Ask Slashdot: What Makes You Uninstall Apps?

jones_supa writes "One of the most important measuring sticks for the success of any software is how long a user keeps it installed after first trying it. Intel has an article about some of the most common reasons users abandon software. Quoting: 'Apps that don’t offer anything helpful or unique tend to be the ones that are uninstalled the most frequently. People cycle through apps incredibly quickly to find the one that best fits their needs. ... A lot of apps have a naturally limited lifecycle; i.e., apps that are centered around a movie release or an app that tracks a pregnancy, or an app that celebrates a holiday. In addition, apps with limited functionality, for example, “lite” games that only go so far, are uninstalled once the user has mastered all the levels.' Some of the common factors they list include: lengthy forms, asking for ratings, collecting unnecessary data, user unfriendliness, unnecessary notifications and, of course, bugs. Additionally, if people have paid even a small price for the app, they are more committed to keep it installed. So, what makes you uninstall a piece of software?"

Comments

They pop up and notify me they are running.

[ackthpt]

If there's one thing I can't abide, it's apps running in the background, poking their noses into my affairs.

Re:They pop up and notify me they are running.

[sunderland56]

The concept on Android of listing app permissions is a good one - although it needs to be MUCH more detailed, and you need to be able to filter in the app store based on permissions.

Right now, to find a suitable app that won't do something you dislike - e.g. running in the background - you need to install it, see if it does the bad thing, then uninstall it. If those attributes were clearly listed, and searchable, then you could only install and try out the ones that aren't instantly annoying.

Re:They pop up and notify me they are running.

[blackraven14250]

One thing that bugs me about Android is that for something like contact listings, which are likely useful to the developer at one point or another, and potentially to the user, it's just a blanket permission that could mean anything from "going to constantly monitor everything in all of your contacts" to "this app will ask you once if you want to share with friends".

Re:They pop up and notify me they are running.

[mikael]

I have "Ad Network Detector". I run that on all downloaded applications. Anything that tracks my location, collects device or mobile network information, needs my list of contacts, has popup advertising and hotkeys that jump to a web page gets thrown out. I'd also throw out "TapJoy", "Mobclix", Mobo and Game Hub if it were possible to remove them.

Re:They pop up and notify me they are running.

[kbrannen]

I was greatly dismayed to see how many apps expect access to my email, location and contacts directory, most with no need whatsoever for such information.

Yes, that is really annoying. I tried to install a Flashlight app the other day. I had to go thru about 6 of them before I found one that didn't need any permissions. I mean really, why does a flashligh need permission for the network? Do I really need to see an ad for the 5s seconds I have the flashlight on to find the keyhole to my front door in the dark?

Re:They pop up and notify me they are running.

[AvitarX]

Even worse is network access, that could be everything from "hey, I'm free, gotta send some ads" to "Imma take all of your actions and send them home"

They spy on you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Many apps ask for far more permissions than needed.

I was once testing a 3270 emulator app to access a mainframe system over a vpn.

The emulator app refused to run unless you give it full access to your email.

When I called the vendor to ask why, they said it was so that users could automatically send support requests by email.

I can write my own email, thanks.

Uninstalled, and the vendor lost out on a multi-thousand dollar purchase.

My List.

[briancox2]

#1 Zinga buys it.

#2 Freer software comes out that can fulfill the utility.

#3 ParanoidAndroid and AdAway are not capable of taming the program the way I'd like.

Depends on platform

[The MAZZTer]

On a PC there's no pressing need since I have lots of disk space, and it's easy to keep apps from running in the background.

On Android is another story. Very limited space, and apps can run in the background very easily and are hard or impossible to kill in some cases. I recently uninstalled outlook.com app since I never used it (I installed it intending to, but never did) and it was sucking battery life. I also uninstall apps which provide duplicate functionality that I already have in an app I prefer. Large apps have to really be persuasive to stay as well.

In-Game Purchases

[Teckla]

The fastest way to get me to uninstall an app is in-game purchases (other than a one-time payment to purchase the full version straight up, with no further fees).

Give me a lite version to evaluate it, then let me buy it straight up. I loathe and detest in-game purchases for gold, gems, or anything else necessary to continue a game, or to speed it up.

Our Research on Why People Hate Your App

[JAS0NH0NG]

Here's a link to our paper at KDD 2013 looking at why people hate your app. We crawled user comments on Google Play for about 100k apps, and then did some clustering and linear regressions to probe what people say when they give you low star ratings.

It turns out that a lot of low ratings often come right after an update, when people find out that their app doesn't work anymore due to incompatibilities. We also found some odd anomalies, like people saying they love your app but gave you a 1 star rating. If you want the very short summary, jump to Table 6. We divided up the comments by app type. For example, for games, people tended to complain about (1) attractiveness, (2) stability, and (3) cost. For other categories, the complaints were less consistent.

Google Search competes with Siri; try App Ops

[tepples]

"Firefox" wants access for Near Field Communication, ability to delete contents of my storage, and ability remove accounts. Google Search update wants the ability to directly call phone numbers or send SMS messages (for search???), and add/modify calendar entries (from search??)

Firefox wants NFC for NFC sharing. Google Search is also the device's voice command prompt; it gains new privileges as Google adds new features to compete with Siri. It probably wants dialing so that when you say "OK Google, call Staisy", you'll get connected. probably wants calendar writing so that when you say "OK Google, remind me of a meeting with Milo at 3:30 on Thursday", you'll get it on your calendar. I'm not sure about Bluetooth though.

The problem is that the choices are to accept whatever the stupid app wants or to forbid it entirely. There is no middle ground of allowing the app but forbidding access to things I want to restrict.

Android 4.3 introduces App Ops, which you can download from Google Play Store. It lets you disable individual permissions for individual applications. It's hidden by default because it would cause too many existing apps to force-stop with a SecurityException.

Ability to deny permissions

[mcrbids]

Why not add the ability to revoke permissions to an app?

Great, so the flashlight app wants to read my contact list: how about NOPE? 2D game wants to access my camera? How about NOPE? Other OS's include the ability to reject permissions to an app.

Why not Android?