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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

#331

Post by billfruit »

wkat4242 wrote: post #309
billfruit wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android already has support for scoped storage. So it is not clear why Obisidian needs the whole file system permission.

Yes but only later Android versions. If you start supporting those you need to move to the corresponding API level and that means to drop support for older ones. They probably don't want to do that yet. This one is Android 10 and up, and the Android 10 version of scoped storage was quite basic IIRC so you probably want an even later one. I guess they still want to support older phones.

At the cost of much lower data privacy for users.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#332

Post by [deleted] »

milesrout wrote: post #64
solardev wrote: post #52

Privacy issues aside, it's kinda cool reading about how Indians use their phones, and also how they use English. I'd never heard "beyond the pale" before, and I'm still not sure what the idea of "multiple Indias" means when some of them are Mexico and some are Africa...? I've also never heard of the majority of the apps being analyzed or tracked. Must be such a different world out there.

Beyond the pale is commonly used in English. A pale is a stake, and it means beyond the boundary (set out by a fence with stakes, hence the phrase) of what is acceptable. It gaines popularity in the mid 19th century. It may be related to the term "the Pale" which referred to the better controlled more Anglicised part of Ireland around Dublin, but there isn't enough evidence to be sure of this. Certainly not an Indian…

[deleted]

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#333

Post by nom »

DevKoala wrote: post #55

> How is knowing whether I have the Xbox or the Playstation app installed on my phone essential to their Swiggy's core functionality? How will knowing if I have the Naukri or Upstox app help them deliver groceries to my doorstep? It is for fingerprinting purposes

It also checks for popular remote desktop apps (allow incoming connections to the phone) which could be used to increase scam success rate.

Same with banks apps, if you are a scammer it's really useful to know beforehand what kind of bank the target uses.

There are probably a whole bunch of groups who have a purposes for this kind of info, especially if they can link it to the phone number.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#334

Post by odiroot »

graemep wrote: post #284

The HSBC UK Android app look s at what apps you have, and refuses to run if you have apps with certain permissions (such as an alternative launcher) and now refuses to run if you have any apps from outside the Google app store. I have complained about this here before, but the end result was that I asked for a hardware security device and use the website instead.

Interestingly FirstDirect app (also part of HSBC) has no such problems. It even ran on my previously rooted phone.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#335

Post by rlpb »

carlosjobim wrote: post #326
wiseowise wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In cases where a native app and web app are both available on iOS, there’s often a huge difference in battery usage and sluggishness. Yeah, like single native instagram draining battery faster than combination of multiple websites that I visit in Safari. > For the same reason I won’t replace my real computer with a Chromebook for the foreseeable future. > real computer Where most of the modern applications are eith…

> Where most of the modern applications are either web wrappers or Electron apps. Only if you're stuck on a depreciated platform like Linux. If you are on Mac, native applications – real applications – are much more powerful and usable than any web wrapper on Linux. I've noticed Linux users have taken a habit of proposing their broken way of using a computer through the browser for other platforms as well. But on oth…

Native applications are way better on Linux, too. But only where they exist. There are plenty of "apps" where there developers have taken shortcuts by getting "Linux support" by using Electron. These app perform noticeably worse and are generally disliked by their users.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#336

Post by divan »

mojuba wrote: post #223
xxprogamerxy wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be fair, browser apps do have their advantages: - text is selectable - content is zoomable - you can have an ad/nuisance blocker - page source is open While native apps have their own advantages: - much smoother experience esp. navigation, scrolling, animations, etc. - better overall performance (JavaScript will always lose to the native binary) - access to hardware opens new possibilities; audio, video accelerato…

> browser apps do have their advantages:

These are more like byproduct of the fact that web apps are built on the stack not suited for modern UI apps. It's literally a text typesetting engine pretending to be a rendering engine for high-performance UI.

So, it can also be framed as:

- everything is selectable, even what shouldn't be - buttons, drawers, video players, etc - content is zoomable, which most of the time just breaks UX in hilariuous ways. Developers have to do extra-work to either disable zoom or make hacks/workarounds.

"Everything is selectable" and "everything is zoomable" makes total sense if it's a blog post. If it's a UI for the modern app, it does not.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#337

Post by divan »

nodar86 wrote: post #327
xxprogamerxy wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Disabling text selection is not just worse UX, it is actively user-hostile

In Photoshop panels, title (like "Layers") are not selectable. How is it worse UX or user-hostile?

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#338

Post by pasc1878 »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #226
IshKebab wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst one is the UK's NHS app, which is only available as an app, despite being just a webview wrapper! I have no idea what they were thinking.

What happens when you visit whatever URL is being wrapped?

You go to the nhs webpage and it works in the same way.

Login is better on the iOS app as you can use touch id/faceId and not userid/password also the webpage asks for cookies as it can't seem to remember the choice

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#339

Post by pasc1878 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #200
rzz3 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im sorry. I really just can’t understand or relate to this at all. Mobile web still feels like such a terrible experience, and apps generally don’t. When’s the last time you tried booking a flight on mobile web? And how do you deal with all of the real estate the browser steals? Having to log in every time when the app can just cache my authentication and FaceID me?

Seriously, booking hotels and flights is so much better on the web. You get multiple windows for easy flight and price comparisons, within and between providers. I don’t understand people who use apps for this. It is such a pain.

You are comparing desktops to phones.

I do most things on my desktop for the reasons you say but on a phone multiple tabs etc is a pain.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#340

Post by anymouse123456 »

IME, Apps usually represent an overly generous amount of contempt for the people who use them.

At best, it's a designer's hubris (mixed with contempt) like, "You want to select some text out of your SMS message? I've decided. NOPE."

But mostly we're treated with contempt simply because we're an annoyance that is obstructing the goal of serving the actual customer (advertiser) who is paying for the work.

App Stores are no mystery. They are a funnel for rent-seekers and adtech info brokers.

If you think they are intended to benefit you in any way at all, you are badly mistaken.

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