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Comment by jonemo | Hacker News Reader

> When you turn something which 99.99% of normal apps...

I think you are confusing your personal use case with everybody's use case. What's a "normal app" anyway? Did you mean to say "apps I use on a daily basis"? Because of the 17 apps on my home screen, 6 do not have a functional requirement for internet connectivity. I bet for users in emerging markets this ratio might be even higher.

> If a user ONLY gets a permissions pop-up when it actually matters...

For most people, spending money is something that actually matters. Again, just because you don't have metered data, doesn't mean everyone else is in the same situation.

> Just an obstruction which teaches the users permissions can be safely ignored

Google manages to sort millions of search results by relevancy, I'm sure they can do the same for app permissions.

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> I think you are confusing your personal use case with everybody's use case.

But your "use case" isn't even really solved by permissions. It is solved by OS settings (e.g. turning off cellular data, using the data usage tracker/warning, etc).

> What's a "normal app" anyway? Did you mean to say "apps I use on a daily basis"?

No, I mean the majority of apps that exist already on the Play Store. Apps that require no data at all are the exception not the rule, apps that also don't use the accounts API, or store data to the SD card are exceedingly rare.

> I bet for users in emerging markets this ratio might be even higher.

Perhaps, but permissions don't solve this. If data isn't there then apps need to fall back to something else, that is up the developer to implement.

> For most people, spending money is something that actually matters. Again, just because you don't have metered data, doesn't mean everyone else is in the same situation.

Solved by the data usage tracker, not the internet permission.

> Google manages to sort millions of search results by relevancy, I'm sure they can do the same for app permissions.

They also manage to strip millions of search results of no relevance which is what they should do to permissions of no relevance.

> What's a "normal app" anyway? Did you mean to say "apps I use on a daily basis"? Because of the 17 apps on my home screen, 6 do not have a functional requirement for internet connectivity. I bet for users in emerging markets this ratio might be even higher.

It sounds like you're agreeing with the GP that a normal app (11 of the 17 most used, for you) needs internet access?

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