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'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

theguardian.com

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Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#261

Post by nehal3m »

xandrius wrote: post #49
everdrive wrote: post #28

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.

Can't say they are expensive anymore, you can get an updated android phone for less than $50 new or less second hand. Can't say about monthly plans, as that depends on the country. Privacy is a different matter and always dependent on the technical literacy as opposed to hard costs.

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.

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#262

Post by aucisson_masque »

ryandrake wrote: post #226
jamesfmilne wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

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…

Yeah yeah yeah.

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.

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#263

Post by curious_cat_163 »

LinuxBender wrote: post #124

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 depende…

I had never heard of Mumla and just looked it up -- looks like it needs some help. [1]

Curious, why do you use it?

[1] https://github.com/quite/mumla

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#264

Post by Kwpolska »

jtbayly wrote: post #103
Yeul wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By choice. Society doesn't penalize anyone if they decide to go off the grid. Look at it this way: should the rest of us with smartphones pay for that bank office?

> "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…

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?

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#265

Post by modeless »

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.

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#266

Post by Henchman21 »

Boogie_Man wrote: post #128
fifticon wrote: post #120

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…

At what point does this constitute a hostile action against the user and what degree of retaliation is appropriate? Open question for everyone.

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.

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#267

Post by serial_dev »

null0ranje wrote: post #243
reaperman wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often can no longer ask for a menu at restaurants that expect me to scan a QR code. Well…I can ask, but they don’t have any to provide.

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.

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#268

Post by cheschire »

LinuxBender wrote: post #124

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 depende…

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."

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#269

Post by OkayPhysicist »

everdrive wrote: post #28

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.

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.

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#270

Post by lazycouchpotato »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #239
2shortplanks wrote: post #167

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…

Is this the same on Android side ? I know that you can more easily sideload app there so it could be an issue only on iphone walled garden.

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.

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