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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

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201–210 of 502 posts

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#201

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

Its funny to read negative replies to your comment on the shortcoming's of web apps.

The browsers are controlled and manipulated by the likes of Apple and Google. These companies have a significant influence on the direction of browser features and limitations, often shaping them to suit their business interests. For example, Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome have been criticized for implementing features that reinforce their own ecosystems, such as limiting web push notifications or restricting certain web API functionalities to encourage users toward their native apps. This ultimately means that even in the browser world, the same forces that drive the app store monopolies can still control and restrict what’s possible, even if the web is inherently more open. So while web apps offer more flexibility than native apps in theory, the reality is that Apple and Google’s control over the browsers still limits the true potential of a completely open web.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#202

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

Simple, UX.

The reality is, most webapps for mobile just suck. The UX is nowhere near that of a native application. I don't want any text to be selectable. I don't want pull to refresh on every page. I don't want the left-swipe to take me to the previous page.

You can probably find workarounds for all these issues. The new Silk library (https://silkhq.co/) is the first case I've seen that get's very close to a native experience. But even the fact that this is a paid library comes to show how non-trivial this is.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#203

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

Many things needs to be an app, but so so many do not require.

Many apps are apps just because they can collect your data, and create walled gardens. It is harder to create extensions for existing apps, for web pages it is easier.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#204
post #181

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

I get your point partially. All these apps that companies put out in order to collect and manage shopping tokens or to contact their customer service would have been much better as a website. However I still do like to have apps on my devices that just work offline, without distributing my data across services I do not control. And I also do not want to depend on a internet connection, when I am anywhere. I like my o…

It’s totally possible to distribute a webapp that works offline and stores all your data offline too.

Platform owners introduce a bunch of restrictions that create reliability and usability concerns, but the standards already exist to enable a website operator to create a webapp that, after the initial ‘install’, runs entirely offline on the user’s device, and has no need to communicate with the website.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#206

> It's worth acknowledging that there are some legitimate reasons for an app to check which other apps are installed on your phone. For example, an app might check which UPI apps are installed to show relevant payment options. Nope! Nope, nope, nope. If you're wondering how we got into this situation.. well, it's exactly stuff like this. Weird to see someone who's digging into it at all also making excuses for it. No…

> "I want to avoid a single extra click once every other month, so I guess I better irrevocably open my data/phone/life up completely to megacorp forever" Nah, it's super annoying when I click on a link and don't get redirected to the native app. This happens way more then once a month. Web experiences are much worse for many things.

Cool but the attitude of “bring on the dystopian future as long as it’s more convenient for some people some of the time” is still confusing to me. Do you imagine that leaked information like this has never gotten someone killed before, and never will in the future?

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#207
post #19

> For extremely specific use cases such as file managers, browsers or antivirus apps, Google grants an exception by allowing QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission, which provides full visibility into installed apps. Why would browser need to enumerate the installed apps? Why?!

File managers need full access as you can use that ability to extract and inspect the code of any apps installed on the system. It is a very useful feature and I would hate for it to be removed.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#208

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

In the case of termux, by far my favorite app, I have more than 2GB of locally installed packages. How would that work with a browser?

OP talks about apps in general, of course there will always be anecdotic cases like this one (see also https://xkcd.com/1172/).

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#209
post #19

> For extremely specific use cases such as file managers, browsers or antivirus apps, Google grants an exception by allowing QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission, which provides full visibility into installed apps. Why would browser need to enumerate the installed apps? Why?!

Perhaps it's checking which apps can handle links?

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#210
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhones are less of a privacy nightmare. One of the biggest incentives for creating apps is to scrape all kind of data from the users. Look at how many apps require permission to see you contacts. And how many actually need your contacts to function. That's why I'm still a bit surprised that many seem to be surprised by findings like this one here.

Look at how many apps require permission to see you contacts. And how many actually need your contacts to function. That is, again, not require but ask for on iphone. I have zero non-functioning apps on my iphone due to denied access to contacts. Even a chinese bluetooth light controller doesn't dare (while refusing to work on android for the same reason). You can hate apple/iphone ecosystem all you want, but let's n…

> I have zero non-functioning apps on my iphone due to denied access to contacts.

You don’t have WhatsApp then.

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