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Comment by dave5104 | Hacker News Reader

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

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)

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...

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

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