I was recently migrating from one phone to another which involved transferring apps and data. This is a tedious process at best, but made much easier by Android 5’s NFC/Bluetooth migration feature.
Anyway, on downloading a certain weather app, I was looking at the resources to which to requested access before installing.
The list was fairly standard, including the likes of Wi-Fi and 4G data sources, location, photos for reporting those particularly fluffy clouds you come across on the way to work, or localised waterspouts — whatever, but then in the middle of it all was contacts.
Why on earth would a weather app need access to my contacts? Now, this was a fairly well rated app that has been around for a long time, many iterations of which I have happily installed and used.
Curious indeed.
“The more I thought about it, the more it brought home to me that this was the two sides of the coin that is the economics of free.”
But more curious was the fact that there was no option other than allow access to all the requested resources or, well, nothing.
There was no option to allow a core set of resource access and then deny the fluffy stuff that was obviously not critical to the core functionality. This struck me as a gross oversight, which resulted directly in me going to a competitor which I regarded as slightly inferior in terms of a product but it did not request access to resources I could not justify, and so it won.
The more I thought about it, the more it brought home to me that this was the two sides of the coin that is the economics of free.
Free mania
Now many studies have been done to prove that when the human brain encounters a circumstance in which we get something for free, it loses much of its reasoning capacity — but indulge me for a moment.
First of all, my reaction of immediately dumping it and going elsewhere is entirely characteristic of the free economy. When a user has nothing invested in a free product, they will dump it without a thought for a perceived slight, a fault or not liking the background colour. This is an issue with which app developers constantly struggle as they seek to woo users and retain them. The opposite effect is that when someone had bought an app and actually invested in it, they will persist through some difficulties in the hope of a fix as they do not want to see their investment either lost or misplaced. So, if something is free it must be perfect, if something costs money, paradoxically, it can be less than perfect with the mere hope of improvement. We are a strange bunch!
The flip side of course is that as a user of a free app, you are, to some extent, the product. The value to the app developer is often the monetisation of usage data derived from the user base, or simply in-app ads. Either way, there are competing interests in the proposition of an app that is free to download, install and use.
But to come back to the suggested alternative, would it be so hard to group these resource access requests according to criticality? For example, if an app needed the basic comms functions for core functionality, and then access to the camera and gallery as optional extras for additional functionality, would it be so hard to have a two stage verification process that facilitated a choice?
It might mean that even in the free economy model, were I to encounter a resource access request with which I’m not happy, it would allow me some flexibility as to whether to go further than simply accept or bugger off.
Alternative model
The counter argument might be that these access request are central to the developer value or monetisation opportunities, in which case fair enough — I’ll still say no.
Let me say at this point that I’m not averse at all to paying for an app, but I don’t believe I’ve ever done so without having a trial first to ensure it works.
In these days of rapid development, massively accelerated release cycles and vast competition, it might be that mobile app developers are going to have to recognise the concerns of an increasingly savvy audience and accommodate those who may wish to use an app, but not when asks for access to resources that are not critical to core functionality, back door keys to your house and use of the car of a Friday evening.
At the very least, an explanation of why non-obvious resource access request are made would be good as it would allow more informed decisions to be made. But the current situation is very much all or nothing and, under the current cloud of privacy concerns, widespread snooping and galloping vulnerability, bug and zero day issues, I’ll plump for nothing over a dodgy app request.
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