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Comment by ProfessorLayton | Hacker News Reader

FB definitely does not deserve the benefit of doubt anymore regarding privacy issues.

That being said, this feature soon to be called a bug, feels like one of those things being done in the name of performance. I do not agree with this solution, however, the startup time for the camera on older iOS devices can be frustratingly slow. My 6S now on iOS 13 can take several seconds for the camera to turn on. This is most evident when trying to capture something in the moment on Snapchat. The stock camera app takes long enough that I often miss key moments (I plan to upgrade soon, but have not yet committed to losing my headphone jack).

I’m not at all excusing this, but I can see why they’d try this if they want their users to post more original content

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> My 6S now on iOS 13 can take several seconds for the camera to turn on.

I can't seem to replicate this (6s, iOS 13.2). Opening the stock camera app from homescreen, I can see an image in less than 1s.

My hunch is that parent has Peak Performance Capability battery throttling turned on. When my 6S crashes and turns that protective feature on, I too noticed how slow everything gets. But I disable that because I'd rather have the occasional crash than suffer the extreme slowdown during the 99+% of the time that I'm using my phone without problem.

If this is Facebook's solution to that type of slowness though, that's not a great solution. I feel like having both the app and camera on will drive up CPU usage making it might more likely that a power spike happens which will cause your phone to shutdown. Not a great tradeoff in my opinion for older phones.

In an effort to extend the lifespan of my 6S I had my battery replaced by Apple January of this year, and iOS lists the battery’s health at 92%.

One setting that seems to have impacted my phone’s performance is the “Optimize storage” setting that works in conjunction with iCloud and Apple Music. What seems to happen is that iOS will fill up my phone’s 64gb capacity before purging photos and music into the cloud. This results in aggressive memory management, resulting in many safari tabs reloading, and apps starting cold again. Often times apps in in the home screen will flicker “cleaning” in their names, which apparently iOS does when running low on storage space.

This all cascades into the slow loading times described in my original post. Not the best UX, but better than manually managing storage on my phone. I’m sure I’m not the only one with this setting, so I don’t think my experience is uncommon.

I think those slow loading times could very well be the flash memory wear, as I seem to remember experiencing that on my nearly-full iPhone 3G way back when towards the end of its life.

This is true. Many apps, including one I worked on, start the camera a bit earlier, with no feedback, just so it's ready to go when you use it. In my case it was starting the camera on the screen right before going to record, very purposefully. In fb's case I guess the home screen is that screen, so it's not great, but it is the only choice if you want fast camera access.

So this is not necessarily a bad thing. Whether they use the feed for anything else is not something we can know I guess, but my bet is that they don't actually do anything sneaky with it besides trying to give the users a faster camera experience.

> This is true. Many apps, including one I worked on, start the camera a bit earlier, with no feedback, just so it's ready to go when you use it.

Interesting. This sounds like a good use-case for an OS API: The OS could either provide some API to "warm up" the camera or allow apps to declare in the manifest that they'll likely need the camera soon after launch - then the OS could do the preloading and do it in a privacy-preserving manner. (And also give the user a central option to disable it)

Whatsapp refuses to function if you don't give it permission to read your contacts. I want to manually input the numbers I want to message via Whatsapp, but that isn't an option. Whatsapp wants to collect my entire contacts. My refusal to grant such permission means I can't use the app, which means there's no point keeping it around.

On iOS?

AFAIK that's not allowed for iOS software, all programs must work even if the permissions are denied or redacted.

Mine works fine without contacts. Maybe try reinstalling?

It's cleanly installed for the first time on this mobile device.

Launch app Chats tab is active by default Tap the chat icon lower right side Whatsapp "To help you connect... allow access to your contacts. Not now or continue"

I tap not now, and am returned to Chats and no way to manually enter a number. Tap the chat icon again, same thing.

Android app info for Whatsapp says no permissions.

This is Android 9. Deleting and reinstalling hasn't changed this behavior.

Works for me. But I can’t keep hundreds of numbers in my head anymore (though I did in my teens), and I hate constantly switching to my contacts - not to mention search by phone number to see who just WhatsApped me just doesn’t work well.

My solution is that I bought a $80-new Android phone (2nd hand would be $20 or less) which I keep at home on WiFi, and WhatsApp web from my iPhone to it. Works perfectly, except notifications, which is somewhat of a beature.

Small price to pay for keeping my main phone Facebook free.

> I bought a $80-new Android phone (2nd hand would be $20 or less)

You just paid money for pushing your personal data to Google.

I use clear Android-x86 VM with wiped Google Services for this, maybe several times for year.

Not connected to google, WhatsApp sideloaded (though cannot guarantee google doesn’t get a copy...).

The only data on this phone are contacts who have contacted me on WhatsApp; it has about 50 contacts compared to my main phone that has an order of magnitude more, and which ttbomk no FANG has access to or a copy of; the war is lost though, because every message/call has at least one more party and almost all of them do give all that info away to google, Facebook and Microsoft (giving Skype access to contacts)

Alas, where I live, NOT using WhatsApp would put me at a much worse disadvantage than the $80 I paid.

I installed Whatsapp for the very first time last week. I feel like there's additional friction and nagging if you don't give it access to your contacts, but you can definitely open it and send/receive messages.

Please explain how, in detail? I tap the message button and it asks for permission to my contacts. I tap deny which only dismisses the permissions request. I don't get a chat field or any way to manually enter a phone number to start chatting.

Last time I used Whatsapp, there was no way to chat with someone who was not in Contacts, on Android. I first had to add each person to Contacts before Whatsapp would let me chat with them.

You can continue active chats or respond people who had started a chat with you, but yeah, you can’t start a new one without the contacts permission.

Maybe you can use a number link (https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/26000030/) without the permission, but I’m not sure.

I use WhatsApp without the contacts permission enabled (on Android, FWIW) and it works just fine.

If you care about the camera and don't want to lose the jack, go for a Pixel 3a, best value for money. Plus you get a very lasting battery.

Then they will loose the iOS eco system. All of the apps that they've bought and will have to relearn a new OS.

Apart from the purchased apps, switching is nowadays a no brainier. Android has come so far that in a couple of hours, tops, anyone can switch. It even imports your data from iOS. PS former Apple loyal customer here.

How is your battery doing? Try changing it to make sure that there is nothing throttling performance. iOS 13 is snappier on the 6S. They did a lot of work on performance improvements.

All time when i use Facebook i think that someone follow me by web camera. My opinion is that we allow too much that our confidential infos are public by allow all this privacy terms.

Its incredible how badly apple slows down phones via updates. There is no way it would have been that slow at release. I recently watched a video of someone using the original iphone and everything was super snappy. The camera took hardly any time to open.

It’s almost like software that gets more complex over time is slower on older devices...

Updates should not degrade the usability of a device. If a device is too slow to run new features then they should be disabled by default. Apple has an obvious incentive to make people disatisfied with their older devices and want to buy the new one so it is fast again.

If they disable the feature, then they’re accused of planned obsolescence too. They can’t win against people like you.

I said disabled by default. Make new but slow features an option. Most people would rather a working phone that isn't super slow over having the latest feature but if they still want it they can turn it on. Its total insanity that apple phones only last a few years before they are too slow.

Part of what makes iOS devices so usable and well-liked is they don't include a massive matrix of configuration options in the settings. Everyone gets a standard configuration, and it works well. If you create hundreds of features you have to test the cross product of all of them separately and together. That's not a realistic way of operating a business.

As a user, how could you possibly know which of these settings was the straw that broke the camels back or the relative impact of each?

Their decision to allow you to access all features as well as your battery can handle (and eventually the option to take the guard rails off, too) is IMO the simplest and cleanest way of solving this problem.

Apparently it doesn't work well if it takes users multiple seconds to open an app. I have heard many complaints about iphones becoming unusablely slow after a few updates which is unacceptable since much older phones were able to run much more responsively.

Until their batteries degraded and were no longer able to provide sufficient current to operate the device at peak performance. Batteries are consumables. It’s a combination of the never ending march of software bloat and the degraded performance characteristics of the years-old battery due to physics.

>due to physics

Due to Apples planned obsolescence making it an absolute nightmare to replace a consumable part because its lifespan lines up nicely with how often they would like you to buy a new device.

Imo it is absolutely critical that a new law be introduced that batteries on consumer hardware must be user replaceable if we want to have any hope in protecting the planet. It would not be hard at all for phones to have user replaceable batteries. Most android phones did for a long time and most laptops just had switches on the bottom to eject the battery.

Sure but it's fair to say that's a different problem. I'd be totally fine with that especially as part of a broader right-to-repair bill.

Current smartphones have sped up an unimaginable amount since the early models. There is no excuse for them to ever be unresponsive, even with the higher resolution screens. There's a difference between 'complexity' and 'bloat', and if they just had less bloat they would win against 'people like that'.

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