14 ms·
I don't even bother installing apps anymore, I don't have time to research whether or not they are going to abuse my privacy or have some horrendous TOS. I got
by ecp9 8y ago
I don't even bother installing apps anymore, I don't have time to research whether or not they are going to abuse my privacy or have some horrendous TOS. I got my core 10 apps and haven't bought a new one in a year.
- awat 8y agoThis is my position as well. Unless your app is going to provide substantial features over your website or operating system like functionality. I'm not even going to try it out.
- criddell 8y agoI don't go to new websites anymore either. Just like I have a handful of core apps, I have about he same number of websites I visit. I think the only webapps I use are Workflowy (love it) and Slack (hate it).
- james_s_tayler 8y agoWorkflowy has updated their app for Android and it's really good! I'm a pretty heavy user of it, and it was a godsend to have a nice official Android client that works well. Make use of the web lots on the desktop but it's probably 50/50 desktop/mobile. Love them both . The only two things workflowy is missing is (1) being able to embed pictures and (2) being able to hyperlink to other nodes to make it act like a graph. It'd be the absolute perfect tool if it had that.
- criddell 8y agoI only use it on the desktop and there I use it in the browser. They have a desktop app but it isn't very good. Embedding pictures sounds like a nice idea, but I can't imagine how they could do it and have it look good. If I were them, I probably wouldn't add images. I kind of hope they resist the urge to keep adding features to Workflowy. It feels done to me and I like simple, focused tools.
- jermaustin1 8y agoI like this concept. Using the smart phone more like a PDA than a tiny laptop. What are your 10 core apps if you don't mind sharing?
- enraged_camel 8y agoFor me: Personal Capital (finance), WhatsApp, Slack, Overcast (podcasts), Kindle, Dark Sky (hyper accurate weather app), Google Authenticator, Lyft, RENPHO (my smart scale’s app), 1Password Everything else is very situational and totally optional.
- Gigablah 8y agoI have Authy instead of Google Authenticator — not that there’s anything wrong with the latter, but if you lose your phone it’s much more of a hassle.
- ed312 8y agooff topic of the thread: do you have a strong opinion of Dark Sky vs Weather Underground?
- jermaustin1 8y agoI have found Dark Sky is great in populated areas (NYC, Denver, Houston), but Wunderground seems to do better outside of the metros (Lower Hudson River Valley, Catskills, Adirondacks -- you can probably tell where I live and work, now).
- SomeHacker44 8y agoDark Sky : T-Mobile :: Wunderground : Verizon Got it.
- drewmol 8y agoI've found the best data comes from the nearest/best doppler radar(s). Often this is one of the local tv broadcast stations. Obviously this radar data is licensed to various weather service providers but are usually owned by a broadcast television network operator.
- criddell 8y agoI too have a core set of apps (email, calendar, browser, phone, weather, sleep tracker, news, password manager, and note taking). I'll buy a game once in a while (just got Civ 6 on the iPad and it's outstanding), but that's about it.
- trophycase 8y agoI figure most things don't need an app unless they are trying to take more data anyway. Anything telling me to install an app whose mobile experience is fine already is very fishy to me. I'm looking at you, Reddit.
- zjaffee 8y agoI have to disagree with you here, even from a social media perspective. Namely, with apps that leverage hardware at a high rate such as the camera features of Snapchat and Instagram. I agree that reddit might not need an app in the same way, but I'm sure there are ways they could improve their user experience by further leveraging mobile hardware in ways that don't relate to tracking.
- geezerjay 8y ago> Anything telling me to install an app whose mobile experience is fine already is very fishy to me. I'm looking at you, Reddit. So much this. To add insult to injury, reddit intentionally degrades the site's experience in mobile devices with tons of dark patterns pushing users to their shady mobile app.
- choward 8y agoI've noticed this too. On top of that, they nag you consistently to install the app. They have an option to disable the nagging. However, even with this option disabled, they still nag you via ads and every time you refresh the page it blinks a distracting "use app" animation at the top right. Reddit is in a downward spiral and I have no problem discontinuing the use of a web site I have been using for over a decade. I've done it before.
- thinkingemote 8y agoI use a Firefox mobile extension which helps greatly (no Reddit mobile ads)
- fiddlerwoaroof 8y agoInteresting, iOS has pretty locked down default settings and prompts you when an app tries to access most sensitive data. I think I’d generally prefer mobile apps from a privacy perspective because I don’t have to worry about things like cookies as much.
- vesak 8y ago> I don't have time to research whether or not they are going to abuse my privacy or have some horrendous TOS. Do you think that web apps are better in that regard?
- adventured 8y agoYes, drastically. Wikipedia and Hacker News don't have access to the contents of my phone or desktop, just as they don't have access to the contents of my home or mailbox.
- da_chicken 8y agoYes. I don't give them permission to run code on my device arbitrarily and perpetually. Think of it like this: If Hacker News required a fat client to function on your desktop, would you actually be here at all?
- woogle 8y agoWhile I agree on your point, your comment made me smile as I’m reading HN using a mobile app
- djhalon 8y agoI'm curious, did you start using HN with the mobile app or migrate to it after you realized the usefulness of the website?
- wholinator2 8y agoI migrated to the mobile app after discovering the site. I find the app greatly increases the readability of the site by adding just a few more colors, some icons for particularly popular threads, and a palatable dark mode.
- laurentl 8y agoWhich app are you using? There are quite a few on the Apple store.
- airstrike 8y ago> I don't even bother installing apps anymore, I don't have time to research whether or not they are going to abuse my privacy or have some horrendous TOS. I'm going out on a limb but I'd wager you're not exactly representative of the general userbase for which apps are developed.
- glenneroo 8y agoI would take that even further and venture a guess that 99% of HN readers are not representative of the intended general userbase of 99% of the apps for ios/android.
- dave5104 8y agoAlso called the Malkovich Bias.
- sslayer 8y agoI disagree with the 99% estimate, I too take the same approach, and recommend the same to those who will listen. I would venture that number to be at least 80%
- rock_hard 8y agoSo you are saying that out of the 3B smart phone users in the world 600M will never install a app ever because they fear the abuse of their privacy or some horrendous TOS? Yeah, no! I think your intuitive judgement failed you here
- smoe 8y agoI think I never had more than 10 apps installed on a smartphone since like 2008. Not for privacy or security concerns, I just never had any use for more than a few core apps and always used the browser for the rest.
- JohnFen 8y agoI am very, very sparing about installing apps. However, I'm even MORE cautious about browsing to websites, unless I can disable all client-side scripting. At least I can firewall apps to mitigate any abuse they may engage in. That's much harder to do with websites.
- conductr 8y agoSounds like a miserable way to browse the web. Why not just isolate your browsing in a VM and trash it when you’re done? I’m not security expert but seems to me if you clicked on something malicious, it costs you nothing as you’re not really exposing anything. Obviously don’t do your banking, etc on the same VM then go clicking around warez sites
- JohnFen 8y agoIt's not miserable at all -- in fact, I personally think that it makes most websites better. If a website can't operate without JS, then I just don't use that site. No loss to me. VMs are another reasonable approach. I don't do that, though, because it's more hassle than it's worth to me. > if you clicked on something malicious That's not my primary concern. My primary concern is really to stop bad behavior that is very common across all websites (tracking, etc.)
- propogandist 8y agojust use Umatrix - https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix you can get the add-on for Firefox mobile also. It can be a hassle for the lazy user, but the addon will provide visibility into scripts, cookies and services used by websites. Most scripts are blocked by default which dramatically improves page load times and privacy.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- qwerty456127 8y agoThis doesn't express how a mobile app is essentially worse than a website - it only highlights how apps devs are doing it wrong and how mobile platforms vendors don't do their job preventing this. Apps vendors should be discouraged from abusing access permissions, users should be warned if they probably do (in a visible and practical way) and be allowed to control them. When a user clicks to install an app the system shows what rights does the app want and only gives choice to allow everything or just cancel. Instead it should disable everything by default, let the user turn particular permissions on explicitly and still install the app even if the user won't allow anything. It's the app vendor job to handle the cases when app can't access something. As for TOSes - I doubt I understand why these should even be allowed by a platform. All the reasonable TOS terms are obvious and can be implied: the user can use the app for whatever is not illegal, the vendor can use whatever data the user enters the ways actually needed for the app to do its direct job (+ in non-personalized statistics calculation perhaps) and no other way.
- t0astbread 8y ago> Instead it should disable everything by default, let the user turn particular permissions on explicitly That would be great for power users but it wouldn't work for "the average dumb user" since they would just enable every permission when asked to do so if they don't know what it means and how it could be abused. And power users already have that in Android forks designed for them. (I can't speak for iOS.) > All the reasonable TOS terms are obvious and can be implied That's your definition of reasonable. With a rule like this a platform would kill off both freedom- and privacy-minded software as well as spyware (the general trackery), thus pissing off almost everyone who cares about those kinda things.
- bitrrrate 8y agoYep. I keep <15 apps on my phone.