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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

#611

Post by MattGaiser »

doctor_radium wrote: post #71
MattGaiser wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this bank? Are there not other banks that do allow access via branches or online?

You're getting downvoted, but here in a populated but not very interesting part of Pennsylvania there must be 15 different banks or credit unions with brick & mortar offices within 10 miles. I lament that not everyone has this degree of choice, but it's not a fantasy. There may be an online-only bank somewhere in the USA that's app-only, but I wouldn't know. Every bank I've ever encountered has a very functional web…

We have an app only bank in Canada called WealthSimple, but hardly the only choice.

The problem here seems to be that people want the free accounts and low fees of app only banks, but still want the costly things they got rid of that make those possible like branches.

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

#612

Post by tokioyoyo »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #388
tokioyoyo wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m gonna say something stupid — the chances of my phone running out of battery and me not being able to charge it is lower than me losing the paper ticket.

You could lose your phone, or even have it stolen. I think of it as multitasking. A paper ticket means I can focus on reading etc on device, while the ticket can serve its purpose. I keep all pertinent materials in a pouch in front of me however so not hard to find.

At the airport? That’s fine. I’ll just talk to the agent and get a ticket if needed. I think these are just extreme cases that applies to extremely tiny percentage of people.

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

#613

Post by qingcharles »

LinuxBender wrote: post #124

I think this article is city-centric. I am in a rural area in the US and I have only had a smart phone for 2 years and have never installed any apps beyond Mumla that I use for my own self hosted uMurmur server. I have never browsed the web from the phone. My life today is just as it was in the 1970's in that regard. All the businesses here have printed coupons. There are local printed newspapers. I have zero depende…

I live in very rural America. The only thing within 25 miles is a gas station. If I didn't have the gas station's app I would pay a lot more for a lot of the items I buy as they are discounted/on offer/free only on the app.

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

#614

Post by qingcharles »

kxrm wrote: post #217
LinuxBender wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unless it's McDonalds. Then you pay more for not having the app.

Practically every store now significantly subsidizes their products through their apps. Especially all the fast food chains. But even my local rural gas station does. Need that juicy, juicy data and those notifications.

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

#615

Post by Zak »

odiroot wrote: post #507
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…

This is all rather easy on Android. You can have multiple Google (Play) accounts set to different countries. But most app developers don't even enforce it. I had UK bank apps installed through my "German" Google account.

You can also sideload or use something like Aurora Store to access Play Store content without restrictions. Yet another reason iOS is a nonstarter for me.

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

#616

Post by wwalexander »

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…

While doing Instacart deliveries here in Maine, I dropped off a leave-at-the-door order which requires uploading a picture of the shopping bags at the entrance. However, there wasn’t any service in the rural area I was delivering to, and the app required a connection to even open the camera interface. So I had to drive away down the road until I had service, open the camera, drive back to the delivery point, take the picture, then drive away again to upload the picture and complete the order.

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

#617

Post by bxparks »

dehrmann wrote: post #348
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.

Yeah, I remember reading something like that, but isn't the United app required to pay for the meal on the flight, so that they know which credit card to charge? To be honest, I have never been able to understand their payment process, and since the United app doesn't run on my phone, I just gave up on the in-flight meals.

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

#618

Post by lucb1e »

dwedge wrote: post #439

Another thing that irritated me is app designers assuming I have email on my phone. I don't, I use it for work and will use my laptop when I want to check email. Too many apps send you a "magic link" in your email to login with no alternative.

I do have email on my phone and it still doesn't work: the app that triggered the email doesn't have a URL bar so I can't paste the link into there. The link is often also not a real link but the epitome of phishing. After resolving the tracking link to the real link, I need to somehow trick an app into sending a system broadcast event for the OS to notice that there is an app that wants to overwrite valid HTTP(S) URLs and handle them inside this app instead of in a browser

What ever happened to the protocol part of the URL to direct the data to the right software handler, I will probably never understand

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

#619

Post by Marsymars »

dwedge wrote: post #443
null0ranje wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just leave restaurants that have gone to the online-only menu. It's usually an indicator that there are other terrible cuts in service and quality going on as well.

It makes it easier for them to regularly increase pricing without printing new menus. I wonder if any restaurants are doing A/B testing with pricing

I’ve thought of this - if there’s no paper menu available, to avoid tracking, I always just search for the restaurant and navigate to the menu from their webpage rather than using a QR code.

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

#620

Post by lucb1e »

jfengel wrote: post #108

It feels on a par with illiteracy. The motives and circumstances are different, but it's got a similar level of assumption. It's kinda rare and requires significant adaptation, so it's just way easier to assume it doesn't happen. I don't think that a law to help people get smartphones is the answer, the way we made literacy education mandatory. But it's rapidly going to be seen as a handicap.

I don't think a skill is the same as a leased possession

Literacy is something the state funds for you to acquire and that can't simply be taken away

A smartphone is something you need to acquire and manage yourself, and it furthermore needs to comply with the rules set by an overseas corporation: you can choose between Apple or Google services but neither of them needs to take you as a customer while they're gatekeeping access to certain government and most transportation services

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