My personal guess is even more far-fetched but I think the ratio between useful and useless native apps reached 1/100 very, VERY fast after the industry successfully implemented wiring money as a feature. That was the one thing, even bigger than successfully implementing ads.

> 99% of HN readers are not representative of the intended general userbase of 99% of the apps for ios/android.

Not that I agreed with the website vs. app debate, but with all respect, that "userbase of 99% of the apps" was likely made up by those people who would also begs for bigger keyboard on their phones so they can send SMS a bit faster back in 2006.

This comment implies (like Fords: "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they'd say better horses") that this 99% of customers are some backwards dwelling people who don't know the way forward (in your example, the no-keyboard touch screen).

But webapps are not some novel development they're not aware of. They are what existed before apps and during apps, and exists still, and people still spend most of their time on mobile apps.

People will spend their time on anything they feel useful to them, not the "mobile app".

I think you've been mislead by the current situation where everybody is using apps on their phone. But really, the "mobile app" it's just another thing that is attractive to them.

If you lock somebody in a room with only a TV inside, eventually that person will turn on the TV and start watching, even the TV only plays China Central Television channel one (FYI: It's boring like hell).

It's basically the same effect, the only twist here is that people chose to be addicted to their phones.

Don't let that effect blind you :)

As a side note, 99% of the statistics are made up, including this very sentence.

And 9 out of 10 concerns are unfounded, so don't worry about it.

Also called the Malkovich Bias.

I disagree with the 99% estimate, I too take the same approach, and recommend the same to those who will listen. I would venture that number to be at least 80%

So you are saying that out of the 3B smart phone users in the world 600M will never install a app ever because they fear the abuse of their privacy or some horrendous TOS?

Yeah, no!

I think your intuitive judgement failed you here

A non trivial number of people don’t realize you can install apps. I know several non tech 65+ iPhone users the vast majority don’t use any app not installed on the phone.

Young kids seem to install apps all the time, but parents quickly learn not to let them spend any money on in app purchasing.

>A non trivial number of people don’t realize you can install apps. I know several non tech 65+ iPhone users the vast majority don’t use any app not installed on the phone.

Those don't matter much for the concerns of TFA, as they're unlikely to use some new fangled web app either...

The claim isn't never--it's for installing a small set of apps that you don't change for more or less the entire lifetime of your device.

Yes. Lurking around the app store of your device and installing random apps is a behavior for first-time users of the platform. Back during 2010 to 2015, almost everyone was a first-time user of the platform. From now on, downloading random apps is a job for ever younger audiences.

Crikey. I'm 48, a developer and I still install random apps.

Yes, I see and it's not binary like there's people who download random apps or not and there's people who are young or not, it's just that the numbers are clearly going in specific directions really fast.

I just bought a new iPad and one of the first things I looked for was apps that utilize the AR frameworks etc. if you are just gonna stick to the web it’s hard to take advantage the full power of your new device.

Yes because it's new and awesome and I'll probably do the same when I get an AR compatible device but it's not the reason we get the device. We get the device to install the apps we already like because we have stuff to do that we already started. Mostly. But especially for older audiences.

Older audiences tend to get replaced by younger ones.

Perhaps not privacy but the average user might be aware of losing a little battery life for each new installed app.

Luckily this is really not a problem in practice on iOS. Main reason I switched after years of frustration with Android. I use a ton of apps and the worst offender for background use is Hangouts of all things (I guess not surprisingly). So I guess I’m giving up a little bit of battery life but it’s really just one poorly designed app (I do not use hangouts nearly enough to justify its share of background draw)

do you know the origin of this? I suppose from the film "being john Malkovich"...

True, but that implies that someone here is after the money of these users, rather than educating them and providing them with the best (safest) options.

On the other hand HN users influence is much greater than their numbers because many of them are doing tech support for family and tech advice for friends.

I used to do that a bit in the past, but not even my completely technologically illiterate father asks me anything anymore since he got an iPad.

While he is not the type to install new apps, all my friends are, and never ask me for any advice.

Anecdotal, but I think HN users do not have all the power you think they have.

You could also say their influence is greater because they are the ones writing the apps in the first place.

A tiny fraction of the people writing apps.