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“It works better in the app”

shkspr.mobi

241–250 of 496 posts

Re: “It works better in the app”

#241

"Never let an abuser take you to a secondary location": It's OK to offer an app, but if a site is pushing, pressuring or forcing you to get one, it's almost certainly because they want to do something abusive that they currently can't. Installing an app is a matter of trust; trying to push me to install one against my will is the best way to demonstrate that you should not be trusted. (Interestingly, I've heard a sta…

It isn't.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#242

I recently had a perfect storm of non-friendly technology. I made one purchase on Amazon while connected to a VPN. Amazon froze my account and demanded proof of identity. Amazon don't accept an existing photo of primary ID for their preferred ID verification check, it must be a photo taken by a camera on-device, and I don't have a webcam on my desktop PC. Once you select the secondary method, it seems you can't go ba…

Just make a new account at that point, right?

Re: “It works better in the app”

#243
post #9

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…

I am the same, the sad reality is that companies don't (really) aim to change our (old folk tech peoples) behavior, they are aiming to make a new normal for the next generation of consumers.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#244
Hot take but I think the entire concept of a "web app" needs to die. My web browser does not need access to my GPU, OpenGL/Vulkan, USB, MIDI, HID, . All of those are things a native app needs, not a website. IMO if you need that kind of access and your instinct is to do it as a "web app" your doing it wrong. Same thing, I would argue, for things even like WebAudio or WebSpeech. At this point my web browser is so complicated that it might as well be a mini-OS of it's own.

Like, I think that the instinct to make everything a web app is what partially leads to things like what this article complains about. Well, besides laziness, of course.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of businesses that have a semi-captive hold on a market. Like a recent example was I drove my daughter and I to a stage play, and to pay for street parking I had to install an app, make an account, and add a credit card. A thing that should have been scan the QR code and click one button to mobile pay became a five minute ordeal. In theory we could have gotten back in the car and looked for parking el…

It should have been put coins in a slot.

Ehh maybe. I mean, it was a three hour show and I don't carry coins any more. So that would have been ATM -> go to a store and break a twenty -> put in a few bucks -> remember to go out at intermission and put in more money.

Paying by phone is a step up from that old world; I just want it to be one tap, not a whole sequence that tries to upsell me on a monthly pass or establishing an in-app "parking wallet" or whatever.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#246

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…

In general, Google hates having customers at an institutional level.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#247

What’s even worse is intentionally degrading performance for sign-in’s. This is still circumstantial but I’ve been looking into that over the past few weeks. When switching between google accounts on a random app or game, no issue. Quick code, you’re in. When I switch between accounts on Claude on mobile, I have to sign in, enter the code, screen freezes, I sign in again, can’t verify it’s me, I sign again, wait 30 s…

Why wouldn't they just link your accounts together on the back end? It's more likely to be because Claude is fully vibecoded.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did domain names stop functioning all of the sudden? Going to somedipshitsbar.com/menu is about as complicated as entering a wifi password at a coffee shop.

Consumers don't care. QR is easier for them and owners get analytics plus built in table identified ordering. I brought up the attack vector to a table full of developers back when this was taking off, just shrugs.

> owners get analytics

They'll get analytics from digital menus regardless of if a QR code is scanned or not. The QR code isn't really making a difference here, other than maybe adding in a specific table ID.

> built in table identified ordering...attack vector

Oh no, they're going to know table 36 ordered the appetizer sampler and a few beers. The horror. They couldn't have possibly known that before.

They're going to get a lot more verifiable information about me when they run my payment card than what they'll glean from a fresh browser tab.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Twitter is the worst. You go to a page and scroll down and it banners a beater in the app thing and you can’t dismiss it. You either get the app or close the tab. Close the tab.

It's worse than that. 90% of the time I click on a tweet I just get the fucking login page. It seems to happen unless the tweet is from a very popular twitter account, ie one with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#250
post #68

It's almost impossible to use social networks on mobile without installing their apps

When I rejoined X at the start of this year I consciously decided not to install the app on my phone . It's addicting enough in the web browser on my laptop. So I have zero social media networks on my phone and, looking at everyone around me who does, I'm very pleased with this decision.

X won't even let me register an account without downloading the stupid app. Then I download it and it just says something isn't right and refuses to let me register the account anyway. Probably thinks I'm a bot.

It's probably better this way. Hopefully bots will kill off social media before even more countries decide to ban it.

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