We need a single application that can be used for anything.
How long will it be until most app functions can just run in the browser or something like it (i.e. HTML 7).
Most of Us Don’t Download Any Smartphone Apps at All
51–60 of 61 posts
Re: Most of Us Don’t Download Any Smartphone Apps at All
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Install--not that many, but usage on my desktop is far more varied.
I definitely use fewer distinct apps on my desktop than on my mobile. My browser, spotify, MS Office, and Messages, pretty much.
Interesting. My phone is email, browser, phone, music, with very rare branches to other apps. My desktop is email, browser, iTunes, terminal/vim, bbedit, eclipse (yuk), Final Cut, Logic X, Final Draft, office, a bunch of other smaller music specific apps (NMEdit, sysex librarian, etc.) omnigraffle, omnioutliner, and a bunch of others. I know I'm an outlier because of a bunch of uses that web apps will likely never supplant, I'm just always surprised.
Re: Most of Us Don’t Download Any Smartphone Apps at All
#53This 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…
The article does surprise me. I assumed people were regularly (at least one a month) downloading new apps and trying them out... I guess I'm definitely in the minority. I like to explore the app store and see what's new. In any given day, I'll be using apps for facebook, instagram, twitter, snapchat, product hunt, mail, safari, nest, hangouts, alien blue, and soundcloud. And when I find a new website that interests me, I usually check if there is a corresponding app.
Re: Most of Us Don’t Download Any Smartphone Apps at All
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you think this anonymises you? Even if you have turned off everything on the phone (eg location services), the sheer quantity of tracking on web pages will quickly carve you out an identity. (Note that they don't necessarily need to have your name, but you will exist in many databases along with everything you have done.) The same applies if you have installed apps. Doing something like frequent factory re…
I don't believe that it anonymizes me, for certain, though I hope it might help. I'm certainly not going to make their job any easier than I have to.
To clarify "they" don't actually care who your identity is. While it is really important to you, knowing that you are John Smith of 123 Main Street isn't that useful to them.
Knowing that "you" (your browser) looked at buying a car last week is far more valuable, especially when combined with other activity and demographic guesses. ie rather than a solid individual, your database records are a set of probabilities. Looked at diapers - probably have a kid. Looked at concert tickets for One Direction - you are likely young and very unlikely old. Combine all these anonymous snippets and probabilities and the database representation of you is then "exploited".
The goal is relevancy. Advertising pays on results, which means the advertisers don't want to pay for things going to people that aren't the targets. eg if they have a campaign aimed at females 20-30 years old that have children in North Texas, then they aren't going to pay for ads going to 60 year old men in Seattle. And if it is a car company, then ads going to people who are likely to buy a car in the near future is far more valuable than a kid playing Angry Birds. (There is also brand advertising where the idea is to keep a brand in your head and good feelings about it, but no immediate action expected of you. They find out if this works by doing it in some areas and not others, and then tracking sales etc over the longer term.)
In theory this should lead to you get good relevant to your interests advertising. In practise it is annoying drivel to many because the companies advertising (ie the ones paying) aren't relevant to you. They are trying to get your attention.
While I only mention advertising, the other pieces especially tracking are pretty much in support of the advertising. It allows the probabilistic deductions about you.
To avoid this you would need to eliminate Internet activity, or go completely anonymous (eg only using Tor, incognito browser sessions, and have components on your system constantly make up data like user agents and locations).
BTW you can see what Google has guessed about you at https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ which works even if you aren't signed in.
Re: Most of Us Don’t Download Any Smartphone Apps at All
#55I've got hundreds of apps on my iPhone, and iPads, and I only use a very small set of them. In fact I can honestly say there are hundreds of apps I've never used, even though I've collected them. One of the principle uses of my i-Devices, it seems, has been the slow and steady accretion of apps from the store, which I end up completely ignoring. The description hooks me, or some friend recommends something they playe…
With regards to your Finder issue, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're after, you can click on the green maximise button (or, on OS X Yosemite, hold alt and click it) and the window will resize to fit the contents. Same goes for most apps (at least those designed properly for Mac), e.g. Safari, where it will resize to fit the website content.
There is likely a keyboard shortcut for it as well but I'm not sure of it.
Re: Most of Us Don’t Download Any Smartphone Apps at All
#56I don't download apps, and I make a point of never entering google account credentials into an Android phone. I don't trust Google, and I don't trust app developers; the whole ecosystem seems designed more to exploit than to serve the end-user. So I just use my phone for SMS, and for killing time browsing the web while I wait for a bus or whatever.
Baseband aside (a big "aside"), isn't the mobile permissions system much more satisfactory than the desktop? unprivileged user-per-app vs everything-as-one-user-and-sometimes-we-ask-for-root
Re: Most of Us Don’t Download Any Smartphone Apps at All
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
65% is 'most' of us
'Most' of us were not born 'in any given month'. That doesn't mean we weren't born 'at all'. Inaccurate headline.
The percentage of users buying apps in a given month does relate to the overall number of app purchases. Also, we're only born once, but we can buy apps any time we want.
Re: Most of Us Don’t Download Any Smartphone Apps at All
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to do the same until I broke my smartphone and found that I wasn't missing it at all. Now I use a clamshell phone someone gave me. It's very lightweight, compact, robust and it can last about ten days without being recharged. Sometimes, having an internet-connected device with me would be nice, but I don't find this occasional need worth the hassle of maintaining a smartphone.
I still have fond feelings for my Motorola V195, which I accidentally left plugged in to charge at the San Francisco airport a decade or so back. I'm occasionally tempted to try building my own device, with a QWERTY keyboard, 320x240 monochrome LCD, and hardcoded apps for SMS and email. It would be big and clunky but it would be kind of nice to have a gadget that did exactly what I wanted.
I still have fond feelings for my Motorola V195, which I accidentally left plugged in to charge at the San Francisco airport a decade or so back.
I've learned that it helps to keep charging devices in one's carry-on bag.
Re: Most of Us Don’t Download Any Smartphone Apps at All
#59I've got hundreds of apps on my iPhone, and iPads, and I only use a very small set of them. In fact I can honestly say there are hundreds of apps I've never used, even though I've collected them. One of the principle uses of my i-Devices, it seems, has been the slow and steady accretion of apps from the store, which I end up completely ignoring. The description hooks me, or some friend recommends something they playe…
With regards to your Finder issue, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're after, you can click on the green maximise button (or, on OS X Yosemite, hold alt and click it) and the window will resize to fit the contents. Same goes for most apps (at least those designed properly for Mac), e.g. Safari, where it will resize to fit the website content. There is likely a keyboard shortcut for it as well but I'm not sure of…
Thats not what I mean - I mean the column content itself should resize, and then the window to fit. Auto-fitting seems obvious, but its not happening anywhere in OSX.
Re: Most of Us Don’t Download Any Smartphone Apps at All
#60Misleading headline: most people don't install an app every month, but what about the apps they already have on their phone? Edit: it's misleading because the article actually says 65% of smartphone users download zero apps in an average month. That doesn't mean most people never download apps. Just not every month.
How is that misleading? I think that's the point of the entire article. People aren't downloading new apps which means they're likely not plugged in to the app discovery scene. There's a much smaller surface area for developers targeting new customers than the number of smartphone owners.
> which means they're likely not plugged in to the app discovery scene.
That is a very significant point.
I bought my wife a Google Play voucher at Christmas, and she was so overwhelmed by the mess that is the Play Store that it took her three months to find a decent solitaire app.
Everytime she would go looking for one she had to wade through pages of junk and just gave up.
Eventually I found one recommended on a forum and even then when we searched for the exact name in the Play Store it was only in the second row of results.
App discovery is HARD, particularly for people unfamiliar with app stores. I am not surprised that they just don't bother.