451–460 of 496 posts
I rolled my eyes and braced for the inevitable pretty but buggy and slow app.
It didn't use an app. It used the Bluetooth functionality built into chrome and it's derivatives to talk to the knife, update it, and perform a calibration
I've only ever used the Bluetooth and serial for flashing esp32s and similar before. It was a wonderful experience
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100% same. So many apps are just a WebView vessel for Crashlytics and Sentry and Dog knows how much more tracking. (My phone is always VPNed into my home network which has DNS-level ad and tracker blocking. This doesn't cover all the bases though.) Some, like Home Depot, have websites that are terrible and battery-draining enough to make the app nominally useful by comparison.
I didn't want to write in this thread. Complaining is just not good for the person complaining. But this: >My phone is always VPNed into my home network which has DNS-level ad and tracker blocking. This doesn't cover all the bases though. Is a great idea for a fun weekend project. Any tips, good practices or things to watch out for when setting it up?
Or you can just throw a couple bucks at something like nextdns and not have to use the VPN bit for mobile DNS ad block
I use both
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so, not books.
If you think a book is made by the physical medium, you must think everything in paper is a book. The prose in a book has certain content structure, intent, and writing. So unless a napkin and a receipt are books, what actually makes something a book is its content structure, intent, and writing. Not the paper it's printed on.
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And what if I don't use Apple Pay or Google Pay?
Enter a credit/debit card number then. They are under zero obligation to allow you a cash payment method.
At this point the barrier for me to install an app is pretty high. If you're going to needlessly gate certain functions behind an app that work on a desktop browser (or could work in-browser), then I just won't use those functions. If by extension that degrades the value I get from your site, then I just won't use the site, and I won't be contributing to ADU stats you promote to advertisers. Every single company has…
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Google Maps has a better excuse for wanting to be an app than most since a primary use case on mobile is turn-by-turn navigation. That's possible to do in a web page now, but several features that improve the experience are not available in browsers.
I'm annoyed by a different thing ... It used to be when you searched for something, maps would always be a tab for results. Now it doesn't seem to be anymore...
Anytime I need to search an entity with physical presence, I use Google Maps first. Maps is very good about getting the first result as intended and not showing superfluous non-matches. Maps will not chirp up with AI-generated responses. Maps will take me right to the place I want, and I can see a lot of profile info at-a-glance, and if I wanted their website, then Maps will give me their main website, and nothing else.
Whether it's a corporate HQ, a clinic, a local restaurant, or a geographic area, Maps can come up with a lot of relevant info and I don't waste my time in an enshittified Search. So I'm thankful for the Maps app and its mobile integrations.
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I didn't want to write in this thread. Complaining is just not good for the person complaining. But this: >My phone is always VPNed into my home network which has DNS-level ad and tracker blocking. This doesn't cover all the bases though. Is a great idea for a fun weekend project. Any tips, good practices or things to watch out for when setting it up?
Not OP, but with DNS ad blocking like pi-hole you need to be aware that any "normies" living with you will hate it. DNS blockers silently break any kind of "sponsored links" in search results and a lot of the links in email marketing, and most people use those frequently. They don't take kindly to being told they're doing it wrong and have to change their browsing habits for benefits they don't perceive.
I noticed a long time ago that Google apps are designed by people who never actually use them. Here's one example. I'm a big fan of reading, and it happened that I stack dozens and dozens of books on my GDrive, so naturally I use mobile Google Drive to download and send those books to the reader app on my iDevices. Finished books are renamed to have an exclamation mark at the beginning of the file name - that puts th…
Binding the user in endless loops. Tracking his exact behavior. Avoiding pesky thinks like uBlock.
All of that works way better in an app than on a website.
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If your app is just a webpage that forces me to use an app just so you can spy on me I just won't use your product. I've switched brokers over it, I swapped banks, I stopped shopping at certain stores. I'm done. The only say I have is in how I spend my money. Those companies won't get any of mine if I can help it. I am the customer, not the product dammit.
> I am the customer, not the product dammit. That’s an illusion that died a long time ago, unfortunately. Just because you’re using their service on a browser doesn’t stop them from harvesting data from your usage, especially if you’re logging in (and if you’re using their services, chances are that you are). Using browser over app can help, but it doesn’t eliminate it. Like it or not, we’re the product, and I don’t…
tl;dr Any company that likes money and has power over their customers, will happily treat them as products to the extent it can get away with.