My doctor/'s office was just forced to switch to app-instead-of-website for patient interation. Ironically, the old and this new software came from same megacorp I work for (different department, same story).
The old web interface was rather good and rather sensible-practical-sane. It was almost as if someone had asked a doctor what he actually needed for his patients, and then understood his answer and also managed to actually implement and deliver it.
The new smartphone app.. Not so much. It looks more like some MBA types managed to solve "what is the cheapest thing we can get away with, lawfully?"
Internally, I know it is because the original dev team has been gutted, development outsourced to india, and just a skeleton crew from the original team manages the chinese-whispers process with the huge indian team.
As a result, the use case flow (IE the only way you can operate it..) of the app, goes as follows:
1 close the app
2 launch the app and sign in
3 do ONE action
4 enjoy the result of the action
5 repeat from 1..
You might wonder why that is.. Well, that is because your software is not allowed to display any errors - because that might indicate there were bugs..
So instead, whenever an error happens, you just display the '... still loading..' animation... forever.
So, technically, there are no errors, no bugs.. "IT IS JUST TAKING TOO LONG TO RESPOND".
(spoiler: it will NEVER respond, because hidden behind the screen, is a series of unhandled web api errors..)
But again, as an "internal" employee, I have seen our management claim all this is a huge success (client paid/pays).
Back to using it: When I have to interact with my doctor, I write the texts on my PC, and mail them to myself. Then I cut/paste them from gmail into this wonderful app.
The perpetual spinner thing happened at my last job too, and I developed the opinion that putting a spinner into your site at all is a sign of incompetence. For any normal CRUD app, it should take milliseconds to do whatever task. Even with network delays, 150 milliseconds is a reasonable upper bound for end-to-end processing. If you have an animation at all, then your thing is either ridiculously slow or broken. Either way the animation is a crappy attempt to paper over a bad job.
> For any normal CRUD app, it should take milliseconds to do whatever task. Even with network delays, 150 milliseconds is a reasonable upper bound for end-to-end processing
This is only really true with stable, high speed internet connections. We still cannot take for granted that everyone has that, especially not in rural areas and double especially not on mobile devices
So many places in apps just wait for no reason. Let's take a hypothetical situation:
Suppose you're doing gig delivery. You're delivering to two customers in the same neighborhood on the same run. You drop the first order, take your photo of the drop, and the app spins. It's waiting for the photo to be delivered before it moves on. You can't get directions to the next customer until the app moves along. Why can't it just take the photo, take the text description, and hold that until service is better? Just give the driver the map, and upload the other stuff when you can.
I have similar issues with every app. It seems like every user interaction, every button press requires a round-trip to the server before the app moves to the next step. There's no reason for this. I wager that every app can keep its UI and the user's data locally, and send and receive teensy data updates.
But all "the best" software development employees (that they claim their hiring process hires) in these companies can't seem to work that out.
The whole point of having an app is to collect data, show ads, and “engage the customer with the brand.” Any additional capabilities beyond that are incidental.
The delivery driver is not the customer, but I wouldn't be surprised if some MBA bonehead thought showing ads to workers was a win. "They have to use the app to schedule and do the work, so it's a captive audience!"
Hell, I got shown an ad after I paid for a ride on Lyft the other day. Even if you’re the customer, you’re still the product. If there’s not already ads in the drivers’ views, I’m shocked it’s taken them this long.
> Why can't it just take the photo, take the text description, and hold that until service is better? Just give the driver the map, and upload the other stuff when you can.
The obvious answer is because asynchronous workflows are brittle, and require intervention from the end user to correct if they break
Then most end users aren't going to care to fix it when it breaks, or be able to fix it when it breaks for a variety of reasons
Relevantly, in this specified case, the picture of their delivered food is shown to the customer immediately. This is more than a nice to have (imagine a large apartment building, where your food could be dropped in any number of locations).
At least on my mobile, I get ~100 ms ping to most things. Admittedly I don't use it very often so it's hard to have a real world feel for how frequent things like dropouts are, but that's mostly because data costs a lot. That kind of also ties into developers doing a bad job though (e.g. sending me 10 MB of who knows what when the task (like paying for parking) fundamentally should be doable with a few kB, most of which are the TLS handshake). If they didn't do that, their thing would be instant with 3g speeds. Most CRUD generally just doesn't need a lot of data to actually accomplish the desired task.
Satellite Internet will be slow, but should still be well under a second? I'd still expect that even extreme cases, you wouldn't expect a spinner to complete a single revolution. So it still seems unnecessary.
Anyway, I'm generally on a reliable 300 Mbit/s connection where my pings are more like 20-70 ms, so I suppose you could alter my statement to "if I see a spinner, I interpret it as incompetence".
Then it should give explicit status information like
uploading to server (xx%)...OK
waiting for response...delayed. Check again in 3 minutes.
Not as cool, but at least somewhat informative. Engineers have a responsibility to push back on this kind of thing, because marketing people frequently do not think about failure modes or actually put themselves in the customer's shoes.
> marketing people frequently do not think about failure modes or actually put themselves in the customer's shoes
It’s literally the job of marketing people to put themselves in the customer’s shoes. If engineering isn’t looping in marketing on UX challenges, or if marketing is too focused on top-of-funnel vanity metrics to engage deeply with product usability, things fall through the cracks.
But that’s a company culture issue, not a marketing deficiency.
It should be, but it isn't in my experience. Marketing people care about onboarding and engagement numbers, and are a major driver of dark patterns - everything from popups to moving the 'close dialog' icon to unintuitive places like the bottom left of unasked-for video embeds.
I’m sorry you only worked with terrible, unethical, incompetent marketing people. There are good ones, just like there are bad programmers who do all sorts of terrible and dumb things without creating universal truths about programmers.
I don't think so; I said marketing people frequently do bad stuff, which is not the same as saying they're all bad. I stand by 'frequently', because just look at how much terrible adware, clickbait, spam etc there is on the web. It's a Gresham's law-type situation.
Of course marketing people do a valuable job in terms of figuring out how to sell things and minimize the gap between producers and customers. But - just like engineers - there are lots of cynical and amoral people who work in that industry who make things worse for everyone else. By contrast, I can't think of any society that is suffering because they don't have enough advertising.
Nah. We have a spinner, but I also have a timeout handler.
The reason is that the app's backend (and many of the servers on which it depends) can be hosted on the lowest-tier-dogshit-shared-hosting plan. I would love to have a better backend server, but we are a nonprofit, and can't afford better. This app would be a lot faster, with a more robust backend.
But error handling/reporting is a true art, and should never be an afterthought. In my experience, I need to start thinking about error management, as soon as I start planning.
In my experience, the best error handling is to not have errors, and, quite often, good UX is the answer to that. If the user doesn't do something that might cause agita, then they don't get an error.
Some things in the real world simply take longer than milliseconds; this is not a failing. I'm working with a system that takes over 10 seconds to get a list of wifi access points, and you bet we throw up a spinner while that's happening.
Now of course if the spinner is merely cosmetic and doesn't represent any actual work going on, that can be a problem especially if the process you're waiting for dies.
The annoying part is that website can just be used as an app. For a booking app we don't need native performance; just a webpage-inside-an-app is fine. In most cases, it should be fairly straight-forward and cheap to make this work.
What happens is they hire some contracting firm and they go "whole thing will have to be redone" so they get more work, and that's how you end up with a "solution" like this. Basically the software equivalent of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq6WME576ZE
What’s even more asinine is the website can be updated without publishing to an app store. You always have the latest version and all these apps are just a thin veneer on some CRUD endpoints anyway.
This is the entire philosophy behind all of the apps run by DHH/Basecamp. The web should be the default and native apps should only be used for software that just isn’t possible through the web (yet).
The problem is that users much prefer native apps. The idiomatic UI, the use of OS specific capabilities (even if the same result could be done without), the appearance of better performance because the app launches before a network connection is made.
We can opine all we want about how things should work, but the ground truth is a good native app has higher user satisfaction, more engagement, whatever metric you want other than development cost/non-customer concerns.
It’s very hard to tell users they should feel differently than they do, no matter the technical or philosophical high ground.
> The problem is that users much prefer native apps.
I imagine there is some data on this, but it goes against my observations of me and my circle.
I have maybe 4 apps that I use heavily and another 10 that I use when I have to. I actively avoid installing another app when the web version is sufficient. I don't need the weekly updates to clog up my storage. I don't need notifications going off at all hours. And I don't need creepy unfathomable permissions requests.
Is there some 500ms delay if I click a button on the web version? Maybe. Honestly, I'm not so busy to have noticed.
people here is web biased, people forgot that mobile world exist and I can tell you navigating web in mobile vs native mobile app is like heavenly different
if people commenting from web dekstop perspective I can see that point, but from mobile?? where hardware processing power and network is sometimes unreliable???
I’m gonna punt on the question of where the line is for hostile actions and use some past legal justification of “I know it when I see it” and I see it clearly here.
The second part is the more interesting question to me:
Appropriate reactions would seem to include:
- finding a new doctor/practice/provider. Super hard in practice as they seem to be geographical monopolies a la the cable networks
- providing appropriately hostile feedback to your current doctors — but this is likely only to garner empathy as the docs have little say over this
- stop using smartphones and claim hardship — not sure how this would pan out. Probably not well?
- channeling Luigi and murdering the people responsible for our ongoing dystopia
Seriously what other options are there? You can either complain to the ether and it goes nowhere. Or you can take up violence and it still likely goes nowhere and you fuck up your life.
This is why so many people are content to let the world burn. It ain’t for us anymore anyway.
This is all downstream of consolidation of ownership in private equity of clinics, community health centers, emergency rooms, veterinarians offices, end-of-life care facilities, etc.
This is what happens when you let the bean counters and MBAs a quarter turn around the world with no on-the-ground experience or institutional knowledge make decisions from their spreadsheets to "optimize out inefficiencies".
wcag has provisions regarding cognitive issues, I have been thinking about writing an article arguing that dark patterns being liable under accessibility laws - but have not really shopped it around.
Of course one thing is nobody wants to sue someone because they don't understand something, because they think it means arguing they are stupid.
They are protected if we collectively-enough (laws, or culture, religion, ethics, or...?) agree to provide equitable access to people with disabilities.
Human rights are made up (the local deer that spent the night in the woods near where I spend the night have no rights, they just exist in a mix of cooperation, reciprocity, and some competition. Actually, I don't know if they afford each other rights in the way we do that. Likewise, I don't know if deer focus on "productivity" as much as so many of us do...), and for good reasons (?). I wonder if rights were codified back when we were far less numerous and living so much closer to the land, amidst so much more abundant life.
That's my question, am I a protected class for not being able to operate a smartphone? I think many of a typical doctor's constituency fall into that category.
I don’t think “person who is unable to operate a cellphone” is a protected class. There might be some overlap between those people and people in other protected classes. But it is hard to say just based on a hypothetical, right?
Where can I vote for "Medical establishments should have an accessible-friendly browser-accessible no-javascript webpage for all functionality"?
I see the "democrat" and "republic" checkboxes, but I don't see the magical third "Good apps, and also health insurance companies have to cover medical claims without questioning whether my doctor is competent, denying each claim once, and requiring 3 months of arguing on a phone"
I've been voting, and as far as I can tell every option I have ever been able to vote for has been fully in support of crappy apps and crappy healthcare.
The users of the sub-par app are captive, the hospital or insurance company is mandating it, and neither the doctor nor patients are free to choose a competing app.
If you create a technically better app for the users, people still won't be able to use it unless you also are chosen by those higher up, and since there's likely already a strong existing relationship between the executives at the existing company and at the medical compan(ies), that means creating a competitor also will require building a lot of social capital with the decision makers, taking them to dinner and on golf trips, and so on.
It will take years of your life, millions of dollars (since a 1-man company will never be seen as legitimate enough to provide a medical app, you'll need a large company with many employees), and the chance of success is minimal.
I don't see how this is an "appropriate" response to a bad app.
I vote. I am 50. I have voted in every election I was able to. In my life my preferred candidate has won exactly twice: Obama’s second term and Biden’s first. This includes local, state elections, and national.
To quote George Carlin: “If voting mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it”.
Trump lost in 2024 but took the win because his cronies disqualified enough voters in enough states to win.
So, please, spare me. We’re up to violence already. You’re just well behind the times unfortunately.
I googled around, but I couldn't find an authoritative source showing either the numbers disqualified, the reasons, and that those ballots were majority not-trump ballots.
Can you provide a source for that data for a specific swing state of your choice?
when the functioning of the app means that people with disabilities, including cognitive disabilities, will be denied medical access, and the retaliation is probably a lawsuit appropriate to your jurisdiction, if your jurisdiction does not support accessibility legislation then you're probably out of luck.
I tend to push back against this nonsense pretty firmly, and would go so far as to request paper documents be sent, as "I don't have a device up to the task" (which sometimes is true, as I use old hardware until I luck into a handmedown or the thing breaks). I get that paper and postage and time are costs. So is user time and stress level.
Do a little reverse engineering/analysis on the app, to parallel-construct the claims of 'fifticon (as to not require them to leak internal info or become a whistleblower). If it's as bad as it sounds, go to press. Or just dump an expose on Twitter/X to maximize public awareness.
> who is even "the user" here?
The doctors and their patients. If it's as bad as it sounds, it actively degrades the ability of doctors to provide care, so it quite literally hurts actual people.
People should instead just vote with you feet and dollars. That'll be inconvenient, but if it bothers you enough, you'll make the effort.
A crucial part of this approach is to let your doctor know exactly why you're leaving. If they're losing business over it, they'll look for alternatives. And if the EHR company loses money, they'll look to make changes, too.
So we should condemn large swaths of the rural population to not only abject poverty, but remove health care access too?
Is this what you're seriously arguing? That people should be forced to have a worse quality life, die earlier; all because they committed the crime of not living in a metropolis?
Do you not see how people read this as completely heartless and devoid of empathy towards their fellow man?
Surely it's not a well-functioning market, when the client (the medical organization) had accepted and paid for a clearly dysfunctional software that harms their operations. Yet, they somehow survive and continue to function despite it.
And thus it's questionable whenever voting with wallet would work. It works in healthy, free and competitive markets with rational actors, and we probably aren't looking at one.
Yea, I wouldn't put up with a doctor that required me to interact with him through an app. I'd switch doctors, and hopefully find a way to let the old doctor know why I'm switching. That's often the hardest part--actually finding an owner who is harmed when a customer leaves.
My hospital system has a surprisingly decent web app. I can log in and see my appointments, pre-register for office visits, view lab results, medications, request appointments, do virtual visits...
The amazing stupid part is when I have to sign in at the actual doctor's office.
They have an iPad which does some sort of remote/citrix setup, resulting in a frustrating experience that is full of lag where you interface with what might be their actual EMR system.
Feels like this well written piece by Atol Gawande is relevant if you haven't seen it. I showed it a couple of years ago to my very competent and conscientious doc and she got PISSED. She talked about how she spent literally half of her doctoring time working through poorly designed menus in {epic, cerner} to carefully document everything she could about the patient, only to discover that most doctors don't pay attention to any of that info.
I had kaiser permanente and had google/doubleclick tracking through the entire website, including investigating conditions, doctor communication, and test results.
I complained, they played dumb, but eventually they came up with "the website is a convenience". I stopped using it.
The app was much worse.
A couple years later, other people must have complained
At the doctor's office I'll just ask for paper if there is no real website. Apps freaking suck. I probably won't be able to do this forever though. Example of enshitification #456249
I just leave restaurants that have gone to the online-only menu. It's usually an indicator that there are other terrible cuts in service and quality going on as well.
I leave because I go to a restaurant to enjoy a meal with my family and friends and to connect. Forcing everyone to stare at their phones for the first five minutes is a bad start.
I ask the waiter what’s good, and usually end up going back forth a few times. It’s not as efficient, but it keeps me from reaching for my phone, which is covered in germs.
I've seen this trend regressing where I live, most restaurants I go to have done away with the QR codes (unless it's a brewery/distillery kind of establishment).
"Online menus" are fine; they allow quick updates without requiring the restaurant to re-print menus, and allow for just one copy/version of the menu to be used everywhere.
But then they should also display them publicly outside/inside, and/or have a bunch of tablets ready for visitors to use.
Oh I think the only reason they did that is because that was the "hip" and "schnazzy" UX flow that everyone signed off and loved because "oh this will be amazing for users".
So apps, and even websites, have just become ways to market and push to users. It's not about functionality or enabling the user.
Another, maybe smallish, manifestation of this that I've seen is that devs, UX, and everyone involved is so downright hostile to direct "links". Devs because it forces them to think about what stupid react/angular router they want to use, devops has to do URL-rewrites, PMs are worried about the "additional scope", and UX folks' brains absolutely explode that there is no "flow" to the entity (it just pops up, omg). Instead you, as the user, are forced to click through the search UI or to type the right thing, to trigger the flow or whatever, before you get to that entity you want. You can't just create it as a link, and thereby enabling users to have "emergent" behavior of sharing links or emailing them, etc.
> this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.
I've heard the arguments, so if you're thinking you're going to win an argument with me about whether this means anything or not, you're not; but supplemental information about why what's printed on our money doesn't mean it's legally money to pay a debt to a doctor, go for it.
I was really expecting your personal usage of the app to involve invoking developer privileges, and inserting your text through the much more user friendly UX of DBeaver..
It's kind of annoying the article burns up all the space talking about various discounts and benefits you get from Apps. Aka far less of a problem as they're optional quid pro quo and doesn't talk about the creeping enshittification of those functionalities. Im fine with a council making an option to do important things through an app. But I'm not fine with it being compulsory and I'm even less fine with it being some non functioning trash made in a software sweatshop that doesn't provide a contact number when it goes wrong and noones ever on the hook if it's dysfunctional. It rarely if ever actually improves functionality or makes important things self service. It more often reduces what I can actually do but with a flashier interface for "computer says no".
One thing this article doesn’t mention is how this all falls apart when you spend time in more than one country.
My UK bank (Barclays) won’t let me install their app on my US iPhone (i.e. my phone that uses a US based iCloud account). Tesco won’t let me use their loyalty app. I can’t install an app that’ll let me order Starbucks or McDonalds in the UK (I only have access to the US versions of these apps). I can’t watch Star Trek because the US paramount plus app detects I’m in the UK and I can’t install the UK version.
I could switch to a UK iCloud account but then when I’m in the states everything falls apart the other way round.
My ugly solution to this problem is to have a free Oracle Cloud VM in the other country that I use to run a VPN (Oracle provides instructions [1]). I then connect to this using OpenVPN on my phone, which allows me have a Google account that thinks I am in the other country and so allows me to install apps that are restricted to that country. I don't have the VPN connected all the time - only when I want to access the App Store using the Google account that I have for the other country.
To be a little pedantic, your solution is a solution to your problem, but only a fraction of the problem you're responding to. Your VPN won't help access the UK apps that require a UK phone localization if those same services aren't also available in the region of your VPN exit node. And since he's talking about UK-specific apps and services, VPNing his US phone back to the US isn't any help.
I recently travelled to Europe and found that a number of transportation apps disallowed me installing them. Toll road apps, public transit, etc…
It was a major pain, and to make it worse I got fined €130 by Ausfinag for not paying tolls, but I couldn’t install their app and I bought the wrong sticker at the gas station because as it turns out there are a bunch of special areas with additional tolls above the base toll. I tried my best to comply but the system is totally user hostile.
I recently complained to my local cities transportation office that their mobile app for bus tickets was only available for German Google users. The actually changed it now.
Yep, as someone who also travels between countries regularly, it's complete nonsense. "This app isn't available in your region" - what do you mean, I am literally in your region.
The sad part is sometimes just switching languages/locales on your phone (i.e. changing the language from US English to British English) fixes this as it's all the code checks.
I can't buy overnight bunk tickets on Ukrainian trains anymore because I need to authenticate, and the only authentication methods require either Ukrainian citizenship or residency cards.
I can't install the app for my new Amex card because my Google account was opened in Canada and I live in Germany now.
And it keeps getting worse every year. I'm worried that eventually my American and Canadian banking apps will stop working...
The internet was supposed to make this shit simpler.
> I can't buy overnight bunk tickets on Ukrainian trains anymore because I need to authenticate, and the only authentication methods require either Ukrainian citizenship or residency cards.
In fairness, that specific case is probably intentional. They have quite limited train capacity as all passenger air travel was forced to switch to trains/busses, and I suspect they're trying to save it for locals. It is annoying though; I've been to Ukraine quite a few times recently and have used that app myself.
Yes, I've long given up trying to reconcile this mess and bought three separate cell phones with three separate sim cards to for the three countries where I spend non-trivial amount of time.
> I could switch to a UK iCloud account but then when I’m in the states everything falls apart the other way round.
If it’s only two countries, you can sign in and out of the App Store only with two regions. This is how I maintained a Japan and US region account on the same device. The thing that sucks is changing between accounts for updates, but it does work to some degree.
AFAIK this is only a problem on iPhone, not Android?
Note: I have an iPhone. It sucks. Same issue. I have bank accounts in other countries. The app needs an update. To install the update I have to switch countries on my account which instantly voids any and all subscriptions through Apple. It's insane.
It's even more crazy that every single Apple employee I know has this issue but for whatever reason it's not fixed.
I have an account at a credit union that only offers SMS 2FA, and requires it for every login. I can't connect to that phone number when I'm abroad, so I can't access my account.
You can add multiple Google accounts - one for each country, and switch between them on the Play Store. That's how I'm able to access apps from my home country and resident country.
As for using the apps themselves, you might run into issues depending on what restrictions they have - IP address, SMS verification, etc.
I have two Google accounts, one in the us, one in Germany. So far that has divided to get around this for the apps I encountered it. But I'm not a heavy phone user...
When I was young in Europe the trend was that the place where you live will dictate and limit less and less of your life. Technology, traveling, motivation of people will allow roaming, postcode independent existence.
Well, the trend froze up very fast and is in full reverse nowadays, I am in my early 50s and I believe me and my children's life will such more and more, be even more difiicult by the reverse of intents towards a more unified humanity. The law and all working with law will remain a big fucking barrier even if the representatives the people choose to form their life (politicians) would magicly become nice and selfless and efficient, they fight hard to do business the same shitty way as 100s of years ago, all differenty in all puny geographic regions, in as much diverse as possible, as incompetible with each other as possible. And several happily collaborate as it is a fix income to do unoptimal and fragmented way, happily waste our resources providing services in this muddy water.
It's funny how people in this thread keep saying "well if you're going to complain about people being penalized for not using apps, you might as well complain about people being penalized for not using telephones/cars/internet"... and yes, I am going to complain about all of those things. I imagine that many or most homeless people don't have reliable access to any of the above. I have an anxiety disorder that makes it hard for me to drive or talk on the phone, and I'm sure there are many people with more extreme conditions for whom it's impossible. There are people like Richard Stallman and members of certain religious communities who have strong moral objections to using certain technologies. Society should accommodate all sorts of people and all sorts of ways of living.
> I imagine that many or most homeless people don't have reliable access to any of the above.
In the US there is a specific government program called "Lifeline" that provides cell phone service to low income people, https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-cons... (whether it gets DOGEd remains to be seen...) And where I live there are a bunch of programs that provide free cell phones to homeless people.
It's not a panacea because lots of homeless people have other problems that make it difficult to keep a cell phone and not lose it. But that's really a separate issue - not having access is really not much of a barrier for the homeless, at least in the US.
IMHO at some point it makes sense to start requiring the internet, it makes a lot of things easier. But when we do that we need to ensure that everyone is supported. For example ensuring that people have ready internet access at public libraries. Providing government-provided email inboxes for receiving government communication (lots of homeless people get locked out of regular free mail providers). Train support staff at these libraries (or whatever institution provides these services) to help people who need assistance though the government processes, including doing it on their behalf when required.
Immigrants are often left out for various reasons, such as not having the right documents, having an unsupported kind of passport, not having an address they can register as their home, not having an app store account in the right country, not having a local payment method, and a variety of other issues.
If we replace "taxes" with "paying for an army, paying for police, etc." than the above statement seems strange. I can understand "I don't like what society choose to build (with the taxes)", but some things can't be let to the free market.
> I have to go do the fucking IRS's job
That's a society choice. I have no experience with IRS, but other countries have tax systems that are much more automatic (come prefilled with most info for example). But taxes are maybe a bit higher (because if you don't do the job, someone needs to maintain the systems that allow the automation).
The only reason you have to do the IRS' job is because the "free market" you love so much spends obscene amounts of money buying out your government and making sure people have to use their products in order to not go insane filing their taxes.
In most countries filing taxes is a painless process that takes 5 minutes and is more or less completely automated for you.
> Sorry to hear about your condition, and while I think society can decide to accommodate to some conditions, I disagree with that idea that it "should accommodate". It is a common decision, and sometimes the answer will be "no, we don't accommodate for that, sorry". In the end, everything has a cost (being it effort, resources, time, etc.).
This falls apart when you realize this isn't just a consistent percentage of the population. It's a large portion of the population at different portions of their lives. It's something like 90% of adults will be disabled in their lives.
How many times have you lost your phone, or broken it without an immediately available backup?
In your world, people in wheelchairs would be housebound. But I guess we shouldn't accommodate them by requiring wheelchair ramps or curb cut-outs. They are lesser than us.
I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
> 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.
Duolingo isn't really a replacement for classes (which are obviously a magnitude or few more expensive) but self learnings books, tapes and such (IMHO it's mostly inferior to those too but not by a such high degree).
I'm kind of puzzled by your first point. In my experience, parking apps require you to pay in larger chunks of hours than paying with coins used to; many times I have to pay for a minimum of 2 hours of parking with the app when I could pay for just 10 or 15 minutes of parking with coins.
>In my experience, parking apps require you to pay in larger chunks of hours than paying with coins used to;
Here in Nashville, they sold out our public street parking to a private company. Now instead of coins in a meter for the time you want, you have to buy at least an hour for $1.75 (or more), pay by scanning a QR code (which is misprinted on the signs) unless you're in one of the spots where there's a working pay machine, and it now is enforced 24/7 instead of having holidays and weekends off (IIRC it was also free after 6, which was great). Also they had two hour limits where you can't simply move your car, you have to park somewhere they don't check for an indeterminate amount of time. How is any of this an improvement unless you get a cut of the money?
The parking app I use in Berlin, easy park, works in the sense that I pre-select a timeframe I think im going to park which then gives me an estimate for how much it'll cost and reserve that amount using my CC. When I end the parking before that timer ends, the actual time I've parked will be taken and only that amount is charged.
It used to be even better in the sense that you'd only start and then end parking without having to pre select a time. But I think too many people, me included, forgot to end the parking when taking off and paid way more than they actually parked for.
Of course the apps could easily detect that parking has ended. They could note your location when you park. When the phone returns to that location, and then moves at driving speed, parking has ended.
But they don't because they make more money by profiting from people who forget to "clock out" when they are done parking.
The idea of a parking app is better than the physical process of using a meter generally. But I have not really seen an app flow better than the physical process despite having parked in many cities. In fact, I can come up with a simple physical process better than the apps by far: tap the meter in and tap the meter out with your NFC chip in the card.
Pay for the exact time, or if you forget, pay the full time period you’re legally allowed to park.
Instead, on my city’s app I must select a car (despite having only one), select a zone (despite GPS), and then manually enter my card (despite it being my account default). Every time.
The Pay By Phone app works well for me. It automatically figures out what parking area you are in from the phone GPS, it already knows your license plate, and it has your credit card.
Basically the flow for me is open the app, and hit how long I want to park for. And then the app will let me know when my parking is running out and I can add time on my phone without going back to the car.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
In my experiece, apps have increased costs around 50% and some even try to add monthly subscription.
> Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.
Why do iOS and Android phones have a "wallet", and why a boarding pass would have anything to do with it?
There's an electronic solution strictly better than the app, for when you have no printer handy: just give the user the goddamned PDF! Works everywhere, works offline, can be printed if needed, and the user can manage, send or back it up however they like.
You can do that if you want. Most airlines issue PDF boarding passes and both iOS and Android can store and show those files.
Apple Wallet (and Apple Pay) are actually one of my favorite smartphone features. The built-in Wallet (speaking for iOS here) has a few advantages over a folder of PDFs:
- The QR code is always fairly big without having to pan and zoom a PDF file
- The display brightness is automatically increased to make reading the QR code easier
- The Wallet syncs with my Apple Watch (where passes use a different, optimized layout) giving me backup if something where to happen to my phone during boarding
- Passes can be updated by the airline (e.g. gate changes)
- Passes automatically expire, I don’t have to cleanup myself. (There’s archive in case I need an old one)
- Passes can be shown on your lock screen during the boarding time for easier access
- Passes can be multilingual, adapting to your phone’s language
> Why do iOS and Android phones have a "wallet", and why a boarding pass would have anything to do with it?
It's not that deep, just a skeuomorphic name for somewhere where you'd keep importants/valuables for quick access, credit/debit cards, boarding passes, concert tickets
Not unlike keeping a folded up copy of a pass in a physical wallet (Which may not be universal, but I would have guessed not that uncommon either)
And if your phone is out of order? I used a PDF version of the boarding pass on my laptop in the past due to a flat phone. Even when my phone is available I still just use the PDF version that was emailed to me. I never use my phone 'wallet' for anything.
Since I use my phone to pay for things, book rides between places and basically existing in general
I also keep a power bank on my person and a spare phone in my house
But if I'm not confident on availability I also keep alternatives, I've not used physical money in months (Other than local bus fares), but I do keep some cash on my person, as well as the physical cards that I use virtually on my phone and copies of boarding passes when necessary, not that I've needed any of them recently, I just like covering my bases, it's not a binary situation, I'd also like to keep spares if my only copy was physical
The wallet allows activation by proximity like RFID. So if the pass is in the wallet you don't need to go digging around for wherever the PDF is stored in the phone. Tap, the pass is requested, the pass responds, go.
Until two years ago, I flew out of ATL - the busiest airport in the US. Am I suppose to look on the board and look for my flight out of the hundreds of flights to see if anything has changed and keep looking every 30 minutes?
If I’m sitting at a restaurant or a bar I should get up every 20 minutes to see if something has changed?
Should I also print out MapQuest directions before I go somewhere and wait for the paper boy to deliver the newspaper to get the news?
And it’s literally a mile from one end of the airport to the other. Is it somehow better to look on a board than just look on a phone?
And then you also get notifications when the flight changes so drastically that I need to completely change my flight plans. Just this past weekend we were suppose to fly MCO - MSP - LAS and flight changes meant we were going to misd our layover.
Luckily we were notified as soon as the change happen and we were able to make a change to MCO - ATL - LAS and get two of the last seats.
The same happen on the way back. It was LAS - MSP - MCO and we were able to change it to LAS - LAX - MCO.
Things always change when you fly a lot. The sooner you know about those changes the better.
> Until two years ago, I flew out of ATL - the busiest airport in the US. Am I suppose to look on the board and look for my flight out of the hundreds of flights to see if anything has changed and keep looking every 30 minutes?
That’s what I usually do. It’s not that much of an effort to look at the screen right at the gate you’re sitting at to confirm that nothing has changed. I‘ve been to ATL twice, it’s not that bad.
What are you going to do when something happens to your phone …
Can you imagine… how did we manage to live before everyone and their dog had a phone in their pocket.
So yeah… yeah? That’s exactly what you supposed to be doing.
> That’s what I usually do. It’s not that much of an effort to look at the screen right at the gate you’re sitting at to confirm that nothing has changed. I‘ve been to ATL twice, it’s not that bad.
And you somehow think that’s more efficient? Do you also think polling is more efficient than web hooks and push notifications? Why would I do that?
And the restaurants are usually not right at the gate you’re sitting at. Well in our case we are usually sitting in the lounge…
> What are you going to do when something happens to your phone
Well, I personally would take out my cellular equipped iPad on the rare occasions that I was flying by myself and I would still get text notifications on my cellular equipped watch or depend on my wife having her phone, cellular equipped iPad or Watch.
If all that failed yes I would have to get a paper ticket - which you can do at the gate.
How often do you actually fly? My wife and I have been flying over a dozen times a year post Covid.
I was in ATL either flying in, out or through ATL over 25x last year alone.
> Can you imagine… how did we manage to live before everyone and their dog had a phone in their pocket.
I personally had my first phone in my pocket in 1995. Never once in 30 years has anything “happened to my phone”.
What is there to be more efficient? You’re sitting there waiting for a flight. This isn’t a shopping mall, even if it appears to look like one.
Re push vs pull… which one do you prefer more? Kafka or MQTT? On a more serious note… pull because I don’t sit snd stare at the phone all the time. Phone stays in the pocket. So the act of taking it out of the pocket is a pull action.
There are no screens and announcements at the lounge? You went to the airport to fly somewhere, not shopping or a dinner for two, no? What’s more important than getting to your destination?
1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue.
3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
I recently got bitten in the rear by Delta not updating boarding passes stored in Apple Wallet, even though it had / has all permissions to do so.
Only when I checked the time and wondered why we weren't boarding yet, and opened the app did I notice that the gate changed.
Even afterwards the one stored in Apple Wallet did not update. I even tried to do the pull-to-refresh. Eventually I pulled to refresh, and that worked.
No, but when you have a device in your hands, with an app provided by the company you're dealing with, and they specifically request permissions to send you notifications, you start to rely on it.
An unreliable boarding pass in Apple Wallet is worse than a paper boarding pass.
With the paper one I know I need to check the screens etc. With the Apple the app implies that you no longer have to do this.
And you get used to it. You stop doing the things you did before. That muscle memory disappears. Not dissimilar to driving with GPS, or programming with AI.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
Pay-on-exit car parks are the answer to this. Combined with contactless card payment and that's peak parking experience.
Except having the actual barrier is expensive. The license plate reader is cheaper, so they'll do that instead, and if it malfunctions, hope you don't mind paying for a full day of parking!
Don’t people just print their boarding passes at home before they leave for the airport? Or worst case, use the kiosks at the airports which print passes? Very few of the passengers in line ahead of me are using their phones.
I don't trust apps, I don't mind using them for stuff that doesn't matter much, like parking og supermarket loyalty programs. For travel information, absolutly fucking not. I print everything. At the airport I mostly see people using their phones as boarding passes, I absolutely refuse to do that, I have zero trust that that will work as well as the paper boarding passes.
Depends on where you are. My experience in American airports is almost all apps, but Spain's Iberia, for example, is basically all paper, typically printed by the airline and not even someone at home. So for them, minimal changes over how flying worked in the 1990s.
That's what I do, because phones are too fiddly and I don't want to have to deal with unlocking it and finding wherever the barcode went off to when it's my turn to check in, but my wife does something with an app instead and seems to like it.
Perhaps that's the thing with an app my wife is doing. I don't have a wallet app, myself; I mistrust phones (and the corporations which own them) too much for that.
Depends where you are and which flights. Around me, maybe 60% of people use mobile. From the other 40%, some probably got their paper tickets when they checked in their baggage and going with that now.
> boarding passes at home before they leave for the airport
It’s been years I’ve heard or seen anyone doing it. Even my parents in their 70s get theirs at the airport.
> I don't think most people worry about that at all. Why wouldn't it be available? If you're heading to the airport from home, your battery is charged.
You're assuming the phone works and the internet connection works and the app works and the service behind it responsive. That's a lot of trust in thousands of moving parts.
Meanwhile I have a printed boarding pass which depends on nothing other than me having it in my pocket, so it basically 100% fail-proof.
While I always use the paper boarding pass, I do also check the boarding pass on the app out of curiosity. Easily like half the time on the American Airlines app, when I'm at the gate about to board and click on show boarding pass, the app hangs for many minutes and never responds. I'm always glad I have the paper boarding pass in my pocket instead.
Maybe I'm weird, but when I go on a trip, I generally pack my smartphone, if I bring it at all. It would be a royal pain to go find it again when I get into line to board.
Same, I do recognize that walking around without a smartphone starting to become "weird" to others though. I don't mind being weird.
I live in a major US city and get hit up for cash by the homeless sometimes. When I explain I do not have a cellphone to them when they ask for money through some cash app. They look bewildered. Just 20 years ago I was the only one carrying around such a device for IT reasons. Now I am putting limits on my digital life, and it makes me socially "weird".
OTOH
Currently, the only thing I don't pay regularly by using a smart device, are bus fares, which are a solved problem, my city just hasn't implemented that yet
Everything else, I can either use a digital wallet for, or an instant bank transfer (Which I've been given to understand are a bit more of a hassle in the US)
I'd basically never expect to be without a device for an extended period of time, specially not in an airport
I am aware of the single point of failure though, so I do take particular care of not running out of battery, keeping an accesible spare, and some cash around for emergencies I just never use it
Almost nobody carries around small cash or change anymore.
And social services provide the homeless and those in poverty with free smartphones, since they're far more effective at ensuring communications with social services.
So how is the world weird? It all seems quite rational and reasonable to me.
At a certain point, low-cost airlines become high-cost, at least in time and annoyance. I have a cousin who insists that Sprit saves him money, and every family holiday his plane is delayed or cancelled, and he had to fly to a different city and drive to where we are.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
Maybe it's better these days, but back when I used to use online apps/sites to pay for parking in private lots, 4/5 times I still got a "ticket." I never had to pay the fine with money, only with time.
I think it really was the 4th time I decided to stop using those apps entirely.
Sometimes I wonder if the devs behind these apps and processes feel embarrassed by the results. I would be, even if the failures weren't my fault.
For me it is less about being concerned about my device running out of batteries. It's more about some weird incompatibility between my device and the scanner.
It's one less thing to worry about when I just want to get on the plane. My paper ticket isn't going to lock before I get to the gate, or not be bright enough. I won't have to "play" with my ticket to keep it active and proper for the scanner.
> and god forbid if your drop your smartphone and get it cracked
Then you print a boarding pass at the kiosk? But I've cracked a phone once in ten years, it's not really something I'm worried about.
And paper isn't reliable. For most people, you're much more likely to lose a random sheet of paper than for your phone to suddenly permanently stop working.
I’m gonna say something stupid — the chances of my phone running out of battery and me not being able to charge it is lower than me losing the paper ticket.
It's not that hard to maintain a random piece of paper, you do it with your ID, which presumably you do not keep on your phone. It is much harder to ensure an iPhone won't randomly be miscalibrated and shut off at 30%.
I do it with my ID because I've conditioned myself to check for it everytime I'm going to move places, or rather, check for my wallet, which usually has my ID inside it, but has burned me on a couple of ocassions
Also, some people do keep their ID on their phones, either directly on the back of the case (I've seen it more on young women, maybe because lack of pockets) or with something like a magnetic wallet
Not it's not hard, but it is significantly harder, and why introduce unnecessary additional complexity into my life?
My ID is in my wallet. A sheet of paper doesn't fit in my wallet. So I have to put the folded paper in a pocket, where it might fall out when I take out my gloves, or I forget if I put it in my backpack, and in which pocket, etc.
A sheet of paper is extra. My phone isn't. And I sure as heck don't bring a phone with low charge to the airport... when I know I'm probably going to be using it for hours... and I've got my charger with me anyways in case I somehow did.
You could lose your phone, or even have it stolen.
I think of it as multitasking. A paper ticket means I can focus on reading etc on device, while the ticket can serve its purpose. I keep all pertinent materials in a pouch in front of me however so not hard to find.
> > 1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
Yeah... nothing more I love than having to scan a QR code to get an app from someone I don't know, then go through the signup process, then input a buncha personal information into an app... instead of just dropping 10 quarters into a metal stick and walking away for the next two hours.
> > 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
> Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.
Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer. They're not gold bars. They're not expensive.
> Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer.
The desk at my AirBnB doesn't seem to have one.
> They're not gold bars. They're not expensive.
If someone has an alternate solution to owning a printer that works for them, whats it to you? Owning a printer so you can print half of the boarding passes you need every time you fly seems excessive to me
> Yeah... nothing more I love than having to scan a QR code to get an app from someone I don't know, then go through the signup process, then input a buncha personal information into an app... instead of just dropping 10 quarters into a metal stick and walking away for the next two hours.
Quality of execution obviously matters. I find EasyPark (Swedish company, used all over the place) a lot better than the usual parking meters. Plus I can use it in several cities with different currencies (in my case Euros and Czech Koruna), saving me from carrying more change.
The point is all these things should be options, not single points of failure. We should be able to pay by coin/tap, or app when at a place we frequent. Apps should use a single system per region, props for being an open standard.
> Yeah... nothing more I love than having to scan a QR code to get an app from someone
True. I does suck when travelling. Locally I find it much more convenient though.
> dropping 10 quarters
You're always carrying a bag full of coins wherever you go? And even if I did I'd end up overpaying/underpaying half of the time.
> Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer.
So I should waste space with a huge device that I use <10 times per year?
I mean I could bring it over from the other room or the attic or wherever it's lying around but why would I waste time and mental energy each time I'm travelling having to keep track of some piece of paper that I mustn't lose? Seems rather pointless...
Cheap Android phones aren't expensive either and can provide a lot more than a printer for most people these days.
A few months ago, I had to use street parking in Long Beach, California. They no longer had individual meters along this particular street, but rather one parking sticker machine. The parking sticker machine was broken, so I had to download the advertised parking payment app which was not one of the parking apps I already had on my phone. Finally, I had to pay an additional “convenience” fee on top to use this app that I wouldn’t have needed to pay using physical payment infrastructure.
So everyone wins here, except us: the app company gets to make a killing on compulsory payment processing, and City of Long Beach gets to continue to pull in parking revenue without worrying about whether their payment machines still work—a broken machine is not an excuse because you can still pay with the app because everyone has a smartphone with an up-to-date OS and functioning cell service with appropriate bandwidth, right? I’m sure I could have complained to the city and gotten my +/-dollar back, but I didn’t have time just to do so for the principle of the thing.
I don't think I could disagree more with your number 4. Adding a boarding pass to Apple Wallet and having it update itself with gate changes, delays, etc, notifying you and even scribbling skeuomorphically what changed on the pass [0] has been one of the strongest delighters I've experienced in recent times.
Are you not also paying attention to the gate itself and to departure boards? Why do you need your phone to tell you what's posted on numerous displays that you walk past?
So you disregard what's in front of your face, in preference to your device.
Other folks here were talking about how their devices did not update in a timely fashion. They had to force refresh several times to get a response. Meanwhile the gate screens have a single job and update within seconds.
You can do that with a boarding pass downloaded from the airline website or emailed to you by the airline. But some airlines like to hide this option in order to force you to download their app.
Why would you need to do that? The boarding pass has a QR code on it; the QR code links to your ticket. If you need to change your booking, they can email you a new one.
And? These are available on google, on the airline's website, and on screens throughout the terminal. Many airlines will send them to you via SMS. There's no need to have a whole app just to check your gate assignment.
My apple wallet boarding passes never update on time. At LAX they sometimes put you as a placeholder at the international terminal for your gate on boarding pass. So then you show up, slog through the international terminal to this gate, and see that no you are actually in terminal 7. Enjoy the resulting 2.5 mile walk I hope you baked in extra time.
Now I don’t trust it. Googling the flight number brings in the updated gate. Not the apple wallet boarding pass though.
I generally agree, but I’ve had a great experience with one of those. I just wish they all did the same streamlined thing this one particular app I used did.
The QR code I had to scan actually ran an App Clip instead of taking me to a website. Everything was done in one screen: enter plate, parking stall number, hours. My physical interaction with it was just scrolling a little and hitting a button. Done. Wonderful.
Most parking solitions are a shitshow though. Multiple screens (seriously, why?!), having to create an account, not handling payment via Apple Pay so I have to enter my credit card manually. Having to enter the parking location manually (how come it’s not a parameter in the QR code URL?). I’d really like to know what happens at the companies that develop those. It’s borderline criminal how bad they are.
I had a frustrating experience with this. We were staying in a small town and the casino had a ferry to cross the river, which would save 20 minutes driving and be kind of neat. I'm guessing they had issues with the staff collecting payments, so they had switched to a parking app to pay for it. You pay for the ferry as a "parking lot" and it should all work fine.
Signs at the road to it say to pay before proceeding, so I do. After driving all the way up, it turns out the ferry wasn't running (they neglected to close the gate at the start of the road). The parking app was tied into a pair of license plate readers on the boat, but since I couldn't drive past the "exit", they never considered my "parking" to end and it racked up a charge over two days. Of course, the "parking" starts without my car being detected going on to the boat.
Fortunately, I got a refund, but it required jumping through a bunch of hoops. If we paid the way it used to be done this wouldn't be possible at all!
>Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
Delta's app is pretty good. I really like the peace of mind from being able to see where my bags are, including when they get put on the conveyor.
Case in point - Toronto Parking Authority (Green P)'s app forces you to keep a balance and refill in multiples of $20 CAD, whereas street parking meters can charge your credit card in any increment as necessary (e.g. $1.25).
I would dispute your points 2 and 4. But yes, the trend towards apps is not very good. I am not sure if the apps are cheaper or just makes people think they are doing something modern and better. One thing is for sure, most apps based devices won't age well.
Having taken both academic classes in Spanish, and using Duolingo for multiple years, I feel like Duolingo is a faster, more cost effective option for establishing a foundation. Obviously if you want to approach fluency, submersion is necessary.
Generally, yes, (it may have improved since I left but the Chicago one was a nightmare a few years back) however the best experience I've ever had was in Nashville (don't recall the company name).
I signed up via the web (no app) and then the parking lot has cameras/sensors that detect my plate. Any parking lot owned by that company is now accessible to me in the city. I can just pull in, it detects me (notifying me my "session" has started), and then charges my card on file when I pull out (either in an hour, or even the next day).
As with a lot of things, there are often examples of well-executed solutions at the fringes, they're just not deployed at a large enough scale to cancel out the other negative examples. Software can improve a lot, but it's down to the team/individuals involved to care enough to do it right (and not be distracted by other incentives).
Printing a boarding pass for the return trip when you can only check in 36 hours before departure is a lot trickier than printing at home. I'd prefer to print but this is one of the things that is simpler.
The only annoying part is when the app gets battery killed with terrible reception in the airport and then takes 2 minutes to show you the boarding pass it already downloaded.
The customers for these apps are the parking lot operators and they love the apps.
> 2. Tinder is worse than IRL speed dating.
It is now, it definitely wasn't when it first came out. Prime example of enshittification, but not an example of what you're conveying.
> 3. Duolingo is worse than language classes.
This one I feel has the most merit, but still not a lot. What % of Duolingo users would've actually taken classes were it not for these apps? Also, some people don't learn well from classes (I'm one of them). Not that that makes Duolingo any better, but despite its pretenses it's squarely aimed at extremely shallow, casual, surface-level learning that might be useful on a holiday. And people don't take classes for that.
> 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
In what way? Admittedly I've only used the apps of 2 airlines, but they worked fine.
women, and a small pool of men, use Tinder to efficiently find hookups. IRL speed dating is actually a much bigger pain in the ass for that purpose. it's "uber for nookie"
In general, I agree with your observation, but in terms of Duolingo it does not matter whether language classes would have been better, because I was never going to sign up for them. Letting myself get hooked on another daily word game was a commitment I could actually make, and after plugging away at it with steadily increasing enthusiasm for a little over a year now, I've gained a significant degree of fluency I would not otherwise have. Thus I think that Duolingo offers a genuinely valuable service, not directly comparable to language classes.
> 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
Whenever I fly business class for an international trip, I always check in at the counter. It's just as fast, but getting that boarding pass printing on cardstock and tucked into the photo page of my passport feels so quaint and charming.
I've seen good airline apps and bad airline apps. The good ones allow you to do things like checking your own bags and dropping off bags without talking to anyone. The bad ones simply are slow and have missing features: you may be able to buy a ticket but changing it requires calling a number. (Of course if you are the type to prefer human customer service, these won't appeal to you.)
Re no. 1, what are you supposed to do in those cities if you don't have a smartphone? Just get a ticket? Seems heavily discriminatory against the poor.
But all of those situations require human labor or oversight which is extremely expensive in the developed world. So in the sense that they allow people to access these things for cheaper they are better. And Tinder, Duolingo, etc. are at least cheaper. The other two the cost savings is gained by the government or the airline
Yes, in the digital world these folks feel like they can strongarm you, in a way they would never have the gall to do in person. By demanding full information and customer-hostile rules. Sorry, we don't "support" anything else at this time!
I think this article is city-centric. I am in a rural area in the US and I have only had a smart phone for 2 years and have never installed any apps beyond Mumla that I use for my own self hosted uMurmur server. I have never browsed the web from the phone. My life today is just as it was in the 1970's in that regard. All the businesses here have printed coupons. There are local printed newspapers. I have zero dependency on any "smart" features of phones unless one considers texting to be a smart feature given that was not a thing in the 70's. I do not expect any of that to change. The people here like keeping things simple. With exception of Amazon to get things small shops here do not carry I could even kill my internet connection and life would go on just fine. I would probably even get healthier. All the local businesses know me by name so I guess that makes up for a lack of cookie tracking.
It's an article about the situation in the UK. If your "rural area" is in the US, it is not surprising that it's a bit different than anything in the article.
That makes sense. I think the US tries to mimic big city behavior in the EU so it's probably just a matter of time for big cities in the US to have the same problems. Maybe that means I have a few more decades for any of that to find it's way to me. Curious how prevalent this behavior is in the rural parts of the UK.
I realize this might not be a kosher comment for HN, and i aphid for that. But you seem to have imagined some inherent divide between the mechanics of urban and rural (and apparently foreign and domestic) lives or at least governance. With this imagined division, you are free to ascribe whatever outcome that affects cities to whatever cause, since you live in a different state of existence.
I'm not saying that as an insult, but rather because I don't think there's an inherent difference, I just think rural communities are harder for companies to monetize, for multiple reasons - think density and average income.
But like Amazon, they will get there, and unlike cities, rural communities have less ability to resist and less ability to support a diversity of options. Think about the takeover of Walmart and Dollar General/Tree.
I don't think there's anything special inherent to your rural community that protects you from all this "progress". You're just living through the time before it catches up to your community. And i bet if you think about the effects of the arrival of changes like Walmart's rural expansion, you might find that they upset rural life as well, reducing wages, extracting money from the local economy instead of allowing it to continue to circulate locally, and then investing driving distances, and the associated costs in fuel and time among others.
My guess is that you will go from blaming cities for their problems to blaming cities for your communities problems once they reach you.
But maybe if you reevaluate your perspective, you could help your community prepare to resist those changes while you still have time.
In the US large companies in rural areas also often use apps in the same way as they do in the city (at least they did the last time I visited) and at least all the people I know in rural areas have had smartphones for a long time and use apps a lot (though maybe the fact that the area I know well is near a major university has made it a bit techier). The smaller local stores don't use apps so even in Chicago most places I actually went to didn't. I just went through my phone and the only app like that I have is for Taco Bell
People here do have smart phones and I'm sure some have apps installed. What I am saying is none of that is required today. Nobody here is penalized for not installing some app.
I would have to pay more regardless. The closest McDonalds is a 2 hour drive each way and going up steep mountains on the way back. The burgers at the local restaurant are much better and healthier ... well ... as healthy as a burger gets.
No worries. This troglodyte will bury his head in the sand. There will be a documentary about us and even the Amish will be shaking their heads. People in the 25th century will look back in envy after the machines take over and they had to reset civilization with EMP's back to agrarian or hunter gatherers. All of that pales in comparison to what happens from the years 201 BG to 108 BG during the Butlerian Jihad.
Well, not so much city-centric as it is population-centric. Cities are population centers, so there is correlation.
The scale you are thinking in is comparable to a small web forum being sustainably moderated by the owner of the site, while the majority of the world exists in a place like reddit that has more moderator users than even large web forums have in total. Reddit would not be sustainable if they had to pay a moderation staff, and similarly rural living cannot be scaled up to support cities without becoming city-like.
So assuming you accept all that, why even read this article or post a reply in the discussion?
I'm not trying to gatekeep here, I'm just saying I don't see why you find this topic interesting? It's like replying to a thread about how life in Afghanistan is really difficult, and you're saying "I think this article is not about America because of all the American things I experience."
I'm not trying to gatekeep here, I'm just saying I don't see why you find this topic interesting?
My ulterior motive and secret agenda is to let people know they can escape that nonsense. Many rural areas are getting faster internet but are much more chill. There are pros and cons people can research themselves. For me most of the cons are pros.
If I can save even one person per year from the social, government and store apps that have massive teams of marketing psychological warfare experts manipulating them then I have done my hero's doodie.
I don't think it's a natural urban/rural division. I suspect that that division is more an artifice of capitalism. These new services want to grow, so they target places with the most potential customers. If the pitch to the municipality is that they can take the cost of coin collection and meter maintenance out of the budget entirely, and switch the enforcement from a human walking around, checking meters and wiring tickets to a car that drives past with license plate readers and a sass subscription, then it will come for anywhere with meters, and may eventually come for everywhere, because the original pitch for meters required justifying the expense with projected revenue. And now, if the expense of a few signs and a subscription are low enough, and the license readers are already on police cars, then that evaluation changes.
Of course, as with all of it, local jobs disappear from the local budget, and that money gets shipped off to Wall Street.
I'm glad to see people talking about this. I'd love to see a new right: The right to not have your phone on you.
For whatever reason. Maybe it was stolen. Maybe it's being fixed. Maybe the battery is dead.
(Maybe you don't want to get a Google or Apple account. But that's not the only use case.)
All public services and essential services (government services, banks, car parks, etc) should respect this right. It's bizarre that people think it's such an outlandish request.
The increasing necessity of the Internet is also why giving companies the power to exile someone from the Internet is an extremely broad power that is increasingly like a prison sentence. E.g. the recent cases of publishers demanding ISPs cut off users who have pirated content.
When visiting the UK last summer we tried to go to a train museum. There were three public parking lots around with different app based parking systems. We were unsuccessful in using any of them due to various issues relating to poor cell service, lack of UK phone number etc. In the end we had to leave without visiting the museum. It was farcical.
As a North London resident, the parking app situation is just as farcical for me.
There are at least three different apps for parking around me: RingGo, PayByPhone and JustPark.
I went to East London recently to visit the Velodrome, and discovered yet another one: Evology.
It's always great fun, standing around in the car park trying to wrangle your cards whilst creating yet another account to pay for 30 minutes of parking.
Then, of course, there's the 50/50 chance that my iPhone has decided to offload the parking app you need because you haven't used it in the last month or so.
And occasionally RingGo will decide to log me out, and when I go to log back in for some reason the last password I have in my password manager doesn't work, so now I also have to reset my password.
Agreed, paying for parking has turned into a total farce.
If people just stopped paying for parking en masse, things might change. I'm in the US, so maybe my attitude is different, but if I parked in a parking lot that didn't let me pay without installing some weirdo app, I would just park without paying and let them come after me if they can find me. If they send me a bill, I can refuse to pay. If they send it to collections, collections will probably not pursue over such a small amount. And if the debt collector does pursue, I can send them a dispute letter, forcing them to prove I have a debt obligation, which 99 times out of 100 will make them go away.
This is like the people who think “admiralty court” is a magic phrase to get out of paying taxes. What actually happens is that your car gets towed if you ever park anywhere affiliated with the same company (hope you never need to go to the same place twice), or you get tired of dodging collectors and having that mounting debt affect your credit and employability. Not liking how a business runs doesn’t give you a right to use their services without paying, your choice is still to pay or not use them.
They sell the debt at lower price to companies specialized in debt collection, the longer you wait then to pay them the more they are allowed to collect from you.
If you try not to pay at all, they put you in court against lawyer working for the company whose only job is to collect debt, so he knows his job pretty well and the bonus is that you end up having to pay the lawyer fee.
Of course you could still refuse to pay that, get cops to show up at your house and then you have to shoot to get them to leave.
At some point of course you would think it's a bit much for a parking ticket.
If you don't like it, just don't use it, like everyone else does.
Nobody takes you to court to collect small amounts. They only do that if the amount is sufficiently large and they have good documentation and they believe they will be able to collect a judgement against you (ie either you have assets or you have stable employment so they can garnish wages).
Mostly nothing will happen except daily phone calls for years plus the hit to credit score.
And cops aren't showing up unless aforementioned judgment happened, you ignored it, and the court eventually authorized physical seizure of your property to recover funds.
Thanks to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), those phone calls should be able to be stopped with a simple Debt Validation Letter. No need to even get an attorney involved. Demand that the collector provide proof that you owe the money. Debt collectors will frequently just give up at that point if it's a tiny amount of money like a parking ticket.
The thing is they can tow your car away potentially. At which point your little protest is over as you are now being extorted for hundreds for something you can’t ignore.
Even those having phone and app have trouble in the form of hefty penalties when cell service does not allow them paying in the hard 5 minute mandated. There was a little 'scandal' (more like the usual random weekly media article pick for traffic increasing annoyment from among the thousands of similar f ups not getting any traction) recently provoking thunderous and colorful statements from officials. Regualation change may come in some form sometime perhaps that solves something possibly, but change something for certain, perhaps.
My city has parking meters that I can't use because the website has a broken credit card form and the app "isn't available on your version of Android." And of course they don't accept cash.
City of Vancouver parking meters have to accept cash still.
If you try putting a quarter in and it doesn't work (as is often the case because of tampering with the coin slots), I believe you don't have to pay for parking.
going back to pre-smartphone but still true, in the US at least, it is generally illegal to park at a broken meter and you can get a ticket -- because otherwise there would be incentive to break the meter so you could park there for free.
> If you try putting a quarter in and it doesn't work (as is often the case because of tampering with the coin slots), I believe you don't have to pay for parking.
Huh? That's the exact opposite of most municipalities I know of.
Normally it is "If the meter is broken, you cannot park there. It's an automatic ticket."
Otherwise, everybody just jams something in the slot and all your meters wind up broken.
Embedded browser with a 450mb app size of course. I wish you can sort by size on app store. It is a signal for quality when you find a 4mb app that does the same thing as a 450mb app.
For example, he cannot access his bank account via his desktop anymore.
He have to go to his agency in person.
Well we all did that for years so it's just annoying, because he still have the possibility to do it and it's his choice.
But what will happen if all the brick and mortar close ? When will it be mandatory to get a smartphone for his bank app, just to have access to his money ?
While I have a smartphone, I choose to not have a Google account.
One of the banks that I am using has terminated its on-line banking service, which I had been using for almost 20 years, replacing it with an app.
That would not have been a problem if they would have provided the app themselves on their Web site, but they refuse to do this and they provide the app only in the Google on-line store, which I cannot use because I do not have a Google account, despite the fact that the app is free.
Therefore I have reduced a lot the number of operations that I do through that bank, redirecting them to another bank, which still has on-line banking on their Web site. Fortunately, for now the bank that has closed their on-line banking Web site still keeps an SMS service, which allows me e.g. to check the balance of my account from my phone and which notifies me about the transactions on my credit card.
Many years ago, I have closed all my accounts at a bank that has annoyed me by updating their on-line banking Web site so that it no longer accepted any browsers except Microsoft Internet Explorer. At that time I have hoped that it will be the last time when I leave a bank because they believe that they can force their customers to also be customers of unrelated third parties, but now this problem with Google has appeared.
I am not a US citizen and the bank is not from USA. I doubt that it can be legal for a bank here in Europe to condition their services by their customer becoming the customer of a foreign entity that is Google. However I cannot afford to waste time and money to determine the legality of their actions.
I was not aware of it, so when I will have time I will experiment with it, to see if it works for downloading the app I need when logging in anonymously.
> If you want to do stuff at a physical bank you pay fees for everything
This hasn't been my experience at all in the US. If you need something in-person, going to the bank is the best option since they don't charge fees like a random ATM does.
My bank used to provide you with a small TOTP device the size of a usb key. Sadly they eventually deprecated it and recently dismissed it entirely in favor of their increadibly slow app.
The solution is that banks should support any TOTP client for authentication and not just their proprietary app. So you can use open source software or a hardware key.
But they won't. HN is quite good at suggesting a lot of genuinely intelligent and valid potential technical solutions, but most banks won't even think about supporting TOTP broadly. They'll lean into smartphones and apps because this is where the bast majority of their customers are. In this case the 'tyranny' is the overwhelming preference of other people. The masses have spoken, and they want everything to be on their phones.
Also because ticking boxes. You just provide an app that fulfills all the silly security requirements for banking apps and then if something goes wrong, the customer has the burden of proving it's the banks fault.
I've had my banking app installed on an old Samsung phone running lineageos. I only powered it on when I had to do online banking. At some point I needed to update the app and they started checking for rooted devices, so it wouldn't work anymore. Now I've installed it on a much newer android device that I also use for a lot of other crap and sketchy stuff I don't want on my main phone. Also it's powered on all the time. Whether that's really more secure than what I did before is questionable.
Maybe not for you, but rooted phones are a legitimate risk for users that do sideload pirated games and malware etc. I still think the risks are arbitrary, but I can understand why banks want to avoid rooted phones
The ING has a small Android based single-purpose authenticator device they offer to customers without smartphones. It can scan the QR code and do the auth.
I had a couple of such TOTP clients from different banks. For approving an operation, both of them required me to sign the amount of money transferred by that operation (i.e. they generated a one-time code that depended on a hash of the amount of money), so no confusions were possible.
In the UK loads of bank branches have closed. They've opened up "hubs" which are a joke, some are open only have weekend opening hours of Saturday morning and you usually have to travel to a different town to get to it.
I had some hilariously degenerate experiences with this recently. There are basic services that branches won't provide at all anymore like cashing cheques, which can be annoying in some circumstance. But the real dumb one was being blocked from taking a certain action in the online banking with a message like "present yourself with 2 forms of government ID at a local branch". OK. Fine. Drive there, wait in line, blah blah blah. The teller looks at me like I'm crazy when I say that online banking sent me there. They figure it out, do the KYC process, unblock me and I say great now can you do the thing I was trying to do before all this? "No, you must use online banking for that."
Related issue: how every website seems to migrate to some smartphone-optimized version that looks like a mobile app blown up to a bigger screen that works much worse on desktop. Hall of Shame: Twitter, Facebook, even Vanguard.
What's even more confusing/frustrating is that, despite being developed with very elaborate, mature frameworks, they still lack basic UI accommodations, like making clickable elements detectable by add-ons, or allowing you to open up a detail view in a new tab.
I get if Joe Shmoe's cobbled-together app forgets some things, but why wouldn't stuff like that be rolled in as a default, with all the development hours applied to it?
My bank is developing a new version of their online banking solution. They've decided to model in on their app, which I refuse to use because it's absolutely garbage. So now I have a online banking platform that can't do copy/paste on, hides much of the relevant information and is generally much harder to use than the old version.
I've provide feedback on multiple occasions, but I don't have high hopes for them to fix anything. If I where running a business and to use the site every day I'd be pissed and threatening to move my business else where.
Good news is we are already hitting upper limits of how many people we can reach via apps/smartphone/internet.
Limits that in the past 2 decades (of scaling) the people who built these Platforms didn't have to think about. Now they do. And they are coming under serious pressure because they have built out more Supply than there is Demand.
For example, we got the explosive growth of Netflix. Everyone sees that and piles into streaming. When growth slows in one country they immediately move into another and they keep growing until they run out of countries to expand into. So Netflix has been in India (a country advertised as having zillions of consumers) for nearly 10 years now but they haven't found more than 25 million paying subscribers. Learning takes time. And everyone is learning there are limits to growth based purely on the online model.
i can't access any of my online accounts without a phone. one at least still does simple sms, so it doesn't require a smartphone, but it requires a phone nonetheless. the other requires an app. the problem is that this is a trend. more and more banks switch to requiring apps. if we don't fight the trend, then all banks will do it. switching banks now does not work because the new bank does not know that this is the reason you switched, and the old bank is also unlikely to track this detail.
You're getting downvoted, but here in a populated but not very interesting part of Pennsylvania there must be 15 different banks or credit unions with brick & mortar offices within 10 miles. I lament that not everyone has this degree of choice, but it's not a fantasy.
There may be an online-only bank somewhere in the USA that's app-only, but I wouldn't know. Every bank I've ever encountered has a very functional web site.
I rather get the impression that the market doesn't always work like economists would like it to work. But do we really need competing banks just for the basic stuff like processing payments? It seems plausible that it's a good idea to have multiple competing banks for the more complex services but perhaps the basic processing of payments could be handled by the government, which already has the monopoly of providing the currency in the first place. Just a thought. Free markets are a tool, not a religion, right?
Some people might insist that a government monopoly would be worse but here in the UK I've noticed that government web sites are usually less crap than web sites created by the private sector.
"Look at it this way: should the rest of us with smartphones pay for that bank office?"
To answer that question with any degree of rigor one has to go back to the beginning and study the works of Bentham, Mill and others—and the many issues that surround utility and utilitarian principles. This involves such issues as the greatest good for the greatest number, greed overpowering well established moral norms and the fact that the majority of modern states and cities were founded on utilitarian models where a lot of give-and-take was involved before workable consensuses were achieved.
Think twice, the obvious solution doesn't always turn out to be the most optimal one.
So are many other political and philosophical ideas—essentially any field involving ethics is fraught with perils and consensus is never fully reached.
Just because unanimity is never achieved in respect of some philosophical idea doesn't mean it's not worthy of consideration and or it's never put into practice. Utilitarianism has been the subject of much study and debate and it's been widely practiced over several hundred years.
I'm well aware of the debates over utilitarianism and its ethics, any why those for and against it take the (usually) entrenched stance that they do. That ought to have been obvious by my use of the word 'consensuses'.
BTW, I could have made the same argument from a different philosophical perspective but the previous commentator specifically invited a utilitarian-type response by the words he used. That said, no matter what philosophical argument I'd have used someone would have found fault with it.
My main point still stands, which is that obvious solutions aren't necessarily the optimal ones. Note, I've deliberately not used the word 'best' for the above reasons.
You could just as easily have cited Aristotle or Augustine or Aquinas or any other philosopher who wrote an ethics. The previous commentator didn't invite a utilitarian-type response. He implicitly posed a question about the justification for the ordering of goods in society. Nothing about that statement is definitively answered (or even satisfyingly questioned) by big-U Utilitarianism.
Since you appear to enjoy a little bit of philosophical discussion, let's break down what you ackshually said:
> To answer that question with any degree of rigor one has to go back to the beginning and study the works of Bentham, Mill and others—and the many issues that surround utility and utilitarian principles.
The "beginning" of ethics hardly begins with Bentham or Mill or even the Enlightenment. Utility is quite a modern concept in ethics. The question of what is "the good" is presupposed in any system of value. "The greatest good for the greatest number" is perhaps one of the more perverse interpretations of human good on record.
> This involves such issues as the greatest good for the greatest number, greed overpowering well established moral norms and the fact that the majority of modern states and cities were founded on utilitarian models where a lot of give-and-take was involved before workable consensuses were achieved.
The majority of modern states and cities were most emphatically NOT "founded" on utilitarian models. Most states predate any notion of such post-hoc rationalizations. Cities were largely founded as commercial centers along trade routes or ports, or sometimes intentionally as colonies. States were largely the results of conquest by militarized groups that were certainly NOT utilitarian. Quite the contrary. In the bronze age, they would have simply been warrior bands centered around family/tribal bonds and vassal/suzerainty relationships founded on violence. By the time of the great early empires around the Mediterranean, formal structures of militarism and class privileges won through violence were the organizing forms of society, not "give-and-take" consensus gathering (unless you mean one group giving up the fight and the other either enslaving them or killing them outright).
Maybe you could have argued they are founded on something like Hobbesian social contract theory (certainly not Rousseau's version) but that, too, would suffer from being simply "not true in fact."
The main point that "obvious solutions aren't necessarily the optimal ones" suffers from being trivial, condescending, and a non sequitur. The commenter didn't offer a solution as such, but raised the obvious question of why they should have to pay for someone else's choices. Utilitarianism is the worst of all philosophical answers because it entails the most absurdities.
Point proven, your comment just confirms what I said earlier:
…an(d) why those for and against it take the (usually) entrenched stance that they do.
I'm aware of those issues and omissions for brevity's sake. Also, I would point out that what I said was a passing comment on HN and not meant for a paper in a learned philosophical journal.
BTW, in case you didn't notice, I never mentioned whether I was for or against utilitarianism specifically because discussion about it inevitability ends in arguments that usually remain unresolved. That it was just an example ought to have been obvious.
It would be informative to compare the syllabus content at your philosophy school versus that of mine.
That's a huge jump from "no smartphone" to "off the grid."
I prefer using laptops and I prefer doing my banking on my laptop. I'm online a lot. I do have a smartphone, usually an older one, for calls, messaging, playing music and taking photos. I even have an old Samsung tablet, for reading ebooks.
It should be possible to do your banking from a laptop.
I just don't want apps on my phone, because they will track me, I don't like using apps on the phone in general, and banking apps in particular because the bank wants to control what I can and can't do with my own phone. Want a rooted phone? No banking for you.
I have a smartphone. However I choose to use a mobile OS that is neither Android nor iOS, why should I get penalized that banks don't invest in applications for my OS too?
It’s business. Should a steakhouse be required to have vegan offerings? If that’s not what their customers want, then why would they invest hundreds of thousands on building and maintaining an app that maybe five people would use?
They do not have to build an app. They could build a mobile website that is accessible from almost any computing platform.
For something so core and critical to society (banking), I don’t think it’s reasonable to leave it up to the private sector and say “well, if some people get left behind—ho hum, thems the breaks”
If we’re talking about a florist, then sure. The market wants what it wants and if you’re not in the majority it kinda sucks. Not great, but probably not a place for government intervention. Banking, though? There should be accessibility guidelines and standards, absolutely.
When businesses provide essential services (like banking) I feel like they should be held to the same standards as government services. Not that some governments don't treat users without Android or iOS as third class citizens.
So, to clarify, there are banks that have their full business value accessible only through mobile, and as a person needing banking but doesn't have access to mobile, I can make an informed decision and not be their customer. But when I create a bank account in a physical office, and then the office gets closed in favour of an alegedly much more accessible mobile application, I feel like there should be some measure protecting me from that. Do you find that unreasonable?
> "should the rest of us with smartphones pay for that bank office?”
Yes! There are many things you cannot do without a physical bank location. It is worth paying[1] something to have them. I used to use an online-only bank, but I realized I wanted to be able to walk into a branch at times, so I switched to a new bank.
[1] “Paying” can mean a variety of things, including lower interest rates on savings accounts, for example.
What are those mythical actions that can't be done outside of a physical location? How many of them are things you do ~once in a lifetime, like getting a mortgage?
At least for me, the problem is not the closing of the brick-and-mortar branches, though that has happened near me, because for the last 25 years I have used those only seldom, preferring on-line banking.
What annoys me now is the closing of the on-line banking Web sites, which could be used easily and without any problem from any computer or smartphone, and their replacement with apps, which may force you not only to have a smartphone but also to be a customer of Apple or Google, because some banks refuse to provide their Android apps otherwise than through the Google app store.
At least in germany, there are both traditional banks with offices and online-only banks and one of the reasons given for the fact that traditional banks have worse conditions (less interest, sometimes monthly charges for even having an account etc.) is that they hvae to pay the offices somehow.
One thing not mentioned yet is what happens when you've got a cheaper phone filled with photos and videos. At various times I've had to spend a few minutes deleting things just to download some stupid 100 meg app that I need to use for a total of 5 minutes to complete some basic task.
A lot of suggestions ask the poster to not store photos on their phone, but this takes away the functionality from their phone that they actually want in service using 1 app for 5 minutes.
I feel your pain. I managed to use my first smart phone, an iPhone 6s, for almost 10 years. In that time the system data took up more and more of what little space I had on there (16GB I think? So unthinkably small to most people that they think I'm confusing it with RAM) to where I was basically dealing with a few mb of storage to use for photos and work-critical apps like Authenticator. I also refuse to use iCloud on principle (tried it once, and realized when I wanted to download all my photos onto my computer that it would only let me do 1 at a time, or low quality versions, or something scummy like that).
It got so bad I had to do things like delete my Internet history if I even wanted to copy and paste something! And I would do everything I could to not have to pick which photos and conversations I needed to delete forever just to download some fucking app I would only use one time to order food or park somewhere or do first-time router setup.
Finally I had to give in and get a new phone, because managing phone storage was making my life much more difficult than it needed to be. But I'm still so mad that I had to, because daily living seems to demand more and more storage space. And people accept it!! Ugh. The dang thing didn't even have a scratch on it either. Would've used it for 20 years if I could.
Is your cheaper phone unable to interface with a computer? I'm no advocate of an app-based economy, but your phone shouldn't be the archive for your photos.
plug in USB cable, drag and drop entire directory from one drive to another with file explorer, is the only reasonable way to manage photos. Get everything off the device at the end of each day. Why would you ever put things back on the phone?
Perhaps I can be patient and explain the underlying concepts here, since they seem to be unintuitive to a small minority of very condescending commenters:
1. I like to have access to my photos and videos while I'm on the go. You never know when the subject of some trip or experience from 2 years ago will come up in conversation, and I'll want to show a photo of it to someone I'm talking to. Since photos and videos don't weight anything inside my phone, it's no trouble to carry them.
2. I don't like to give cloud services all my photos and videos. Despite the extremely dark pattern in Google Photos where it tries multiple times a month to trick me into enabling cloud backup, I've kept it off. Some of my photos may be sensitive things like personal documents, I'd rather not have to think about what's in the cloud and what isn't, and what is deleted where. These services also often aren't free and I'd prefer not to pay for them.
3. I back up my phone regularly to my personal computer, so losing my phone doesn't mean I lose all the media on my phone.
4. And since I know someone will ask, I lock my phone. Not with a fingerprint; with a passcode. It's not perfect but I'm comfortable with the level of security.
> Since photos and videos don't weight anything inside my phone, it's no trouble to carry them.
But in your example they -do- weigh something, measured in megabytes. So there is an obvious tradeoff in terms of what you can fit on your phone with some spare empty margin, similar to physical goods that you need to fit into a backpack when you know you might pick something else up along the way.
Digital storage is so far removed from this concept. Let us not excuse poor business practices by trying to offload a piece of their business systems on to their customers' devices.
I shouldn't have to provide space on my property to conduct business with another organization.
To extend the already poor and tortured analogy, imagine if a paper train ticket were the size and weight of an 800 page textbook that you had to lug around, and 799 of the pages were filled with some boilerplate copied from a different company's train ticket book, that nobody ever needed to look at.
But if you have a problem with the train ticket textbook, people will come out of the woodwork to tell you that you're not managing or carrying your belongings properly. I should get a bigger bag, or I should carry fewer of the books I actually want to read. Why am I carrying around so many things anyway? It's irresponsible! Sure I've got room for a piece of paper, but that's not enough these days. Don't I know that I'll need space for the train ticket textbook?
> If you have a place to live, you shouldn't carry all your belongings with you in a backpack when you go outside.
I really don't like this analogy. These are entirely different concepts. A backpack has weight, dimension in real space that impacts the real world. A phone full of videos has no extra weight or volume in the real world.
App store monopoly hurts us way more than it is talked about. Suddenly, not only we are not to chose which devices to use to access what could be a simple website. Now unrelated third party decides if we have access to it based in, for example, country of residence. Or at all. Apple routine forces censorship on our phones as if it was it's property.
I still believe it was a tragedy that Microsoft folded their attempt into mobile. To explain my level of desperation, I feel our next best hope here is China.
People are writing this off, but it eventually becomes impossible not to own a smartphone; an expensive device, with an expensive monthly plan, and an absolutely terrible privacy record. Eventually more businesses will require smartphone usage just to use their services. There could even be a time when government services require it.
A landline phone is about the cost of a cheap smartphone, and the landline itself costs about as much as the cheapest cell plans.
But you actually don't need either of those. You just need the cheapest Android cellphone or tablet you get, and access to someone's wifi, which is freely available at many coffee shops, or from neighbors.
I still agree you shouldn't need it, especially if you already have a computer. But it's only "expensive" if you choose the higher tiers.
A landline phone doesn't spy on you, and has often better audio quality (unless you're in an area with great cell coverage). And you can also use the mobile network with a "feature phone", like those that were around until smartphones arrived, they're still around.
Before that, government services required phone calls, or fixed addresses to receive mail, or a free public transit program to get people to government buildings. Comparatively, it's a lot easier and cheaper to just give the needy smartphones and data plans. Hence the Lifeline Assistance Program (Obama phones), which does just that.
The UK is an incredibly competitive and well-regulated market. If you're in receipt of welfare benefits, you can get a tariff with unlimited 5G data for £12 ($15) per month. If you're a light user, you can get a tariff with a few gigabytes of data for as little as £5 ($6.50) per month.
A cheap but perfectly useable phone costs less than £100 new from a brand like Xiaomi, Motorola or TCL; on any high street, you'll find a shop selling second-hand phones for as little as £30. I cannot think of any object in human history that provides so much utility for so little money.
Totally true that smartphones are useful. But people can decide they don't want one for many reasons, including not wanting to accept 20-pages-long T&C just to turn them on, and surrendering lots of personal data. If you're a lot into tech stuff, you might go around that by blocking most data collection, but most people don't have the competence for this, or have better things to do with their lives.
This is actually something the US does pretty well, actually. The Lifeline Assistance Program (colloquially known as "Obama Phones") gives low income people (basically anyone who qualifies for food stamps) a phone, with calling and internet, at no cost to the individual.
I wouldn't bet on that being around much longer, because for some reason it makes a lot of conservatives absolutely seethe. Many of them convinced themselves poor people were being given the latest luxury model iphone out of taxpayer funds.
Depending on where you live, a smartphone can be bought for 100 bucks and a basic line (voice, messages, 2GB of data) for less than 5 bucks. It's not ideal but it's not a sacrifice anymore.
If having a smartphone and a cellular plan will become an absolute requirement to partake in the society, carriers certainly are going to hike prices. Here in Finland, cellular plans used to be very cheap, but now the prices have been soaring after the society has become more and more reliant on the phones.
You can also use wifi. Even free wifi. You can get a very nice used phone with many years of updates for 100 dollars. You can find a worse phone for much less if you really want to.
edit: You can even get a free phone from your community. Possibly a better one than the a53. Most people have a phone or several in a drawer.
This has always been the case though. Before the smartphone, it was computers and internet; before that it was landline phone service. Both of the latter were far more expensive than a modern smartphone, so we are actually making progress in reducing barriers to social participation.
Landlines didn't spy on people. Computers and Internet, well, depends on which OS you are on, but there are options that don't. What about smartphones? IMHO that's the big issue, not what they cost.
I think that ends up pretty nuanced. A cheap $50 Android will receive security updates for one year if you're lucky. So now you have a choice between buying a new cheap phone yearly, forgoing security, or being technically savvy enough to put a 3rd party OS on your phone. With regard to privacy, smart phones really don't have options for privacy unless you go with a 3rd party OS. And, if you do so, you might not even be able to run the various apps which the various businesses require. I just don't see this as a valid alternative.
The larger point is that to use the mainstream apps you would buy a smartphone for, you are forced into a contract (or at least to agree to terms of service) with one of two third parties, Apple or Google.
I had a tangential experience to this phenomenon lately. I moved continents a few years ago. Eventually I had to switch my Play Store country to where I moved. That restricted my access to certain versions of apps but my downloaded apps continued to function anyway.
Then, a few months ago, I finally bought a new phone. I quickly found out that there was no way I could get this one banking app from my home country on the new phone (other than switching my country setting again, which isn't worth the potential hassle right now). Fortunately, I could still do online banking with on my browser...right?
I try to login to my online banking. They say they will send me an OTP on my registered mobile number. Makes sense, and, thanks to the wonders of roaming, I will be able to receive it. Except...instead of just sending me the actual OTP like any sane platform would do, I had to first confirm that I was, indeed, trying to sign-in to online banking by replying "YES" to their SMS prompt. And due to the wonders of SMS roaming protocol, though I could receive their messages, I simply could not reply to them no matter which gods I invoke.
Security design by committee. I curse the manager who though this was a necessary and valuable addition to the whole OTP scheme.
It's not so much a "convenience tax" as in the article but, I guess, a penalty for moving countries. I have no choice now but simply to just settle this when I go on vacation to my home country. There is probably no convenient resolution to this even when I am in the correct geospace.
PS. I have two banks from home country and I was able to install the other bank's app in my new phone without a hitch. I try to avoid cynicism but this simply has the stink of Managerial Software Engineering Best Practices all over it.
The big group that keeps getting ignored are older people who actually do have smartphones, but find them increasingly difficult to use as they age, due to how fiddly touch interfaces can be and visuals designed by and for people in their 20s, not 70s and 80s.
Typing on a smartphone is impossible for my 70-something father, even on the larger models.
Touchscreens also frequently don't work with older people's skin which is often dry. They often literally cannot type because the screen doesn't pick up the electrical currents in the drier, more insulated fingers. Physical keyboards wouldn't have this problem.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what my dad’s problem boils down to. He worked in construction for half a century, specializing in concrete, so heaven knows what that did to the skin on his fingertips.
Same for my parents (ironically, my 90-something grandmother can use an iPhone with no problem). My dad has Raynaud's (poor fingertip circulation), so touch screens sometimes just won't work for him anyways. Making things app-only is practically discrimination.
Not only do I need a smartphone for "everything" in my live.(managing my local gym membership for example)
I also only have the choice between two us companies: Google or Apple.
I had an ubuntu smartphone at some point but it's practically useless.
If I want a appointment with my doctor in Germany living in the same street as I, the Californian Company Google has to be involved for some reason.
Yes! I've often said "software engineers should be doomed to use what they create. Or at least watch others try to use it." One example is our local Costco parking garage. They replaced the old push-button ticketing kiosk (which had nothing wrong with it) with one that had a touchscreen. Many times the line is backed up and one day I saw why. The guy was pushing the touchscreen button as if it were physical, and it wasn't registering the tap. He was using multiple fingers and mashing instead of using one finger and doing a clean tap inside the digital button.
> And at the bakery chain Greggs, you can collect loyalty “stamps” for free food and drink and get “exclusive app-only gifts”. You currently get a free hot drink just for downloading the app.
> McDonald’s is running a high-profile promotion called Deal Drop, where it offers items at “bargain” prices, such as a classic Big Mac for £1.49 (normally £4.99) and a children’s Happy Meal for £1.99 (normally £3.59) – but all of the discounts are available exclusively with the company’s app.
The article paints a painstakingly detailed photo of the UK's app culture, but fails to explain exactly why app users are entitled to such discounts. What exactly is McDonald's doing with your data that is worth a whopping £3.50 Big Mac discount, and more?? Why is the app so important?? I have never found an article that does more than scratch the surface on this topic. Any suggestions?
I think such discounts are not as much because of the data, they're a way to tier your customers, similar to coupons.
That way you both get to take the full price from people whose time is expensive enough that they won't bother with the apps, and also those who wouldn't pay the full price but have enough time to use the apps.
I never eat McD's, but I see the pattern everywhere. If you make between the minimum and average wage in Slovenia and don't own property, you practically can't get by without dedicating 6h per week to grocery shopping in various different 'discount' chains (Lidl, Hofer AKA Aldi Sud, Euro Spin), keeping up with the weekly discount catalogs and using all the app discounts (more recently).
As a user of Greggs and McD (UK) I can maybe offer some insight.
Fairly obviously the discounts are to encourage customer loyalty so you keep going to McD rather than somewhere healthier. Also to get you to come back - if you haven't been for ages they may offer a 99p big mac to get you back in.
As to why apps rather than paper coupons, my closest McD has a typically had group of about 20 people waiting for the 50 items they ordered with new stuff ordered every 30 seconds or so. The last thing the low wage rushed staff need are customers going can you explain this coupon to me an is it valid for extra fries on Friday etc.
I've also seen it explained that it's part of their toolset in extracting maximum "value" from a customer.
Richer customers self-select to pay higher prices without the app as they can't be bothered faffing around to find the digital coupon/deal/whatever combination (you can, of course, only use one of the wide range of deals at a time). Poorer customers will invest the time in finding and using a deal.
They both get the same sandwich, but McD got them to pay different prices for it.
Most forms of direct marketing require unambiguous consent in the UK (likewise for data collection used for direct marketing). Culturally, many Brits are relatively suspicious of authority and will not consent to the use of their data 'just because'. Loyalty apps are a great invention: they give advertisers a direct channel to the consumer, and the consumer a way to receive something of value in exchange for their deliberate engagement.
I think the idea is to get as many people as possible to install and set up the app, so they then have more incentive to become repeat customers. Theyre probably making some loss on new signups and hope to get it back later on.
Market segmentation through user profiling and individualized discounts based on the entire order, making it hard for people to tell if they are being treated "fairly."
Get more people to use McD's app. When they order, give them a personalized coupon giving you a discount. The discount is different for everyone. Use the response rate, plus information about your buying habit (always buys a family-sized order on Fridays) to optimize the discount.
Raise the non-app prices so the people using the app think they got a deal ... while the overall price is on average higher than if McD's had flat rates for everyone.
People tend to think flat rates are more fair when the services are identical, and get pissed off when they find it isn't.
It is not even about privacy and safety or freedom of choice really. Besides very soon - in this duopoly you really will not be owning phones or even access to apps would be limited/controlled to more draconian measures than it is today.
Anyways. I took an auto ride few weeks back and an old gentleman picked me up. He did have a tattered smartphone. But he didn't have the UPI app or a QR code (QR is the way here; UPI the instant payment thingie in India). He was not agitated but really looked embarrassed and helpless and told me in broken English he tried a few times but he forgets many kinds of PINs and messes up and his bank account gets blocked and then he has to run around with documents to get it unblocked and then again. I had some cash and I was able to pay him. But it's horrible. There are people for whom cash is the ONLY way. Even going to the bank (or ATM; which anyway is still a difficulty for me) means sometimes half to one day's work gone. Just like that. This has a lot to do with political climate changes. So many people get trampled over without any check and balances because they have the vote without a voice or any real power.
I think a lot of us, and for many of us who tap and pay at a Starbucks as if it's bill there lowest currency denomination in our consciousness, never stop to try and understand this and realise this. This is not merely inconvenience in huge part of this planet - it's a real life pain. I don't think even this article considered such a case/life struggles due to smartphones and everything getting tied to a SIM et cetera.
ok - but despite this well-meaning story.. the answer IMO is still cash; use it, support it, continue it. The alternatives are not stable over time -- not a joke.
A factor not mentioned in this article is people not being able to install apps because they've run out of space.
I've seen this a bunch with people who buy the less expensive phones with smaller amounts of storage: they take photos until their phone is full, and now if they need to install a new app they have to delete something else (including potentially their photos) to make space for it.
It mentions parking which is a similar category of annoyance, but I think the multitude of mutually incompatible apps for EV charging pose a real barrier to adoption too. Maybe not in a way people are explicitly aware of, but it certainly makes up part of the stories about difficulty and inconvenience with public charging.
I can pay for petrol with any card or, if I'm feeling really old school, by going into a building and handing a person cash. Someone like my mum, who still likes to draw the cash she'll need for the week and spend that, wouldn't even entertain the idea of having to download and maintain a suite of apps for every brand of charger.
Apps are a good convenience option for those that want them, but they shouldn't be the only option, especially not for something as essential as fuelling your car. I would welcome regulation on these, even a baby step of "all chargers must accept contactless payment". I'd like to see manned charging stations and cash options too—and I say that as someone who pays for everything by card—but I fear in the short term that might hamper infrastructure rollout.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, you started to see more and more interactive phone systems appear due to touch-tone phones being common place. However, I grew up poor, and for quite some time we still had rotary phones (when we could afford to have a phone that is), making those systems inaccessible to us.
I chose to use a flip phone over a previous Android phone around 10 years ago when ISPs/Phone providers showed that security lapse issues for them was just a cost of doing business. I used to store private client info in Exchange and sync it, but I could not, in good conscience, continue to do so with the knowledge of that information's exposure.
I recently worked with NetGear support to have a new router replaced after we determined the firmware was known to be problematic, and the only way the level 2 support person had of correcting it required their app.
So fortunately, there may still be ways around working with IT without a "smart" phone, and I will continue to blaze that trail as needed.
I have a big issue with this, and the truth is that the majority of people simply do not care and/or do not understand the implications.
By tying your service to a smartphone your are basically refusing to provide service if the costumer doesn't agree to Apple's or Google's TOS. If the app doesn't complain about emulation or something different than Android or IOS you are in luck, but that's not the case with most banking apps. And that's only talking about people who don't have it by choice and have money to buy one.
For me, once, it went beyond: I took my first dose of the Covid vaccine, and the second dose's date would still be announced. I asked where it would be available to the nurse, "On the Instagram page of the <local health body>". "But i don't have Instagram" i said, and the nurse shrugged. It requires both a phone and a social media account with your real info, but since absolute nobody complains about it they just do because it's easier.
This will continue as long people are complacent with it. In some places the government is required to provide you services, by law, by any means available and not depending on 3rd party service, but they do require apps anyway and people stay quiet. Phones as an alternative is fine, it's a tool, but should not be an obligatory device for you to be considered an human being.
Sure, I own a smartphone, it runs just plain android but without any google accounts or services because I do not agree to Googles terms of services. I never did, and as an European citizen especially with recent developments I feel that has been the right choice.
The thing is, without google account there is no play store, and without play store I am not able to install the majority of apps - no banking, no parking, and all the other services people complain about in these threads.
This is my choice, and I stick to it. I'm also pretty vocal about it and complain when needed. Doctors office informs me I only can get medicine with the app? Apparently they can make exceptions when you complain, because I'm allowed to get medicine with a simple phone call. My bank tried to force me to use their app, but apparently they still do have an alternative login method when you complain. Sure, I know it's a fight I will lose in the long run, but I enjoy it while it lasts.
> if the costumer doesn't agree to Apple's or Google's TOS.
Or if Apple or Google arbitrarily decide that they don't like that customer. You don't have to have done something wrong, they can decide that you're likely associated with someone who did.
When people ask for examples, I point to a NYT report of a man in San Francisco whose young son had redness on his penis and complained about it feeling sore. The pediatrician asked for some photos to make a diagnosis online. Google flagged it as child porn and notified the police. The police said it wasn't, but Google declined to restore service.
In India, Google locked an engineer from Gujarat out of his Google
account because it contained explicit content potentially involving
child abuse or exploitation. The engineer believes it's because the
account contain images of him as a child being bathed by his
grandmother.
I use these examples specifically because many in my government want "Chat Control", where snitchware scans messages for child porn and the like, and notifies the police. It will be full of false positives like these, especially if the scanning software continues to be built by puritanical American companies.
Another class is people who the US deems to be a security threat. How long will it be until the US extends its sanctions against the ICC by ordering Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Oracle, and Google to shut down the accounts for the ICC and anyone involved in their genocide investigation, work and personal?
United Airlines used to accept credit cards to pay for meals during the flight. It worked great. At some point they dropped that and replaced it with something that involves their slow bloated buggy app that crashes on my phone. So I stopped buying their meals.
> The consumer group is among those to have highlighted Lidl’s loyalty scheme, Lidl Plus, as one that is only accessible via an app, with an email address also required.
At least here in Finland Lidl Plus is one of the few which can be used by just entering a phone number.
That said, all "loyalty programs" should be outright banned. They stifle competition, make pricing less transparent and discriminate against the less well off.
> loyalty programs" discriminate against the less well off.
The opposite: supermarket loyalty cards are often designed so that the well off pay more: i.e. it is the well off that are being discriminated against. The barriers are designed to allow poorer people to pay less. The topic is called price discrimination.
All the poorer people I know use loyalty cards because they judge them to be valuable (despite the extra hassle).
The less well off often get lower prices (plus valuable rewards) because of the loyalty programs in New Zealand.
I often use my friend's loyalty accounts: so I get the item discounts but they collect the loyalty rewards/cash. Also I like to screw the data surveillance up - I don't get tracked so much and my friend's account is spammed with higher cost items.
Coupons are designed for the same purpose. Allowing poorer people to choose to trade their time/hassle for savings (according to their values).
In loyalty programs the benefit percentage often increases as a function of money spent, disproportionally benefiting the more well off who spend more. I've yet to encounter a loyalty program that would do the inverse (probably there are some that cap the benefits, which could be interpreted to be to this direction). Neither have I seen a loyalty program that would only accept poor people.
Price discrimination is anything where the same product is sold at different price for different buyers. All loyalty programs are price discrimination.
Do your best to make these decisions cost them, even if it's only a few pennies. Call their customer support up and tie up one of their representatives as long as possible. Who knows, if enough people do that, and they log the reason, then maybe, just maybe these SuperUltraMegaCorps have a chance of changing their mind.
Those without smartphones _and_ those who do not wish to install trash on their smartphones, _and_ those who do not wish to use Android (or an Android build blessed by the corporations) or iOS.
My greatest aspiration in life (yes, hyperbole) is to retire and get rid of my smartphone, and I can imagine it’s just going to be harder and harder as time goes on. I went into a restaurant recently and asked for a menu and they looked at me like I was from another planet.
Agreed. After 27 years of working in IT and having to carry a mobile device (first a pager, then a flip phone, & now a smartphone) for on-call duties, carrying a mobile device has always felt like a punishment to me. The days when I can walk around device-free are the happiest, most stress-free times of my life. But the tech companies are making it harder and harder to do.
I guess I’m just lucky (or don’t live in UK). Nothing in my daily life requires a smartphone. Banking is either with a local branch or on the web. Making an appointment with a doctor or dentist is a voice phone call to the office. All my routine bills can be paid by check or over the postal mail. All my usual restaurant spots have paper menus. Sometimes I go a week or so and forget that I have an old iphone7 in a drawer with a now drained battery. I don’t think I regularly use a single app on it besides the browser.
I use my phone primarily for messaging. In fact, I often forget and have the Anti-Distraction mode turned on, so I only get important comms but no app notifications.
SIDENOTE
People need to chill out with the word "tyranny". It's like saying that you are being "assaulted" by a different opinion, or claiming that ordinary platform moderation is "censorship". You are not being terrorized, assaulted, or censored.
There are people in the world who are truly subjected to those things, and you have NO idea what that's actually like.
I think you're in a very small minority if you think that someone using the phrase "tyranny of notifications" is implying they live under a dictatorial regime. Most people just understand the hyperbole.
Scary things make people pay attention and click the links. I loathe the casual use of the term “lynching” by people in the public eye but same rules apply, using exaggerated, scary words to sell your weak point. Not saying I agree with it, but it’s marketing and journalism.
I agree on two points in your sidenote. The first is that online moderation is rarely, if ever, "censorship". The second thing is that the majority of us have no idea what it's actually like being terrorized or assaulted.
That said, words can take on different meanings depending on context. We can only imagine the tyranny of being a prisoner of war but we can also complain about the tyranny of noise pollution in modern cities; that doesn't mean I think they're equal. I know some people suffer assault domestically but I can also label some perfumes as an assault to the senses; it doesn't lessen the gravity of the former. And yes, Calvin, you are allowed to think your household is a den of censorship and oppression (https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....).
My problem with gatekeeping words is that it is performative. We can indeed chill out on using these words save for their most extreme interpretations but it doesn't really help anyone suffering from these things and just makes language less colorful for the rest of us. And, once more, nor does their usage dismiss the extent of any of these situations because you don't need to be a genius to know that words can have subtle changes in meaning depending on context.
I know people who love having specific apps for everything, but I generally find them a much worse user experience than the browser. Can't select/copy text. Sometimes if it's a terrible developer you can't paste. Can't arbitrarily zoom in.
I know Android now lets me copy from the screen but it still flows incorrectly sometimes, like copying from a PDF.
Somewhat unrelated to the piece, but this is the second website I’ve seen in two days that appears to not have properly merged an edit?
“ The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, says many people are overwhelmed by the multitude of apps they have to use, “when in reality you want one that you like and you’re happy using and that you can use everywhere”.
Six years ago the Department for Transport started developing a “national parking platform” (NPP) designed to enable drivers to use one app of their choice to pay for all their parking. It has been trialled by a number of councils, but a big question mark hangs over its future as public funding for the project looks likely to be withdrawn.
The RAC’s head of policy Simon Williams says many people are overwhelmed by the multitude of apps they have to use, “when in reality you want one that you like and you’re happy using and that you can use everywhere”.
Six years ago the Department for Transport started developing a “national parking platform” (NPP) designed to enable drivers to use one app of their choice to pay for all their parking, and it has been trialled by a number of councils. However, a big question mark now hangs over its future as public funding for the project looks likely to be withdrawn imminently.”
I think the other one was an npr piece posted on HN yesterday? Is there a bug with wordpress or are people just getting sloppy?
I refuse to use service specific apps (on personal devices) and let the chips fall where they may. So far the vast majority of stuff continues to work ...
And in the good old day. Apple will force its hands on these sort of issues. But 10 years after Apple Pay and the Claims to replace your wallet. They are still millions miles away from doing it.
In many ways Apple without Steve Jobs feels more Google and Microsoft but with better taste of software and hardware.
>"So the people who make the company more successful are the sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the ‘product people’ get run out of the decision-making forums.
The companies forget how to make great products. The product sensibility and product genius that brought them to this monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product vs. a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product.
>"And they really have no feeling in their hearts about wanting to help the costumers.” *
> 10 years after Apple Pay and the Claims to replace your wallet. They are still millions miles away from doing it.
Clearly we have very different experiences here, because Apple Pay has effectively replaced my wallet. I don’t carry any cash and carry one or two cards for the rare times when tap to pay is unavailable.
Where I live in the US, only fairly recently have I started encountering parking where you cannot pay without doing it over the internet on a device. I haven't seen any where you need an app specifically, but you do need a smartphone or internet capable device. I am very annoyed by this.
Another thing that irritated me is app designers assuming I have email on my phone. I don't, I use it for work and will use my laptop when I want to check email. Too many apps send you a "magic link" in your email to login with no alternative.
Just saying, 99% of the app could be replaced by a browser bookmark.
Of course some companies don't want it so they make their website unusable to smartphone.
There isn't really much that technically would prevent people from using their web browser to pay the parking or to pay McDonald.
You can have geolocation on browser too, save your account, take picture and so on.
It's just better for these companies if we have their app because we can't use ad blocker and just close the browser. The app, it can send data 24/24.
For instance, I have yet to find an llm or ai chatbot app that doesn't force me to have the Google play store enabled on my phone and to be logged in with my Google account.
What the FCK they care if I have a Google account on my phone to be able to use chatgpt, deepseek, Mistral, lama and others ? More and more do that, recently the app I used to use to track food quality (Yuka) did that too.
The more thing goes, the less app I use and the more I rely on web browser. And those who refuse to work in browser, i just ditch them.
I feel like we reached a plateau years ago and now things are going downhill with android and iPhone.
I write small utility apps that are often used by friends, families, the teams my kids are on, etc. None of them are overly complicated or aiming for award-winning polish. While I personally like installed apps, many people seem to prefer a link they can click. To accommodate that, I've been leaning towards Flutter as an acceptable compromise. The installed app has some better characteristics regarding device integration and storage, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how well the web versions work. When run on phone it’s hard to tell (visually) that it’s not the app. (UX is laggier though.)
Resist! If a bank forces you to use a surveillance device (smartphone) to do Internet banking or forces you to install invasive apps on your PC, don't.
TAN apps were still reasonable. TAN generators too, though the hardware sucked and used an insane amount of batteries. Then banks forced apps and smartphones and that is the point where to say no thanks.
They are still required to perform transactions by filling out forms with a pen.
It sounds like a lot of work but it really isn't. Use cash or credit cards and cut down the number of manual transactions.
My grandfather does not have a cellphone, however he seems pretty creative about getting around situations where he would need an app. For example, my sister had some sporting event where the only way to get a ticket was to use an app, so he snuck into the hand stamping line, and entered the event.
It's unfortunate the article accepts the questionable argument about apps being more secure - companies say that to soften people up to handing out personal data access that apps enable.
My anecdote for the pile is that my apartment complex uses one of those apps to pay for laundry services, but is slightly less expensive than the coin based counterparts on the same machine.
What's even worse is that the app is incredibly poorly made such that occasionally some payments just fall into the void and either start the machine for free or require a double charge. Anytime I have reached out to complain about these I just get told to bring my phone closer to the machine.
In Germany you would mostly be forced to fill forms on paper and send it back and forth by mail, do payments in cash or use support hotlines on the phone, which take a long waiting time to get to somebody... Apps would be fine :-)
It is even worse: people with smartphones not running software from either Google or Apple are penalized. I have huge problems right now because the only second factor from one of my banks (that also has the inbox for my insurances) is a Android app that requires play protect.
In my country the same reason is used to make things more expensive and give contracts via nepotism to allow for "alternative use without apps" to companies to make the whole thing through SMS or physical office while making the whole thing expensive for everyone and inefficient.
I was just whini- er, talking about this, this morning.
The main issue is that end-users not only accept crappy software, they pay for it (sometimes, quite a bit). They also recommend it to others, give it good reviews, and subcultures of "tech-macho" workarounds to bugs cause people to actually prefer crap. It's infuriating (to me, but not, perhaps, to many tech companies).
As long as that keeps happening, the quality of software is going to remain in the shitter. It doesn't make economic sense to write good software. Writing high-Quality software is a lot more expensive than writing crap.
My software tends to be pretty high-Quality, but that's mainly because it is free software, and I tend to work alone, so its scope is quite limited. I would not expect a commercial company to develop software the way that I do. It would just cost too much.
This is why I wished all apps were backed by webapps of similar capabilities. I know that I personally see how it goes with the website first before I install an app. I prefer the browser sandbox by far to the phone OS
The entire history of technology is our becoming dependent on one invention after another, such that anyone with any interest in the area(s) that invention touches no longer has a realistic choice not to use it. They may technically be able to, but only through outsize sacrifice that leaves them worse off than they would have been before the thing was invented.
I was in a full service restaurant a few months ago, and they were steering everybody to scan a QR code for their menus. Had eaten there several times before and this was new. I demanded a physical menu, even though the waiter said it might be outdated. Wanted a beer, but the drink menus were no more. I stared the waiter down and snapped, "WATER!" You must push back or else they'll think their lazy changes are fine. Maybe next time they'll expect me to bus the table?
I see that this thread is full of a lot of very valid complaints about the hellish world we've created. But my reaction when these things come up is to point out that we effectively demanded this with our revealed preferences. We're at the triangulation of people preferring to use their phones for most things, while also demanding the lowest price possible. At a certain point, it's natural for companies to realize they can make more money—which is their reason for existing—by discontinuing products and lines of services that can be replaced by cheaper alternatives. I think everyone (over a certain age at least) has had the thought that brick and mortar stores all seem to be gone, and the realization that it's because everyone shops online, and then, if they are self-aware, the realization that they're part of that process. This is that at a somewhat zoomed-out scale.
Government services are a different case. I suppose they feel cost pressure as well, but it's right to expect them to accommodate more people than private businesses.
I don't think that's the case. Just because companies have successful business models doing things this way doesn't mean this is what people want or that it's the only way. It could just as easily be this is the most profitable way (which does not equate with delivered value) and these decisions are made by a subset of people who profit off of the fallout.
The US government hands out smartphones with service for free. Elsewhere you can get used phones for practically nothing. Most places have wifi these days so you don't even need to pay for service just to use an app at a store.
Not having a smartphone is a choice. Nobody is obligated to support you in that choice. It's not "unfair". Not everything you dislike is "unfair".
What's actually unfair is the app store monopolies that dictate what you can and can't do with the phone you "own". But I don't really expect The Guardian to understand the true issue.
I hate this trend with a passion.
Digital can make a lot things easier, but frankly speaking for a majority of those use cases a mobile website will do just fine as well.
My bank is digital only and doesn't have any local branches. That works for me and is fine. It's not like I'm switching banks every few weeks. They still have an all phone line access as well though. You can call people round the clock to do transfers, get your balance, etc. Even my analog grandmother has her bank account with them.
On the other hand, you have restaurants and other businesses that just over do it. There is a restaurant around my work place that I went to once or twice a month. Nothing special but fair prices and good lunch menus. Then they went all digital. Want a menu? Scan this barcode. Want to order? Create an account and place you order with your table number. Want to pay? You can click pay on your phone and enter your details.
Don't have a phone? Totally sorry, we don't have any printed back-ups and our servers don't have any card terminals anymore anyway.
...following some excerpts from an article in the NZZ (swiss newspaper): "Right to an offline life and much more: French-speaking Switzerland is becoming a global pioneer of a new digital fundamental right". Source: https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/die-romandie-mausert-sich-zur-wel...
Neuchâtel is including "digital integrity" in its constitution, and other cantons could follow. The National Council had criticized a proposal as purely symbolic. But the consequences are visible in Geneva.
The first time it could be dismissed as an accident, the second time not: that's what Alexis Roussel, the driving force behind a fundamental right to digital integrity, says. Roussel, a member of the Pirate Party and former president, is in good spirits. After Geneva in 2023, his home canton of Neuchâtel also enshrined the new fundamental right in the constitution on November 24. Both times the people voted yes by a very clear margin: 94 percent in Geneva and almost 92 percent in Neuchâtel.
From the new legislative period in 2025, the Neuchâtel constitution will therefore guarantee not only the right to physical, mental and psychological integrity, but also the right to digital integrity. The new right only applies in relation to the state. It includes, for example, the right to security in digital space, the right "not to be monitored, measured and analyzed", the right to an "offline life" and the right to be forgotten.
[...]
In Geneva, Alexis Roussel is already seeing the first consequences of the right to digital integrity. Secondary school students there no longer use the office software Microsoft Office, but the non-commercial alternative Libre Office. The education department explained the change to the newspaper "Le Temps" by saying that Microsoft has been receiving personal data such as names and email addresses since an update to its licensing terms. However, the canton is only allowed to process data at foreign companies if they are "adequately" protected there.
[...]
In the canton of Neuchâtel, too, the new fundamental right is already being mentioned in concrete terms in political debates. The liberal municipal councillor Catherine Zeter said on RTS television about the planned closure of the post office in Boudry that the company would probably prefer to offer its services only digitally. But, said Zeter, this "completely" violates the right to an offline life that the people of Neuchâtel have just decided on with their new fundamental right.
Yeah, that's how that works. The world moves on and progress happens. You don't have to necessarily like it, or embrace it. But if the entire world is moving a certain direction and you decide to not move with it, that fine. But it's a choice you're making. You may not like that the entire world is going from horses to automobiles, but if you refuse to embrace them you can't be surprised when the grocery store is now a 3 hour walk away.
This is mostly overblown, but the really annoying cases are the UK government themselves! Both the NHS app and HMRC app provide access to things you can't get to just from the web, even though they are just webview apps!! It's so dumb.
But generally... just buy a phone and download the apps. I imagine in the 1800s someone wrote an article "those without telephones are unfairly penalised". This is just a modern version.
I didn't own a smartphone until 2022. Now, after three years of carrying this dopamine-slothed brick, I’m ditching it—but first, let’s autopsy the “security” demands forcing ownership.
Peak security theater: banks (at least in Europe) mandate smartphones as “safe,” yet the device itself is the ultimate attack vector.
- 2FA apps? Single point of failure (SIM-jacking, zero-days, bricked phone = locked out of life).
- Biometrics? Your face now lives in a corp database that will get breached.
The irony? A YubiKey was objectively safer: no GPS, mic, or app permissions. But we’ve normalized “security” as surrender to surveillance capitalism. Banks want your data, not hardware tokens.
Smartphones manufacture threats:
- AirTag stalking requires… a smartphone to detect.
- Signal/encrypted chat? Tied to a phone number (→ ID → surveillance graph).
- “Find My Phone” = backdoor with a UX polish.
The system isn’t securing you, it’s securing access to you. Every forced 2FA method is another node to map, monetize, and manipulate.
I hate having to use a metro app or bank app or app for conferences or whatever. Who knows what the privacy and security of all these are. I am sure it’s a matter of time before they all get breached.
I don't mind having a phone, but the only way I'll put personal information on it is if I have root access and can run a firewall. anything else and it's not my phone.
more and more apps are starting to reject rooted phones. I'm dropping them for now, but I worry that at some point I'll have to carry a decoy phone for essential apps. or maybe I'll learn to just not put anything more personal than the stuff required to use the essential ones like health care and transport.
Toronto, Canada. Tried to pay for street parking using their machine and with credit card. It spat out some gibberish on display that flashed too fast to read. Parking ticket guy was hanging around so I asked him WTF is going on. He said I must use the app or he will give a ticket. I tried to argue with him that they must still accept the other form of payment and I do not want to pollute phone with the app. He said that he does not give a shit and will issue ticket regardless of what fucking Toronto's parking website pages say.
I don't have a permanent address nor a permanent (mobile) phone number. It's impossible to do so many things without these. I have to use my mother's address and my mother is currently suing me in court, so go figure how much mail reaches me. Without a permanent address, you can't open a bank account, you can't use many government services,...
It's a "required" field on many online forms. It's such a pain because they don't need those info to give me the services they offer...
I for one will never ever do any kind of banking or monetary
transaction on a Smart Phone.
As for other apps, I just have a couple of simple games and Firefox, which I only use when in waiting an office for am appointment. So far where I am, it is not an impediment.
It is unfair. A close friend of mine has brain damage, is low income, and he can't really use a smart phone. He just has a simple flip phone and it's all he has. It has been isolating for him with working and managing his life.
Tell your friend what good company he is in, as one of many, many of
us, who do not fit a fleeting mythical stereotype. There are hundreds
of reasons why people can not or will not use smartphones. Eyesight.
Dexterity. Poverty. Location tracking by hostiles. Privacy. Poor
memory. Security needs. Environmental concerns...
We should not play the victims. Being without one of those cursed
things is a blessing. We get good mental health. We get focus and
calm. We get a profound sense of freedom, time to think, to create, to
talk to real people, to see the world go by. We learn to enjoy being
bored. We interact with other real people. We willingly pay more for
freedom and privacy.
What we lose is being tied up in pointless abusive machinations of an
already dying "online" culture, one that is over-extended, fragile,
dysfunctional, and we dodge much of the abusive enshitified corporate
hell that every living being now hates.
Please, big-up your friend instead of painting him as a victim.
Ticketmaster is the worst of these for me. They have a near monopoly, and started forcing this shit on everyone a few years ago with covid as the excuse. Now going to one of their concerts is like taking an international flight.
Forget privacy, forget having a paper stub as a souvenir (not even an option), forget paying with cash. As I avoid ticketmaster, I've avoided most concerts the last few years... only going to small local venues, which provide the options above.
Ticketmaster is the one of the shittiest apps I've ever used in my life. Constantly have to reactivate because it forgets your info, it fails to display tickets, it shows ads, etc.
But I recently discovered you can just view the tickets in your mobile browser instead and it will work fine for whatever scanners the venues use.
Even for those who is OK with Ticketmaster - there is little "surprise" - hostile location/IP-based blockings. Do you want to buy some tickets for concert in Germany while being on trip in non-EU country? No way - we are just blocking you! They even learned to detect whether a client use VPN so latter could not circumvent this ridiculous obstacle.
So, what's this story getting unfairly penalized for? It's been bumping around between page and 2 and 3 after it had more than 80 upvotes and not even half the comments; meanwhile there's a story with not even half the votes, that is also older, which is firmly near the top.
Very weird logic. As the article points out, this is an intentional choice for many people. So you shoulder the consequences, that seems fair to me?
I don't currently drive a car, and to be honest, I have anxiety about driving. I could bitch about how US is hostile to people who don't drive, to the point that it's difficult to go to places/get things done, but that's useless. I can 1) move to NYC and never leave the city 2) get a car, work on my anxiety, and start enjoying life or 3) talk to Guardian and complain all day long. 1) is not actually a bad choice, and literally millions of people choose that, but I am working on 2) because that's the sensible thing to do. If I intentionally choose not to drive, not because of a physical disability or not being to afford a car, I bear the consequences.
We all shoulder the consequences of slowly sliding into a society of lock-in and surveillance, which is what unnecessarily requiring smartphones advances. That there are choices along the way doesn't make it fair - if I let you choose which of your fingers I cut off, am I being fair? Wait a few years, and the "choice" will be between living in the woods, and carrying an always-on telescreen with you at all times.
I do drive and the having do download a bunch of parking apps is a pain the arse. And for each one you have to spend five minutes entering your address card number etc.
We really got to get away from this vibe that other people's underbelly feelings aren't valid unless they can back them up with seventy scientific articles. It doesn't matter whether this "moron" has a good or a bad reason to not want apps. Apps make him feel insecure, so he doesn't want them. Why can't that be enough?
The general attitude of companies that make apps doesn't help. No wonder he feels insecure, even if he can't articulate the specific reason in every case.
It could have been explained better, but there are lots of reasons to prefer paper over digital and websites over apps. Apps can collect very invasive information, often unnecessarily (my Fuji camera app requires that I enable fine-grained location information in order to open the app at all).
"Security reasons" might be standing in for an inexpressible distaste about being tracked, even if nothing specifically bad is likely to result from it.
Yes, only paranoid morons would doubt the security of random apps, when they, and smartphones in general, have such a stellar security and privacy record.
We are approaching the level of Atlas Shrugged Dystopia.
Has anyone though about how people that don't want to own a computer or learn how to read are unfairly penalized? What about people that don't want to learn how to drive, will nobody thing about the poor people that don't want to learn how to drive? Shouldn't we, as a society, pay, so those people have their own private chauffeur?
Just imagine, for a second, a society where everyone had to own up to their choices in life. What a blissful society it would be.
I remember the European young folk who had RFID chips implanted in their arms so they could fast track the lines in dance clubs. I wonder how many of those chips are still in arms, today.
I'm not denying smartphone adoption. I'm just giving it 20 years to mature. During which time I can observe it from the outside, and better track dystopian policies that may result from it and slow their progress... by using a desktop computer and advocating for arms-length 'security' solutions, instead of installing apps and losing all control. The opaque app sandbox is just as menacing to the user as to the hypothetical hacker. Currently I'm thinking, why should I EVER decide to use a device for which I cannot easily attain God-Mode? That includes defeating end to end encryption so I can see the plaintext the device uses to communicate. If that itself carries another layer of encryption, I will suspect it to be devious by default, and isn't that rational?
It just seems like Darwin In Action, and my quick adoption would make me the brunt of some cosmic joke. I will never buy a cellphone without an easily removable battery, either. On general principle. Some things are not features, they are curses disguised as features.
That's like saying the tyranny of credit cards prevents me from enjoying discounts in some venues. Or that the tyranny of educational system prevents me from working as a doctor.
No, I don't like installing apps for every stupid parking lot or restaurant. But calling it "tyranny" is clickbait and bad journalism. I pay more for my sons bus pass because I don't want him to have a smartphone.
That's a choice I made. My solution isn't to make everyone else pay more because the same discount can't be given without a smartphone. I see why businesses would want to reward me when I let them send me push notifications. Again, not even remotely tyranny. If anything this is tyranny of bad writing.
If the app is required - which has happened already (eg. bank apps, car charging) or could happen in the future - then I think it's reasonable to call this bad. Maybe not a "tyranny", we'd probably want to reserve that for the government doing it, but not good news.
It's a tool. Do you complain when the bank requires you to sign something with a pen?
We require computers today for many things. Why not force websites to provide phone service with exactly the same pricing. Guess what the effect will be? Higher prices.
The same is true with apps, some things make no financial sense without them.
If the pen collected location information continuously and sent it to a insecure cloud endpoint, and sent me spammy notifications every day, then probably I would.
If the pen was somehow of financial benefit to the bank, and I didn't benefit, and they won't let me use a different pen, I'd still resent it. No, I don't want to jump through a hoop to make your business some extra money.
Sure, but that's a different debate. You can see why it would be in the interest of the business for you to install that app and why it would be worth enough for a discount.
We're giving them something that provides value and saves on costs.
It's not always your choice. In my country, you're basically cut off from banking services if you don't own a smartphone. I lived without one for years and had to give in a couple of years ago (second hand but perfectly usable — thanks to LineageOS).
The pain was self-inflicted in my case, but some people simply don't have money for one (as there are lots of people living on 200-250 USD per month or even less — they have nothing left at the end of the month).
If any banking whatsoever then sure, this is a problem like cashless society. But if it's from a set of specific banks that makes sense. I use a smartphone only bank and pay lower costs as a result. That makes sense.
I guess you're right ultimately, if there's choice. But the alternatives get more expensive. Basically all kinds of businesses have figured out they can get us to sell our privacy in return for a relatively cheaper product - and as this becomes the norm, it no longer even seems to be cheaper, it's just that resisting selling your privacy gets more expensive.
Or, think of Stephen Hawking, able to communicate but unable to operate a pen in the later part of his life. Wouldn't you complain if he had been unable to control his bank account because he couldn't use a pen?
The relevant Uniform Commercial Code has a wider definition of what counts as a signature than using a pen, § 3-401, https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/3/3-401 .
Accessibility is a great point. In that regard apps often exceed pens in their accessibility support and laws such as the ADA require organizations like banks to comply with accessibility regulation.
Just as a disabled person would have a caretaker sign as a proxy for them, such a caretaker could use the app for them in such a case.
Better yet. A person who is bedridden or incapacitated could use an app from the convenience of their own home instead of physically going to a bank. A blind person could avoid the walk to a distant location. It's a mixed bag in terms of accessibility.
> Just as a disabled person would have a caretaker sign as a proxy for them
You should likely be more careful about how your use of "disabled person" as I'm sure you know most disabled people do not have caretakers.
Also, the link I gave says 'agent or representative' - a caretaker is not necessarily either of those.
My point is that, yes, I would complain if the bank requires everyone to sign with a pen - and so would you, it seems.
So why is it okay to complain about forcing everyone to use a pen, but not okay to complain about forcing everyone to use an app, especially when we know there are people who will not use a smartphone including, for example, religious reasons. There is a market for "kosher phones" which don't let you install apps, or even have no internet support at all.
> He does own a smartphone – an Apple iPhone he bought secondhand about three years ago – but says: “I don’t use apps at all. I don’t download them for security reasons.”
Yes and?
He makes a choice and he is being penalized for it. Presumably the benefits for him outweigh the costs. For Richard Stallman they do.
There is no innate human right to grocery store coupons or private parking lots.
I have to install an app to communicate with my child's state-sponsored daycare. I'll have to install an app to communicate with the teachers at his future school. Is this still fine?
It'd be one thing, if it were just apps. But all of these apps are essentially just containers for some web application.
Do you get access to the web application without the app? No.
So what's the point of the apps? So they can send you notifications and annoy you with irrelevant updates concerning other groups at the same daycare all day long, because they don't care to filter?
Here in Sweden, it took me about 5 months but I was able to get the school to send me info by email. They switched to an app-only system, and I have no smartphone.
Setting aside any issues related to privacy or US corporate control over my life, I'm one of the people who doesn't use a smartphone because the temptation to be online, at the drop of the hat, is too much to resist.
I compare it to being like someone who needs to lose weight, so keeps all chocolate out of the house, while everyone seems to expect me to have a luscious bar of high quality chocolate with me all the time, just sitting there, begging me to eat it.
There is an ongoing debate about smartphones at school, and the addiction and distraction they can be for kids. I think my strongest argument is that the addiction and distraction don't simply disappear for adults, and there was no way they were going to force me to get a smartphone.
I don't think that would work for those with a smartphone, but it's a crack keeping an alternative open.
Thank you for pointing this out. However, it seems that HN crowd really doesn't like this kind of viewpoint. "If you cannot do everything without a smart phone, that's the society's fault, not yours.", as echoed by comments under my (also downvoted) comment.
Many people here seem to have trouble understanding how the world works. If all you do is complain (which will change nothing) instead of adapt, good luck with your miserable life.
Because it's dismissive, sophomoric, and can be applied to literally anything you might complain about - eg "If you don't like how the 'HN crowd' votes, then stop coming here". In reality, Exit is not the only option.
30 years ago, the internet was a novelty, nothing more, and it remained so easily for another ten years after that. It wasn't until the widespread adoption of smartphones that permanent connectivity came to be taken for granted.
It was actually very easy to get by without any of it until quite recently, when legacy options for all kinds of things began being phased out.
Eh? 30 years ago would be 1994. Most people did not have internet in 1994.
But let's use 10 years: you absolutely could get by without internet 10 years ago. It would have been a bit of a hassle for a few things, but internet access wasn't needed for lots of every-day basic activities like parking a car, ordering in a restaurant, using tickets at a concert, etc.
Also: it was easy to use internet at a library, often at zero to no costs. You didn't need to have a personal device only used by you.
All of the council car parks in my local town now expect you to use a parking app to pay. They removed cash devices and the recent BT switch-off of 3G clobbered the credit card devices
Paying for parking that way was never very successful. Machines often failed to work even before apps. Apart from the inherent discrimination more people probably pay successfully now.
Agree, the article's prime example is also that ppl cannot get LIDL loyalty discounts, which to me seems a bit tame too commonplace for the "tyranny" word choice.
Do you consider “going to your GP” a minor area of life, on par with rewards programs? Because if you can only pay for parking or buy bus tickets with an app, I’m not sure how most people get to their GP.
It feels on a par with illiteracy. The motives and circumstances are different, but it's got a similar level of assumption. It's kinda rare and requires significant adaptation, so it's just way easier to assume it doesn't happen.
I don't think that a law to help people get smartphones is the answer, the way we made literacy education mandatory. But it's rapidly going to be seen as a handicap.
Literacy skills increase monotonically though. If you learn to read adult novels while in grade school, you can still continue reading grade school books as well. Whereas if you learn tech to the proficiency of understanding how corporate apps are attacking you, or if you simply take administrative control of that computer you carry everywhere, then you can then find yourself unable to engage despite having higher than the basic skill level.
> Some of the best savings rates are offered by app-only providers – made up of banks and “electronic money institutions” (EMIs), which do not have their own banking licence, but put your money in a bank that does.
Okay, this wins for euphemism of the week. "We're not a bank, we're a money institution!"
I never install apps, and I don't have any problem with private companies offering discounts or whatever via apps. The market will do its thing.
But where I have a big problem is when my local government requires me to install apps to do basic things like parking. It would almost be okay if the apps were developed in house and were open source. But of course they're not. And anyway there's no reason they can't just be web based.
So now I just don't pay for parking and I pay the ticket if I get a ticket...
Markets' "thing" is concentration of capital and the whittling of service/product providers until just a few major ones, or a single one, is left, and then they collude on pricing, bypassing/preventing regulation, psychological manipulation of customers etc.
As a result, the use case flow (IE the only way you can operate it..) of the app, goes as follows:
1 close the app 2 launch the app and sign in 3 do ONE action 4 enjoy the result of the action 5 repeat from 1..
You might wonder why that is.. Well, that is because your software is not allowed to display any errors - because that might indicate there were bugs.. So instead, whenever an error happens, you just display the '... still loading..' animation... forever. So, technically, there are no errors, no bugs.. "IT IS JUST TAKING TOO LONG TO RESPOND". (spoiler: it will NEVER respond, because hidden behind the screen, is a series of unhandled web api errors..)
But again, as an "internal" employee, I have seen our management claim all this is a huge success (client paid/pays).
Back to using it: When I have to interact with my doctor, I write the texts on my PC, and mail them to myself. Then I cut/paste them from gmail into this wonderful app.
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