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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

#241

Post by jonplackett »

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…

You have to wonder about the motivations of the company making the browser that makes it impossible to disable some of these things, and therefore makes real apps so much superior (like swipe to go back on safari - I have never ever swiped back intentionally in over 100000 swipe backs).

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#242

Post by whs »

ignoramous wrote: post #95
AznHisoka wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That loophole was published 5 years ago, it hasnt been fixed since. Do you need someone from Google to explicitly write an official note, notarized, indicating they are refusing to fix it?

> refusing to fix it Google addressed similar isolation concerns (without breaking a tonne of APIs in incompatible ways) with Private Space and Work Profile: https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/private-sp...

If it's a security issue fix, they should release it in one of the monthly security patch.

I also think that private space do not fix the underlying issue. If you have four apps and you don't want them to know about each other you can put one of them in main profile, work profile, app locker and you run out of profile for the last one. The way app locker work doesn't scale to tens of sandbox.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#243

Post by buyucu »

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…

webapp UIs suck because nobody cares about them. They could be a lot better.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#245

Post by silisili »

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…

That's funny, I use Amazon on mobile web, my wife insists on the app.

Guess which one of us has way more problems, due to both functionality and a constantly changing layout?

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#246

Post by fauigerzigerk »

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…

>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.

Strange. This inability to select any text has always felt like one of the most hostile things developers could ever do. It feels like pure vandalism.

Another thing that causes massive productivity degradation is not being able to keep multiple pages open so you can come back to some state. I cannot imagine how anyone could possibly use these apps for any serious work.

The UX of almost all native mobile apps is absolute crap. But it's not their nativeness that makes them crap. I'm not complaining about the idea of operating systems offering non-portable but high performance UI primitives that make use of OS facilities.

Many native desktop apps don't have these UX issues (at least not all of them at the same time). It's the mobile UX patterns, conventions and native UI frameworks that are causing this catastrophic state of affairs.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#247

Post by HSO »

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…

> the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept introduced by Apple/Google so they could scrape a huge percentage in sales.

Actually, when the iPhone was introduced, Apple wanted it to have only a few select native apps (like Maps or Mail) and all the rest to be web apps.

They were browbeaten into opening an app store by the developers, who wanted to do native apps, not the other way around like you say.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#248

Post by whs »

mgriepentrog wrote: post #119
wkat4242 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On iOS it's kinda worse in some ways. If you enroll into a company MDM they can see all your apps. On Android if they use the work profile (which is the standard method these days) they can only see the apps inside there.

Apple introduced account-driven enrollments in 2021[1], which behaves similar to Android's work profile. Managed apps/data are kept in its own APFS volume, and MDM servers don't have access to anything outside of it. They also disallow system-wide commands like wipe device. The only caveat is you need managed Apple IDs[2] to use this enrollment flow, and I doubt many companies have set it up. Regardless, MDM installe…

I'm working on implementing this for the company, and the annoying limitations on iOS is that you can't clone apps. If you want Gmail (as an example) as managed app, you can't have another Gmail as unmanaged app. While the company can't see inside the Gmail managed app (without the app itself explicitly providing that feature), the company can remove Gmail (and any local data inside the app) at any time.

Fun fact from the MDM implementation - the most private way (at least to the company policies) to have a company-connected device is to buy a separate phone and install company's MDM on it. On company provided devices, the company may locate company's assets at any time but doing so on a personal device is a privacy breach.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#249

Post by weinzierl »

moi2388 wrote: post #238
weinzierl wrote: post #236

"the one that blue tick twitter accounts living in certain pin codes of Bengaluru passionately discuss amongst themselves for a week every year" To someone embarrassingly unfamiliar with Indian culture, what does it mean?

The PowerPoint he talks about and is displayed the line below it

I know but that does not clarify the connection between blue tick, certain pin codes and a certain week in the slightest.

Sure, these are probably all hints to affluent members of society but I was hoping for a more detailed explanation.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#250

Post by sgt »

turblety wrote: post #148
halper wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, there are a lot of applications that I want to be able to load regardless of whether I have a connection to the Internet or not: calendar, notes, mail etc. They can sync/send/whatever whenever I am next online.

Ah yeah. While this is mostly implemented terrible, a web app can absolutely do this for you using service workers. So you can install a webapp to your homescreen and use it without an internet connection at all.

You seem to miss the fact that most web app experiences are inferior to that of native app.

The disadvantage of native is barrier to install. Once that's done, the experience to the user is simply superior. True native experience, fast and predictable. As a developer it's easier to build those types of apps as well.

People who haven't used iOS might not understand this though as they've never seen "how things should be".

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