I have a hard time seeing the majority of iOS users installing one, this is the same as with most things, if it's not the default, 95% of users won't make use of it.
Is even the majority of users of desktop web browsers actually using adblockers yet?
Adblock Plus on Firefox shows a bit short of 20 million users, while Adblock on Chrome says 'over 200 million downloads', whatever that means in number of users. These numbers don't suggest a majority. (I don't think assuming over 500 million desktop users is crazy.)
Given that iOS is about 20% of total mobile users, this feature will probably make little to no difference, it might be a couple of % of those 20% of users, at the very best.
You're probably right against the parent, but in the long term I would expect use of ad blockers to rise, simply because ads are getting observably more bloated and intrusive.
Elementary example: the likes of us will get requests from our tech-illiterate friends and relatives - "my internet is broken. It's really slow." And we will install ABP/ublock whatever.
This is, of course, assuming that there are no dramatic 'interruptions' - eg, browsers ceasing to support ABP-type extensions, the ads-versus-adblockers arms race moving decisively in the former's favour; etc.
Thanks for the graph, that's quite interesting. Do you have any insight as to why it's risen so sharply during the past three years? I'm thinking maybe it's just connected to the increase in overall (especially smartphone) users of the internet? Even people who have been using desktops for years, use the internet more thanks to smartphones and thus ads become more pervasive in their life, thus perhaps prompting an increase as well?
Maybe you can share your thoughts on why you think it would be any indication that the overall percentage of internet users using ad blockers has gone up?
That certainly could be it - it's literally the only graph I could pull up at short notice. There are stats around but like browser usage etc they tend to come from this website or that. Based on some other numbers[0], trends seem to be more or less in line with what you'd expect: more blockers installed for visitors to tech-related sites; more installed on Firefox than IE, and Linux than Windows; etc. In that link, you're looking at nearly 10% of impressions blocked as of 3 years ago (which is obviously not the same thing as unique visitors, but I would be surprised if that was not higher than a few years before that).
I'm merely stating a hypothesis here, really - I have in mind how it was that people installed things like the google toolbar to block popups, and then browsers blocked popups by default, and then there were no more popups (OK, not quite, but still). The more irritating something is, the more likely a user will take steps to do something about it.
Right, but it's part of the Schengen area, which also covers most of the EU countries, so once you got a visa to e.g. France, you're free to work and live in Switzerland as well.
Nope. There are many different types of Schengen visa [1] and it generally does not allow you to work. For this you need a national visa from a specific member state [2]. So, no, if you get a work permit in France, you are not free to live and work in Switzerland. In fact, EU citizens generally need a residency and work permit if they wish to live and work there.
From the page: "For employment lasting longer than three months, a residence permit is required."
I named their permit incorrectly: should be "residence permit" instead of "residency and work permit". The point remains that EU citizens generally need an official permit to work in Switzerland.
Switzerland is not part of the EU nor Schengen. Eu citizens can travel visa-free to Switzerland, but they can't work there. Same goes for US and many other nationals...
Wrong. You can enter Switzerland with a Schengen visa as a tourist. Finding work in Switzerland is difficult (employer has to prove it can't hire Swiss citizen for this position).
Using the developer preview now there is no difference when installing new apps, so do developers all have to make manual changes in their apps for it to work, or will Google flip a switch at some point?
Currently you can change app permissions once an app is installed, but they gain all the permissions they ask for when installed.
If each app has to be updated by the developer for the changes to take place, it might take a while for this to have any large effect on the ecosystem.
The app needs to target M in order to access to these granular permission.
An app targeting a lower API level will work in legacy mode where it gets its permissions at install time, like before.
I guess it makes sense in order to give enough time to the devs to update their apps to this new system.
As long as the checking/warning becomes more aggressive in N, I am fine with that choice.
According to the session after the keynote, you'll still be able to at least go back and revoke permissions individually for apps targeting older API levels.
And they will most likely crash if you do, because they are not expecting a SecurityException. I prefer the CyanogenMod way to just give out empty data, if a permission is not given by the user.
What you're calling the "CyanogenMod" way is actually what Google built, it's called AppOps. All CM did was expose it. The actual capability of permission revoking and handing out dummy data instead was all done by Google as part of AppOps and I assume that M is using that same system because it'd be silly not to.
yeah, but that way you can only remove the permission after the installation.
Facebook for example is known to siphon your contact list as soon as the app is installed, so even if you remove the permissions from the fb app, it is already too late.
