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Developing for Android is like being a demonetized YouTuber

gbl08ma.com

51–60 of 118 posts

Re: Developing for Android is like being a demonetized YouTuber

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ 80% of all iOS devices are on iOS 12. An additional 12% are on iOS 11. Any device that can run iOS 11 can also run iOS 12. By not supporting older devices, you are missing out on at most 8% of the iOS population. But even some percentage of those are able to update to iOS 12. To target anything older than the 5s means you also have to target 32 bit processors. How much t…

8% of the iOS user base is still millions of people

So does that mean you also support 3.5” screens? If you want to support older devices that can’t run iOS 12 but have the same screen size as a supported device then you limit support to the 5 and the poorly selling 5c.

How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? The 4s? The 4? The 3GS? The 3G? The original iphone?

Re: Developing for Android is like being a demonetized YouTuber

#52

In fairness, access to features such as call logs and clipboard are too easily abused. I think that most users downloading apps from the Play Store have the expectation that Google is taking care of their privacy. As the author mentioned, advanced users can still sideload any non-approved apps they want, and as advanced users they should understand any security implications. The point I do agree on is that the platfo…

Speaking of ridiculous, Android and banking, just yesterday I was browsing my transactions and wanted to send a screenshot of one to my wife. As it turns out, you cannot make screenshots of banking apps. Because "security".

Good thing criminals don’t have access to a camera or other device to take pictures of the screen. How does this stuff not get laughed out of the meeting when suggested?

Re: Developing for Android is like being a demonetized YouTuber

#53
post #16

Android's Storage Access Framework is really underrated. Just ask the user to choose a document (file or image or whatever) by firing an intent-- then Android's built-in file picker starts up and you don't have to deal with implementing any of that UI experience. After the user picks the file, a content:// URI is returned back. https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/providers/documen... Best part-- along with the…

> Reading from the content:// URI is a little different than from a file://

I haven't found the reading part to be different, but getting the uri has changed from Uri.fromFile() to their FileProvider package. Which, requires quite a bit of setup in comparison.

To be fair, it's documented well on the Android developer site.

Re: Developing for Android is like being a demonetized YouTuber

#55

In fairness, access to features such as call logs and clipboard are too easily abused. I think that most users downloading apps from the Play Store have the expectation that Google is taking care of their privacy. As the author mentioned, advanced users can still sideload any non-approved apps they want, and as advanced users they should understand any security implications. The point I do agree on is that the platfo…

Speaking of ridiculous, Android and banking, just yesterday I was browsing my transactions and wanted to send a screenshot of one to my wife. As it turns out, you cannot make screenshots of banking apps. Because "security".

That's odd. I just checked this (running current version of Android Pie) and I could screenshot both my Bank of America app and my credit union.

I wonder if this is something the apps themselves have to disable or something in certain versions of Android itself.

Re: Developing for Android is like being a demonetized YouTuber

#56

> "Note that all of these things that they are removing for “security”, could simply be gated around a permission prompt you’d have to accept, as with the contact list, or location." I think letting the user decide on permissions works in practice only if (i) There is a good chance that an average user would understand the tradeoffs of giving different permissions to different apps (ii) A large majority of users are…

This is the crux of the problem that gbl08ma isn't realizing.

"User choice is what all of this boils down to, really. Android used to give me the choice of being slightly insecure in exchange for having more powerful and innovative features in the apps I install..."

You're dead on about the average user. Watch someone install and app, and less than a second is spent looking at the permissions.

Google's solution makes sense for their platform, not for power users. Leaving security up to users will result in insecure devices, increasing support costs as well as denigrating the brand.

If people are going to do things like financial transactions shudder on their phone, then the platform has to be rock-solid secure. That leaves those who might know and do better with their devices with less options.

It's the price of maturity.

Re: Developing for Android is like being a demonetized YouTuber

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of ridiculous, Android and banking, just yesterday I was browsing my transactions and wanted to send a screenshot of one to my wife. As it turns out, you cannot make screenshots of banking apps. Because "security".

Good thing criminals don’t have access to a camera or other device to take pictures of the screen. How does this stuff not get laughed out of the meeting when suggested?

I think the intention is that someone with malicious code placed in the users device still won't be able to access bank details

Re: Developing for Android is like being a demonetized YouTuber

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of ridiculous, Android and banking, just yesterday I was browsing my transactions and wanted to send a screenshot of one to my wife. As it turns out, you cannot make screenshots of banking apps. Because "security".

That's odd. I just checked this (running current version of Android Pie) and I could screenshot both my Bank of America app and my credit union. I wonder if this is something the apps themselves have to disable or something in certain versions of Android itself.

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/WindowM...

Re: Developing for Android is like being a demonetized YouTuber

#60
post #54

As an Android user it feels like Android is getting more and more IOS like with every new release. Seriously I wouldn't be surprised if they locked down the filesystem (like IOS) in the name of security.

Maybe they'll start mandating a half-decent device security update policy in the name of security. I've had a few too many two year old devices stop getting updates.
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