271–280 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…
Of course some companies don't want it so they make their website unusable to smartphone.
There isn't really much that technically would prevent people from using their web browser to pay the parking or to pay McDonald.
You can have geolocation on browser too, save your account, take picture and so on.
It's just better for these companies if we have their app because we can't use ad blocker and just close the browser. The app, it can send data 24/24.
For instance, I have yet to find an llm or ai chatbot app that doesn't force me to have the Google play store enabled on my phone and to be logged in with my Google account.
What the FCK they care if I have a Google account on my phone to be able to use chatgpt, deepseek, Mistral, lama and others ? More and more do that, recently the app I used to use to track food quality (Yuka) did that too.
The more thing goes, the less app I use and the more I rely on web browser. And those who refuse to work in browser, i just ditch them.
I feel like we reached a plateau years ago and now things are going downhill with android and iPhone.
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You can also use wifi. Even free wifi. You can get a very nice used phone with many years of updates for 100 dollars. You can find a worse phone for much less if you really want to. edit: You can even get a free phone from your community. Possibly a better one than the a53. Most people have a phone or several in a drawer. https://swappa.com/listings/samsung-galaxy-a53-5g?carrier=un...
Yeah, but you need to be lucky for free wifi to be available for apps that you need to use in specific locations, like the parking meter app.
A good point, but also a parking spot like that which is also not in range of city wifi is pretty rare, I'd reckon.
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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 appropria…
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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…
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 hope they manage to change things.
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.
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…
So apps, and even websites, have just become ways to market and push to users. It's not about functionality or enabling the user.
Another, maybe smallish, manifestation of this that I've seen is that devs, UX, and everyone involved is so downright hostile to direct "links". Devs because it forces them to think about what stupid react/angular router they want to use, devops has to do URL-rewrites, PMs are worried about the "additional scope", and UX folks' brains absolutely explode that there is no "flow" to the entity (it just pops up, omg). Instead you, as the user, are forced to click through the search UI or to type the right thing, to trigger the flow or whatever, before you get to that entity you want. You can't just create it as a link, and thereby enabling users to have "emergent" behavior of sharing links or emailing them, etc.
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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…
Don’t people just print their boarding passes at home before they leave for the airport? Or worst case, use the kiosks at the airports which print passes? Very few of the passengers in line ahead of me are using their phones.
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You can do that with a boarding pass downloaded from the airline website or emailed to you by the airline. But some airlines like to hide this option in order to force you to download their app.
How can you remotely update a PDF file after someone downloaded it?