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

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

#601

Post by lucb1e » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 1:27 AM UTC

JeanMarcS wrote: post #10

My brother doesn't have à smartphone (by choice). For example, he cannot access his bank account via his desktop anymore. He have to go to his agency in person. Well we all did that for years so it's just annoying, because he still have the possibility to do it and it's his choice. But what will happen if all the brick and mortar close ? When will it be mandatory to get a smartphone for his bank app, just to have acc…

> But what will happen if all the brick and mortar close ?

Hello, it's me from the future, reporting live from Germany. My bank is online only and to talk to a person, I need to call the hotline and wait (I shit you not) 20~25 minutes for the PIN input prompt to repeat itself once too many times and time out, handing me off to a very confused human who is wondering how I'm speaking to them unauthenticated (they're very suspicious and will not answer most questions; it's a pretty useless party trick). Alternatively, you can have the answering machine send you an authentication code by snail mail which you can then use once in the next few days to call them one time

I put up with it because the other bank account I applied for rejected me for not being creditworthy (never had a debt in my life, but also no loan, so there is no credit data and apparently that's suspicious; on the other hand, students get accounts there with no problem, so maybe it's a combination of no credit data and age? Or not having citizenship? They're not saying of course, I can only assume it's an illegal reason because why else not say it). The other bank card I own from a neighboring country isn't accepted in most supermarkets, I'd need to bring cash into the country or pay extra for using an ATM abroad. Single European Market is really lovely, you should try it

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

#602

Post by kristianc » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 1:31 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #579

kristianc wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Scammy marketing can sometimes be effective in the short term, but the problem with it it’s inherently self-limiting.

Deceptive brands burn their audiences, lose customer trust, and either get regulated out of existence or collapse under their own churn rates. Meanwhile, companies that invest in clear, honest positioning, strong customer relationships, and long-term brand value consistently outperform in the long run. Apple, Patagonia, and Tesla aren’t winning because they spam pop-ups.

If marketing were purely a race to the bottom, all successful brands would look like clickbait farms. They don’t.

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

#603

Post by greazy » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 1:33 AM UTC

ponector wrote: post #573

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.

Which phone costs $100 that isn't a POS? Honest question because even my discounted mid range motorolla is starting to struggle with some apps.

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

#604

Post by ctrlp » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 1:36 AM UTC

hilbert42 wrote: post #560

ctrlp wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just as easily have cited Aristotle or Augustine or Aquinas or any other philosopher who wrote an ethics. The previous commentator didn't invite a utilitarian-type response. He implicitly posed a question about the justification for the ordering of goods in society. Nothing about that statement is definitively answered (or even satisfyingly questioned) by big-U Utilitarianism. Since you appear to enjoy a li…

Point proven, your comment just confirms what I said earlier: …an(d) why those for and against it take the (usually) entrenched stance that they do. I'm aware of those issues and omissions for brevity's sake. Also, I would point out that what I said was a passing comment on HN and not meant for a paper in a learned philosophical journal. BTW, in case you didn't notice, I never mentioned whether I was for or against u…

My philosophy school was a library card. Am I presuming too much by your handle that you are a lover of the higher mathematics? Although I think it would be hard to derive a workable ethics from number theory, I believe it has been tried. Descartes and Spinoza metaphysics come to mind, but Plato's number magic is probably a more entertaining place to start.

As you say, not relevant to you, but do you think mathematicians generally have some kind of affinity for Utilitarian ethics?

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

#605

Post by listenallyall » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 1:41 AM UTC

thwarted wrote: post #464

roughly wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of having an app is to collect data, show ads, and “engage the customer with the brand.” Any additional capabilities beyond that are incidental.

The delivery driver is not the customer, but I wouldn't be surprised if some MBA bonehead thought showing ads to workers was a win. "They have to use the app to schedule and do the work, so it's a captive audience!"

Why do you think only MBAs have the idea to insert ads? It's not exactly specialized thinking. Plenty of startup founders with technical chops decide to insert ads because they desperately need the revenue.

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

#606

Post by lucb1e » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 1:41 AM UTC

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #199

iforgotpassword wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also because ticking boxes. You just provide an app that fulfills all the silly security requirements for banking apps and then if something goes wrong, the customer has the burden of proving it's the banks fault. I've had my banking app installed on an old Samsung phone running lineageos. I only powered it on when I had to do online banking. At some point I needed to update the app and they started checking for root…

Maybe not for you, but rooted phones are a legitimate risk for users that do sideload pirated games and malware etc. I still think the risks are arbitrary, but I can understand why banks want to avoid rooted phones

Then they should also avoid rooted Windows machines where malware is a legitimate risk and orders of magnitude more prevalent than on mobile. Doing one but not the other is arbitrary and just pushes people towards having a locked-down device that they don't fully control with them all the time (can't uninstall tracking software from the vendor, for example). A locked-down computer that just sits in your office all day would be less worrisome

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

#607

Post by lmm » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 1:42 AM UTC

jagged-chisel wrote: post #587

TeMPOraL wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

So the automaton can’t deliver to the next customer because the app can’t phone home. I don’t see how this benefits anyone.

For the control system, no delivery is better than a delivery that they can't track.

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

#608

Post by lucb1e » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 1:46 AM UTC

philipov wrote: post #152

layer8 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t solve the problem of having to spend time deleting photos and later restoring them back from the archive.

plug in USB cable, drag and drop entire directory from one drive to another with file explorer, is the only reasonable way to manage photos. Get everything off the device at the end of each day. Why would you ever put things back on the phone?

Ah yes, let me just walk home for 20 hours instead of taking a train because I need to first transfer the pictures I took on a trip to my computer before I can install the local transport company's app to get home now that they removed ticket machines from platforms and are telling people to use their app to buy tickets...

I can think of various solutions (from companies not requiring an app in the first place to inserting an SD card) but suggesting that people simply not store user data on their phone is a new one

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

#609

Post by qingcharles » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 1:49 AM 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…

I had to keep two phones for this purpose[0] and pay two cellphone bills, one in the USA and one in the UK. It helped when traveling in Europe though because then you are only paying UK data rates, not USA-on-vacation rates.

It is still an insane situation, though.

[0] LloydsTSB had the same restriction on app store

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

#610

Post by defrost » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 1:50 AM UTC

ctrlp wrote: post #604

hilbert42 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point proven, your comment just confirms what I said earlier: …an(d) why those for and against it take the (usually) entrenched stance that they do. I'm aware of those issues and omissions for brevity's sake. Also, I would point out that what I said was a passing comment on HN and not meant for a paper in a learned philosophical journal. BTW, in case you didn't notice, I never mentioned whether I was for or against u…

My philosophy school was a library card. Am I presuming too much by your handle that you are a lover of the higher mathematics? Although I think it would be hard to derive a workable ethics from number theory, I believe it has been tried. Descartes and Spinoza metaphysics come to mind, but Plato's number magic is probably a more entertaining place to start. As you say, not relevant to you, but do you think mathematic…

In general (there are exceptions) most adhere to the broader set of consequentialism of which utilitarianism is one form of.

A number would say that ethics and morality are subjective and not objective and thus an attempt to apply a utilitarian metric or measure of "good" along with a (partial?) ordering such as "greatest good" is a doomed endeavour.

Few would deny that from this, that would follow (for some specific values of this 'n that).