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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

#571

Post by athenot »

reaperman wrote: post #227
7thaccount wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the doctor's office I'll just ask for paper if there is no real website. Apps freaking suck. I probably won't be able to do this forever though. Example of enshitification #456249

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.

Tell them you can't use your phone for whatever reason, and then ask them to just tell you what they have. I think enough people must have done this already because I've seen paper menus return in many places.

(This fall under the general pattern of "make it their pain")

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

#572

Post by kristianc »

anigbrowl wrote: post #566
brookst wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Effective marketing (not just comms, but real positioning and messaging) is why people can find the right products and services, why small businesses can compete, and why entire industries grow. It's unequivocally a good.

If anything, societies suffer when good marketing is absent—because that’s when bad actors fill the void with misinformation, hype, and scammy tactics.

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

#573

Post by ponector »

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.

You can get a cheap 100$ smartphone with cheap prepaid plan.

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

#574

Post by genewitch »

jmholla wrote: post #321
vladms wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear about your condition, and while I think society can decide to accommodate to some conditions, I disagree with that idea that it "should accommodate". It is a common decision, and sometimes the answer will be "no, we don't accommodate for that, sorry". In the end, everything has a cost (being it effort, resources, time, etc.). Regarding the article, there are many cheap smartphones (<100eur) so I wonder…

> Sorry to hear about your condition, and while I think society can decide to accommodate to some conditions, I disagree with that idea that it "should accommodate". It is a common decision, and sometimes the answer will be "no, we don't accommodate for that, sorry". In the end, everything has a cost (being it effort, resources, time, etc.). This falls apart when you realize this isn't just a consistent percentage of…

I've heard in the US adults spend >10% of their life sick or otherwise incapacitated.

I don't remember the exact percentage, but it was much higher than I would have expected the mean to be.

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

#576

Post by scarface_74 »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #553
scarface_74 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

What is there to be more efficient? You’re sitting there waiting for a flight. This isn’t a shopping mall, even if it appears to look like one. Re push vs pull… which one do you prefer more? Kafka or MQTT? On a more serious note… pull because I don’t sit snd stare at the phone all the time. Phone stays in the pocket. So the act of taking it out of the pocket is a pull action. There are no screens and announcements at…

> What is there to be more efficient? You’re sitting there waiting for a flight. This isn’t a shopping mall, even if it appears to look like one.

That’s just it, even if I didn’t have lounge access, I would be hanging out at a restaurant or a bar that isn’t near the gate. I would have to be constantly looking on the board with all of the flights. ATL has 192 gates spread across seven concourses and two terminals.

> pull because I don’t sit snd stare at the phone all the time. Phone stays in the pocket

Of course I have an alarm set for when I need to start heading toward my gate. But gate changes and when it’s time to board are both push notifications to both my phone and my watch.

> There are no screens and announcements at the lounge

2100 flights take off per day from ATL. That’s over 100 flights an hour - I think there are at least 6 hours a day where no flights take off. They explicitly say they don’t make announcements.

This goes back to do you really want to be searching for your flight on a board with that many flights?

> You went to the airport to fly somewhere, not shopping or a dinner for two, no

If you either get to the airport early to avoid rush hour or have a long layover, you probably will end up having a meal or drinks while you wait. We had a four hour layover at LAX last week.

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

#577

Post by TeMPOraL »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #528
bluefirebrand wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't it just take the photo, take the text description, and hold that until service is better? Just give the driver the map, and upload the other stuff when you can. The obvious answer is because asynchronous workflows are brittle, and require intervention from the end user to correct if they break Then most end users aren't going to care to fix it when it breaks, or be able to fix it when it breaks for a vari…

And what should one do if the network is down? Stand there indefinitely hoping it comes back up? Recall the driver can’t continue without an address.

Better they can't continue than they do the last order wrong, amirite?

There's some strong "Seeing Like a State" vibes here. I'm pretty sure these apps are intentionally designed as tools to force the users (here, drivers) into a specific flow, a flow that minimizes complexity for the vendor, reality be damned.

Another way to look at it: the job of the driver side of a delivery (or taxi) app isn't to be useful to the driver; the job is to be a remote control with which the business can control the driver like they were an automaton.

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

#578

Post by joquarky »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #396
bluefirebrand wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 This is only really true with stable, high speed internet connections. We still cannot take for granted that everyone has that, especially not in rural areas and double especially not on mobile devices

So many places in apps just wait for no reason. Let's take a hypothetical situation: Suppose you're doing gig delivery. You're delivering to two customers in the same neighborhood on the same run. You drop the first order, take your photo of the drop, and the app spins. It's waiting for the photo to be delivered before it moves on. You can't get directions to the next customer until the app moves along. Why can't it…

I'm proficient in optimizing these UX flaws, and have been unable to land a full time job in two years, even after hundreds of applications.

Nobody cares about quality anymore.

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

#579

Post by TeMPOraL »

kristianc wrote: post #572
anigbrowl wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Effective marketing (not just comms, but real positioning and messaging) is why people can find the right products and services, why small businesses can compete, and why entire industries grow. It's unequivocally a good. If anything, societies suffer when good marketing is absent—because that’s when bad actors fill the void with misinformation, hype, and scammy tactics.

> If anything, societies suffer when good marketing is absent—because that’s when bad actors fill the void with misinformation, hype, and scammy tactics.

Except, marketing too is a market for lemons. Scammy marketing outcompetes good marketing. Simple as that.

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

#580

Post by TeMPOraL »

kortilla wrote: post #398
Henchman21 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

> The fact that murder is on your list but not voting is mind boggling.

It's not. Unlike voting, it has a nonzero chance of improving the app situation.

In this situation, instead of anything on the list above, I recommend going to press/Twitter and stressing the angle that this bullshit actually ruins people's lives permanently (or kills them prematurely).

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