Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

coutts.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 312 posts

Re: Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

#241

Post by coffee_beqn »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #192
jl6 wrote: post #60

What I find really amazing is that we have here an incredibly elite service that the vast majority of people will never be able to afford, and yet its elite clients are dependent on essentially the same mobile devices that everyone else is. You can spend ~$2k on a phone, and it will be the best phone you can buy. There's no $20k phone that will be any better. It's like flying in first class and then having to queue u…

It's not going to be any better , but if you'd like to spend $20k on a phone, Vertu still seems to be around peddling crocodile skin phones encrusted with diamonds etc. https://www.vertu.com/collections/aster-p The gullwing titanium SIM card slots are straight out of Silicon Valley. There's even a Gavin Belson-worthy signature! https://www.vertu.com/products/aster-p-ti-black-rococo-himal... And tying neatly back to t…

At least you get a crappy android now. Not too long ago they were peddling gold encrusted dumbphones as some kind of a tasteless luxury item

Edit: they still have those too https://www.vertu.com/products/signature-v-black-gold-diamon...

Re: Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

#242

Post by fy20 »

Bilal_io wrote: post #228
jl6 wrote: post #60

What I find really amazing is that we have here an incredibly elite service that the vast majority of people will never be able to afford, and yet its elite clients are dependent on essentially the same mobile devices that everyone else is. You can spend ~$2k on a phone, and it will be the best phone you can buy. There's no $20k phone that will be any better. It's like flying in first class and then having to queue u…

> $20k phone Is this what some of Blackberry phones would have been if they continued their earlier legacy and designed phone lineups that appeal to reach people (hardened device, durable, privacy, "non-trackable", can connect to any cellular network and satellite internet.. etc)?

Vertu was originally using Blackberry OS, but now is based on Android.

Re: Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

#243

Post by ramesh31 »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #148
joshmanders wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem here is that modern libs and standards change so fast (similar to JS) that it really is hard for anyone without a megacorp's worth of software dev employees to keep up. Are you so sure of this? I have apps that haven't been updated in years that still run on my iPhone 13 Pro Max using latest iOS.

As an iOS dev of 7 years, year to year changes are generally mild and impact is generally low, particularly if your app is built with UIKit. For the past 4-5 releases the worst I’ve seen in the apps I’m responsible are a small number of minor non-breaking quirks… think things like a button rendering slightly oddly. It’s never been beyond what a single dev could handle. Android on the other hand…

>Android on the other hand…

Yeah. Hence why Kotlin is a dead end and React Native is more or less the new standard.

Re: Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

#244

Post by Tsiklon »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #192
jl6 wrote: post #60

What I find really amazing is that we have here an incredibly elite service that the vast majority of people will never be able to afford, and yet its elite clients are dependent on essentially the same mobile devices that everyone else is. You can spend ~$2k on a phone, and it will be the best phone you can buy. There's no $20k phone that will be any better. It's like flying in first class and then having to queue u…

It's not going to be any better , but if you'd like to spend $20k on a phone, Vertu still seems to be around peddling crocodile skin phones encrusted with diamonds etc. https://www.vertu.com/collections/aster-p The gullwing titanium SIM card slots are straight out of Silicon Valley. There's even a Gavin Belson-worthy signature! https://www.vertu.com/products/aster-p-ti-black-rococo-himal... And tying neatly back to t…

I'm shocked that Vertu are still about - that said there's a classic idiom "money can't buy taste". The aesthetic of Vertu's devices is just so gauche, I'd imagine the traditional Coutts customer would abhor it.

Re: Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

#245

Post by atomicnumber3 »

AJRF wrote: post #101
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can't even be bothered to keep their mobile app up to date Guessing their clients aren’t banking via mobile apps, their staff having lines to their banker. Most top-tier private banks barely have an online presence. If you want something, you (or your assistant) calls or texts your banker.

Coutts has (in)famously gone through a digital transformation recently making talking to a personal banker exceedingly difficult. They are getting slaughtered on social media and on review sites for the change, because the new website and app are extraordinarily bad, even for a bank.

I seriously don't understand how websites with TREMENDOUS funding end up so bad. I have literally watched seniors in college, who three years prior did not know how to "int i = 1;", do senior design projects that put out what I'd call "standard bootstrap + rails websites" (which are fine! just specifying how EASY it is nowadays to make websites that don't suck) which are ridiculously superior to even any single page on most bank's websites.

Look, I'm a data engineer by day, I understand how bad UIs happen. I use Airflow, for God's sake, and heavily customized Airflow at that (where we've honestly only kind of roughly kept pace with the UI quality. like I said, I get how bad UIs happen).

But seriously. I try to be charitable. I can understand how page flows might be janky, how you might need a few redirects as they pass you through decades of legacy systems, etc.

But by God, there are some pages where I seriously cannot figure how they made that specific page, alone, in isolation so bad. The only thing I can come up with is they either a) contracted it out to someone who is literally not as capable as someone 2 years into a CS degree, or they've split the page among multiple teams who all wrote little scraps of HTML and JS and then some poor soul had to weld them all together and that's how it ended up.

Is it really just that they all hire huge incompetent contractors who "nobody ever got fired for hiring etc etc" and then they invariably fuck it up? I don't get how that doesn't get disrupted by either SaaS or just someone making a contracting shop that actually finishes projects correctly.

Re: Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

#246

Post by K7PJP »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #149
Gigachad wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple releases an update once a year and they give several months of betas where app devs can test and prepare. That’s more than enough for supported apps.

Still pretty embarrassing when Microsoft maintains backwards compatibility for decades.

Not embarrassing, its a deliberate strategy to keep the platform moving forward.

Re: Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

#247

Post by traceroute66 »

Cederfjard wrote: post #239
traceroute66 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is one of the most exclusive banks in the world Not particularly exclusive, bought by NatWest in 2000 and then taken over by Ernst & Cie. So its little more than a brand-name these days, you can effectively buy your way in. If you want truly exclusive, you have to cross the road and walk a bit further down the Strand to Fleet Street. Regarding Private Banks and the online world, yes they tend to be a bit furth…

> If you want truly exclusive, you have to cross the road and walk a bit further down the Strand to Fleet Street. So if you can’t “buy your way in” to these banks, what are the criteria?

> So if you can’t “buy your way in” to these banks, what are the criteria?

First you will need to be "introduced" to the bank by an existing customer. We're not talking about a referral link here, we're saying who introduces you is just as important as who is being introduced (i.e. long-standing customer vouching for an introduction gets more weight than a newbie trying to get a mate in).

Second, if the introduction is acceptable, then you will be invited to a meeting with one or more members of the bank's senior management to determine if you are a good fit (and no, "good fit" does not equal a commercial fit about determining how much they can sell you, its a "good fit" as in determining that you have your head screwed on and won't cause the bank problems).

You might think this is excessive, but at the most exclusive bank the management have genuine skin in the game (e.g. bank is purposely setup as unlimited liability legal structure, so if management were to ever fuck up, they really would FUCK UP because they have no corporate veil to hide behind).

It also means that dodgy overseas money and the nouveau riche can't buy their way in and start causing problems. A truly exclusive bank values quality of client over quantity of clients.

Re: Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

#248

Post by eloisius »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #245
AJRF wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coutts has (in)famously gone through a digital transformation recently making talking to a personal banker exceedingly difficult. They are getting slaughtered on social media and on review sites for the change, because the new website and app are extraordinarily bad, even for a bank.

I seriously don't understand how websites with TREMENDOUS funding end up so bad. I have literally watched seniors in college, who three years prior did not know how to "int i = 1;", do senior design projects that put out what I'd call "standard bootstrap + rails websites" (which are fine! just specifying how EASY it is nowadays to make websites that don't suck) which are ridiculously superior to even any single page…

They use that enormous pile of cash to hire a prestigious consultancy like Accenture to build it for them.

Re: Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

#249

Post by tomrod »

jquery wrote: post #226
tomrod wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To have such problems.

It sounds sad to me. It’s like how visions of heaven 500 years ago all imagined huge feasts every day, but if you told me heaven was a Golden Corral, I’d look for a different heaven. We are still in this scarcity-capitalist-mindset that more money/stuff is always better, but I don’t think that’s the right way to be looking at things. We should appreciate the forced scarcity, like how our ancestors may have been hungr…

> Please keep in mind I’m not talking about living in poverty, I’m talking about having all your monetary needs met to live your lifestyle (without being forced to work), without having a huge excess left over.

Out of curiosity (not debating, but rather conversating) -- what portion of humanity is in this enviable condition?

Re: Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16

#250

Post by loopdoend »

xeromal wrote: post #210
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can't even be bothered to keep their mobile app up to date Guessing their clients aren’t banking via mobile apps, their staff having lines to their banker. Most top-tier private banks barely have an online presence. If you want something, you (or your assistant) calls or texts your banker.

Definitely true. I'm with a bank that feels like I might be their poorest client. They do have a nice app, but the real benefit to working with them is that I have a banker on standby that I can call or email for anything. Wonder why a transaction was denied? Shoot an email with a screenshot. Want 500$ of Moroccan Dirhams for your next trip? Shoot a text and they'll put together a package + a few sweets for you to pi…

That sounds amazing sign me up.
Post reply on HN