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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

#341

Post by realityking »

lenkite wrote: post #259
crazygringo wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's more about some weird incompatibility between my device and the scanner. That's not a thing. They're literally just cameras looking for a QR code. And unlocking your phone and adjusting brightness is pretty effortless, I dunno. I already do those things lots of times a day.

Its not effortless...and god forbid if your drop your smartphone and get it cracked. This headache is simply avoided with plain old paper reliability.

In that - hopefully exceptionally rare case - the gate could just print you a boarding pass. It’s not a big deal.

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

#342

Post by kraussvonespy »

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…

Feels like this well written piece by Atol Gawande is relevant if you haven't seen it. I showed it a couple of years ago to my very competent and conscientious doc and she got PISSED. She talked about how she spent literally half of her doctoring time working through poorly designed menus in {epic, cerner} to carefully document everything she could about the patient, only to discover that most doctors don't pay attention to any of that info.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-ha...

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

#343

Post by azemetre »

michaelmrose wrote: post #248
azemetre wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually when people say vote with your wallet, it means those with more money make the rules. What recourse does an individual have if they live in a rural area with 1 or 3 doctors that all use the same hostile software? Should they suffer because they don't have money or the ability to go else where?

Most people don't have 3 doctors let alone 3 which all use the same niche/bad customer facing software. Those that do should organize to make their displeasure known. Senior decision makers are probably incompetent boobs rather than compete assholes. If they live somewhere with 1 doc they should vote with their feet by leaving before the town finishes dying around them.

So we should condemn large swaths of the rural population to not only abject poverty, but remove health care access too?

Is this what you're seriously arguing? That people should be forced to have a worse quality life, die earlier; all because they committed the crime of not living in a metropolis?

Do you not see how people read this as completely heartless and devoid of empathy towards their fellow man?

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

#344

Post by realityking »

cbozeman wrote: post #285
pqtyw wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). Yeah... nothing more I love than having to scan a QR code to get an app from someone I don't know, then go through the signup process, then input a buncha personal i…

> Yeah... nothing more I love than having to scan a QR code to get an app from someone I don't know, then go through the signup process, then input a buncha personal information into an app... instead of just dropping 10 quarters into a metal stick and walking away for the next two hours.

Quality of execution obviously matters. I find EasyPark (Swedish company, used all over the place) a lot better than the usual parking meters. Plus I can use it in several cities with different currencies (in my case Euros and Czech Koruna), saving me from carrying more change.

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

#345

Post by 201984 »

joshdavham wrote: post #127

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…

Re no. 1, what are you supposed to do in those cities if you don't have a smartphone? Just get a ticket? Seems heavily discriminatory against the poor.

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

#346

Post by IOUnix »

Yeah, that's how that works. The world moves on and progress happens. You don't have to necessarily like it, or embrace it. But if the entire world is moving a certain direction and you decide to not move with it, that fine. But it's a choice you're making. You may not like that the entire world is going from horses to automobiles, but if you refuse to embrace them you can't be surprised when the grocery store is now a 3 hour walk away.

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

#347

Post by xxr »

joshdavham wrote: post #127

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…

A few months ago, I had to use street parking in Long Beach, California. They no longer had individual meters along this particular street, but rather one parking sticker machine. The parking sticker machine was broken, so I had to download the advertised parking payment app which was not one of the parking apps I already had on my phone. Finally, I had to pay an additional “convenience” fee on top to use this app that I wouldn’t have needed to pay using physical payment infrastructure.

So everyone wins here, except us: the app company gets to make a killing on compulsory payment processing, and City of Long Beach gets to continue to pull in parking revenue without worrying about whether their payment machines still work—a broken machine is not an excuse because you can still pay with the app because everyone has a smartphone with an up-to-date OS and functioning cell service with appropriate bandwidth, right? I’m sure I could have complained to the city and gotten my +/-dollar back, but I didn’t have time just to do so for the principle of the thing.

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

#348

Post by dehrmann »

bxparks wrote: post #169

United Airlines used to accept credit cards to pay for meals during the flight. It worked great. At some point they dropped that and replaced it with something that involves their slow bloated buggy app that crashes on my phone. So I stopped buying their meals.

I'm 50% sure you can set this credit card through their website.

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

#349

Post by mark-r »

ndriscoll wrote: post #283
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…

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…

Some things in the real world simply take longer than milliseconds; this is not a failing. I'm working with a system that takes over 10 seconds to get a list of wifi access points, and you bet we throw up a spinner while that's happening.

Now of course if the spinner is merely cosmetic and doesn't represent any actual work going on, that can be a problem especially if the process you're waiting for dies.

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

#350

Post by gs17 »

369548684892826 wrote: post #293
pqtyw wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>Pay-on-exit car parks are the answer to this

Except having the actual barrier is expensive. The license plate reader is cheaper, so they'll do that instead, and if it malfunctions, hope you don't mind paying for a full day of parking!

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