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Comment by zupreme | Hacker News Reader

This is why iOS is badly in need of a “Task Manager” and of an “Event Viewer”, so that users may easily audit what resources each app is currently accessing, and which resources they have accessed in the past, including logging each instance of camera or microphone use by any app.

Apple has the power to easily mitigate these concerns - yet they do not.

Why?

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Because my mother is using an iphone and nothing you described would make sense for her.

She is pretty good with tech and understands how computers and phones work, but she just does not want to browse a process list to see which process is using the camera.

but she just does not want to browse a process list to see which process is using the camera.

How do you know until you've tried?

At the risk of provoking a tangential discussion, I don't think keeping users "in the dark" about what's happening is ever a good idea. They don't have to learn if they really don't want to, but deliberate opaqueness is bad --- if anything, it only leads to more learned helplessness and ignorance. Of course, that's probably what companies want in general, since it means they can control users more easily...

Additionally, even if the main user of the device will never pull up a task manager or usage log, that info can be useful for a friend, relative, or hired technician who is trying to help them figure out what's going on with their device.

Instead we have to explain to people that their photos aren't "in" the photos app and their music isn't "in" iTunes. It's the thing you mentioned: file managers will just confuse people so let's not include one. Easier to have them think of files as "living" in the apps we assign to open them.

The comment you're replying to does not describe a process list.

Users do understand the concept of apps, obviously. A log of "App X used the camera", "App Y accessed your location" is well within what non-tech-savvy smartphone users can understand.

then she can choose not to browse the list?

My main point is that you need to present this information on a way that even those people can interpret it who can't/don't want to know about process lists because they are the majority.

It's the same as you have an engine temperature gauge in most cars. I'm not really interested on what's going on inside the engine, I just want to know if the engine overheats so I can check basic things (cooling system leaks, etc) and if I cannot see what's wrong I wait and try to get to the nearest garage or call roadside assistance.

As a power user, I see value in a process list but I see why it does not take priority over other features.

Edit: spelling

Not my intention for this to come off like a plug but Android has been doing this for quite a while now. It simply shows any process being ran as a silent notification and then goes away when it's done. I agree keeping a running log is probably unintuitive even for an advanced phone user but the way Android has pulled this off is surprisingly easy to wrap your head around.

You make a good point with 'your mom' but this would be an extraneous feature, not necessary and therefore not in the 'regular case path' of behaviours.

So I think it's a valid thing.

Though iOS is getting out of hand with complexity these days.

Sometimes I want a dumb phone.

Though iOS is getting out of hand with complexity these days.

That's because iPhones were always full-featured general-purpose computers, just severely locked-down and restricted from user control. We are simply seeing the results of that opaqueness.

Ok so we are going for the least common denominator based on your mother. Makes zero sense.

Not saying they shouldn't do it, but in a company with finite resources dedicated to the needs of 100,000,000 users, <1% of whom would ever look at such a thing, not getting around to that feature would make a non-zero amount of sense.

Reminder, this company you are saying can't possibly spend a few hundred thousand dollars to add a feature their underlying OS most likely already supports and is a definite net good for security researchers and industry watchdogs at a minimum is worth Two Trillion Dollars and has absurdly high profit margins.

But said company has practically unlimited resources and actually touts privacy and security in ads.

You're off by more than one order of magnitude.

The more I see this excuse the more I realize Apple wants people lazy and dependent on them. They have all the trust, and that is bad.

iOS 14 shows a green or amber dot in the top right if the camera or microphone is active. But yes i generally agree that more robust monitor tools are still needed. iPad is "a computer", right apple?

There could be an industry wide agreement to reserve the top two pixel rows for realtime visual feedback of sensor use. 1st quarter of the display refers to the microphone, 2nd to the camera, 3rd to GPS and so on, with standardized ways of notifying what is happening, ie blinking means it's currently active, red that it has been used at least once during the last 5 minutes or so, with more detailed information in the notification bar.

There could be an industry wide agreement to reserve the top two pixel rows for realtime visual feedback of sensor use.

Apple already has this. Little orange dot indicates audio. There's a blue arrow for location access. I don't know if there's something for video or not.

You can then go into the Settings app and see which apps were using those features.

Green dot for video, I believe.

There could be, but there won't, because that would be aesthetically unpleasant.

Or iOS shows an icon similar to location services. Full camera icon means it’s in use, hollow icon means it’s been used recently. Ideally it would have a list of apps just like the location services.

neat.

In the new iOS 14 there's a green (camera) or orange (microphone) dot in the upper right-hand corner of the phone. If you swipe down from the top right it'll show you what apps are using the input and which apps have used it recently.

So that's a step in the right direction.

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