I recently switched from iOS to Android, and the two readily available app stores on my device(Google Play and Amazon)are little more than a cross between a digital flea market and the wild west.
Google would do well to copy Apple's approach to app store curation and locking down their OS so that shenanigans like this can't be pulled off.
Apple's curated approach wasn't allowing me to find and install an app for a very simple need - completely blocking calls and SMS from certain phone numbers, without those numbers even showing up in the logs. My iPhone couldn't do tethering either, because it's an on/off switch accessible to your mobile career and my mobile career was charging an extra 4 EUR/month for it.
Also, people don't freaking read and we can pretend that it's somehow our problem, but what's so hard at looking at the list of required dependency and reading:
- wants access to your location
- wants to read your contacts list
Android is not perfect and the permissions system could sure use some work. It would have been awesome if you could disallow certain permissions, but still install the app, in which case the app would simply not receive your location, or it would receive a blank contacts list and so on.
Also, people don't freaking read and we can pretend that it's somehow our
problem, but what's so hard at looking at the list of required dependency
and reading:
- wants access to your location
- wants to read your contacts list
The reason why the App Store has been so attractive to developers is that it has engaged users who know the downside of installing random app Foo is not high. If we train users to be wary of apps, it will not be good for hones developers of good quality apps either.
> If we train users to be wary of apps, it will not be good for honest developers
So what you're saying is that users would learn to not trust implicitly random strangers making promises in exchange for cash and that would somehow harm honest developers? Like how in the world did you reach that conclusion?
Dude, selling an app on the web or in an app store is no different than selling something in the real world. You find some initial customers, if your product is good those customers will give you reviews, they'll tell other people and so on. Trust is something you earn. I don't see where the problem is for "honest developers", I really don't.
I agree. My point is that a large part of why this is true is that users have learned that installing random software from the App Store is mostly harmless. This is in stark contrast to the situation on Windows (desktop) and Android (mobile).
>> Dude, ...
Thanks.
>> selling an app on the web is no different than selling something in the real world. You find some initial customers, if your product is good those customers will give you reviews, they'll tell other people and so on. Trust is something you earn. I don't see where the problem is for "honest developers", I really don't.
Selling an app on the web is different because the user doesn't know who you are. In real life, they can make assessments about your scaminess based on a whole host of (possible irrelevant) factors: is your shop clean and tidy? Is it in a dodgy part of town or on the main high street? This makes them feel more comfortable trying your thing out.
On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog. Or worse, a contact-list sucking, location-tracking, SMS-scanning scammer.
The problem is you are trained to completely ignore permissions. After installing your first 5 apps which all come with a billion permissions and you have no idea what they mean or why they are used, you really stop caring.
You said "after installing your first 5 apps". Well, I never got past 1, because I never installed an app that asks for unjustified permissions. I also have a non-technical wife that is usually not interested in technical stuff, but if I want to teach her something and I choose the proper words, such that she can understand, then she listens - that's how I taught her to use BCC when emailing multiple people, or to be wary of browser SSL security errors, or to tighten her privacy settings on Facebook, or indeed, to read the permissions required by apps on her Android.
Education is the answer, in combination with smarter controls (e.g. optional permissions), instead of making the world a worse place for those of us that can read just fine.
Indeed curation works for Apple insofar as it's in their interest. It's in their interest because people, overwhelmed with other things to deal with in a mere 16 hours a day, choose (among other reasons) to function in the "walled garden" where such crap behavior is screened out and they don't have to worry about it. The Android ecosystem isn't, for most people, appreciably different from the iOS ecosystem; a major differentiator is curation, which while having some downsides, on the whole leads to a better experience of getting to useful apps rather than having to wade well-educated thru a swamp of gratuitous permissions abuse.
Sure, one could learn the risks of pre-loaded crapware so prevalent on new Windows computers and learn (it's easy!) how to wipe everything & do a clean OS install to get rid of it ... or get a Mac, which doesn't include any crapware. It's a persuasive option for many people. Likewise Android vs iOS app stores: learn the details of dealing with problems, or just go where you don't have to deal with those problems.
There's an activity to manage apps permissions, although it's not exposed and a little bit funky [1]. There's an app on the play store whose sole purpose is to launch the activity [2].
[1] http://googlesystem.blogspot.ca/2013/08/app-ops-androids-hid... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.schurich.a...
Or a proper Open Source app store like F-Droid.
The main difference is that Android has this all-or-nothing approach (accept giving the app all these permissions, or don't use the app at all), while iOS asks you for each permission individually, and you can use an app without granting it specific permissions. (eg. the weather app -- disallow access to location, and you can still type in place names manually)
OTOH, maybe they did it this way so you can't prevent ad-driven apps from accessing all the fine data about you.
With the technology we have, saying that one of the biggest software companies in the world just 'had no choice' but to implement something in a particular way is crazy.