now.
I wish I could force this guy and his ilk to forever use the unoptimized first version of every product that benefits from user analytics.
It's not like cofounding a company that was purchased by Flurry doesn't make you biased or anything. http://www.flurry.com/about-us/merger/welcome.html (Thanks Timothee for pointing it out further down the thread)
It would be bizarre if your ideas, beliefs, and opinions didn't reflect themselves in your economic interests.
Engage with the argument and not the arguer.
But the line between what's considered usage pattern analysis or creepy spying is hard to draw.
The first part of this article is all about apps doing unnecessarily large network requests. The lack of gzip, optimized images, and redundant requests are more a sign of developers having not enough time or knowledge in the area of bandwidth optimization. The second half of the article is much more interesting with a discussion of the horrible security practices in apps (or lack thereof). It is an indichtment of Fac…