'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by gamedever » Sat, Feb 22, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

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…

AFAIK this is only a problem on iPhone, not Android?

Note: I have an iPhone. It sucks. Same issue. I have bank accounts in other countries. The app needs an update. To install the update I have to switch countries on my account which instantly voids any and all subscriptions through Apple. It's insane.

It's even more crazy that every single Apple employee I know has this issue but for whatever reason it's not fixed.

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

#532

Post by brookst » Sat, Feb 22, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #520

kristianc wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> marketing people frequently do not think about failure modes or actually put themselves in the customer's shoes It’s literally the job of marketing people to put themselves in the customer’s shoes. If engineering isn’t looping in marketing on UX challenges, or if marketing is too focused on top-of-funnel vanity metrics to engage deeply with product usability, things fall through the cracks. But that’s a company cul…

It should be, but it isn't in my experience. Marketing people care about onboarding and engagement numbers, and are a major driver of dark patterns - everything from popups to moving the 'close dialog' icon to unintuitive places like the bottom left of unasked-for video embeds.

Massive over-generalization.

I’m sorry you only worked with terrible, unethical, incompetent marketing people. There are good ones, just like there are bad programmers who do all sorts of terrible and dumb things without creating universal truths about programmers.

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

#533

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 22, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

LinuxBender wrote: post #183

tdb7893 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US large companies in rural areas also often use apps in the same way as they do in the city (at least they did the last time I visited) and at least all the people I know in rural areas have had smartphones for a long time and use apps a lot (though maybe the fact that the area I know well is near a major university has made it a bit techier). The smaller local stores don't use apps so even in Chicago most pl…

People here do have smart phones and I'm sure some have apps installed. What I am saying is none of that is required today. Nobody here is penalized for not installing some app.

[deleted]

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

#534

Post by fc417fc802 » Sat, Feb 22, 2025, 9:54 PM UTC

aucisson_masque wrote: post #262

ryandrake wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nobody takes you to court to collect small amounts. They only do that if the amount is sufficiently large and they have good documentation and they believe they will be able to collect a judgement against you (ie either you have assets or you have stable employment so they can garnish wages).

Mostly nothing will happen except daily phone calls for years plus the hit to credit score.

And cops aren't showing up unless aforementioned judgment happened, you ignored it, and the court eventually authorized physical seizure of your property to recover funds.

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

#535

Post by benhurmarcel » Sat, Feb 22, 2025, 9:54 PM UTC

realityking wrote: post #276

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…

Interestingly EU consumer protection cooperation is currently claiming this is illegal within the EU/between EU markets: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/es/ip_24_... I hope they manage to change things.

I’ve had the same issue between Spain and France, so it might be illegal but it’s still the case.

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

#536

Post by tonyhart7 » Sat, Feb 22, 2025, 9:57 PM UTC

brookst wrote: post #529

yurishimo wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the entire philosophy behind all of the apps run by DHH/Basecamp. The web should be the default and native apps should only be used for software that just isn’t possible through the web (yet).

The problem is that users much prefer native apps. The idiomatic UI, the use of OS specific capabilities (even if the same result could be done without), the appearance of better performance because the app launches before a network connection is made. We can opine all we want about how things should work, but the ground truth is a good native app has higher user satisfaction, more engagement, whatever metric you wan…

people here is web biased, people forgot that mobile world exist and I can tell you navigating web in mobile vs native mobile app is like heavenly different

if people commenting from web dekstop perspective I can see that point, but from mobile?? where hardware processing power and network is sometimes unreliable???

huft

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

#537

Post by MiddleEndian » Sat, Feb 22, 2025, 9:59 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #356

Ticketmaster is the worst of these for me. They have a near monopoly, and started forcing this shit on everyone a few years ago with covid as the excuse. Now going to one of their concerts is like taking an international flight. Forget privacy, forget having a paper stub as a souvenir (not even an option), forget paying with cash. As I avoid ticketmaster, I've avoided most concerts the last few years... only going to…

Ticketmaster is the one of the shittiest apps I've ever used in my life. Constantly have to reactivate because it forgets your info, it fails to display tickets, it shows ads, etc.

But I recently discovered you can just view the tickets in your mobile browser instead and it will work fine for whatever scanners the venues use.

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

#538

Post by scarface_74 » Sat, Feb 22, 2025, 9:59 PM UTC

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #508

scarface_74 wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until two years ago, I flew out of ATL - the busiest airport in the US. Am I suppose to look on the board and look for my flight out of the hundreds of flights to see if anything has changed and keep looking every 30 minutes? If I’m sitting at a restaurant or a bar I should get up every 20 minutes to see if something has changed? Should I also print out MapQuest directions before I go somewhere and wait for the paper…

> Until two years ago, I flew out of ATL - the busiest airport in the US. Am I suppose to look on the board and look for my flight out of the hundreds of flights to see if anything has changed and keep looking every 30 minutes? That’s what I usually do. It’s not that much of an effort to look at the screen right at the gate you’re sitting at to confirm that nothing has changed. I‘ve been to ATL twice, it’s not that b…

> That’s what I usually do. It’s not that much of an effort to look at the screen right at the gate you’re sitting at to confirm that nothing has changed. I‘ve been to ATL twice, it’s not that bad.

And you somehow think that’s more efficient? Do you also think polling is more efficient than web hooks and push notifications? Why would I do that?

And the restaurants are usually not right at the gate you’re sitting at. Well in our case we are usually sitting in the lounge…

> What are you going to do when something happens to your phone

Well, I personally would take out my cellular equipped iPad on the rare occasions that I was flying by myself and I would still get text notifications on my cellular equipped watch or depend on my wife having her phone, cellular equipped iPad or Watch.

If all that failed yes I would have to get a paper ticket - which you can do at the gate.

How often do you actually fly? My wife and I have been flying over a dozen times a year post Covid.

I was in ATL either flying in, out or through ATL over 25x last year alone.

> Can you imagine… how did we manage to live before everyone and their dog had a phone in their pocket.

I personally had my first phone in my pocket in 1995. Never once in 30 years has anything “happened to my phone”.

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

#539

Post by flocciput » Sat, Feb 22, 2025, 10:02 PM UTC

tdeck wrote: post #92

One thing not mentioned yet is what happens when you've got a cheaper phone filled with photos and videos. At various times I've had to spend a few minutes deleting things just to download some stupid 100 meg app that I need to use for a total of 5 minutes to complete some basic task.

I feel your pain. I managed to use my first smart phone, an iPhone 6s, for almost 10 years. In that time the system data took up more and more of what little space I had on there (16GB I think? So unthinkably small to most people that they think I'm confusing it with RAM) to where I was basically dealing with a few mb of storage to use for photos and work-critical apps like Authenticator. I also refuse to use iCloud on principle (tried it once, and realized when I wanted to download all my photos onto my computer that it would only let me do 1 at a time, or low quality versions, or something scummy like that).

It got so bad I had to do things like delete my Internet history if I even wanted to copy and paste something! And I would do everything I could to not have to pick which photos and conversations I needed to delete forever just to download some fucking app I would only use one time to order food or park somewhere or do first-time router setup.

Finally I had to give in and get a new phone, because managing phone storage was making my life much more difficult than it needed to be. But I'm still so mad that I had to, because daily living seems to demand more and more storage space. And people accept it!! Ugh. The dang thing didn't even have a scratch on it either. Would've used it for 20 years if I could.

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

#540

Post by Terr_ » Sat, Feb 22, 2025, 10:04 PM UTC

ComposedPattern wrote: post #245

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…

To quote something from a favorite fiction-series, where someone has traveled to a relatively backwards planet:

> "Poor?" said Cordelia, bewildered. "No electricity? How can it be on the comm network?"

> "It's not, of course," answered Vorkosigan.

> "Then how can anybody get their schooling?"

> "They don't."

> Cordelia stared. "I don't understand. How do they get their jobs?"

> "A few escape to the Service. The rest prey on each other, mostly." Vorkosigan regarded her face uneasily. "Have you no poverty on Beta Colony?"

> "Poverty? Well, some people have more money than others, of course, but... no comconsoles?"

> Vorkosigan was diverted from his interrogation. "Is not owning a comconsole the lowest standard of living you can imagine?" he said in wonder.

> "It's the first article in the constitution. 'Access to information shall not be abridged.' "

-- Shards of Honor (1986) by Lois McMaster Bujold

In the 39 years since this was published, I would have hoped our real society would have advanced a bit more in that direction.