41–50 of 61 posts
The only reason she had one was a best buy employee convincing her as a replacement for her old but functional cell phone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I follow. What specifically about apps would make you think it's designed to exploit the user? I know Android apps are more likely to be ad-supported (hence YOU are the product) but looking at my iPhone, I have Instagram for taking photos and sharing it with my family/friends, Lyft to get rides around the city when I don't want to drive, Dropbox for automatically backing up my photos, Google Maps for Nav…
Clearly there are benefits to these apps, but the concern was about exploiting the user. Presumably, the chief concerns are tracking and security. For instance, why does DropBox need to access my entire contact list just to backup my photos? Some people don't even think about it, others don't care but some do.
I think one of the challenges is that a lot of what an app maker wants to do is not known yet but they want to mine the user data to identify patterns that might help them decide on what features to build next or provide insight on how they should improve their app. Given this, they err on the side of asking for more data vs. less. On a mobile device, this definitely feels much more invasive given that our phones are basically "tied at the hip" when compared to classic web tracking techniques.
This doesn't surprise me at all. For most people (myself included) an iPhone or Android is not a general purpose computer, but a communicator. The vast majority of my communicating happens in email, with the web browser a distant second. Apple's email program in iOS accounts for 70% of my usage, web browser 20% and everything else falls in that last 10%. Other people I know have very different breakdowns, but wether…
Given that, how many programs do you install even on your computer each month? I bet there are a lot of months where there are zero no new programs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given that, how many programs do you install even on your computer each month? I bet there are a lot of months where there are zero no new programs.
Install--not that many, but usage on my desktop is far more varied.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I follow. What specifically about apps would make you think it's designed to exploit the user? I know Android apps are more likely to be ad-supported (hence YOU are the product) but looking at my iPhone, I have Instagram for taking photos and sharing it with my family/friends, Lyft to get rides around the city when I don't want to drive, Dropbox for automatically backing up my photos, Google Maps for Nav…
I can't see or control what information gets sent where. I don't know what gets logged and sent to Google. I refrain from using Google credentials on the phone in case that makes it harder for Google to correlate what happens on my phone with my activity on the web in general. I disable the location services in case that makes it more difficult for someone to watch my location and movements. I don't know if it helps…
I think for most people, privacy is secondary to convenience and we basically sell data about ourselves in exchange for free use of these services that have become an essential part of our life.
I also think it's extremely hard to piece-meal control what permissions are allowed and requires substantially more work from app developers to consider all the possible conditional cases and have well thought out experiences when some/all pieces of data are missing. In many cases, it's just a matter of what is practical and doable in light of constrained resources. Not giving them a pass, but offering a possible reason instead of assuming malicious intent.
On my android phone, I do install more things: netflix, kindle, audible, music player, weather app, and that is about it. Email and a web browser do it for me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I follow. What specifically about apps would make you think it's designed to exploit the user? I know Android apps are more likely to be ad-supported (hence YOU are the product) but looking at my iPhone, I have Instagram for taking photos and sharing it with my family/friends, Lyft to get rides around the city when I don't want to drive, Dropbox for automatically backing up my photos, Google Maps for Nav…
I can't see or control what information gets sent where. I don't know what gets logged and sent to Google. I refrain from using Google credentials on the phone in case that makes it harder for Google to correlate what happens on my phone with my activity on the web in general. I disable the location services in case that makes it more difficult for someone to watch my location and movements. I don't know if it helps…
This doesn't surprise me at all. For most people (myself included) an iPhone or Android is not a general purpose computer, but a communicator. The vast majority of my communicating happens in email, with the web browser a distant second. Apple's email program in iOS accounts for 70% of my usage, web browser 20% and everything else falls in that last 10%. Other people I know have very different breakdowns, but wether…
for me, my smartphone is a general purpose device : -Access to Pocket articles while commuting -Music, Podcast -Social networks -a little bit of instant messaging / voice -mails -maps It is also a communicator device, but only in the sense that for some silly reason I can't place calls with the 2000$ box on my desk, but only with the 800$ one in my pocket. None of the apps I have are perfect, especially now that we a…
Not to derail too much, 80-90% of my computer usage isn't even really possible with an iPhone or android, at least not productively. Small devices make it very hard for me to do anything other than small bite-sized interactions. When I'm writing music, prose, editing video, writing code, all of these things are borderline impossible on a phone, and barely possible on a tablet, and those things are the bulk of my computer usage.