Zwapp’s app makes iPhone app discovery more social

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25 points·sushumna··5 comments

Zwapp is a neat product, but using sysctl to detect background processes (and therefore other installed applications on the device) would make me really nervous.

Apple has a tendency to shut down interesting workarounds they didn't anticipate -- and while Zwapp's all opt-in, sysctl can just as easily be used by an ad network to get more context for targeting. At that point the feature bounces from security researcher to tech press to class-action troll to grandstanding politician, and then it goes away, leaving Zwapp in a bind.

I wish Apple would allow users to explicitly give an app permission to see their installed apps. App discovery's still a huge problem.

We do wish Apple would provide better ways too, but using the processes isn't going to get you to a 100% anyways. We are (luckily) not dependent entirely on system processes and will (in a few days) see if we can ramp up our app detection with help from the community!

Has anyone else reached their threshold for giving yet another startup access to _all_ your actually useful social/webapp sites?

nope

haha!

We still hope that creating little app stores with your friends helps to solve the fundamental issue that the App Store is simply becoming too big to find useful apps fast

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