And this is why I like Androids feature that automatically revokes permissions after a certain timeframe of not using an app
iOS will sometimes ask you even if the app has been using it (for certain permissions), and might even tell you how often the app has used it. Which is really handy.
Like, “this app has accessed your location from the background 48 times in the last month, you gave it permission, would you like to change it to ‘when using’?” Or “This app has had full access to your photos, would you like to limit it?” (Not exact wording, but you get the idea.)
Something that delighted me when I discovered it.
(Android does permissions very well too, I’m in no way trying to knock it.)
With the last update, Android also started limiting apps’ access to photos on a per-photo basis. Not even Google Lens (which I use to copy text from slides) can see all my photos. (Don’t get me wrong, though: I’m not naive enough to believe Google can’t see my photos at all.)
Yeah iOS had had this for 2 or 3 years now, it’s a great feature.
I give a few apps background location access, and for a couple of weeks after enabling each android would occasionally ask if the app still needs background data
wait what android version, my android 13 doesn’t do that
Pixel 6 on current version
Better yet: Bouncer allows you to remove permissions after a given set of time or immediately after closing the app. WhatsApp only gets my location for 3h after I shared it with someone on there - Google would never remove that permission since the app is in use regularly and it’s no problem granting that permission anew next time I want to share something.
Also all my pictures are only accessible on demand by chat apps and not permanently
I’ve done this on a simple timer app I developed.
Why? Because I want the timer to stop automatically during a phone call. To do this I need to request READ_PHONE_STATE (which bafflingly tells the user the permission is to “make and manage phone calls”). Unfortunately, there’s no way to alter the permission request to tell the user (at least in Android) why you want the permission. They really need to make the permissions more granular and provide some way for devs to communicate what the permission is for.
This is why, on the occasion of necessary permissions not being set, a lot of apps nowadays have a popup which tells the user something like “you need to grant permission for X because it actually lets this app do legitimate thing Y” like you just told us, with a button to click over to do the permissions grab and trigger the OS popup.
Smooth workarounds are out there!
Pre-permissions pop up:
Pre-permissions checklist:
Obviously, the calculator app needs camera permission for scanning complex formulas that would otherwise require lengthy manual input and calculating them automatically.
I mean, you can download one in 10 seconds if you really need one (or use Spotlight)
The app I use to write notes needs access to everyone in my Contacts. For “reasons”.
Stop using that app and find a different one.
Simple Notes (Pro)
You know what’s also annoying AF? The number of apps that keep asking permissions when you open then. Doesn’t matter how many times you say no.
Yeah, NordVPN does that now if you have notifications turned off. I turned them off because I would get notifications that were basically ads. Now, I have to dismiss their “please turn notifications on” screen every time I open it up. This will be my last subscription with them.
Friendly reminder to my Android peeps that https://f-droid.org/ rocks!
I think I open up the google play store like twice a year.
Had to get a Gallery app from there last week
gstore idea of gallery app is ads in your stolen pictures
Seriously, is that how far we came?
laughs in LineageOS
But seriously folks, you can survive without Google Play Store. While it definitely is sometimes not easy and there are obstacles put in your way, after a certain time you learn to accommodate. And I have a peace of mind knowing that no one is selling my pictures to data foraging companies God knows where.
at this point you can get a pixel 6 (dunno about other models) and really easily unlock the bootloader and install lineageos, then with microg and aurora store you can install any apps you need from gplay, with an absolute bare minimum of proprietary code running on your phone and with most of the conveniences people expect.
it’s amazing how little how you have to sacrifice.
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Why do you think LineageOS is way less secure?
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Majority of the stuff there should be on play store too.
I open F-Droid like every week just to know what’s new. Found some cool apps that way. I’ll drop some recommendations here:
Thumb-Key
Quasseldroid
QRAlarm
Audile
At least you’ve got a calculator app, ipads have never had one. Kind of ironic for a device that has more processing power than 1970’s supercomputers.
more processing power than 1970’s supercomputers.
Doesn’t every computer and computer-like device for the last couple decades or more? Or is that the joke?
The joke is that ipads don’t have a calculator despite having plenty of computing power
Like a watch that doesn’t tell time.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Even SD cards and USB chargers have powerful microcontrollers in them nowadays
Isn’t it better though? You can install it if you want.
It’s just odd, anything ever made with a user interface since the 80’s has had a calculator app. Apple just remove features and charge more for something that is inherently similar to everything else they’ve ever done.
Apple just remove features and charge more for something that is inherently similar to everything else they’ve ever done.
Ah, the joys of walled garden consumer electronics!
But it’s so easy to use!
except for all these idiotic things apple doesn’t allow you to do, but ignore that please
i remember as a kid when i temporarily had an iphone i thought something was broken because i couldn’t access the files from my pc
Except there are tons of free calculator apps, so they aren’t charging more in this case. Your criticism of Apple, in general, is warranted. Just not in this case.
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… it is a calculator … all it needs is like 15 buttons and a number screen.
It is the most basic program any student programmer creates at some point during their studies. And can be shown on just about every UI you can imagine.
It is also something every person uses.
Those apple excuses you mention, are just rubbish.
They have gone publicly on record saying they didn’t find an “Appley” way to bring calculator to the iPad. As an iPad user myself who has used 3rd party calculator apps this whole time, I get it. They all suck. The interfaces are all over the place. It is enough for Apple to let users download whichever app best fit their needs, instead of staking their claim, as they do with all their other apps, that the calculator app they made is the best one.
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I’m all for choice or whatever, but a simple system-provided calculator should be benign and lightweight enough to be there and coexist with any competing calculator app without much drawback. Like a clock or web browser.
You can use the search bar for quick calculations. That doesn’t escuses Apple from adding an calculator app on iPad! Most calculator apps have ads or are paid
Desmos is legendary.
Nerved had heard of it, looks amazing! Thanks for sharing
And I thought our admins removed it…
Isn’t app store full of calculator apps?
Mostly with ads. It’s easy to argue that a calculator is more fundamental to a functional tablet than a web browser is, and Apple includes one. By all means, there ought to be a market for calculator apps, but it’s pretty fundamental to cover the basics. Also, Apple already has a calculator on iPhone and iPad runs pretty much the same software, so where is it?
Is it really that fundamental? The iPad has been selling quite well with no calculator app.
I feel like most people nowadays are just typing math calculations into their search engine. Which obviously also has massive privacy implications.
Yeah. If a search engine knows you didn’t know 5x(30/47)^2 they might be able to derive your SSN from that information.
Well, if I start converting 23 cm to inches, you’ll know that I have a massive dong.
Once upon a time I wrote an IRC chat bot for my friends and I that could do calculations and convert units (metric -> imperial) with a command.
My friends were impressed that I included units like furloughs, leagues and bushels.
My chatbot was just googling their request and returning the result (which, handily, was done by the google engine itself and was very easy to extract with Beautiful Soup in python). This was 15+ years ago.
This doesn’t really have anything to do with your reply, just a fun memory I guess
Which obviously also has massive privacy implications.
How so? I don’t know much about this stuff lol
I’m mainly concerned with people using it for calculating things personal to them, finances/taxes comes to mind first. While the search engine may not know with certainty what the numbers represent, they have so much data on you that they could very well start inferring what those numbers are to add to your profile. For example if you suddenly do a ton of calculations in the days leading up to when taxes are due and all the numbers have two decimal places, it would be a pretty big hint to them. Or if you always do budget calculations on the days you get paid, they might be able to recognize that pattern and work out when your payday is and what your income, expenses, and savings are. And they definitely have AI to make these inferences for them so they can do it for every single user. IDK I might just be paranoid though.
With all that’s going on to systematically profile each and every person that ever went online, goes online, and will go online, that sounds 100% plausible and realistic to me.
Love your username person
Thank you!
There are many fun ways of calculating stuff.
echo $((5+8))or abusing REPL mode of python3 or node.My colleagues once made fun of me using galculator with a tiling wm:
Call me a plebian but I still open up Python when I want to do calculations in the command line because I don’t know how to in Bash.
It’s complicated.
((5+8))doesn’t support floats. For float you need
bcand I always have to look up how to use it. You have to tell it how many numbers it should showscale=2;5/8, by default it also only does integer.
This is one of the many reasons I built my own weather application for Android. Too much crap out there.
Are you willing too share? Been looking for a good weather app.
On F Droid lots of beautiful ones. Breezy, Prognoza, Rain, and more.
Try openweather
I use Openweather and it suffices.
It can be found on Google Play, Weather Warbler. I haven’t put it on F-Droid yet. Still adding features, so it’s not complete yet, but getting there.
Thanks. I just installed it. You’re right, it’s straightforward and no bullshit about it. How refreshing.
Glad you like it.
So now are you spying on me somehow? I don’t understand apps, I didn’t pay for this, so what are you getting out of it if it’s free for me? serious question because I don’t know how the world works.
That’s a great question. I’m using the API from Open Weather. It’s free for the first 1000 requests, then like fifteen cents per 100 after that. They also have a free version of their API.
Eventually, if enough people start using it, I’ll switch to the free, limited version. So I don’t share this app with others much.
What am I getting out of it? I built it because I was tired of other weather apps and also wanted something to add to my portfolio since I’m trying to switch from SDET to Android developer.
Well i also installed it now and it is great! Indeed a no BS design and really simple (in a good way). If a paid option comes along I will definitely get it if am not a poor student anymore. Only issue i had was that I was not able to switch to mm\hour (unresponsive ui button) on my FP5 but I expected so much less and you have already blown me away. If you would progress development a widget would be nice. (I really don’t expect further development but maybe youappreciated the feedback.
And how does the free API differ? Less exact data like graphs?
Anyhow, thanks for the great app!
It also wants to access your location and nearby devices and wifi
Weather wants your location so you can get weather for where you are
Which is fair, but I’d still like to have the option to manually type in my area code, instead of having to turn on gps.
To be clear, I haven’t come across a weather app that doesn’t allow that, but I also wouldn’t be surpised if there are some out there.
Then deny location access
It still keeps asking or sometimes straight up doesn’t work.
Well yeah. So it can look at its work on the paper.
You weren’t expecting your calculator app to do all that math in its head, were you?
iPads : I’m once again asking you to download a calculator app from the app store
Is this an Android meme I’m too iOS to understand?
Sort of. I don’t remember the specifics, but it used to be that some apps completely unrelated to phone calls had to request access to make phone calls because of some stuff they needed that Google only allowed them access to if they had the phone call permission.
I believe Google has since changed it so most of that stuff is now a separate permission not related to phone calls, so you don’t see it as often now. It can still happen with older apps, though.
How quickly the fan boys come to downvote you for being correct. 🤣
“Android bad, they hate us for being right” --iOS users after pointing out the flaws in a satirical meme
You guys are too funny. 🤣
truly I must bow to your superior intellect. iphones have so many more features, like not being able to sideload apps, not being able to use a terminal or actual filesystem, not being able to install browsers that aren’t reskins of safari, not being able to use apps that would totally work on my device because Steve jobs thought they looked bad with a different screen size, and strawman arguments about what android was like 10 years ago. iOS is clearly superior and I’m gonna sell my phone today
Oh my gosh! All of those would be super helpful if I actually cared to use them! I don’t need my phone to be a mobile computer. That’s why I have a desktop!
I sideload apps like YouTube that has sponsor block and it also blocks ads, just so I can airplay it to my television. That’s all I need.
Some of us just like a simple device. I don’t need the rest of that. My god dude, it was a fucking joke because androids have always had these weird ass permission requests.
I hate Apple as much as the next guy, but I like the ecosystem. That’s all I need for my use case.
Get a grip, and relax. Take a fucking joke. The way you’re reacting is EXACTLY why I made the god damn joke in the first place. 🤯
I have been using android since 2013 and that was legitimately the last time I saw any such “weird permission request”
I hate Apple as much as the next guy, but I like the ecosystem
which is a fancy way of saying “I hate Apple as much as the next guy, but I still bought all their products”
Ah yes. The two things I own. The watch and the phone. That sure is ALL the Apple products available to buy. You got me all right!
I’m not going to sit here and bicker with your dense ass over something as minuscule as what mobile OS we each prefer.
Pull your head out of your ass, learn to take a fucking joke.
Best wishes to you.
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The vast majority of the Android/iOS flamewar is pro Android on fedi (mostly Mastodon for me). I usually don’t bother but I thought my comment was at least sort of funny? oh well.
It was funny! These people act like THEIR way is the ONLY way. Not all of us want our phones to be mobile computers with full feature sets. I just want a simple device that has a very nice ecosystem where everything connects and works together 98% of the time. Apple sucks too, who would’ve thought.
Oh don’t worry, there will be a reason.
F-Droid ftw!
