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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

#711

Post by genewitch »

tdeck wrote: post #178
philipov wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

And then if I want to look at my photos while I'm out, or show them to someone, I don't have them on my phone anymore?

I hear you; in practice I can use my nextcloud server for this, or if I have tailscale turned on in the phone I can even use the synology photo app.

Being forced to upgrade phones... Ugh.

I don't have a solution if you're not me and you're not paying me, though.

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

#712

Post by genewitch »

em-bee wrote: post #47
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?

i can't access any of my online accounts without a phone. one at least still does simple sms, so it doesn't require a smartphone, but it requires a phone nonetheless. the other requires an app. the problem is that this is a trend. more and more banks switch to requiring apps. if we don't fight the trend, then all banks will do it. switching banks now does not work because the new bank does not know that this is the r…

In the US: chase bank, us bank, do not require 2FA unless you don't have a cookie. I don't have to use an app for any of the banks we use.

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

#713

Post by rixed »

TheDong wrote: post #503
rixed wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, maybe something less desperate than voting but appropriate in this case: create a competitor to disrupt the suckers? Maybe using the same API?

The users of the sub-par app are captive, the hospital or insurance company is mandating it, and neither the doctor nor patients are free to choose a competing app. If you create a technically better app for the users, people still won't be able to use it unless you also are chosen by those higher up, and since there's likely already a strong existing relationship between the executives at the existing company and at…

I was just thinking of a better front end for the same API that trifticon mentionned. Still a lot of work of course, but may not require as many approvals.

I wish we lived in a world where all these APIs were open, regulated, and everybody could compete on the implementation on both sides... One day, if capitalism survive technofeudalism...

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

#714

Post by genewitch »

Kwpolska wrote: post #264
jtbayly wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "should the rest of us with smartphones pay for that bank office?” Yes! There are many things you cannot do without a physical bank location. It is worth paying[1] something to have them. I used to use an online-only bank, but I realized I wanted to be able to walk into a branch at times, so I switched to a new bank. [1] “Paying” can mean a variety of things, including lower interest rates on savings accounts, for…

What are those mythical actions that can't be done outside of a physical location? How many of them are things you do ~once in a lifetime, like getting a mortgage?

I need 100 rolls of quarters. I need 500 $2 bills. I need to change my pin on a debit card.

I need to change all these $2 bills and quarters into $20 bills.

Trivial examples that I have done at my bank. Maybe drbit cards now don't need to be put into a machine to change the pin anymore, idk.

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

#715

Post by genewitch »

adrian_b wrote: post #220
Yeul wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By choice. Society doesn't penalize anyone if they decide to go off the grid. Look at it this way: should the rest of us with smartphones pay for that bank office?

At least for me, the problem is not the closing of the brick-and-mortar branches, though that has happened near me, because for the last 25 years I have used those only seldom, preferring on-line banking. What annoys me now is the closing of the on-line banking Web sites, which could be used easily and without any problem from any computer or smartphone, and their replacement with apps, which may force you not only t…

How is this different though. Infrastructure costs money. Apps are the new hotness. The same "well, I don't use it so whatever" you bring is what it seems like the online banking folks are saying to the brick and mortar people.

Has anyone looked at the world lately and thought "hey maybe all these apps aren't the greatest idea"? Amazon, Shein, Temu, AliExpress have all but made history just visiting a mall and browsing.

I know Walmart loved the pandemic, too, because all the mom and pop stores that survived the first 20 years of amazon couldn't survive the local and state and federal government interfering with their commerce.

JoAnns is closing hundreds of stores. This whole subject is on my mind a lot lately.

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

#716

Post by lukan »

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’…

Your argument is, violence is an option, because your preferred candidates don't win as much as you like?

I would see a point in saying voting is pointless, because no matter who you vote for, all end up on the payroll of the people doing enshitification. But not because your side always loose. Because this then won't likely change when you turn to violence - your side will be still the smaller one and we tried the whole voting thing, to not have all arguments solved with bloodshed.

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

#717

Post by a012 »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #401
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 recently travelled to Europe and found that a number of transportation apps disallowed me installing them. Toll road apps, public transit, etc… It was a major pain, and to make it worse I got fined €130 by Ausfinag for not paying tolls, but I couldn’t install their app and I bought the wrong sticker at the gas station because as it turns out there are a bunch of special areas with additional tolls above the base to…

Also as a tourist, I’m glad that DB app just works for me to register and buy tickets so easily with out hassle (though their trains scheduling is the problem)

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

#718

Post by olowe »

strken wrote: post #703
ndriscoll wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perpetual spinner thing happened at my last job too, and I developed the opinion that putting a spinner into your site at all is a sign of incompetence. 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. If you have an animation at all, then your thing is either ridiculously slow or broken. Eit…

As an Australian whose parents have 300kbps internet, please continue to add spinners to your apps. The round trip time to US west is 270ms for a good connection here. That 270ms doesn't include any processing (maybe 60ms or so) and the wifi tax (another 20ms). Then your round trip time gets doubled by HTTPS, which goes up to tripled if you're sending more than 14 KB of data. This means it takes a full second to load…

Imagine the entire UI of an email client becoming inoperable, diplaying "loading..." and a spinner every time you send mail. We don't do it now nor did we do that when 300kbps connections were more common. Spinners are a crutch for undercooked, bad software.

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

#719

Post by johnnyanmac »

yurishimo wrote: post #517
koolba wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s even more asinine is the website can be updated without publishing to an app store. You always have the latest version and all these apps are just a thin veneer on some CRUD endpoints anyway.

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).

Ideally, Web is either for thin clients or text/visual focused content with minimal interaction (i.e. anything more than basic forms). Apps are for when a user needs more control (i.e. important or sensitive data that persists on their hard drive or account) or access to your hardware for proper function (aka, games or other resource-specific/intensive tasks).

In reality, you want to push everything to an app that you can or one day want to monetize. Web is to be avoided except to advertise the app. I hate it with a passion. Easily my least favorite shift over the 2010's. We advanced past flash to make proper use of HTML5, and can now start blur the lines with aspects like Webassembly and PWAs, but corporate is angry that the WWW never properly optimized itself to monetize easily.

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

#720

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

part of that is old perceptions that have long went away. And the other part is the huge push against PWAs, especially from Apple. Web-based app development has come so far but Apple is showing off its control freak tendencies as usual to make it not seem so.

Hearing the story above about infinite loading to hide crashes really boils my blood and shows that it's simply a matter of care these days (and not hardware/bad middleware) that determines how smooth something feels.

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