641–650 of 870 posts
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…
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> 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). > 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 muc…
>> 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). Pay-on-exit car parks are the answer to this. Combined with contactless card payment and that's peak parking experience.
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…
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. Eit…
I frequently put spinners just in the individual components that need loading. I tend to use them more for large data loads that will hang around awhile, so I have to do fewer round trip transactions. Loading a list of a customer's last 1000 transactions? I'm going to bring on all that data at once, not keep calling the server as you try to scroll through it.
I want user actions to have an INSTANT consequence, not 150ms latency. So even if not a spinner, that button needs to gray out and something should affirm that they tapped it.
Also, spinners are very useful for me in tracking down bugs. When a few customers report stuck spinners in the same day, I can almost immediately determine if some particular action is failing or whether it's a server issue. Even better, they can send screenshots helping me isolate the problem. If no stuck spinner and the app just freezes, they reload it and forget what exactly they did to trigger an error. And endpoints do go down, nothing has 100% uptime. I want to FEEL how long a call is taking on a heavy operation on a busy day.
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 wat…
I have a US and an Aus Apple Account, and I switch the account on App Store to get apps that are region locked.
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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. [0] https://i.imgur.com/OkthcOi.png
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?
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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 wan…
> 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…
User feedback was loud and clear: many users see web apps as cost savings efforts that are inferior products and only exist so a lazy / cheap company doesn’t have to invest in native.
Remember that permissions and notifications can also be a problem in web apps; that’s one thing the “make web apps as good as native” crowd has gotten us.
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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 u…
My philosophy school was a library card. Am I presuming too much by your handle that you are a lover of the higher mathematics? Although I think it would be hard to derive a workable ethics from number theory, I believe it has been tried. Descartes and Spinoza metaphysics come to mind, but Plato's number magic is probably a more entertaining place to start. As you say, not relevant to you, but do you think mathematic…
There's nothing wrong with that, sometimes it's one's best tutor.
I'm not a mathematician but I've studied mathematics in conjunction with my bread-and-butter subjects science and engineering. It's thus fair to say the analytical philosophers and their ilk have had a strong influence on my thinking—Frege, Whitehead, Russell, Wittgenstein, and G.E. Moore—I can even see my copy of Principia Ethica on the bookshelf on the other side of the room from where I'm sitting.
(BTW, In my world I cannot see any relevant connection between number theory (as mathematicians understand it) and ethics.)
The analytical strand of philosophy is particularly significant for me as formal logic has a direct bearing on some of my technical work (they're closely related). It also led to me electing to take HPS.
Philosophy is a remarkably broad church and its analytical strand is only one section, and in no way do I consider myself pigeonholed to just one or two of its strands; Being and Nothingness, The Social Contract, Leviathan, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, (the) Republic are just a few titles from the large compulsory corpus from which I was trained.
I will not delve further into utilitarianism given what I've already said except to say I have neither the talent of Shakespeare nor am I an APL programmer, so it would be impossible for me to present my rather convoluted views on the matter in a short HN post without some part being misinterpreted. To do it linguistic justice and present a watertight case that precisely and accurately explains my view I'd likely require a dozen pages of typed text, and clearly that's not possible on HN.
That's not a copout, it's just fact. Moreover, philosophy taught me long ago that précising and brevity can easily lead to misunderstandings unless one's words are very carefully chosen. I was reminded of that again earlier today when you came on the attack.
I’m fascinated by this phenomenon of apps proposing solutions that are far worse than the previous existing solutions. For example: 1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters. 2. Tinder is worse than IRL speed dating. 3. Duolingo is worse than language classes. 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass. 5. Etc It really makes me frustrated as someone who builds software and generally thinks…
I had come to this conclusion long ago i.e. computers/software are now majorly being oriented towards purely money-making (for certain vested interests) rather than doing any good for people/society or the world in general. The original idealism is long gone.
> 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…
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 de…