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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

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Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#211

Post by hk__2 »

WuxiFingerHold wrote: post #125
andsoitis wrote: post #26

> everyone knows all the alls on your phone On Android phones. iPhone doesn’t have this privacy deficiency.

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.

It is so annoying that it’s either "give access to ALL my contacts and ALL their information (yes, even the notes I took on their favorite things for next Christmas)" or "don’t give access". I wish we could limit the number of contacts and the level of information we give.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#212

Post by nottorp »

turblety wrote: post #137

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…

Imagine a world in which your smartphone's battery lasted more than a day...

... and ram requirements for good performance went down by 66% ...

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#213

Post by leipie »

xxprogamerxy wrote: post #202
turblety wrote: post #137

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 nati…

As a user I usually want all of those features to work. I regularly get ticked off at apps, because I cannot copy paste like in the browser or the app just closes (and loses all state) because I tried to use the back button. I also encountered apps that just reset, because I dared switch to another app for a second because I wanted to copy paste something into it...

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#214

Post by nechuchelo »

hk__2 wrote: post #210
wruza wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do and deny it access to contacts. Everything works fine.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#215

Post by ffsm8 »

xxprogamerxy wrote: post #202
turblety wrote: post #137

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 nati…

Mmh, the examples you've listed are actually super easy to do if you're using a framework such as angular with it's plugins for pwa and touch controls. And prolly tailwind for css/disabling selection if you really want to, but I'd call that an anti feature in almost all cases.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#216

Post by DeathArrow »

>Please remember the next time you casually install an app on your Android device, this information is being broadcast to the whole world. Data brokers will use it to profile you, cross-reference it with data about you from other ad networks and eventually it will be used to decide how much you’ll be asked to pay the next time you order a samosa.

Who are those data brokers? Are they publicly known? Do they have an API where a business sends customer ID, mail or something and get an spending profile that helps adjusting price for a particular customer?

I know this sounds evil. But didn't banks and insurance companies collaborate to profile their customers since tens of years ago? That is not similarly evil?

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#217

Post by wiseowise »

xxprogamerxy wrote: post #202
turblety wrote: post #137

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 nati…

UX is when you have less features - got it.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#219

Post by xlii »

turblety wrote: post #137

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…

Any kind of offline cryptography. Imagine Apple Pay being an app. So all sort of digital signatures, documents, checks, payment codes and vouchers, tickets etc.

IMO this is in the range of „why we use machines to transport if we all have legs”. Technically true, but applications do more than only UI.

I've heard this argument for the past 30 years (we won’t be using apps, everything will be remote console/terminal/webpage/web). Chromebooks were meant for web-first access, and yet native apps are still alive and kicking.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#220

Post by usrusr »

turblety wrote: post #137

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…

Push notification is the big one. Yes, there is web push, but that's hardly scratching the surface of feature completeness. And incentives to change that aren't really there.
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