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Show HN: See what Apps your friends are using on iPhone in real-time
- alanctgardner2 14y agoI don't have an iPhone, but on it's face this seems like a very scary idea. They say they select from a database, but does that mean that I can whitelist what apps are shared with the server, or is some random person going to see everything I do? Also, the unstyled privacy page is a bit offputting: http://appmap.mobi/privacy http://appmap.mobi/privacy
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoSo it's a geo location-enhanced "most popular apps" list, essentially?
- hyperenergy 14y agoHow does this work? iOS has permissions to see other running applications?
- jevinskie 14y agoYou can use MobileDevice (private framework on OS X) or libimobiledevice to query lockdownd for a list of installed apps. Of course this only works from a PC host. Jailbroken apps can directly query lockdownd or traverse the filesystem if they would like to.
- jonny_eh 14y agoHow do they collect this data, technically?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jrnkntl 14y agothe iHasApp framework does it like this: https://github.com/danielamitay/iHasApp/blob/master/iHasApp/iHasApp.m https://github.com/danielamitay/iHasApp/blob/master/iHasApp/...
- objclxt 14y agoThat's slightly different: iHasApp is matching back against a list of URL schemes (check the repository, you'll find a big fat JSON file full of app identifiers). This can tell you if an app is installed, but not if it's being actively run. See my answer above for how you can figure out whether an app is currently being used, rather than simply just installed.
- objclxt 14y agoIt's a bit of a hack. There is no way to get hold of a list of installed or runnings apps through the Cocoa APIs (this is in contrast to Android, where you can obtain finite information on apps right down to data consumption). However, there is a way to obtain all current running processes, using the standard sysctl function[1]. This includes apps that are backgrounded but not terminated. If you are interested someone on StackOverflow has put together some sample code (I haven't verified it, but it looks like it should work)[2]. This is not as useful as it sounds though. You're not getting app metadata, just process names. The developers behind AppMap will presumably have set up a database populated with the most popular apps, but will need to keep this current as more apps come to market. [1]: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/System/Conceptual/ManPages_iPhoneOS/man3/sysctl.3.html http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/System... [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10141067/running-apps-in-background-or-active http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10141067/running-apps-in-...
- phoenixy 14y agoIt's really interesting. Thanks for the detailed explanation. I always wondered if there's any way to do this.. And it's good to know that Apple is OK with this kind of hack.
- Terretta 14y agoWhat I'd like is a log / graph of what apps I am using on my own iPhone, in an MRU sort and frequency sort.
- aw3c2 14y agoWith all the data kept locally and not uploaded anywhere.
- AustinGibbons 14y agoTry carat (http://carat.cs.berkeley.edu/ http://carat.cs.berkeley.edu/) - shows you over time what apps are using the most power.