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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

#561

Post by arp242 »

deeg wrote: post #148

To play somewhat of a devils advocate, 30 years ago this article could have been titled the tyranny of the internet. Is this much different from that.

Eh? 30 years ago would be 1994. Most people did not have internet in 1994.

But let's use 10 years: you absolutely could get by without internet 10 years ago. It would have been a bit of a hassle for a few things, but internet access wasn't needed for lots of every-day basic activities like parking a car, ordering in a restaurant, using tickets at a concert, etc.

Also: it was easy to use internet at a library, often at zero to no costs. You didn't need to have a personal device only used by you.

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

#562

Post by nicce »

fsflover wrote: post #477
hamilyon2 wrote: post #81

App store monopoly hurts us way more than it is talked about. Suddenly, not only we are not to chose which devices to use to access what could be a simple website. Now unrelated third party decides if we have access to it based in, for example, country of residence. Or at all. Apple routine forces censorship on our phones as if it was it's property. I still believe it was a tragedy that Microsoft folded their attempt…

Our next best hope is GNU/Linux smartphones. Sent from my Librem 5.

They can’t handle the masses, unfortunately. That needs alot more money and infrastructure.

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

#563

Post by causal »

afandian wrote: post #516

I'm glad to see people talking about this. I'd love to see a new right: The right to not have your phone on you. For whatever reason. Maybe it was stolen. Maybe it's being fixed. Maybe the battery is dead. (Maybe you don't want to get a Google or Apple account. But that's not the only use case.) All public services and essential services (government services, banks, car parks, etc) should respect this right. It's biz…

The increasing necessity of the Internet is also why giving companies the power to exile someone from the Internet is an extremely broad power that is increasingly like a prison sentence. E.g. the recent cases of publishers demanding ISPs cut off users who have pirated content.

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

#564

Post by cookie_monsta »

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…

> The problem is that users much prefer native apps.

I imagine there is some data on this, but it goes against my observations of me and my circle.

I have maybe 4 apps that I use heavily and another 10 that I use when I have to. I actively avoid installing another app when the web version is sufficient. I don't need the weekly updates to clog up my storage. I don't need notifications going off at all hours. And I don't need creepy unfathomable permissions requests.

Is there some 500ms delay if I click a button on the web version? Maybe. Honestly, I'm not so busy to have noticed.

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

#565

Post by wat10000 »

Henchman21 wrote: post #412
kortilla wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VOTE MOTHERFUCKER Local government politics work. State politics even kinda work. The fact that murder is on your list but not voting is mind boggling.

I vote. I am 50. I have voted in every election I was able to. In my life my preferred candidate has won exactly twice: Obama’s second term and Biden’s first. This includes local, state elections, and national. To quote George Carlin: “ If voting mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it ”. Trump lost in 2024 but took the win because his cronies disqualified enough voters in enough states to win. So, please, spare me. We’…

Contra Carlin, if voting didn’t matter they wouldn’t be putting so much effort into making it harder.

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

#566

Post by anigbrowl »

brookst wrote: post #532
anigbrowl wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think so; I said marketing people frequently do bad stuff, which is not the same as saying they're all bad. I stand by 'frequently', because just look at how much terrible adware, clickbait, spam etc there is on the web. It's a Gresham's law-type situation.

Of course marketing people do a valuable job in terms of figuring out how to sell things and minimize the gap between producers and customers. But - just like engineers - there are lots of cynical and amoral people who work in that industry who make things worse for everyone else. By contrast, I can't think of any society that is suffering because they don't have enough advertising.

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

#567

Post by Hackbraten »

brainwad wrote: post #222
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.

This has always been the case though. Before the smartphone, it was computers and internet; before that it was landline phone service. Both of the latter were far more expensive than a modern smartphone, so we are actually making progress in reducing barriers to social participation.

Internet browsers exist for many OSes. To use a web-based service, you don’t need a mandatory account with a platform tech giant.

Almost all mobile apps today are Android/iOS only and require an App Store/Play Store account.

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

#568

Post by wat10000 »

tmnvix wrote: post #502
joseda-hg wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do iOS and Android phones have a "wallet", and why a boarding pass would have anything to do with it? It's not that deep, just a skeuomorphic name for somewhere where you'd keep importants/valuables for quick access, credit/debit cards, boarding passes, concert tickets Not unlike keeping a folded up copy of a pass in a physical wallet (Which may not be universal, but I would have guessed not that uncommon eithe…

And if your phone is out of order? I used a PDF version of the boarding pass on my laptop in the past due to a flat phone. Even when my phone is available I still just use the PDF version that was emailed to me. I never use my phone 'wallet' for anything.

In the unlikely event my phone dies (hasn’t ever happened in 20 years of having phones) then I’ll go to the desk and ask them to print a boarding pass.

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

#569

Post by gamedever »

lambda wrote: post #156
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…

I'm kind of puzzled by your first point. In my experience, parking apps require you to pay in larger chunks of hours than paying with coins used to; many times I have to pay for a minimum of 2 hours of parking with the app when I could pay for just 10 or 15 minutes of parking with coins.

Parking apps requires registration. I arrive, park my car then

(1) via machine: insert my card into the machine, get ticket, leave

(2) via app: spend 10 minutes registering an account, email, password, phone number, wants verification via email or phone number, wants me to register my credit card and the agree to them selling all my data.

IF on the other hand, they just made it use some kind of common e-cash and no registration, no tracking, no account, I'd be 100% for it.

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

#570

Post by rex_gallorum2 »

arp242 wrote: post #561
deeg wrote: post #148

To play somewhat of a devils advocate, 30 years ago this article could have been titled the tyranny of the internet. Is this much different from that.

Eh? 30 years ago would be 1994. Most people did not have internet in 1994. But let's use 10 years: you absolutely could get by without internet 10 years ago. It would have been a bit of a hassle for a few things, but internet access wasn't needed for lots of every-day basic activities like parking a car, ordering in a restaurant, using tickets at a concert, etc. Also: it was easy to use internet at a library, often a…

Absolutely. The internet stopped being something you accessed and became something you were connected to 24/7, and that you have a persistent, high-speed connection. That was a huge shift.
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