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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

#751

Post by kelnos »

369548684892826 wrote: post #293
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…

>> 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). Pay-on-exit car parks are the answer to this. Combined with contactless card payment and that's peak parking experience.

> Pay-on-exit car parks are the answer to this. Combined with contactless card payment and that's peak parking experience.

US here (you are presumably elsewhere given that you said "car park"), but I can't remember ever seeing a parking garage that had a parking app. All of them are like you describe, with pay-on-exit.

I mainly see parking apps for street parking (where pay-on-exit can't work), and sometimes more basic parking lots where there isn't room for the entry/exit gate and hardware, or lots where it's bare-bones enough that the owner certainly isn't going to spring for the expense of installing something like that.

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

#752

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

Yeul wrote: post #61
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…

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?

What I'm stating below is my general understanding of this subject, If I'm wrong and if you i.e the reader have investigated sufficiently on the subject let me know.

>Society doesn't penalize anyone if they decide to go off the grid

While they don't penalize you, they do make it extremely difficult, if not impossible to go completely off grid. Try putting up your own 'grid', which in IMO should include your own monetary system, and not having to pay taxes.

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

#753

Post by kelnos »

noqc wrote: post #306
crazygringo wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not stupid at all. I think that's the case for most people. It's easy to lose a random piece of paper. Whereas people are generally extremely aware of where their phone is at all times.

It's not that hard to maintain a random piece of paper, you do it with your ID, which presumably you do not keep on your phone. It is much harder to ensure an iPhone won't randomly be miscalibrated and shut off at 30%.

My ID is not a random piece of paper. A boarding pass is.

I have never ever in my life lost my ID or my phone. I have lost paper boarding passes on several occasions.

The failure modes of a phone don't really matter; if the phone fails for some reason (still has never happened to me), I can always ask a gate agent to print me a boarding pass.

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

#754

Post by tuna74 »

dalke wrote: post #218
hkwerf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to install an app to communicate with my child's state-sponsored daycare. I'll have to install an app to communicate with the teachers at his future school. Is this still fine? It'd be one thing, if it were just apps. But all of these apps are essentially just containers for some web application. Do you get access to the web application without the app? No. So what's the point of the apps? So they can send you…

Here in Sweden, it took me about 5 months but I was able to get the school to send me info by email. They switched to an app-only system, and I have no smartphone. Setting aside any issues related to privacy or US corporate control over my life, I'm one of the people who doesn't use a smartphone because the temptation to be online, at the drop of the hat, is too much to resist. I compare it to being like someone who…

I live in Sweden with two kids in school and can do everything through the web (except BankId authentication of course).

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

#755

Post by kelnos »

what wrote: post #661
crazygringo wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not stupid at all. I think that's the case for most people. It's easy to lose a random piece of paper. Whereas people are generally extremely aware of where their phone is at all times.

I don’t know why you keep calling it a “random” piece of paper? It’s really not hard to keep track of your physical boarding pass for a few hours.

It's not hard, certainly. But I have lost paper boarding passes a few times. I've never lost my phone, though.

I just like not having to keep track of an extra thing. Travel is already often stressful; having one fewer thing to keep on me and avoid losing is nice.

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

#756

Post by silon42 »

ndriscoll wrote: post #283
fifticon wrote: post #120

My doctor/'s office was just forced to switch to app-instead-of-website for patient interation. Ironically, the old and this new software came from same megacorp I work for (different department, same story). The old web interface was rather good and rather sensible-practical-sane. It was almost as if someone had asked a doctor what he actually needed for his patients, and then understood his answer and also managed…

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…

150 ms is really bad... in mid 90s, 50 was considered the upper limit before some "busy" indicator was to be shown... these days, I'd consider 20ms to the limit of "good".

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

#757

Post by kelnos »

cbozeman wrote: post #285
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…

> > 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). Yeah... nothing more I love than having to scan a QR code to get an app from someone I don't know, then go through the signup process, then input a buncha personal i…

> 10 quarters

I can't remember the last time I had any quarters on me, let alone 10. Coins are annoying to carry around, and I don't drive enough or park in paid lots/areas enough to expect that I'll remember to ensure that I always have change in my car.

> Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer.

While I do have a printer now (at my wife's request), I went a good 20 years without one, and was fine with that.

> They're not expensive.

That's a weird take. Even if the printer itself isn't that expensive, keeping it fed with ink/toner can be. Not to mention they're just annoying pieces of hardware, with usually-shitty software, that take up precious desk real-estate.

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

#758

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

arrowsmith wrote: post #98
alabastervlog wrote: post #90

The entire history of technology is our becoming dependent on one invention after another, such that anyone with any interest in the area(s) that invention touches no longer has a realistic choice not to use it. They may technically be able to, but only through outsize sacrifice that leaves them worse off than they would have been before the thing was invented.

Hi Ted.

I too was thinking that...

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

#759

Post by kelnos »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #391
realityking wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah... nothing more I love than having to scan a QR code to get an app from someone I don't know, then go through the signup process, then input a buncha personal information into an app... instead of just dropping 10 quarters into a metal stick and walking away for the next two hours. Quality of execution obviously matters. I find EasyPark (Swedish company, used all over the place) a lot better than the usual par…

The point is all these things should be options, not single points of failure. We should be able to pay by coin/tap, or app when at a place we frequent. Apps should use a single system per region, props for being an open standard. We have the technology.

I don't think anyone is arguing that. While I wouldn't be surprised if app-only parking situations exist, I have never encountered one. Every place I've needed to park that had an app also offered the ability to pay with card (and often cash) at a meter or machine.

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

#760

Post by Symbiote »

scarface_74 wrote: post #576
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. > p…

I think it was Kyiv's airport (so I can't check) but their flight times were not all rounded to the nearest 10 minutes.

I liked this, as finding the single 12:34 flight was much quicker than looking at the 4+ flights all with "12:30" at another airport, where on the display each line is rotating between multiple flight numbers, airlines and languages.

Personally, even if I'm using an app I still look at the screens to check. A notification might not have been sent, or my phone might have dropped off the airport wifi leaving me with no connection, or roaming might have stopped working.

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