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The surprising part to me is that it's only 3/4. I assume the rest are not doing any real analytics. Of course they are using 3rd party tools, because the soft

by harryf 9y ago

The surprising part to me is that it's only 3/4. I assume the rest are not doing any real analytics. Of course they are using 3rd party tools, because the software and infrastructure required to do meaningful analytics on a large user base is way beyond what any startup or independent developer can afford to invest. There aren't even decent Open Source options - Google Analytics long ago sucked the air out of Open Source in this space and choosing Open Source means running your own infrastructure, which is non-trival the moment you start having Gigabytes+ of usage data.

marpstar 9y ago
Exactly this. We're constantly told not to "roll our own X", making paid offerings like Azure App Insights, which is more robust than any hand-rolled solution we could ever develop, so appealing. We're not trying to sell the user, or their data. We just want to know which features are being used and whether or not it's meeting our performance criteria, thus doing the user a favor by meeting those criteria.
- johnny_and1 9y ago
  The problem is not informing the user that you use SDKs from third party providers, although using them for login services (Facebook, Google+, twitter) or tracking (Crashlytics, Microsoft App Insights). The other problem is not knowing exactly what these SDKs can collect. They basically have the same permissions as the apps that include them. Crashlytics will collect and send location data alongside bug reports if the crashed app has this permission. (Source: Study on the most popular 200 apps in Germany done on real network traffic. We don't know if the study will be available for the public.) We are currently pushing for legislation changes in Europe. Users should be informed about SDKs and data destination. Europe has 3 main data sinkholes, Ireland (EU data centres for US companies), Netherlands (Akamai) and Germany (probably selection bias). Nobody knows where the data ends up afterwards and under which legislation it falls.
  - harryf 9y ago
    This is certainly a good move. The Facebook SDK for example is widely used by many apps for Facebook ad performance tracking and analytics and that's something he public should be aware of. See https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/libraries-used-in-the-top-100-ios-apps-5b845ad927b7 https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/libraries-used-in-th... for example
flukus 9y ago
Oh well then, if it's hard then feel free to violate my privacy instead, I'd hate to inconvenience you, the developer! /s We really need to get over this notion that developer time is the most important thing in the world, it's having negative affects on privacy, performance and probably more. Gigabytes of usage data is really not that much anyway, but even if it is, you don't need to track every single user, just a representative sample. And don't forget the age old option of not doing analytics, except for marketing purposes I've rarely seen analytics provide more value than it's worth.
on_and_off 9y ago
haha I came to say exactly this Mobile engineer here, I don't know any mobile app without some form of tracking because at the very least you want to know when your app crashes and have a way to get the stacktrace. Enter firebase crashreporting / crashlytics

by harryf 9y ago

marpstar 9y ago

Exactly this. We're constantly told not to "roll our own X", making paid offerings like Azure App Insights, which is more robust than any hand-rolled solution we could ever develop, so appealing. We're not trying to sell the user, or their data. We just want to know which features are being used and whether or not it's meeting our performance criteria, thus doing the user a favor by meeting those criteria.

johnny_and1 9y ago
The problem is not informing the user that you use SDKs from third party providers, although using them for login services (Facebook, Google+, twitter) or tracking (Crashlytics, Microsoft App Insights). The other problem is not knowing exactly what these SDKs can collect. They basically have the same permissions as the apps that include them. Crashlytics will collect and send location data alongside bug reports if the crashed app has this permission. (Source: Study on the most popular 200 apps in Germany done on real network traffic. We don't know if the study will be available for the public.) We are currently pushing for legislation changes in Europe. Users should be informed about SDKs and data destination. Europe has 3 main data sinkholes, Ireland (EU data centres for US companies), Netherlands (Akamai) and Germany (probably selection bias). Nobody knows where the data ends up afterwards and under which legislation it falls.
- harryf 9y ago
  This is certainly a good move. The Facebook SDK for example is widely used by many apps for Facebook ad performance tracking and analytics and that's something he public should be aware of. See https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/libraries-used-in-the-top-100-ios-apps-5b845ad927b7 https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/libraries-used-in-th... for example

flukus 9y ago

Oh well then, if it's hard then feel free to violate my privacy instead, I'd hate to inconvenience you, the developer! /s We really need to get over this notion that developer time is the most important thing in the world, it's having negative affects on privacy, performance and probably more. Gigabytes of usage data is really not that much anyway, but even if it is, you don't need to track every single user, just a representative sample. And don't forget the age old option of not doing analytics, except for marketing purposes I've rarely seen analytics provide more value than it's worth.

on_and_off 9y ago

haha I came to say exactly this Mobile engineer here, I don't know any mobile app without some form of tracking because at the very least you want to know when your app crashes and have a way to get the stacktrace. Enter firebase crashreporting / crashlytics