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

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/feb/22/the-tyranny-of-apps-those-without-smartphones-are-unfairly-penalised-say-campaigners

by zeristor • 1 year ago

788 821 1 year ago

theguardian.com

mschild• 1 year ago

I hate this trend with a passion. Digital can make a lot things easier, but frankly speaking for a majority of those use cases a mobile website will do just fine as well.

My bank is digital only and doesn't have any local branches. That works for me and is fine. It's not like I'm switching banks every few weeks. They still have an all phone line access as well though. You can call people round the clock to do transfers, get your balance, etc. Even my analog grandmother has her bank account with them.

On the other hand, you have restaurants and other businesses that just over do it. There is a restaurant around my work place that I went to once or twice a month. Nothing special but fair prices and good lunch menus. Then they went all digital. Want a menu? Scan this barcode. Want to order? Create an account and place you order with your table number. Want to pay? You can click pay on your phone and enter your details. Don't have a phone? Totally sorry, we don't have any printed back-ups and our servers don't have any card terminals anymore anyway.

unsupp0rted• 1 year ago

He does own a smartphone – an Apple iPhone he bought secondhand about three years ago – but says: “I don’t use apps at all. I don’t download them for security reasons.”

Yes and?

He makes a choice and he is being penalized for it. Presumably the benefits for him outweigh the costs. For Richard Stallman they do.

There is no innate human right to grocery store coupons or private parking lots.

hkwerf• 1 year ago

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 notifications and annoy you with irrelevant updates concerning other groups at the same daycare all day long, because they don't care to filter?

froglets• 1 year ago

Once they get into school you’ll need to use separate apps to communicate with their teachers, pay for fee/lunches, etc.

The communication apps are out of control since the teachers seem to have choice in what is required and so changes every year.

My middle schooler needs 3 different apps (and a Chromebook) to check/hand in homework and parents need 2 to receive communication from the teachers.

dalke3• 1 year ago

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 needs to lose weight, so keeps all chocolate out of the house, while everyone seems to expect me to have a luscious bar of high quality chocolate with me all the time, just sitting there, begging me to eat it.

There is an ongoing debate about smartphones at school, and the addiction and distraction they can be for kids. I think my strongest argument is that the addiction and distraction don't simply disappear for adults, and there was no way they were going to force me to get a smartphone.

I don't think that would work for those with a smartphone, but it's a crack keeping an alternative open.

timmb• 1 year ago

The parking lots mentioned are municipal not private.

rs1864• 1 year ago

Thank you for pointing this out. However, it seems that HN crowd really doesn't like this kind of viewpoint. "If you cannot do everything without a smart phone, that's the society's fault, not yours.", as echoed by comments under my (also downvoted) comment.

Many people here seem to have trouble understanding how the world works. If all you do is complain (which will change nothing) instead of adapt, good luck with your miserable life.

mindslight3• 1 year ago

Because it's dismissive, sophomoric, and can be applied to literally anything you might complain about - eg "If you don't like how the 'HN crowd' votes, then stop coming here". In reality, Exit is not the only option.

goodpoint• 1 year ago

Privacy is very much a human right and it's being violated all the time.

invalidname8• 1 year ago

That's like saying the tyranny of credit cards prevents me from enjoying discounts in some venues. Or that the tyranny of educational system prevents me from working as a doctor.

No, I don't like installing apps for every stupid parking lot or restaurant. But calling it "tyranny" is clickbait and bad journalism. I pay more for my sons bus pass because I don't want him to have a smartphone.

That's a choice I made. My solution isn't to make everyone else pay more because the same discount can't be given without a smartphone. I see why businesses would want to reward me when I let them send me push notifications. Again, not even remotely tyranny. If anything this is tyranny of bad writing.

rwmj2• 1 year ago

If the app is required - which has happened already (eg. bank apps, car charging) or could happen in the future - then I think it's reasonable to call this bad. Maybe not a "tyranny", we'd probably want to reserve that for the government doing it, but not good news.

invalidname8• 1 year ago

Why?

It's a tool. Do you complain when the bank requires you to sign something with a pen?

We require computers today for many things. Why not force websites to provide phone service with exactly the same pricing. Guess what the effect will be? Higher prices.

The same is true with apps, some things make no financial sense without them.

JeanMarcS• 1 year ago

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 access to his money ?

And it's just an example...

cenamus• 1 year ago

I really felt that when I was waiting for a replacement display from china for about 3 months...

If you want to do stuff at a physical bank you pay fees for everything, if there's even a branch still open close to you.

Can't even buy bus tickets without an app (tracks your journey with GPS of course), without paying more, even at ticket machines in the busses.

hypeatei• 1 year ago

If you want to do stuff at a physical bank you pay fees for everything

This hasn't been my experience at all in the US. If you need something in-person, going to the bank is the best option since they don't charge fees like a random ATM does.

MattGaiser2• 1 year ago

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

em-bee2• 1 year ago

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 reason you switched, and the old bank is also unlikely to track this detail.

doctor_radium3• 1 year ago

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 site.

sumuyuda• 1 year ago

The solution is that banks should support any TOTP client for authentication and not just their proprietary app. So you can use open source software or a hardware key.

everdrive3• 1 year ago

But they won't. HN is quite good at suggesting a lot of genuinely intelligent and valid potential technical solutions, but most banks won't even think about supporting TOTP broadly. They'll lean into smartphones and apps because this is where the bast majority of their customers are. In this case the 'tyranny' is the overwhelming preference of other people. The masses have spoken, and they want everything to be on their phones.

Kwpolska5• 1 year ago

Can your TOTP client show what operation you’re approving? Because my bank app can.

sebazzz• 1 year ago

The ING has a small Android based single-purpose authenticator device they offer to customers without smartphones. It can scan the QR code and do the auth.

ekianjo2• 1 year ago

the solution is to let the market do its work and move to another bank?

em-bee2• 1 year ago

in many places there is no bank that offers an alternative

bloak• 1 year ago

I rather get the impression that the market doesn't always work like economists would like it to work. But do we really need competing banks just for the basic stuff like processing payments? It seems plausible that it's a good idea to have multiple competing banks for the more complex services but perhaps the basic processing of payments could be handled by the government, which already has the monopoly of providing the currency in the first place. Just a thought. Free markets are a tool, not a religion, right?

Some people might insist that a government monopoly would be worse but here in the UK I've noticed that government web sites are usually less crap than web sites created by the private sector.

teeray2• 1 year ago

Voting with your feet only works if there’s somewhere else for you to walk to.

jasdi• 1 year ago

Good news is we are already hitting upper limits of how many people we can reach via apps/smartphone/internet.

Limits that in the past 2 decades (of scaling) the people who built these Platforms didn't have to think about. Now they do. And they are coming under serious pressure because they have built out more Supply than there is Demand.

For example, we got the explosive growth of Netflix. Everyone sees that and piles into streaming. When growth slows in one country they immediately move into another and they keep growing until they run out of countries to expand into. So Netflix has been in India (a country advertised as having zillions of consumers) for nearly 10 years now but they haven't found more than 25 million paying subscribers. Learning takes time. And everyone is learning there are limits to growth based purely on the online model.

porridgeraisin2• 1 year ago

While I agree with your overarching point re:saturation,

haven't found more than 25 million subscribers

There is a metric ton of demand for steaming services in India.. just that amazon prime and hotstar.com took most of the market. Most of this is due to pricing:

Prime: 999 INR/year Netflix: 650 INR/month

Recently they've tried segmenting.. by packaging a single-device 720p-only plan along with the telecom plans, and I'd bet that's the majority of their customer base today since people get it for free. They also have a deal with samsung and other companies that make mid-range phones which most people in india own to have netflix pre-installed. So this + the telecom plans is the way they count them as users.

To be fair, amazon packages theirs with the 1-day delivery service on amazon.in, so it's a bit of an unfair advantage there. But even if you compare with hotstar, they charge 1499/year, which is about 1/6th of netflix's price.

Again to be fair, live cricket streaming is _huge_ here, and people get hotstar for that anyways, so a bit of an unfair advantage again.

Even twitch managed to make price cuts here. I bet netflix can as well. I doubt regional content production is actually a problem for somebody like netflix.

Yeul2• 1 year ago

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?

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B• 1 year ago

It’s a bad rebuttal because you’re paying for the phone, and the bank pays for their office with what they gain from credits, stock market stuff…

If the bank had no office it wouldn’t be cheaper.

elpocko• 1 year ago

That's a huge jump from "no smartphone" to "off the grid."

I prefer using laptops and I prefer doing my banking on my laptop. I'm online a lot. I do have a smartphone, usually an older one, for calls, messaging, playing music and taking photos. I even have an old Samsung tablet, for reading ebooks.

It should be possible to do your banking from a laptop.

I just don't want apps on my phone, because they will track me, I don't like using apps on the phone in general, and banking apps in particular because the bank wants to control what I can and can't do with my own phone. Want a rooted phone? No banking for you.

mariusor2• 1 year ago

I have a smartphone. However I choose to use a mobile OS that is neither Android nor iOS, why should I get penalized that banks don't invest in applications for my OS too?

hilbert428• 1 year ago

"Look at it this way: should the rest of us with smartphones pay for that bank office?"

To answer that question with any degree of rigor one has to go back to the beginning and study the works of Bentham, Mill and others—and the many issues that surround utility and utilitarian principles. This involves such issues as the greatest good for the greatest number, greed overpowering well established moral norms and the fact that the majority of modern states and cities were founded on utilitarian models where a lot of give-and-take was involved before workable consensuses were achieved.

Think twice, the obvious solution doesn't always turn out to be the most optimal one.

jtbayly• 1 year ago

"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 example.

adrian_b4• 1 year ago

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 to have a smartphone but also to be a customer of Apple or Google, because some banks refuse to provide their Android apps otherwise than through the Google app store.

dennis_jeeves24• 1 year ago

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.

dumbfounder• 1 year ago

Then you will need to use an app.

captainbland• 1 year ago

In the UK loads of bank branches have closed. They've opened up "hubs" which are a joke, some are open only have weekend opening hours of Saturday morning and you usually have to travel to a different town to get to it.

morkalork• 1 year ago

I had some hilariously degenerate experiences with this recently. There are basic services that branches won't provide at all anymore like cashing cheques, which can be annoying in some circumstance. But the real dumb one was being blocked from taking a certain action in the online banking with a message like "present yourself with 2 forms of government ID at a local branch". OK. Fine. Drive there, wait in line, blah blah blah. The teller looks at me like I'm crazy when I say that online banking sent me there. They figure it out, do the KYC process, unblock me and I say great now can you do the thing I was trying to do before all this? "No, you must use online banking for that."

SilasX• 1 year ago

Related issue: how every website seems to migrate to some smartphone-optimized version that looks like a mobile app blown up to a bigger screen that works much worse on desktop. Hall of Shame: Twitter, Facebook, even Vanguard.

What's even more confusing/frustrating is that, despite being developed with very elaborate, mature frameworks, they still lack basic UI accommodations, like making clickable elements detectable by add-ons, or allowing you to open up a detail view in a new tab.

I get if Joe Shmoe's cobbled-together app forgets some things, but why wouldn't stuff like that be rolled in as a default, with all the development hours applied to it?

mrweasel2• 1 year ago

My bank is developing a new version of their online banking solution. They've decided to model in on their app, which I refuse to use because it's absolutely garbage. So now I have a online banking platform that can't do copy/paste on, hides much of the relevant information and is generally much harder to use than the old version.

I've provide feedback on multiple occasions, but I don't have high hopes for them to fix anything. If I where running a business and to use the site every day I'd be pissed and threatening to move my business else where.

SkiFire13• 1 year ago

My bank used to provide you with a small TOTP device the size of a usb key. Sadly they eventually deprecated it and recently dismissed it entirely in favor of their increadibly slow app.

pseingatl2• 1 year ago

With a text sent to your phone for TFA. Which means you can't access your accou nt if you travel. You could always access it with the TOTP device.

adrian_b4• 1 year ago

While I have a smartphone, I choose to not have a Google account.

One of the banks that I am using has terminated its on-line banking service, which I had been using for almost 20 years, replacing it with an app.

That would not have been a problem if they would have provided the app themselves on their Web site, but they refuse to do this and they provide the app only in the Google on-line store, which I cannot use because I do not have a Google account, despite the fact that the app is free.

Therefore I have reduced a lot the number of operations that I do through that bank, redirecting them to another bank, which still has on-line banking on their Web site. Fortunately, for now the bank that has closed their on-line banking Web site still keeps an SMS service, which allows me e.g. to check the balance of my account from my phone and which notifies me about the transactions on my credit card.

Many years ago, I have closed all my accounts at a bank that has annoyed me by updating their on-line banking Web site so that it no longer accepted any browsers except Microsoft Internet Explorer. At that time I have hoped that it will be the last time when I leave a bank because they believe that they can force their customers to also be customers of unrelated third parties, but now this problem with Google has appeared.

I am not a US citizen and the bank is not from USA. I doubt that it can be legal for a bank here in Europe to condition their services by their customer becoming the customer of a foreign entity that is Google. However I cannot afford to waste time and money to determine the legality of their actions.

ajolly• 1 year ago

Can you use Aurora store? https://auroraoss.com/ (That's what I use when I don't want to put a Google account on an Android phone)

pseingatl2• 1 year ago

The advantage of having to go to the branch in person is that KYC is never an issue.

lucb1e12• 1 year ago

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

renegade-otter• 1 year ago

I use my phone primarily for messaging. In fact, I often forget and have the Anti-Distraction mode turned on, so I only get important comms but no app notifications.

SIDENOTE

People need to chill out with the word "tyranny". It's like saying that you are being "assaulted" by a different opinion, or claiming that ordinary platform moderation is "censorship". You are not being terrorized, assaulted, or censored.

There are people in the world who are truly subjected to those things, and you have NO idea what that's actually like.

stavros• 1 year ago

I think you're in a very small minority if you think that someone using the phrase "tyranny of notifications" is implying they live under a dictatorial regime. Most people just understand the hyperbole.

dmos622• 1 year ago

You say it's just a hyperbole as if the comparison being made (dictatorship or violence or whatever) has no meaning for the speaker or the listener.

yallpendantools2• 1 year ago

I agree on two points in your sidenote. The first is that online moderation is rarely, if ever, "censorship". The second thing is that the majority of us have no idea what it's actually like being terrorized or assaulted.

That said, words can take on different meanings depending on context. We can only imagine the tyranny of being a prisoner of war but we can also complain about the tyranny of noise pollution in modern cities; that doesn't mean I think they're equal. I know some people suffer assault domestically but I can also label some perfumes as an assault to the senses; it doesn't lessen the gravity of the former. And yes, Calvin, you are allowed to think your household is a den of censorship and oppression (https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....).

My problem with gatekeeping words is that it is performative. We can indeed chill out on using these words save for their most extreme interpretations but it doesn't really help anyone suffering from these things and just makes language less colorful for the rest of us. And, once more, nor does their usage dismiss the extent of any of these situations because you don't need to be a genius to know that words can have subtle changes in meaning depending on context.

mathverse• 1 year ago

In my country the same reason is used to make things more expensive and give contracts via nepotism to allow for "alternative use without apps" to companies to make the whole thing through SMS or physical office while making the whole thing expensive for everyone and inefficient.

nonrandomstring2• 1 year ago

It is not "unfair". We choose to resist technofascism.

underseacables• 1 year ago

It is unfair. A close friend of mine has brain damage, is low income, and he can't really use a smart phone. He just has a simple flip phone and it's all he has. It has been isolating for him with working and managing his life.

nonrandomstring2• 1 year ago

Tell your friend what good company he is in, as one of many, many of us, who do not fit a fleeting mythical stereotype. There are hundreds of reasons why people can not or will not use smartphones. Eyesight. Dexterity. Poverty. Location tracking by hostiles. Privacy. Poor memory. Security needs. Environmental concerns...

We should not play the victims. Being without one of those cursed things is a blessing. We get good mental health. We get focus and calm. We get a profound sense of freedom, time to think, to create, to talk to real people, to see the world go by. We learn to enjoy being bored. We interact with other real people. We willingly pay more for freedom and privacy.

What we lose is being tied up in pointless abusive machinations of an already dying "online" culture, one that is over-extended, fragile, dysfunctional, and we dodge much of the abusive enshitified corporate hell that every living being now hates.

Please, big-up your friend instead of painting him as a victim.

everdrive3• 1 year ago

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.

xandrius2• 1 year ago

Can't say they are expensive anymore, you can get an updated android phone for less than $50 new or less second hand.

Can't say about monthly plans, as that depends on the country.

Privacy is a different matter and always dependent on the technical literacy as opposed to hard costs.

deadlydose• 1 year ago

It's still an additional 'tax' on individuals.

wccrawford2• 1 year ago

As I noted in my other comment, you don't even need a cell plan. You can just use wifi. Your own, your neighbor's, a nearby coffee shop, etc.

everdrive3• 1 year ago

I think that ends up pretty nuanced. A cheap $50 Android will receive security updates for one year if you're lucky. So now you have a choice between buying a new cheap phone yearly, forgoing security, or being technically savvy enough to put a 3rd party OS on your phone. With regard to privacy, smart phones really don't have options for privacy unless you go with a 3rd party OS. And, if you do so, you might not even be able to run the various apps which the various businesses require. I just don't see this as a valid alternative.

nehal3m• 1 year ago

The larger point is that to use the mainstream apps you would buy a smartphone for, you are forced into a contract (or at least to agree to terms of service) with one of two third parties, Apple or Google.

wccrawford2• 1 year ago

A landline phone is about the cost of a cheap smartphone, and the landline itself costs about as much as the cheapest cell plans.

But you actually don't need either of those. You just need the cheapest Android cellphone or tablet you get, and access to someone's wifi, which is freely available at many coffee shops, or from neighbors.

I still agree you shouldn't need it, especially if you already have a computer. But it's only "expensive" if you choose the higher tiers.

fsflover3• 1 year ago

You just need the cheapest Android cellphone or tablet

So no security updates and any app can stop working any moment. And all your data are at Google, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261

ale423• 1 year ago

A landline phone doesn't spy on you, and has often better audio quality (unless you're in an area with great cell coverage). And you can also use the mobile network with a "feature phone", like those that were around until smartphones arrived, they're still around.

squigz• 1 year ago

But you actually don't need either of those. You just need the cheapest Android cellphone or tablet you get, and access to someone's wifi, which is freely available at many coffee shops, or from neighbors.

The cheapest device you can get will be unusably slow - good luck doing anything out and about without inconveniencing everyone else while you wait for your device to load and pray the app opens in a timely fashion. Oh, that is, if your outdated device can even download and run it.

Access to wifi isn't really as ubiquitous as you make it seem either - what if the business you're needing to use the app for doesn't have wifi? Run down the street to the coffee shop?

agumonkey3• 1 year ago

Depending on where you live, a smartphone can be bought for 100 bucks and a basic line (voice, messages, 2GB of data) for less than 5 bucks. It's not ideal but it's not a sacrifice anymore.

derac3• 1 year ago

You can also use wifi. Even free wifi. You can get a very nice used phone with many years of updates for 100 dollars. You can find a worse phone for much less if you really want to.

edit: You can even get a free phone from your community. Possibly a better one than the a53. Most people have a phone or several in a drawer.

https://swappa.com/listings/samsung-galaxy-a53-5g?carrier=un...

AAAAaccountAAAA• 1 year ago

If having a smartphone and a cellular plan will become an absolute requirement to partake in the society, carriers certainly are going to hike prices. Here in Finland, cellular plans used to be very cheap, but now the prices have been soaring after the society has become more and more reliant on the phones.

jdietrich• 1 year ago

The UK is an incredibly competitive and well-regulated market. If you're in receipt of welfare benefits, you can get a tariff with unlimited 5G data for £12 ($15) per month. If you're a light user, you can get a tariff with a few gigabytes of data for as little as £5 ($6.50) per month.

https://smarty.co.uk/social-tariff

A cheap but perfectly useable phone costs less than £100 new from a brand like Xiaomi, Motorola or TCL; on any high street, you'll find a shop selling second-hand phones for as little as £30. I cannot think of any object in human history that provides so much utility for so little money.

OkayPhysicist2• 1 year ago

This is actually something the US does pretty well, actually. The Lifeline Assistance Program (colloquially known as "Obama Phones") gives low income people (basically anyone who qualifies for food stamps) a phone, with calling and internet, at no cost to the individual.

ale423• 1 year ago

Totally true that smartphones are useful. But people can decide they don't want one for many reasons, including not wanting to accept 20-pages-long T&C just to turn them on, and surrendering lots of personal data. If you're a lot into tech stuff, you might go around that by blocking most data collection, but most people don't have the competence for this, or have better things to do with their lives.

4k93n2• 1 year ago

if only i was that simple. you will still need to swap it for a newer phone every once in a while when the OS stops being supported, and have to transfer the apps and auth to the new device which is not always straight forward

brainwad• 1 year ago

This has always been the case though. Before the smartphone, it was computers and internet; before that it was landline phone service. Both of the latter were far more expensive than a modern smartphone, so we are actually making progress in reducing barriers to social participation.

ale423• 1 year ago

Landlines didn't spy on people. Computers and Internet, well, depends on which OS you are on, but there are options that don't. What about smartphones? IMHO that's the big issue, not what they cost.

Hackbraten• 1 year ago

Internet browsers exist for many OSes. To use a web-based service, you don’t need a mandatory account with a platform tech giant.

Almost all mobile apps today are Android/iOS only and require an App Store/Play Store account.

OkayPhysicist2• 1 year ago

Before that, government services required phone calls, or fixed addresses to receive mail, or a free public transit program to get people to government buildings. Comparatively, it's a lot easier and cheaper to just give the needy smartphones and data plans. Hence the Lifeline Assistance Program (Obama phones), which does just that.

ponector3• 1 year ago

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

greazy• 1 year ago

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.

kpmcc• 1 year ago

Somewhat unrelated to the piece, but this is the second website I’ve seen in two days that appears to not have properly merged an edit?

“ The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, says many people are overwhelmed by the multitude of apps they have to use, “when in reality you want one that you like and you’re happy using and that you can use everywhere”.

Six years ago the Department for Transport started developing a “national parking platform” (NPP) designed to enable drivers to use one app of their choice to pay for all their parking. It has been trialled by a number of councils, but a big question mark hangs over its future as public funding for the project looks likely to be withdrawn.

The RAC’s head of policy Simon Williams says many people are overwhelmed by the multitude of apps they have to use, “when in reality you want one that you like and you’re happy using and that you can use everywhere”.

Six years ago the Department for Transport started developing a “national parking platform” (NPP) designed to enable drivers to use one app of their choice to pay for all their parking, and it has been trialled by a number of councils. However, a big question mark now hangs over its future as public funding for the project looks likely to be withdrawn imminently.”

I think the other one was an npr piece posted on HN yesterday? Is there a bug with wordpress or are people just getting sloppy?

aspect0545• 1 year ago

I doubt the guardian and npr use Wordpress

nooneisanon• 1 year ago

Typos and editing bugs are pretty common on The Guardian

[source: grumpy Guardian Weekly subscriber]

4ndrewl• 1 year ago

The Guardian is also known as the Grauniad for their lack of detail to grammar, spelling etc .

rs1864• 1 year ago

Very weird logic. As the article points out, this is an intentional choice for many people. So you shoulder the consequences, that seems fair to me?

I don't currently drive a car, and to be honest, I have anxiety about driving. I could bitch about how US is hostile to people who don't drive, to the point that it's difficult to go to places/get things done, but that's useless. I can 1) move to NYC and never leave the city 2) get a car, work on my anxiety, and start enjoying life or 3) talk to Guardian and complain all day long. 1) is not actually a bad choice, and literally millions of people choose that, but I am working on 2) because that's the sensible thing to do. If I intentionally choose not to drive, not because of a physical disability or not being to afford a car, I bear the consequences.

like_any_other2• 1 year ago

We all shoulder the consequences of slowly sliding into a society of lock-in and surveillance, which is what unnecessarily requiring smartphones advances. That there are choices along the way doesn't make it fair - if I let you choose which of your fingers I cut off, am I being fair? Wait a few years, and the "choice" will be between living in the woods, and carrying an always-on telescreen with you at all times.

rs1864• 1 year ago

if I let you choose which of your fingers I cut off, am I being fair?

That's not what we are discussing here.

You can't use whatever irrelevant analogy you like to prove a point that doesn't exist.

tim3333• 1 year ago

I do drive and the having do download a bunch of parking apps is a pain the arse. And for each one you have to spend five minutes entering your address card number etc.

kome• 1 year ago

I didn't own a smartphone until 2022. Now, after three years of carrying this dopamine-slothed brick, I’m ditching it—but first, let’s autopsy the “security” demands forcing ownership.

Peak security theater: banks (at least in Europe) mandate smartphones as “safe,” yet the device itself is the ultimate attack vector.

- 2FA apps? Single point of failure (SIM-jacking, zero-days, bricked phone = locked out of life).

- Mandatory apps? Swapped phishing for supply-chain attacks + 24/7 location leaks.

- Biometrics? Your face now lives in a corp database that will get breached.

The irony? A YubiKey was objectively safer: no GPS, mic, or app permissions. But we’ve normalized “security” as surrender to surveillance capitalism. Banks want your data, not hardware tokens.

Smartphones manufacture threats:

- AirTag stalking requires… a smartphone to detect.

- Signal/encrypted chat? Tied to a phone number (→ ID → surveillance graph).

- “Find My Phone” = backdoor with a UX polish.

The system isn’t securing you, it’s securing access to you. Every forced 2FA method is another node to map, monetize, and manipulate.

btw. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41310150 - old ASK NH of mine, i still welcome ideas.

ecef9-8c0f-4374• 1 year ago

Not only do I need a smartphone for "everything" in my live.(managing my local gym membership for example) I also only have the choice between two us companies: Google or Apple. I had an ubuntu smartphone at some point but it's practically useless. If I want a appointment with my doctor in Germany living in the same street as I, the Californian Company Google has to be involved for some reason.

crossroadsguy• 1 year ago

It is not even about privacy and safety or freedom of choice really. Besides very soon - in this duopoly you really will not be owning phones or even access to apps would be limited/controlled to more draconian measures than it is today.

Anyways. I took an auto ride few weeks back and an old gentleman picked me up. He did have a tattered smartphone. But he didn't have the UPI app or a QR code (QR is the way here; UPI the instant payment thingie in India). He was not agitated but really looked embarrassed and helpless and told me in broken English he tried a few times but he forgets many kinds of PINs and messes up and his bank account gets blocked and then he has to run around with documents to get it unblocked and then again. I had some cash and I was able to pay him. But it's horrible. There are people for whom cash is the ONLY way. Even going to the bank (or ATM; which anyway is still a difficulty for me) means sometimes half to one day's work gone. Just like that. This has a lot to do with political climate changes. So many people get trampled over without any check and balances because they have the vote without a voice or any real power.

I think a lot of us, and for many of us who tap and pay at a Starbucks as if it's bill there lowest currency denomination in our consciousness, never stop to try and understand this and realise this. This is not merely inconvenience in huge part of this planet - it's a real life pain. I don't think even this article considered such a case/life struggles due to smartphones and everything getting tied to a SIM et cetera.

mistrial92• 1 year ago

ok - but despite this well-meaning story.. the answer IMO is still cash; use it, support it, continue it. The alternatives are not stable over time -- not a joke.

Arch-TK• 1 year ago

Those without smartphones _and_ those who do not wish to install trash on their smartphones, _and_ those who do not wish to use Android (or an Android build blessed by the corporations) or iOS.

yallpendantools2• 1 year ago

I had a tangential experience to this phenomenon lately. I moved continents a few years ago. Eventually I had to switch my Play Store country to where I moved. That restricted my access to certain versions of apps but my downloaded apps continued to function anyway.

Then, a few months ago, I finally bought a new phone. I quickly found out that there was no way I could get this one banking app from my home country on the new phone (other than switching my country setting again, which isn't worth the potential hassle right now). Fortunately, I could still do online banking with on my browser...right?

I try to login to my online banking. They say they will send me an OTP on my registered mobile number. Makes sense, and, thanks to the wonders of roaming, I will be able to receive it. Except...instead of just sending me the actual OTP like any sane platform would do, I had to first confirm that I was, indeed, trying to sign-in to online banking by replying "YES" to their SMS prompt. And due to the wonders of SMS roaming protocol, though I could receive their messages, I simply could not reply to them no matter which gods I invoke.

Security design by committee. I curse the manager who though this was a necessary and valuable addition to the whole OTP scheme.

It's not so much a "convenience tax" as in the article but, I guess, a penalty for moving countries. I have no choice now but simply to just settle this when I go on vacation to my home country. There is probably no convenient resolution to this even when I am in the correct geospace.

PS. I have two banks from home country and I was able to install the other bank's app in my new phone without a hitch. I try to avoid cynicism but this simply has the stink of Managerial Software Engineering Best Practices all over it.

doctor_radium3• 1 year ago

And at the bakery chain Greggs, you can collect loyalty “stamps” for free food and drink and get “exclusive app-only gifts”. You currently get a free hot drink just for downloading the app.
McDonald’s is running a high-profile promotion called Deal Drop, where it offers items at “bargain” prices, such as a classic Big Mac for £1.49 (normally £4.99) and a children’s Happy Meal for £1.99 (normally £3.59) – but all of the discounts are available exclusively with the company’s app.

The article paints a painstakingly detailed photo of the UK's app culture, but fails to explain exactly why app users are entitled to such discounts. What exactly is McDonald's doing with your data that is worth a whopping £3.50 Big Mac discount, and more?? Why is the app so important?? I have never found an article that does more than scratch the surface on this topic. Any suggestions?

cue_the_strings• 1 year ago

I think such discounts are not as much because of the data, they're a way to tier your customers, similar to coupons.

That way you both get to take the full price from people whose time is expensive enough that they won't bother with the apps, and also those who wouldn't pay the full price but have enough time to use the apps.

I never eat McD's, but I see the pattern everywhere. If you make between the minimum and average wage in Slovenia and don't own property, you practically can't get by without dedicating 6h per week to grocery shopping in various different 'discount' chains (Lidl, Hofer AKA Aldi Sud, Euro Spin), keeping up with the weekly discount catalogs and using all the app discounts (more recently).

tim3333• 1 year ago

As a user of Greggs and McD (UK) I can maybe offer some insight.

Fairly obviously the discounts are to encourage customer loyalty so you keep going to McD rather than somewhere healthier. Also to get you to come back - if you haven't been for ages they may offer a 99p big mac to get you back in.

As to why apps rather than paper coupons, my closest McD has a typically had group of about 20 people waiting for the 50 items they ordered with new stuff ordered every 30 seconds or so. The last thing the low wage rushed staff need are customers going can you explain this coupon to me an is it valid for extra fries on Friday etc.

owlbite• 1 year ago

I've also seen it explained that it's part of their toolset in extracting maximum "value" from a customer.

Richer customers self-select to pay higher prices without the app as they can't be bothered faffing around to find the digital coupon/deal/whatever combination (you can, of course, only use one of the wide range of deals at a time). Poorer customers will invest the time in finding and using a deal.

They both get the same sandwich, but McD got them to pay different prices for it.

james_in_the_uk• 1 year ago

Most forms of direct marketing require unambiguous consent in the UK (likewise for data collection used for direct marketing). Culturally, many Brits are relatively suspicious of authority and will not consent to the use of their data 'just because'. Loyalty apps are a great invention: they give advertisers a direct channel to the consumer, and the consumer a way to receive something of value in exchange for their deliberate engagement.

echoangle2• 1 year ago

I think the idea is to get as many people as possible to install and set up the app, so they then have more incentive to become repeat customers. Theyre probably making some loss on new signups and hope to get it back later on.

eesmith6• 1 year ago

Market segmentation through user profiling and individualized discounts based on the entire order, making it hard for people to tell if they are being treated "fairly."

Get more people to use McD's app. When they order, give them a personalized coupon giving you a discount. The discount is different for everyone. Use the response rate, plus information about your buying habit (always buys a family-sized order on Fridays) to optimize the discount.

Raise the non-app prices so the people using the app think they got a deal ... while the overall price is on average higher than if McD's had flat rates for everyone.

People tend to think flat rates are more fair when the services are identical, and get pissed off when they find it isn't.

computerthings• 1 year ago

So, what's this story getting unfairly penalized for? It's been bumping around between page and 2 and 3 after it had more than 80 upvotes and not even half the comments; meanwhile there's a story with not even half the votes, that is also older, which is firmly near the top.

doctor_radium3• 1 year ago

I was in a full service restaurant a few months ago, and they were steering everybody to scan a QR code for their menus. Had eaten there several times before and this was new. I demanded a physical menu, even though the waiter said it might be outdated. Wanted a beer, but the drink menus were no more. I stared the waiter down and snapped, "WATER!" You must push back or else they'll think their lazy changes are fine. Maybe next time they'll expect me to bus the table?

hamilyon2• 1 year ago

App store monopoly hurts us way more than it is talked about. Suddenly, not only we are not to chose which devices to use to access what could be a simple website. Now unrelated third party decides if we have access to it based in, for example, country of residence. Or at all. Apple routine forces censorship on our phones as if it was it's property.

I still believe it was a tragedy that Microsoft folded their attempt into mobile. To explain my level of desperation, I feel our next best hope here is China.

fsflover3• 1 year ago

Our next best hope is GNU/Linux smartphones. Sent from my Librem 5.

nicce2• 1 year ago

They can’t handle the masses, unfortunately. That needs alot more money and infrastructure.

jmclnx• 1 year ago

I for one will never ever do any kind of banking or monetary transaction on a Smart Phone.

As for other apps, I just have a couple of simple games and Firefox, which I only use when in waiting an office for am appointment. So far where I am, it is not an impediment.

harrisoned• 1 year ago

I have a big issue with this, and the truth is that the majority of people simply do not care and/or do not understand the implications.

By tying your service to a smartphone your are basically refusing to provide service if the costumer doesn't agree to Apple's or Google's TOS. If the app doesn't complain about emulation or something different than Android or IOS you are in luck, but that's not the case with most banking apps. And that's only talking about people who don't have it by choice and have money to buy one.

For me, once, it went beyond: I took my first dose of the Covid vaccine, and the second dose's date would still be announced. I asked where it would be available to the nurse, "On the Instagram page of the <local health body>". "But i don't have Instagram" i said, and the nurse shrugged. It requires both a phone and a social media account with your real info, but since absolute nobody complains about it they just do because it's easier.

This will continue as long people are complacent with it. In some places the government is required to provide you services, by law, by any means available and not depending on 3rd party service, but they do require apps anyway and people stay quiet. Phones as an alternative is fine, it's a tool, but should not be an obligatory device for you to be considered an human being.

zevv• 1 year ago

Yes. This.

Sure, I own a smartphone, it runs just plain android but without any google accounts or services because I do not agree to Googles terms of services. I never did, and as an European citizen especially with recent developments I feel that has been the right choice.

The thing is, without google account there is no play store, and without play store I am not able to install the majority of apps - no banking, no parking, and all the other services people complain about in these threads.

This is my choice, and I stick to it. I'm also pretty vocal about it and complain when needed. Doctors office informs me I only can get medicine with the app? Apparently they can make exceptions when you complain, because I'm allowed to get medicine with a simple phone call. My bank tried to force me to use their app, but apparently they still do have an alternative login method when you complain. Sure, I know it's a fight I will lose in the long run, but I enjoy it while it lasts.

gs176• 1 year ago

if the costumer doesn't agree to Apple's or Google's TOS.

Or if Apple or Google arbitrarily decide that they don't like that customer. You don't have to have done something wrong, they can decide that you're likely associated with someone who did.

dalke3• 1 year ago

When people ask for examples, I point to a NYT report of a man in San Francisco whose young son had redness on his penis and complained about it feeling sore. The pediatrician asked for some photos to make a diagnosis online. Google flagged it as child porn and notified the police. The police said it wasn't, but Google declined to restore service.

"A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal.", https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil...

In India, Google locked an engineer from Gujarat out of his Google account because it contained explicit content potentially involving child abuse or exploitation. The engineer believes it's because the account contain images of him as a child being bathed by his grandmother.

"HC notice to Google India after engineer loses access Gmail, Google Drive, and more over childhood photo labelled 'porn'" https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/hc-...

I use these examples specifically because many in my government want "Chat Control", where snitchware scans messages for child porn and the like, and notifies the police. It will be full of false positives like these, especially if the scanning software continues to be built by puritanical American companies.

Another class is people who the US deems to be a security threat. How long will it be until the US extends its sanctions against the ICC by ordering Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Oracle, and Google to shut down the accounts for the ICC and anyone involved in their genocide investigation, work and personal?

pbalau• 1 year ago

Did it occur to you that a nurse is a nurse because they are good at nursing sick people and not because they are good at customer support?

I want my nurse to take care of my health, not to know where I can find stuff. You are misplacing your anger...

alabastervlog2• 1 year ago

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.

arrowsmith• 1 year ago

Hi Ted.

alabastervlog2• 1 year ago

I was channeling Burke’s show Connections, actually, but sure, that too.

dennis_jeeves24• 1 year ago

I too was thinking that...

tdeck9• 1 year ago

One thing not mentioned yet is what happens when you've got a cheaper phone filled with photos and videos. At various times I've had to spend a few minutes deleting things just to download some stupid 100 meg app that I need to use for a total of 5 minutes to complete some basic task.

philipov2• 1 year ago

Is your cheaper phone unable to interface with a computer? I'm no advocate of an app-based economy, but your phone shouldn't be the archive for your photos.

tdeck9• 1 year ago

I back my photos up using adb backup, but I don't keep them in cloud services.

layer83• 1 year ago

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

zulban4• 1 year ago

If you have a place to live, you shouldn't carry all your belongings with you in a backpack when you go outside.

Similarly, a phone should not be your archive of all your media.

tdeck9• 1 year ago

Perhaps I can be patient and explain the underlying concepts here, since they seem to be unintuitive to a small minority of very condescending commenters:

1. I like to have access to my photos and videos while I'm on the go. You never know when the subject of some trip or experience from 2 years ago will come up in conversation, and I'll want to show a photo of it to someone I'm talking to. Since photos and videos don't weight anything inside my phone, it's no trouble to carry them.

2. I don't like to give cloud services all my photos and videos. Despite the extremely dark pattern in Google Photos where it tries multiple times a month to trick me into enabling cloud backup, I've kept it off. Some of my photos may be sensitive things like personal documents, I'd rather not have to think about what's in the cloud and what isn't, and what is deleted where. These services also often aren't free and I'd prefer not to pay for them.

3. I back up my phone regularly to my personal computer, so losing my phone doesn't mean I lose all the media on my phone.

4. And since I know someone will ask, I lock my phone. Not with a fingerprint; with a passcode. It's not perfect but I'm comfortable with the level of security.

kxrm6• 1 year ago

If you have a place to live, you shouldn't carry all your belongings with you in a backpack when you go outside.

I really don't like this analogy. These are entirely different concepts. A backpack has weight, dimension in real space that impacts the real world. A phone full of videos has no extra weight or volume in the real world.

anigbrowl5• 1 year ago

How other people choose to use their phones is not your business.

shipp02• 1 year ago

A lot of suggestions ask the poster to not store photos on their phone, but this takes away the functionality from their phone that they actually want in service using 1 app for 5 minutes.

flocciput• 1 year ago

I feel your pain. I managed to use my first smart phone, an iPhone 6s, for almost 10 years. In that time the system data took up more and more of what little space I had on there (16GB I think? So unthinkably small to most people that they think I'm confusing it with RAM) to where I was basically dealing with a few mb of storage to use for photos and work-critical apps like Authenticator. I also refuse to use iCloud on principle (tried it once, and realized when I wanted to download all my photos onto my computer that it would only let me do 1 at a time, or low quality versions, or something scummy like that).

It got so bad I had to do things like delete my Internet history if I even wanted to copy and paste something! And I would do everything I could to not have to pick which photos and conversations I needed to delete forever just to download some fucking app I would only use one time to order food or park somewhere or do first-time router setup.

Finally I had to give in and get a new phone, because managing phone storage was making my life much more difficult than it needed to be. But I'm still so mad that I had to, because daily living seems to demand more and more storage space. And people accept it!! Ugh. The dang thing didn't even have a scratch on it either. Would've used it for 20 years if I could.

pimlottc• 1 year ago

Some of the best savings rates are offered by app-only providers – made up of banks and “electronic money institutions” (EMIs), which do not have their own banking licence, but put your money in a bank that does.

Okay, this wins for euphemism of the week. "We're not a bank, we're a money institution!"

robocat3• 1 year ago

"Bank" is a highly regulated word.

jebarker• 1 year ago

When visiting the UK last summer we tried to go to a train museum. There were three public parking lots around with different app based parking systems. We were unsuccessful in using any of them due to various issues relating to poor cell service, lack of UK phone number etc. In the end we had to leave without visiting the museum. It was farcical.

jamesfmilne• 1 year ago

As a North London resident, the parking app situation is just as farcical for me.

There are at least three different apps for parking around me: RingGo, PayByPhone and JustPark.

I went to East London recently to visit the Velodrome, and discovered yet another one: Evology.

It's always great fun, standing around in the car park trying to wrangle your cards whilst creating yet another account to pay for 30 minutes of parking.

Then, of course, there's the 50/50 chance that my iPhone has decided to offload the parking app you need because you haven't used it in the last month or so.

And occasionally RingGo will decide to log me out, and when I go to log back in for some reason the last password I have in my password manager doesn't work, so now I also have to reset my password.

Agreed, paying for parking has turned into a total farce.

ryandrake11• 1 year ago

If people just stopped paying for parking en masse, things might change. I'm in the US, so maybe my attitude is different, but if I parked in a parking lot that didn't let me pay without installing some weirdo app, I would just park without paying and let them come after me if they can find me. If they send me a bill, I can refuse to pay. If they send it to collections, collections will probably not pursue over such a small amount. And if the debt collector does pursue, I can send them a dispute letter, forcing them to prove I have a debt obligation, which 99 times out of 100 will make them go away.

mihaaly4• 1 year ago

Even those having phone and app have trouble in the form of hefty penalties when cell service does not allow them paying in the hard 5 minute mandated. There was a little 'scandal' (more like the usual random weekly media article pick for traffic increasing annoyment from among the thousands of similar f ups not getting any traction) recently provoking thunderous and colorful statements from officials. Regualation change may come in some form sometime perhaps that solves something possibly, but change something for certain, perhaps.

jfengel• 1 year ago

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.

mindslight3• 1 year ago

Literacy skills increase monotonically though. If you learn to read adult novels while in grade school, you can still continue reading grade school books as well. Whereas if you learn tech to the proficiency of understanding how corporate apps are attacking you, or if you simply take administrative control of that computer you carry everywhere, then you can then find yourself unable to engage despite having higher than the basic skill level.

lucb1e12• 1 year ago

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

Glyptodon• 1 year ago

My city has parking meters that I can't use because the website has a broken credit card form and the app "isn't available on your version of Android." And of course they don't accept cash.

It's a farce.

joshdavham2• 1 year ago

You’re in Vancouver, too?

pcthrowaway• 1 year ago

City of Vancouver parking meters have to accept cash still.

If you try putting a quarter in and it doesn't work (as is often the case because of tampering with the coin slots), I believe you don't have to pay for parking.

QuadrupleA• 1 year ago

I avoid apps too if I can. So rare that the app does anything a website can't. Indeed most apps are implemented with embedded browsers.

It's about tracking, and push notifications. Full stop.

jampekka3• 1 year ago

Cue HN's anti-PWA brigade.

genewitch16• 1 year ago

I wanted to make one but I wanted it to work without networking but be able to trigger notifications on a timer. I don't know anything about cellphone development or JavaScript so I gave up and made a discord bot instead.

Zak2• 1 year ago

If I'm forced into using an app when a website would have done just fine, I give it a one-star review.

kjkjadksj4• 1 year ago

Embedded browser with a 450mb app size of course. I wish you can sort by size on app store. It is a signal for quality when you find a 4mb app that does the same thing as a 450mb app.

elric3• 1 year ago

It's about tracking

That's exactly what it is. That is the only real reason. More tracking, more data harvesting, more control for the publisher at the expense of user agency.

fifticon• 1 year ago

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 to actually implement and deliver it.

  The new smartphone app.. Not so much. It looks more like some MBA types managed to solve "what is the cheapest thing we can get away with, lawfully?"

Internally, I know it is because the original dev team has been gutted, development outsourced to india, and just a skeleton crew from the original team manages the chinese-whispers process with the huge indian team.

As a result, the use case flow (IE the only way you can operate it..) of the app, goes as follows:

1 close the app 2 launch the app and sign in 3 do ONE action 4 enjoy the result of the action 5 repeat from 1..

You might wonder why that is.. Well, that is because your software is not allowed to display any errors - because that might indicate there were bugs.. So instead, whenever an error happens, you just display the '... still loading..' animation... forever. So, technically, there are no errors, no bugs.. "IT IS JUST TAKING TOO LONG TO RESPOND". (spoiler: it will NEVER respond, because hidden behind the screen, is a series of unhandled web api errors..)

But again, as an "internal" employee, I have seen our management claim all this is a huge success (client paid/pays).

Back to using it: When I have to interact with my doctor, I write the texts on my PC, and mail them to myself. Then I cut/paste them from gmail into this wonderful app.

Boogie_Man• 1 year ago

At what point does this constitute a hostile action against the user and what degree of retaliation is appropriate? Open question for everyone.

PaulDavisThe1st2• 1 year ago

what retaliation are you imagining and against whom? who is even "the user" here?

Henchman216• 1 year ago

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 appropriately hostile feedback to your current doctors — but this is likely only to garner empathy as the docs have little say over this
  - stop using smartphones and claim hardship — not sure how this would pan out. Probably not well?
  - channeling Luigi and murdering the people responsible for our ongoing dystopia

Seriously what other options are there? You can either complain to the ether and it goes nowhere. Or you can take up violence and it still likely goes nowhere and you fuck up your life.

This is why so many people are content to let the world burn. It ain’t for us anymore anyway.

meristohm2• 1 year ago

I tend to push back against this nonsense pretty firmly, and would go so far as to request paper documents be sent, as "I don't have a device up to the task" (which sometimes is true, as I use old hardware until I luck into a handmedown or the thing breaks). I get that paper and postage and time are costs. So is user time and stress level.

bryanrasmussen2• 1 year ago

when the functioning of the app means that people with disabilities, including cognitive disabilities, will be denied medical access, and the retaliation is probably a lawsuit appropriate to your jurisdiction, if your jurisdiction does not support accessibility legislation then you're probably out of luck.

7thaccount• 1 year ago

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

reaperman• 1 year ago

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.

ericjmorey• 1 year ago

I've stopped submitting all electronic forms for medical purposes. I simply don't want to chatbot my health concerns to anyone. So I don't.

I also stopped signing anything in the waiting room.

otterley8• 1 year ago

What are you going to do when they refuse to provide care because you won’t fill out or sign forms?

bluedino• 1 year ago

My hospital system has a surprisingly decent web app. I can log in and see my appointments, pre-register for office visits, view lab results, medications, request appointments, do virtual visits...

The amazing stupid part is when I have to sign in at the actual doctor's office.

They have an iPad which does some sort of remote/citrix setup, resulting in a frustrating experience that is full of lag where you interface with what might be their actual EMR system.

zo1• 1 year ago

Oh I think the only reason they did that is because that was the "hip" and "schnazzy" UX flow that everyone signed off and loved because "oh this will be amazing for users".

So apps, and even websites, have just become ways to market and push to users. It's not about functionality or enabling the user.

Another, maybe smallish, manifestation of this that I've seen is that devs, UX, and everyone involved is so downright hostile to direct "links". Devs because it forces them to think about what stupid react/angular router they want to use, devops has to do URL-rewrites, PMs are worried about the "additional scope", and UX folks' brains absolutely explode that there is no "flow" to the entity (it just pops up, omg). Instead you, as the user, are forced to click through the search UI or to type the right thing, to trigger the flow or whatever, before you get to that entity you want. You can't just create it as a link, and thereby enabling users to have "emergent" behavior of sharing links or emailing them, etc.

ndriscoll5• 1 year ago

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. Either way the animation is a crappy attempt to paper over a bad job.

bluefirebrand4• 1 year ago

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

mark-r• 1 year ago

Some things in the real world simply take longer than milliseconds; this is not a failing. I'm working with a system that takes over 10 seconds to get a list of wifi access points, and you bet we throw up a spinner while that's happening.

Now of course if the spinner is merely cosmetic and doesn't represent any actual work going on, that can be a problem especially if the process you're waiting for dies.

andai• 1 year ago

150ms

Server in Australia?

worik• 1 year ago

For any normal CRUD app, it should take milliseconds

For most CRUD apps

Sometimes wheels within wheels can slow down even modern computers.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 1 year ago

Nah. We have a spinner, but I also have a timeout handler.

The reason is that the app's backend (and many of the servers on which it depends) can be hosted on the lowest-tier-dogshit-shared-hosting plan. I would love to have a better backend server, but we are a nonprofit, and can't afford better. This app would be a lot faster, with a more robust backend.

But error handling/reporting is a true art, and should never be an afterthought. In my experience, I need to start thinking about error management, as soon as I start planning.

In my experience, the best error handling is to not have errors, and, quite often, good UX is the answer to that. If the user doesn't do something that might cause agita, then they don't get an error.

lucb1e12• 1 year ago

I developed the opinion that putting a spinner into your site at all is a sign of incompetence

This so much. If your site is so slow that it can load what is usually a video file (non-SVG animated graphics) before it can load the text on the page, then you have failed at making a website

Looking at Discourse® here, and iirc Google AMP did something similar except it was a blank page for 8 seconds (until it hit a timeout) if you blocked their tracking

noduerme• 1 year ago

I think it's an art, not a science. The alternative to a spinner is to show some sort of error to the user; a connection error or something specific that went wrong that they can report. Sometimes this is useful.

I frequently put spinners just in the individual components that need loading. I tend to use them more for large data loads that will hang around awhile, so I have to do fewer round trip transactions. Loading a list of a customer's last 1000 transactions? I'm going to bring on all that data at once, not keep calling the server as you try to scroll through it.

I want user actions to have an INSTANT consequence, not 150ms latency. So even if not a spinner, that button needs to gray out and something should affirm that they tapped it.

Also, spinners are very useful for me in tracking down bugs. When a few customers report stuck spinners in the same day, I can almost immediately determine if some particular action is failing or whether it's a server issue. Even better, they can send screenshots helping me isolate the problem. If no stuck spinner and the app just freezes, they reload it and forget what exactly they did to trigger an error. And endpoints do go down, nothing has 100% uptime. I want to FEEL how long a call is taking on a heavy operation on a busy day.

RHSeeger2• 1 year ago

Not sure if it counts as CRUD but, when downloading files, it can take a while to prepare the files. If that while is long enough the user may thing something isn't happening, and a "I'm working on it" signal is not unreasonable.

strken2• 1 year ago

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 most websites or apps, and this is further compounded by slow server code, daisy-chained sequential calls, living further away from the undersea cables, and bad infrastructure.

silon42• 1 year ago

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".

lotsoweiners• 1 year ago

I used to work with a web developer in state govt who purposely coded a couple seconds delay before data was displayed so that the spinner would always show. He was actually one of the best developers on the team ironically.

cyanydeez2• 1 year ago

Our state implemented a regulatory report website. It took 10 minutes to file a quarterly report thats basically 5 screens and 3 check boxes.

I emailed IT About it and they replied "try restarting your machine"

I then produced a video of the process for them.

I am 99.9% certain its just a poorly written SQL query, but no one responsible knows where that code is.

Tanjreeve• 1 year ago

It's kind of annoying the article burns up all the space talking about various discounts and benefits you get from Apps. Aka far less of a problem as they're optional quid pro quo and doesn't talk about the creeping enshittification of those functionalities. Im fine with a council making an option to do important things through an app. But I'm not fine with it being compulsory and I'm even less fine with it being some non functioning trash made in a software sweatshop that doesn't provide a contact number when it goes wrong and noones ever on the hook if it's dysfunctional. It rarely if ever actually improves functionality or makes important things self service. It more often reduces what I can actually do but with a flashier interface for "computer says no".

_Algernon_2• 1 year ago

Companies need to be held accountable for their negligent behaviour

Henchman216• 1 year ago

How? What do you propose?

kraussvonespy• 1 year ago

Feels like this well written piece by Atol Gawande is relevant if you haven't seen it. I showed it a couple of years ago to my very competent and conscientious doc and she got PISSED. She talked about how she spent literally half of her doctoring time working through poorly designed menus in {epic, cerner} to carefully document everything she could about the patient, only to discover that most doctors don't pay attention to any of that info.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-ha...

amarant• 1 year ago

I was really expecting your personal usage of the app to involve invoking developer privileges, and inserting your text through the much more user friendly UX of DBeaver..

I can't decide if I'm disappointed or relieved

arp2423• 1 year ago

The annoying part is that website can just be used as an app. For a booking app we don't need native performance; just a webpage-inside-an-app is fine. In most cases, it should be fairly straight-forward and cheap to make this work.

What happens is they hire some contracting firm and they go "whole thing will have to be redone" so they get more work, and that's how you end up with a "solution" like this. Basically the software equivalent of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq6WME576ZE

koolba• 1 year ago

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.

m463• 1 year ago

I had kaiser permanente and had google/doubleclick tracking through the entire website, including investigating conditions, doctor communication, and test results.

I complained, they played dumb, but eventually they came up with "the website is a convenience". I stopped using it.

The app was much worse.

A couple years later, other people must have complained

https://www.classaction.org/news/kaiser-permanente-shares-we...

https://www.classaction.org/news/data-breach-lawsuit-says-ka...

I believe the same thing happens with apps and websites provided by other health care providers, but nobody investigates and nobody cares.

stodor89• 1 year ago

So instead, whenever an error happens, you just display the '... still loading..' animation... forever.

Gotta love how everyone copies the nasty things Apple does (hi beach ball of death), but not the good things Apple does.

donatj2• 1 year ago

Xfinity sent me a new cable modem this week.

Came with zero instructions for set up, just a QR code. Scanned the QR code and it took me to install an app. I begrudgingly installed it.

The app had me hit next a few times before scanning a different QR code on the bottom of the modem. That was the entire process.

I guess you just have to pay for installation if you don't have a smart phone? It offered for $150+ when I agreed to the new modem.

mistrial92• 1 year ago

there will be more of this.. This has to be regulated IMHO

ryandrake11• 1 year ago

Do your best to make these decisions cost them, even if it's only a few pennies. Call their customer support up and tie up one of their representatives as long as possible. Who knows, if enough people do that, and they log the reason, then maybe, just maybe these SuperUltraMegaCorps have a chance of changing their mind.

jmholla4• 1 year ago

You also have to pay them monthly to not use their equipment. It definitely isn't a racket.

jampekka3• 1 year ago

The consumer group is among those to have highlighted Lidl’s loyalty scheme, Lidl Plus, as one that is only accessible via an app, with an email address also required.

At least here in Finland Lidl Plus is one of the few which can be used by just entering a phone number.

That said, all "loyalty programs" should be outright banned. They stifle competition, make pricing less transparent and discriminate against the less well off.

robocat3• 1 year ago

loyalty programs" discriminate against the less well off.

The opposite: supermarket loyalty cards are often designed so that the well off pay more: i.e. it is the well off that are being discriminated against. The barriers are designed to allow poorer people to pay less. The topic is called price discrimination.

All the poorer people I know use loyalty cards because they judge them to be valuable (despite the extra hassle).

The less well off often get lower prices (plus valuable rewards) because of the loyalty programs in New Zealand.

I often use my friend's loyalty accounts: so I get the item discounts but they collect the loyalty rewards/cash. Also I like to screw the data surveillance up - I don't get tracked so much and my friend's account is spammed with higher cost items.

Coupons are designed for the same purpose. Allowing poorer people to choose to trade their time/hassle for savings (according to their values).

jampekka3• 1 year ago

In loyalty programs the benefit percentage often increases as a function of money spent, disproportionally benefiting the more well off who spend more. I've yet to encounter a loyalty program that would do the inverse (probably there are some that cap the benefits, which could be interpreted to be to this direction). Neither have I seen a loyalty program that would only accept poor people.

Price discrimination is anything where the same product is sold at different price for different buyers. All loyalty programs are price discrimination.

LinuxBender8• 1 year ago

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 dependency on any "smart" features of phones unless one considers texting to be a smart feature given that was not a thing in the 70's. I do not expect any of that to change. The people here like keeping things simple. With exception of Amazon to get things small shops here do not carry I could even kill my internet connection and life would go on just fine. I would probably even get healthier. All the local businesses know me by name so I guess that makes up for a lack of cookie tracking.

PaulDavisThe1st2• 1 year ago

I think this article is city-centric.

It's an article about the situation in the UK. If your "rural area" is in the US, it is not surprising that it's a bit different than anything in the article.

LinuxBender8• 1 year ago

That makes sense. I think the US tries to mimic big city behavior in the EU so it's probably just a matter of time for big cities in the US to have the same problems. Maybe that means I have a few more decades for any of that to find it's way to me. Curious how prevalent this behavior is in the rural parts of the UK.

tdb7893• 1 year ago

In the US large companies in rural areas also often use apps in the same way as they do in the city (at least they did the last time I visited) and at least all the people I know in rural areas have had smartphones for a long time and use apps a lot (though maybe the fact that the area I know well is near a major university has made it a bit techier). The smaller local stores don't use apps so even in Chicago most places I actually went to didn't. I just went through my phone and the only app like that I have is for Taco Bell

LinuxBender8• 1 year ago

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.

realo• 1 year ago

Don't worry... The 21st century should reach you too, eventually.

LinuxBender8• 1 year ago

No worries. This troglodyte will bury his head in the sand. There will be a documentary about us and even the Amish will be shaking their heads. People in the 25th century will look back in envy after the machines take over and they had to reset civilization with EMP's back to agrarian or hunter gatherers. All of that pales in comparison to what happens from the years 201 BG to 108 BG during the Butlerian Jihad.

curious_cat_163• 1 year ago

I had never heard of Mumla and just looked it up -- looks like it needs some help. [1]

Curious, why do you use it?

[1] https://github.com/quite/mumla

LinuxBender8• 1 year ago

Amazing audio quality. Text chat. No censorious behavior. The server is ultra light weight in terms of memory and CPU.

cheschire• 1 year ago

Well, not so much city-centric as it is population-centric. Cities are population centers, so there is correlation.

The scale you are thinking in is comparable to a small web forum being sustainably moderated by the owner of the site, while the majority of the world exists in a place like reddit that has more moderator users than even large web forums have in total. Reddit would not be sustainable if they had to pay a moderation staff, and similarly rural living cannot be scaled up to support cities without becoming city-like.

So assuming you accept all that, why even read this article or post a reply in the discussion?

I'm not trying to gatekeep here, I'm just saying I don't see why you find this topic interesting? It's like replying to a thread about how life in Afghanistan is really difficult, and you're saying "I think this article is not about America because of all the American things I experience."

LinuxBender8• 1 year ago

I'm not trying to gatekeep here, I'm just saying I don't see why you find this topic interesting?

My ulterior motive and secret agenda is to let people know they can escape that nonsense. Many rural areas are getting faster internet but are much more chill. There are pros and cons people can research themselves. For me most of the cons are pros.

If I can save even one person per year from the social, government and store apps that have massive teams of marketing psychological warfare experts manipulating them then I have done my hero's doodie.

crusty4• 1 year ago

I don't think it's a natural urban/rural division. I suspect that that division is more an artifice of capitalism. These new services want to grow, so they target places with the most potential customers. If the pitch to the municipality is that they can take the cost of coin collection and meter maintenance out of the budget entirely, and switch the enforcement from a human walking around, checking meters and wiring tickets to a car that drives past with license plate readers and a sass subscription, then it will come for anywhere with meters, and may eventually come for everywhere, because the original pitch for meters required justifying the expense with projected revenue. And now, if the expense of a few signs and a subscription are low enough, and the license readers are already on police cars, then that evaluation changes.

Of course, as with all of it, local jobs disappear from the local budget, and that money gets shipped off to Wall Street.

qingcharles3• 1 year ago

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.

joshdavham2• 1 year ago

I’m fascinated by this phenomenon of apps proposing solutions that are far worse than the previous existing solutions.

For example:

1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters.

2. Tinder is worse than IRL speed dating.

3. Duolingo is worse than language classes.

4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.

5. Etc

It really makes me frustrated as someone who builds software and generally thinks it improves the world…

pqtyw4• 1 year ago

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 much more convenient than having to find a printer.

Duolingo isn't really a replacement for classes (which are obviously a magnitude or few more expensive) but self learnings books, tapes and such (IMHO it's mostly inferior to those too but not by a such high degree).

Can't disagree about Tinder/etc. though.

lambda• 1 year ago

I'm kind of puzzled by your first point. In my experience, parking apps require you to pay in larger chunks of hours than paying with coins used to; many times I have to pay for a minimum of 2 hours of parking with the app when I could pay for just 10 or 15 minutes of parking with coins.

noqc2• 1 year ago

what if your phone runs out of battery?

ryandrake11• 1 year ago

Don’t people just print their boarding passes at home before they leave for the airport? Or worst case, use the kiosks at the airports which print passes? Very few of the passengers in line ahead of me are using their phones.

TeMPOraL6• 1 year ago

Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.

Why do iOS and Android phones have a "wallet", and why a boarding pass would have anything to do with it?

There's an electronic solution strictly better than the app, for when you have no printer handy: just give the user the goddamned PDF! Works everywhere, works offline, can be printed if needed, and the user can manage, send or back it up however they like.

It's a simple solution that works.

dpkirchner• 1 year ago

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).

Maybe it's better these days, but back when I used to use online apps/sites to pay for parking in private lots, 4/5 times I still got a "ticket." I never had to pay the fine with money, only with time.

I think it really was the 4th time I decided to stop using those apps entirely.

Sometimes I wonder if the devs behind these apps and processes feel embarrassed by the results. I would be, even if the failures weren't my fault.

thfuran• 1 year ago

Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.

And once the gate or departure time changes, your printed boarding pass will start lying to you.

OptionOfT2• 1 year ago

I recently got bitten in the rear by Delta not updating boarding passes stored in Apple Wallet, even though it had / has all permissions to do so.

Only when I checked the time and wondered why we weren't boarding yet, and opened the app did I notice that the gate changed.

Even afterwards the one stored in Apple Wallet did not update. I even tried to do the pull-to-refresh. Eventually I pulled to refresh, and that worked.

cbozeman• 1 year ago

> 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 information into an app... instead of just dropping 10 quarters into a metal stick and walking away for the next two hours.

> 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 much more convenient than having to find a printer.

Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer. They're not gold bars. They're not expensive.

369548684892826• 1 year ago

> 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.

noah_buddy• 1 year ago

The idea of a parking app is better than the physical process of using a meter generally. But I have not really seen an app flow better than the physical process despite having parked in many cities. In fact, I can come up with a simple physical process better than the apps by far: tap the meter in and tap the meter out with your NFC chip in the card.

Pay for the exact time, or if you forget, pay the full time period you’re legally allowed to park.

Instead, on my city’s app I must select a car (despite having only one), select a zone (despite GPS), and then manually enter my card (despite it being my account default). Every time.

nicce2• 1 year ago

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).

In my experiece, apps have increased costs around 50% and some even try to add monthly subscription.

lucb1e12• 1 year ago

you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.

...or show the document they sent you rather than printing it?

As someone who never installed these wallets (maybe I'm missing out), what's the problem they solve?

Marsymars4• 1 year ago

Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.

You can just print at the airport at the check-in machines.

I never even bother checking-in in advance of arriving at the airport. I theorize that they assign bad seats to early checkins to incentivize people to pay to choose a different seats. I have at various times been assigned to upgraded seats (not upgraded class, but e.g. emergency row, bulkhead, etc.) when checking in at the airport.

teeray2• 1 year ago

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

But they are worse than mid-2000s tech. I used to have a tag with an lcd timer that I loaded up with cash periodically. When I parked in a metered space in the city, I just turn the thing on and hang it on my driver window. It was synced with the parking schedule, so the timer wouldn’t run until metered parking started and stopped at the end of metered parking. Parking enforcement simply had to look at the tag to make sure it was on and had a positive value. When I came back, I just shut the thing off—I paid for exactly what I used, always. Great UX: turn on thing, hang in window, remove, turn off thing, plug into computer to add money every few months.

Compare to now where there’s An App that requires multiple taps to tell it which street your on, which car, oh look it forgot your credit card and they don’t take Apple Pay, time to enter all that data in again… oh yeah, also you have to overbuy parking and they charge transaction fees every time if you try to buy exact and add time later.

Also, now parking enforcement has to key in everyone’s license plates to figure out if they’re legal or not (no automated plate readers—they’re illegal in this state). Apart from being annoying, now that data is conveniently harvested.

Ray20• 1 year ago

Can't disagree about Tinder

And what wrong with Tinder? It is great if you are hot or a woman. And if you are not - well, nobody never cared anyway.

steelframe10• 1 year ago

> 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).

The last time I tried parking in downtown Salt Lake City the city's app wouldn't even install on my phone, complaining about being built for an older Android version. Fortunately the web site still worked. Sort of. I had to try a couple of different browsers before I found one that functioned with the site.

When riding Caltrain I get charged for the maximum amount I could possibly pay (all stops) when I board. Then when I get off at my stop I tap again and get refunded for all the stops I ended up not getting to. It works fine. Seems a meter could be a "tap in/tap out" thing. If it's 5 hours until it's free to park, put a hold for 5 hours of time. If you get back in 2 hours, release the hold and only charge for 2 hours when you tap out.

It's even possible to do this with cash. Imagine a machine that calculates your change and spits out bills and/or coins. Oh wait, yeah, we've had that technology since around 1959. It would just need to print out a ticket with a bar code or something to authenticate that you're the one who paid in the first place. Did you lose your ticket? Sorry, looks like you're paying for the rest of the day. But that's still a lot cheaper than a citation.

I suspect it's not "pay max/get refund" because municipalities can't stop milking those sweet sweet citations from people who fail to correctly guess how much time they'll need up front.

catlikesshrimp• 1 year ago

1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters.

Not the appS for parking in your location. ( I say apps because I would have to register to two apps and those don't cover 100% of districts)

But where I live, the parking apps are buggy and resource hungry (could be just another bug)

We can still buy 15 min / 30 min ,60 min tickets. The problem is each district has its own tickets :/

I still prefer the tickets. At least I know with certainty if I can park or not (depending on my having of tickets or not)

But usually there is a private parking lot around the corner. Which is another argument agaisnt installing yet another app.

rqtwteye• 1 year ago

I would dispute your points 2 and 4. But yes, the trend towards apps is not very good. I am not sure if the apps are cheaper or just makes people think they are doing something modern and better. One thing is for sure, most apps based devices won't age well.

internet20002• 1 year ago

I don't think I could disagree more with your number 4. Adding a boarding pass to Apple Wallet and having it update itself with gate changes, delays, etc, notifying you and even scribbling skeuomorphically what changed on the pass [0] has been one of the strongest delighters I've experienced in recent times.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/OkthcOi.png

tdeck9• 1 year ago

You can do that with a boarding pass downloaded from the airline website or emailed to you by the airline. But some airlines like to hide this option in order to force you to download their app.

kjkjadksj4• 1 year ago

My apple wallet boarding passes never update on time. At LAX they sometimes put you as a placeholder at the international terminal for your gate on boarding pass. So then you show up, slog through the international terminal to this gate, and see that no you are actually in terminal 7. Enjoy the resulting 2.5 mile walk I hope you baked in extra time.

Now I don’t trust it. Googling the flight number brings in the updated gate. Not the apple wallet boarding pass though.

RhysU• 1 year ago

Are you not also paying attention to the gate itself and to departure boards? Why do you need your phone to tell you what's posted on numerous displays that you walk past?

kccqzy• 1 year ago

I've seen good airline apps and bad airline apps. The good ones allow you to do things like checking your own bags and dropping off bags without talking to anyone. The bad ones simply are slow and have missing features: you may be able to buy a ticket but changing it requires calling a number. (Of course if you are the type to prefer human customer service, these won't appeal to you.)

fundingshovel• 1 year ago

Even if you do they might? Good service in app can lead to shorter wait times for people that need to talk to humans

_fat_santa• 1 year ago

And don't forget an increasing number of consumer electronics now need to be "activated" via an app.

bdcravens2• 1 year ago

Having taken both academic classes in Spanish, and using Duolingo for multiple years, I feel like Duolingo is a faster, more cost effective option for establishing a foundation. Obviously if you want to approach fluency, submersion is necessary.

poincaredisk• 1 year ago

Not to mention that it's hard to take a language class while commuting in a bus.

nayuki2• 1 year ago

Parking apps are worse than parking meters.

Case in point - Toronto Parking Authority (Green P)'s app forces you to keep a balance and refill in multiples of $20 CAD, whereas street parking meters can charge your credit card in any increment as necessary (e.g. $1.25).

Also, the app forces you to disclose your phone number as an account identifier; you have no option to sign up by email or username. https://mobilepay.greenp.com/faq/i-have-a-new-phone-number-w...

The culture of designing user-hostile apps is wild.

rglover• 1 year ago

1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters.

Generally, yes, (it may have improved since I left but the Chicago one was a nightmare a few years back) however the best experience I've ever had was in Nashville (don't recall the company name).

I signed up via the web (no app) and then the parking lot has cameras/sensors that detect my plate. Any parking lot owned by that company is now accessible to me in the city. I can just pull in, it detects me (notifying me my "session" has started), and then charges my card on file when I pull out (either in an hour, or even the next day).

As with a lot of things, there are often examples of well-executed solutions at the fringes, they're just not deployed at a large enough scale to cancel out the other negative examples. Software can improve a lot, but it's down to the team/individuals involved to care enough to do it right (and not be distracted by other incentives).

eep_social• 1 year ago

Sounds fantastic. Literally not an app. Bring back websites.

marssaxman3• 1 year ago

In general, I agree with your observation, but in terms of Duolingo it does not matter whether language classes would have been better, because I was never going to sign up for them. Letting myself get hooked on another daily word game was a commitment I could actually make, and after plugging away at it with steadily increasing enthusiasm for a little over a year now, I've gained a significant degree of fluency I would not otherwise have. Thus I think that Duolingo offers a genuinely valuable service, not directly comparable to language classes.

maeil• 1 year ago

1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters.

The customers for these apps are the parking lot operators and they love the apps.

2. Tinder is worse than IRL speed dating.

It is now, it definitely wasn't when it first came out. Prime example of enshittification, but not an example of what you're conveying.

3. Duolingo is worse than language classes.

This one I feel has the most merit, but still not a lot. What % of Duolingo users would've actually taken classes were it not for these apps? Also, some people don't learn well from classes (I'm one of them). Not that that makes Duolingo any better, but despite its pretenses it's squarely aimed at extremely shallow, casual, surface-level learning that might be useful on a holiday. And people don't take classes for that.

4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.

In what way? Admittedly I've only used the apps of 2 airlines, but they worked fine.

Neonlicht5• 1 year ago

I recently had to buy a printer because some shitty company didn't accept my smartphone screen.

It was a lot less convenient let me tell you.

201984• 1 year ago

Re no. 1, what are you supposed to do in those cities if you don't have a smartphone? Just get a ticket? Seems heavily discriminatory against the poor.

xxr• 1 year ago

A few months ago, I had to use street parking in Long Beach, California. They no longer had individual meters along this particular street, but rather one parking sticker machine. The parking sticker machine was broken, so I had to download the advertised parking payment app which was not one of the parking apps I already had on my phone. Finally, I had to pay an additional “convenience” fee on top to use this app that I wouldn’t have needed to pay using physical payment infrastructure.

So everyone wins here, except us: the app company gets to make a killing on compulsory payment processing, and City of Long Beach gets to continue to pull in parking revenue without worrying about whether their payment machines still work—a broken machine is not an excuse because you can still pay with the app because everyone has a smartphone with an up-to-date OS and functioning cell service with appropriate bandwidth, right? I’m sure I could have complained to the city and gotten my +/-dollar back, but I didn’t have time just to do so for the principle of the thing.

kelnos19• 1 year ago

Ugh, that's gross. And I bet if you hadn't paid, gotten a ticket, and then defended yourself by saying the machine was broken, they would have still fined you because the app was available.

It should be illegal to have that sort of setup... if the lowest-common-denominator form of payment is broken, then it should be free.

gs176• 1 year ago

Parking apps are worse than parking meters.

I had a frustrating experience with this. We were staying in a small town and the casino had a ferry to cross the river, which would save 20 minutes driving and be kind of neat. I'm guessing they had issues with the staff collecting payments, so they had switched to a parking app to pay for it. You pay for the ferry as a "parking lot" and it should all work fine.

Signs at the road to it say to pay before proceeding, so I do. After driving all the way up, it turns out the ferry wasn't running (they neglected to close the gate at the start of the road). The parking app was tied into a pair of license plate readers on the boat, but since I couldn't drive past the "exit", they never considered my "parking" to end and it racked up a charge over two days. Of course, the "parking" starts without my car being detected going on to the boat.

Fortunately, I got a refund, but it required jumping through a bunch of hoops. If we paid the way it used to be done this wouldn't be possible at all!

Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.

Delta's app is pretty good. I really like the peace of mind from being able to see where my bags are, including when they get put on the conveyor.

genewitch16• 1 year ago

You know what all these stories kind of sound like me? When some new technology comes out and you see somebody and they're like, one of the first people to buy it and they're like, oh, check this out. And then they try to show you something, but it doesn't work?

So if the parking thing is broken and I don't have my phone with me I can't go to the doctor today?

Cool. If a meter was broken I could just go to another spot with a working meter.

In Laguna beach they had $1 coin machines to get around the "ten quarters" thing, and this was 20 years ago!

dehrmann2• 1 year ago

4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.

Whenever I fly business class for an international trip, I always check in at the counter. It's just as fast, but getting that boarding pass printing on cardstock and tucked into the photo page of my passport feels so quaint and charming.

kelnos19• 1 year ago

I always check in at the counter. It's just as fast

Having waited in several check-in counter lines because the airline's app insists that a human needs to check my travel documents before giving me a boarding pass, no, it is so not just as fast. Even for business class. Even if there is no line, I can tap through a mobile app check-in flow (in the comfort of my own home!) faster than a check-in agent will usually verify my identity and print a boarding pass. Regardless, I'd rather not add that kind of variability into the airport process, and have to pad my arrival time even more.

getting that boarding pass printing on cardstock and tucked into the photo page of my passport feels so quaint and charming.

This made me smile :)

mixmastamyk6• 1 year ago

Yes, in the digital world these folks feel like they can strongarm you, in a way they would never have the gall to do in person. By demanding full information and customer-hostile rules. Sorry, we don't "support" anything else at this time!

aprilthird20212• 1 year ago

But all of those situations require human labor or oversight which is extremely expensive in the developed world. So in the sense that they allow people to access these things for cheaper they are better. And Tinder, Duolingo, etc. are at least cheaper. The other two the cost savings is gained by the government or the airline

dwedge4• 1 year ago

Printing a boarding pass for the return trip when you can only check in 36 hours before departure is a lot trickier than printing at home. I'd prefer to print but this is one of the things that is simpler.

The only annoying part is when the app gets battery killed with terrible reception in the airport and then takes 2 minutes to show you the boarding pass it already downloaded.

JustExAWS5• 1 year ago

That’s why you put your boarding pass in your phone’s wallet

tsm• 1 year ago

Time was you could check in online and get the ticket counter agent to print your boarding pass for you

fsckboy2• 1 year ago

2. Tinder is worse than IRL speed dating.

women, and a small pool of men, use Tinder to efficiently find hookups. IRL speed dating is actually a much bigger pain in the ass for that purpose. it's "uber for nookie"

mihaaly4• 1 year ago

I believe they alwasy want and do change or revolution, or the most notorius ones disrupt life.

No improvement - displacement vector towards the positive half space of life quality - is implied, except for those selling it.

cblum• 1 year ago

Parking apps are worse than parking meters.

I generally agree, but I’ve had a great experience with one of those. I just wish they all did the same streamlined thing this one particular app I used did.

The QR code I had to scan actually ran an App Clip instead of taking me to a website. Everything was done in one screen: enter plate, parking stall number, hours. My physical interaction with it was just scrolling a little and hitting a button. Done. Wonderful.

Most parking solitions are a shitshow though. Multiple screens (seriously, why?!), having to create an account, not handling payment via Apple Pay so I have to enter my credit card manually. Having to enter the parking location manually (how come it’s not a parameter in the QR code URL?). I’d really like to know what happens at the companies that develop those. It’s borderline criminal how bad they are.

rramadass• 1 year ago

You have hit the nail right on the head.

I had come to this conclusion long ago i.e. computers/software are now majorly being oriented towards purely money-making (for certain vested interests) rather than doing any good for people/society or the world in general. The original idealism is long gone.

kelnos19• 1 year ago

Parking apps are worse than parking meters.

Ehhhhh. In the case where it's a one-off, yes, because I'm not going to install an app and give it my payment details if I only expect to rarely park in a particular place.

But, for example, in downtown Truckee, California, I always use the parking app, especially in the winter, so I don't have to futz with a machine out in the cold while my fingers are freezing. I pay from inside the warmth of my car, or inside the building I'm going to. Even in the summer, it's nice to be able to pay while I'm walking to my destination, rather than stand there staring at a machine, waiting for it to charge my credit card.

It's also great to be able to "feed the meter" from my table at the restaurant if end up there longer than I expected, and the time has run out.

Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.

To each their own, I guess. In general I prefer not to waste paper for one-time use things, and when I'm traveling I already have my phone, and not having to keep track of more things is a plus. I do worry about situations where I could lose or break my phone (though I could lose a printed boarding pass too) or its battery runs out, but if that happens I can still go to the check-in counter or a kiosk and get a boarding pass printed, so I'm really no worse off than if I didn't have the mobile app in the first place.

seabombs• 1 year ago

Though there are exceptions (even amongst your examples IMO), of the good-fast-cheap triangle I feel the majority choose fast and cheap.

Minor49er• 1 year ago

I paid for a parking space in Cambridge, MA once and got fined by a meter maid. The department didn't answer any communications I placed about it. I learned my lesson to always carry cash and never trust the app

Izkata• 1 year ago

2. Tinder is worse than IRL speed dating.

I don't know about Tinder specifically, but from what I've heard apps seem to be where most people meet nowadays - you'll find normal people mixed in with the weirdos. Meanwhile real-life speed dating is where the really desperate people go and is mostly weirdos.

sobakeitso2• 1 year ago

Lots of issues with your claims.

1. Parking Kitty is much much easier than fussing with grafitti-ed, vandalized, unserviced parking machines.

2. Speak for yourself, Tinder is a great rebound app; vastly more productive than the limited pools at speed dating (which was big in like, 1998?)

3. True. But I don't have time for language classes. Anecdote but Duolingo brought my French language skills back to life, but probably because I already had them.

4. Do you travel much? Apps are far, far superior to any mechanism. Let's say your flight is cancelled due to weather. You can (a) call the 800 number and wait in a phone queue, (b) go to the desk and wait in a physical queue, which is challenging if you are in a country that is not your native language, or (c) log into the app to make changes instead of waiting for a person. Have you ever wanted to change your seat, or upgrade? You have the same three choices. Yeah, apps are hands-down light-years ahead of alternatives when you travel frequently.

tremon3• 1 year ago

1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters.

Here in NL, parking apps show predictions of available parking spaces and some even allow reservation: you book a timeslot and enter your license plate, and on arrival the gates open automatically when it recognizes your license plate. No more fiddling with tickets, no queueing at the payment console.

For on-street parking, the apps usually allow two ways of parking registration: either you enter the location where you're parked (via manual lookup or phone GPS location), or you scan a QR code displayed on road signs. I'd call this one a solid win.

4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.

The train service here has this reminder in various locations: "If you use your phone to store/buy your ticket, you are responsible for keeping it charged. If your phone drains empty, you don't have a valid ticket and will be fined." I wouldn't want to be in the situation where I need to transfer after a long-haul flight and find my phone empty. For me, paper always beats battery for longevity of important documents.

jrochkind14• 1 year ago

Where I live in the US, only fairly recently have I started encountering parking where you cannot pay without doing it over the internet on a device. I haven't seen any where you need an app specifically, but you do need a smartphone or internet capable device. I am very annoyed by this.

LVB• 1 year ago

I write small utility apps that are often used by friends, families, the teams my kids are on, etc. None of them are overly complicated or aiming for award-winning polish. While I personally like installed apps, many people seem to prefer a link they can click. To accommodate that, I've been leaning towards Flutter as an acceptable compromise. The installed app has some better characteristics regarding device integration and storage, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how well the web versions work. When run on phone it’s hard to tell (visually) that it’s not the app. (UX is laggier though.)

maelito2• 1 year ago

That's why I'm building a Web map app. The Web is universal. It's already very capable.

aspenmayer• 1 year ago

Maps seem like a distinct failure mode of web apps. How do you load the map data on the website to navigate or orient yourself if you got lost outside the network coverage area?

febusravenga2• 1 year ago

It's easy. You can download data for certain areas you expect to be in offline mode and move all routing logic to app. It has been done many times in many apps. (ok, it only easy conceptually in reality it's quite big chunk of conscious dosign of app as a whole and no lesser chunk of actual work )

maelito2• 1 year ago

As far as I know, Google Maps used to not work outside of network coverage for like 15 years ? It already reached 1 billion user without the download area feature.

deeg• 1 year ago

To play somewhat of a devils advocate, 30 years ago this article could have been titled the tyranny of the internet. Is this much different from that.

rex_gallorum22• 1 year ago

30 years ago, the internet was a novelty, nothing more, and it remained so easily for another ten years after that. It wasn't until the widespread adoption of smartphones that permanent connectivity came to be taken for granted.

It was actually very easy to get by without any of it until quite recently, when legacy options for all kinds of things began being phased out.

arp2423• 1 year ago

Eh? 30 years ago would be 1994. Most people did not have internet in 1994.

But let's use 10 years: you absolutely could get by without internet 10 years ago. It would have been a bit of a hassle for a few things, but internet access wasn't needed for lots of every-day basic activities like parking a car, ordering in a restaurant, using tickets at a concert, etc.

Also: it was easy to use internet at a library, often at zero to no costs. You didn't need to have a personal device only used by you.

rex_gallorum22• 1 year ago

Absolutely. The internet stopped being something you accessed and became something you were connected to 24/7, and that you have a persistent, high-speed connection. That was a huge shift.

lucb1e12• 1 year ago

You'd be right if, 30 years ago, people were required to download proprietary software and run that on a locked-down computer (you don't get to have administrator-level access to it) in order to do simple things like pay a parking meter

Internet is (increasingly: was) an open system that you can connect to on your own terms. Browsers do your bidding, for the most part anyway and you can switch if you don't like one of them. However, you can't simply install an open source version of Google Play Services on your phone and if the Deutsche Bahn app doesn't work for you, there is no alternative that you can install to talk to their server and buy that train ticket (no equivalent to installing a different browser aka 'user agent')

donatj2• 1 year ago

I know people who love having specific apps for everything, but I generally find them a much worse user experience than the browser. Can't select/copy text. Sometimes if it's a terrible developer you can't paste. Can't arbitrarily zoom in.

I know Android now lets me copy from the screen but it still flows incorrectly sometimes, like copying from a PDF.

ThinkingGuy2• 1 year ago

Can't select/copy text… can't paste. Can't arbitrarily zoom in.

Don’t forget “Can’t block advertisements and tracking”

simonw• 1 year ago

A factor not mentioned in this article is people not being able to install apps because they've run out of space.

I've seen this a bunch with people who buy the less expensive phones with smaller amounts of storage: they take photos until their phone is full, and now if they need to install a new app they have to delete something else (including potentially their photos) to make space for it.

ryandrake11• 1 year ago

I guess I’m just lucky (or don’t live in UK). Nothing in my daily life requires a smartphone. Banking is either with a local branch or on the web. Making an appointment with a doctor or dentist is a voice phone call to the office. All my routine bills can be paid by check or over the postal mail. All my usual restaurant spots have paper menus. Sometimes I go a week or so and forget that I have an old iphone7 in a drawer with a now drained battery. I don’t think I regularly use a single app on it besides the browser.

Here’s hoping this doesn’t change!

karaterobot• 1 year ago

I see that this thread is full of a lot of very valid complaints about the hellish world we've created. But my reaction when these things come up is to point out that we effectively demanded this with our revealed preferences. We're at the triangulation of people preferring to use their phones for most things, while also demanding the lowest price possible. At a certain point, it's natural for companies to realize they can make more money—which is their reason for existing—by discontinuing products and lines of services that can be replaced by cheaper alternatives. I think everyone (over a certain age at least) has had the thought that brick and mortar stores all seem to be gone, and the realization that it's because everyone shops online, and then, if they are self-aware, the realization that they're part of that process. This is that at a somewhat zoomed-out scale.

Government services are a different case. I suppose they feel cost pressure as well, but it's right to expect them to accommodate more people than private businesses.

jmholla4• 1 year ago

I don't think that's the case. Just because companies have successful business models doing things this way doesn't mean this is what people want or that it's the only way. It could just as easily be this is the most profitable way (which does not equate with delivered value) and these decisions are made by a subset of people who profit off of the fallout.

edelbitter• 1 year ago

If my revealed preference is that you should pay extra to subsidize my shopping, does that really make you any more complicit in the redistribution scheme?

IshKebab• 1 year ago

This is mostly overblown, but the really annoying cases are the UK government themselves! Both the NHS app and HMRC app provide access to things you can't get to just from the web, even though they are just webview apps!! It's so dumb.

But generally... just buy a phone and download the apps. I imagine in the 1800s someone wrote an article "those without telephones are unfairly penalised". This is just a modern version.

2shortplanks• 1 year ago

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 watch Star Trek because the US paramount plus app detects I’m in the UK and I can’t install the UK version.

I could switch to a UK iCloud account but then when I’m in the states everything falls apart the other way round.

gambiting• 1 year ago

Yep, as someone who also travels between countries regularly, it's complete nonsense. "This app isn't available in your region" - what do you mean, I am literally in your region.

fnikacevic• 1 year ago

The sad part is sometimes just switching languages/locales on your phone (i.e. changing the language from US English to British English) fixes this as it's all the code checks.

aucisson_masque4• 1 year ago

Is this the same on Android side ? I know that you can more easily sideload app there so it could be an issue only on iphone walled garden.

lawgimenez• 1 year ago

Android app can still geolocate the user so yeah, still the same issue.

lazycouchpotato• 1 year ago

You can add multiple Google accounts - one for each country, and switch between them on the Play Store. That's how I'm able to access apps from my home country and resident country.

As for using the apps themselves, you might run into issues depending on what restrictions they have - IP address, SMS verification, etc.

anarazel• 1 year ago

I have two Google accounts, one in the us, one in Germany. So far that has divided to get around this for the apps I encountered it. But I'm not a heavy phone user...

userabchn• 1 year ago

My ugly solution to this problem is to have a free Oracle Cloud VM in the other country that I use to run a VPN (Oracle provides instructions [1]). I then connect to this using OpenVPN on my phone, which allows me have a Google account that thinks I am in the other country and so allows me to install apps that are restricted to that country. I don't have the VPN connected all the time - only when I want to access the App Store using the Google account that I have for the other country.

[1] https://blogs.oracle.com/developers/post/launching-your-own-...

crusty4• 1 year ago

To be a little pedantic, your solution is a solution to your problem, but only a fraction of the problem you're responding to. Your VPN won't help access the UK apps that require a UK phone localization if those same services aren't also available in the region of your VPN exit node. And since he's talking about UK-specific apps and services, VPNing his US phone back to the US isn't any help.

Netflix? Sure UK NHS? Not so much.

overflowcat• 1 year ago

This is essentially what's known as 'digital migration'[1] in mainland China. Many streaming services aren't available in China; foreign companies that do operate here often have their features reduced. So, apart from buying foreign SIM cards and using multiple Apple accounts, we typically subscribe to something called 'airports,' which provide standardized, open-source VPN protocols with servers (called 'nodes') in various regions. Besides bypassing internet censorship, these nodes often use residential broadband and specify which streaming and LLM services they can unlock.

[1] https://blog.shuziyimin.org/

realityking5• 1 year ago

Interestingly EU consumer protection cooperation is currently claiming this is illegal within the EU/between EU markets: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/es/ip_24_...

I hope they manage to change things.

sorokod• 1 year ago

UK is not part of EU.

benhurmarcel• 1 year ago

I’ve had the same issue between Spain and France, so it might be illegal but it’s still the case.

Farbklex• 1 year ago

I recently complained to my local cities transportation office that their mobile app for bus tickets was only available for German Google users. The actually changed it now.

Shank• 1 year ago

I could switch to a UK iCloud account but then when I’m in the states everything falls apart the other way round.

If it’s only two countries, you can sign in and out of the App Store only with two regions. This is how I maintained a Japan and US region account on the same device. The thing that sucks is changing between accounts for updates, but it does work to some degree.

kstenerud2• 1 year ago

I can't buy overnight bunk tickets on Ukrainian trains anymore because I need to authenticate, and the only authentication methods require either Ukrainian citizenship or residency cards.

I can't install the app for my new Amex card because my Google account was opened in Canada and I live in Germany now.

And it keeps getting worse every year. I'm worried that eventually my American and Canadian banking apps will stop working...

The internet was supposed to make this shit simpler.

petertodd• 1 year ago

I can't buy overnight bunk tickets on Ukrainian trains anymore because I need to authenticate, and the only authentication methods require either Ukrainian citizenship or residency cards.

In fairness, that specific case is probably intentional. They have quite limited train capacity as all passenger air travel was forced to switch to trains/busses, and I suspect they're trying to save it for locals. It is annoying though; I've been to Ukraine quite a few times recently and have used that app myself.

__turbobrew__3• 1 year ago

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 toll. I tried my best to comply but the system is totally user hostile.

whall6• 1 year ago

Ha seems like the app is the scapegoat for this one

odiroot2• 1 year ago

Truth be told, the tolls in Austria are a total mess.

a012• 1 year ago

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)

mitthrowaway23• 1 year ago

I have an account at a credit union that only offers SMS 2FA, and requires it for every login. I can't connect to that phone number when I'm abroad, so I can't access my account.

abustamam• 1 year ago

Have you considered getting a voip number? Google Voice, Twilio, etc.

As an aside, I think it's insane that banking apps almost always have 2FA via SMS, which is known to be less secure than a TOTP authenticator, whereas my Nintendo account has TOTP 2FA, and passkey support. Heaven forbid I want more security options for my banking than for my videogames.

abraxas• 1 year ago

Yes, I've long given up trying to reconcile this mess and bought three separate cell phones with three separate sim cards to for the three countries where I spend non-trivial amount of time.

mihaaly4• 1 year ago

When I was young in Europe the trend was that the place where you live will dictate and limit less and less of your life. Technology, traveling, motivation of people will allow roaming, postcode independent existence.

Well, the trend froze up very fast and is in full reverse nowadays, I am in my early 50s and I believe me and my children's life will such more and more, be even more difiicult by the reverse of intents towards a more unified humanity. The law and all working with law will remain a big fucking barrier even if the representatives the people choose to form their life (politicians) would magicly become nice and selfless and efficient, they fight hard to do business the same shitty way as 100s of years ago, all differenty in all puny geographic regions, in as much diverse as possible, as incompetible with each other as possible. And several happily collaborate as it is a fix income to do unoptimal and fragmented way, happily waste our resources providing services in this muddy water.

Idesmi• 1 year ago

Not just freedom of living and work, but things even more basic: Have you tried crossing the border with Germany or Austria by train? You'll most likely get a mini deportation squad on board, despite all agreeing to Schengen Convention.

odiroot2• 1 year ago

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.

lucb1e12• 1 year ago

That might also be because it's not legal to geoblock consumers within the "single european market" EU strategy thing. The bank might have not blocked German residents from using their UK bank account before and now they noticed there's no reason to bother people with geoblocking and so it still works after the UK broke out of the EU

Zak2• 1 year ago

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.

bmoxb• 1 year ago

I don't see why I should even have to set up multiple accounts. For the vast majority of these apps, I see no reason they need to be geo-locked anyway.

gamedever4• 1 year ago

AFAIK this is only a problem on iPhone, not Android?

Note: I have an iPhone. It sucks. Same issue. I have bank accounts in other countries. The app needs an update. To install the update I have to switch countries on my account which instantly voids any and all subscriptions through Apple. It's insane.

It's even more crazy that every single Apple employee I know has this issue but for whatever reason it's not fixed.

Symbiote6• 1 year ago

The UK National Health Service app is restricted to the UK only: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nhs.online... — that's not too crazy, as it's also only useful for people resident in the UK.

The McDonald's UK app is also restricted to the UK: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mcdonalds.... which is daft, why wouldn't they want tourists and visitors?

Searching "<city> transport app" with large cities, the first restricted example I found is for Sheffield, which is limited to the UK: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yorcard.ts... . (It's the official app, the contact email ends .gov.uk.)

An example in the article, of paying for on-street parking, is also blocked for tourists: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paybyphone...

I'm not going to bother registering an additional Google account when I visit Sheffield then want to take the tram to McDonald's.

(By "restricted" I mean Google Play reports "This app is not available for your device" which is a current phone registered in Denmark.)

archon8102• 1 year ago

If you're on Android, apkmirror.com or another similar site is a good and safe solution.

ptx2• 1 year ago

On the safety point, how would I ensure that e.g. the APK for my banking app is authentic and unmodified?

qingcharles3• 1 year ago

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

crmi• 1 year ago

You can purchase data-only sims that last a couple of years in the UK with generous monthly data allowances for a one time upfront fee. May save you overpaying for two separate bills.

commandersaki• 1 year ago

If you create multiple Apple accounts in different regions, you can switch to that regions app store in the App Store app (this doesn't have to do with your iPhone iCloud account) by logging in to the relevant account.

I have a US and an Aus Apple Account, and I switch the account on App Store to get apps that are region locked.

relistan• 1 year ago

I feel your pain. I’ve been dealing with this since 2011. The thing that makes it even worse is subscriptions. You can’t switch app stores while you have subscriptions.

bxparks2• 1 year ago

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.

dehrmann2• 1 year ago

I'm 50% sure you can set this credit card through their website.

bxparks2• 1 year ago

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.

montroser• 1 year ago

I never install apps, and I don't have any problem with private companies offering discounts or whatever via apps. The market will do its thing.

But where I have a big problem is when my local government requires me to install apps to do basic things like parking. It would almost be okay if the apps were developed in house and were open source. But of course they're not. And anyway there's no reason they can't just be web based.

So now I just don't pay for parking and I pay the ticket if I get a ticket...

einpoklum• 1 year ago

The market will do its thing.

Markets' "thing" is concentration of capital and the whittling of service/product providers until just a few major ones, or a single one, is left, and then they collude on pricing, bypassing/preventing regulation, psychological manipulation of customers etc.

grg02• 1 year ago

Yup, it will certainly do its thing.

nmstoker• 1 year ago

It's unfortunate the article accepts the questionable argument about apps being more secure - companies say that to soften people up to handing out personal data access that apps enable.

thyw123129• 1 year ago

Resist! If a bank forces you to use a surveillance device (smartphone) to do Internet banking or forces you to install invasive apps on your PC, don't.

TAN apps were still reasonable. TAN generators too, though the hardware sucked and used an insane amount of batteries. Then banks forced apps and smartphones and that is the point where to say no thanks.

They are still required to perform transactions by filling out forms with a pen. It sounds like a lot of work but it really isn't. Use cash or credit cards and cut down the number of manual transactions.

mharrig1• 1 year ago

My anecdote for the pile is that my apartment complex uses one of those apps to pay for laundry services, but is slightly less expensive than the coin based counterparts on the same machine.

What's even worse is that the app is incredibly poorly made such that occasionally some payments just fall into the void and either start the machine for free or require a double charge. Anytime I have reached out to complain about these I just get told to bring my phone closer to the machine.

techorange• 1 year ago

My greatest aspiration in life (yes, hyperbole) is to retire and get rid of my smartphone, and I can imagine it’s just going to be harder and harder as time goes on. I went into a restaurant recently and asked for a menu and they looked at me like I was from another planet.

ThinkingGuy2• 1 year ago

Agreed. After 27 years of working in IT and having to carry a mobile device (first a pager, then a flip phone, & now a smartphone) for on-call duties, carrying a mobile device has always felt like a punishment to me. The days when I can walk around device-free are the happiest, most stress-free times of my life. But the tech companies are making it harder and harder to do.

nicbou3• 1 year ago

I went on a trip without any tech. No smartphone.

I made it five days but could have gone for longer. It was interesting to see how the system worked from without, and how people reacted to requests that would have been banal in the nineties. For the most part, it went well. Very few things were unavailable. I only remember hotel phones being missing or broken. However it was impossible to handle things back home and my life would have started falling apart after a few weeks of ignoring emails.

bdcravens2• 1 year ago

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, you started to see more and more interactive phone systems appear due to touch-tone phones being common place. However, I grew up poor, and for quite some time we still had rotary phones (when we could afford to have a phone that is), making those systems inaccessible to us.

s3graham• 1 year ago

"""Many tech experts also argue that apps are generally more secure than websites..."""

"Many", like, maybe the ones who are trying to sell you on an app development contract? But not many others!

pipecmd• 1 year ago

...following some excerpts from an article in the NZZ (swiss newspaper): "Right to an offline life and much more: French-speaking Switzerland is becoming a global pioneer of a new digital fundamental right". Source: https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/die-romandie-mausert-sich-zur-wel...

Neuchâtel is including "digital integrity" in its constitution, and other cantons could follow. The National Council had criticized a proposal as purely symbolic. But the consequences are visible in Geneva.

The first time it could be dismissed as an accident, the second time not: that's what Alexis Roussel, the driving force behind a fundamental right to digital integrity, says. Roussel, a member of the Pirate Party and former president, is in good spirits. After Geneva in 2023, his home canton of Neuchâtel also enshrined the new fundamental right in the constitution on November 24. Both times the people voted yes by a very clear margin: 94 percent in Geneva and almost 92 percent in Neuchâtel.

From the new legislative period in 2025, the Neuchâtel constitution will therefore guarantee not only the right to physical, mental and psychological integrity, but also the right to digital integrity. The new right only applies in relation to the state. It includes, for example, the right to security in digital space, the right "not to be monitored, measured and analyzed", the right to an "offline life" and the right to be forgotten.

[...]

In Geneva, Alexis Roussel is already seeing the first consequences of the right to digital integrity. Secondary school students there no longer use the office software Microsoft Office, but the non-commercial alternative Libre Office. The education department explained the change to the newspaper "Le Temps" by saying that Microsoft has been receiving personal data such as names and email addresses since an update to its licensing terms. However, the canton is only allowed to process data at foreign companies if they are "adequately" protected there.

[...]

In the canton of Neuchâtel, too, the new fundamental right is already being mentioned in concrete terms in political debates. The liberal municipal councillor Catherine Zeter said on RTS television about the planned closure of the post office in Boudry that the company would probably prefer to offer its services only digitally. But, said Zeter, this "completely" violates the right to an offline life that the people of Neuchâtel have just decided on with their new fundamental right.

ComposedPattern• 1 year ago

It's funny how people in this thread keep saying "well if you're going to complain about people being penalized for not using apps, you might as well complain about people being penalized for not using telephones/cars/internet"... and yes, I am going to complain about all of those things. I imagine that many or most homeless people don't have reliable access to any of the above. I have an anxiety disorder that makes it hard for me to drive or talk on the phone, and I'm sure there are many people with more extreme conditions for whom it's impossible. There are people like Richard Stallman and members of certain religious communities who have strong moral objections to using certain technologies. Society should accommodate all sorts of people and all sorts of ways of living.

vladms2• 1 year ago

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 if it isn't just fear of the new that stops people using them. I keep a smartphone around 4-5 years and my 10 year old phone still works ok. If people just don't want to change or learn new things, I would found that much more worrying...

miltonlost2• 1 year ago

In your world, people in wheelchairs would be housebound. But I guess we shouldn't accommodate them by requiring wheelchair ramps or curb cut-outs. They are lesser than us.

jmholla4• 1 year ago

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 the population. It's a large portion of the population at different portions of their lives. It's something like 90% of adults will be disabled in their lives.

How many times have you lost your phone, or broken it without an immediately available backup?

johnea• 1 year ago

Your argument is of course predicated on the assumption that "society" doesn't fail to accommodate you...

Requireing purchase of a private companies product, and accommpanying service, to access merdical or government services should be illegal...

Apple or goggle don't speak for me...

nicbou3• 1 year ago

Immigrants are often left out for various reasons, such as not having the right documents, having an unsupported kind of passport, not having an address they can register as their home, not having an app store account in the right country, not having a local payment method, and a variety of other issues.

kevincox• 1 year ago

IMHO at some point it makes sense to start requiring the internet, it makes a lot of things easier. But when we do that we need to ensure that everyone is supported. For example ensuring that people have ready internet access at public libraries. Providing government-provided email inboxes for receiving government communication (lots of homeless people get locked out of regular free mail providers). Train support staff at these libraries (or whatever institution provides these services) to help people who need assistance though the government processes, including doing it on their behalf when required.

Terr_• 1 year ago

To quote something from a favorite fiction-series, where someone has traveled to a relatively backwards planet:

"Poor?" said Cordelia, bewildered. "No electricity? How can it be on the comm network?"
"It's not, of course," answered Vorkosigan.
"Then how can anybody get their schooling?"
"They don't."
Cordelia stared. "I don't understand. How do they get their jobs?"
"A few escape to the Service. The rest prey on each other, mostly." Vorkosigan regarded her face uneasily. "Have you no poverty on Beta Colony?"
"Poverty? Well, some people have more money than others, of course, but... no comconsoles?"
Vorkosigan was diverted from his interrogation. "Is not owning a comconsole the lowest standard of living you can imagine?" he said in wonder.
"It's the first article in the constitution. 'Access to information shall not be abridged.' "

-- Shards of Honor (1986) by Lois McMaster Bujold

In the 39 years since this was published, I would have hoped our real society would have advanced a bit more in that direction.

theragra• 1 year ago

Thanks, a bit of nostalgy from my youth. I read it in Russian, in 200x, though

hn_throwaway_99• 1 year ago

I imagine that many or most homeless people don't have reliable access to any of the above.

In the US there is a specific government program called "Lifeline" that provides cell phone service to low income people, https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-cons... (whether it gets DOGEd remains to be seen...) And where I live there are a bunch of programs that provide free cell phones to homeless people.

It's not a panacea because lots of homeless people have other problems that make it difficult to keep a cell phone and not lose it. But that's really a separate issue - not having access is really not much of a barrier for the homeless, at least in the US.

stonogo• 1 year ago

You cannot receive Lifeline benefits without an address in most states.

ksec• 1 year ago

And in the good old day. Apple will force its hands on these sort of issues. But 10 years after Apple Pay and the Claims to replace your wallet. They are still millions miles away from doing it.

In many ways Apple without Steve Jobs feels more Google and Microsoft but with better taste of software and hardware.

"So the people who make the company more successful are the sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the ‘product people’ get run out of the decision-making forums. The companies forget how to make great products. The product sensibility and product genius that brought them to this monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product vs. a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product.
"And they really have no feeling in their hearts about wanting to help the costumers.” *

Carrok• 1 year ago

10 years after Apple Pay and the Claims to replace your wallet. They are still millions miles away from doing it.

Clearly we have very different experiences here, because Apple Pay has effectively replaced my wallet. I don’t carry any cash and carry one or two cards for the rare times when tap to pay is unavailable.

modeless• 1 year ago

The US government hands out smartphones with service for free. Elsewhere you can get used phones for practically nothing. Most places have wifi these days so you don't even need to pay for service just to use an app at a store.

Not having a smartphone is a choice. Nobody is obligated to support you in that choice. It's not "unfair". Not everything you dislike is "unfair".

What's actually unfair is the app store monopolies that dictate what you can and can't do with the phone you "own". But I don't really expect The Guardian to understand the true issue.

aucisson_masque4• 1 year ago

Just saying, 99% of the app could be replaced by a browser bookmark.

Of course some companies don't want it so they make their website unusable to smartphone.

There isn't really much that technically would prevent people from using their web browser to pay the parking or to pay McDonald.

You can have geolocation on browser too, save your account, take picture and so on.

It's just better for these companies if we have their app because we can't use ad blocker and just close the browser. The app, it can send data 24/24.

For instance, I have yet to find an llm or ai chatbot app that doesn't force me to have the Google play store enabled on my phone and to be logged in with my Google account.

What the FCK they care if I have a Google account on my phone to be able to use chatgpt, deepseek, Mistral, lama and others ? More and more do that, recently the app I used to use to track food quality (Yuka) did that too.

The more thing goes, the less app I use and the more I rely on web browser. And those who refuse to work in browser, i just ditch them.

I feel like we reached a plateau years ago and now things are going downhill with android and iPhone.

raintrees• 1 year ago

I chose to use a flip phone over a previous Android phone around 10 years ago when ISPs/Phone providers showed that security lapse issues for them was just a cost of doing business. I used to store private client info in Exchange and sync it, but I could not, in good conscience, continue to do so with the knowledge of that information's exposure.

I recently worked with NetGear support to have a new router replaced after we determined the firmware was known to be problematic, and the only way the level 2 support person had of correcting it required their app.

So fortunately, there may still be ways around working with IT without a "smart" phone, and I will continue to blaze that trail as needed.

cwoolfe• 1 year ago

Yes! I've often said "software engineers should be doomed to use what they create. Or at least watch others try to use it." One example is our local Costco parking garage. They replaced the old push-button ticketing kiosk (which had nothing wrong with it) with one that had a touchscreen. Many times the line is backed up and one day I saw why. The guy was pushing the touchscreen button as if it were physical, and it wasn't registering the tap. He was using multiple fingers and mashing instead of using one finger and doing a clean tap inside the digital button.

mitthrowaway23• 1 year ago

Perhaps while wearing gloves, because it's really cold outside?

nicbou3• 1 year ago

They should be forced to use it from scratch on a cheap Android phone using spotty signal.

febusravenga2• 1 year ago

Times where SWEs decided about these things are long gone. It's all in hands of product managers, designers and other business oriented people.

Mystery-Machine• 1 year ago

I don't have a permanent address nor a permanent (mobile) phone number. It's impossible to do so many things without these. I have to use my mother's address and my mother is currently suing me in court, so go figure how much mail reaches me. Without a permanent address, you can't open a bank account, you can't use many government services,... It's a "required" field on many online forms. It's such a pain because they don't need those info to give me the services they offer...

EasyMark• 1 year ago

This is why I wished all apps were backed by webapps of similar capabilities. I know that I personally see how it goes with the website first before I install an app. I prefer the browser sandbox by far to the phone OS

NotYourLawyer• 1 year ago

I hate the app-ification of everything. 95% of apps could just be a web page, and should be.

IOUnix• 1 year ago

Yeah, that's how that works. The world moves on and progress happens. You don't have to necessarily like it, or embrace it. But if the entire world is moving a certain direction and you decide to not move with it, that fine. But it's a choice you're making. You may not like that the entire world is going from horses to automobiles, but if you refuse to embrace them you can't be surprised when the grocery store is now a 3 hour walk away.

mixmastamyk6• 1 year ago

Ticketmaster is the worst of these for me. They have a near monopoly, and started forcing this shit on everyone a few years ago with covid as the excuse. Now going to one of their concerts is like taking an international flight.

Forget privacy, forget having a paper stub as a souvenir (not even an option), forget paying with cash. As I avoid ticketmaster, I've avoided most concerts the last few years... only going to small local venues, which provide the options above.

mglvsky• 1 year ago

Even for those who is OK with Ticketmaster - there is little "surprise" - hostile location/IP-based blockings. Do you want to buy some tickets for concert in Germany while being on trip in non-EU country? No way - we are just blocking you! They even learned to detect whether a client use VPN so latter could not circumvent this ridiculous obstacle.

MiddleEndian• 1 year ago

Ticketmaster is the one of the shittiest apps I've ever used in my life. Constantly have to reactivate because it forgets your info, it fails to display tickets, it shows ads, etc.

But I recently discovered you can just view the tickets in your mobile browser instead and it will work fine for whatever scanners the venues use.

steelframe10• 1 year ago

I'm all-in on this. If the only way for me to attend an event is to deal with an app on my phone, I automatically assume there are a few dozen other activities or events I'd enjoy doing more during that time and choose to go do one of those instead.

MandieD2• 1 year ago

The big group that keeps getting ignored are older people who actually do have smartphones, but find them increasingly difficult to use as they age, due to how fiddly touch interfaces can be and visuals designed by and for people in their 20s, not 70s and 80s.

Typing on a smartphone is impossible for my 70-something father, even on the larger models.

miltonlost2• 1 year ago

Touchscreens also frequently don't work with older people's skin which is often dry. They often literally cannot type because the screen doesn't pick up the electrical currents in the drier, more insulated fingers. Physical keyboards wouldn't have this problem.

MandieD2• 1 year ago

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what my dad’s problem boils down to. He worked in construction for half a century, specializing in concrete, so heaven knows what that did to the skin on his fingertips.

gs176• 1 year ago

Same for my parents (ironically, my 90-something grandmother can use an iPhone with no problem). My dad has Raynaud's (poor fingertip circulation), so touch screens sometimes just won't work for him anyways. Making things app-only is practically discrimination.

sylware• 1 year ago

Solution: restore noscript/basic (x)html interop, where it can do a good enough job (like most online services where doing a few years ago...).

FpUser• 1 year ago

Toronto, Canada. Tried to pay for street parking using their machine and with credit card. It spat out some gibberish on display that flashed too fast to read. Parking ticket guy was hanging around so I asked him WTF is going on. He said I must use the app or he will give a ticket. I tried to argue with him that they must still accept the other form of payment and I do not want to pollute phone with the app. He said that he does not give a shit and will issue ticket regardless of what fucking Toronto's parking website pages say.

LorenzoGood• 1 year ago

My grandfather does not have a cellphone, however he seems pretty creative about getting around situations where he would need an app. For example, my sister had some sporting event where the only way to get a ticket was to use an app, so he snuck into the hand stamping line, and entered the event.

exe34• 1 year ago

I don't mind having a phone, but the only way I'll put personal information on it is if I have root access and can run a firewall. anything else and it's not my phone.

more and more apps are starting to reject rooted phones. I'm dropping them for now, but I worry that at some point I'll have to carry a decoy phone for essential apps. or maybe I'll learn to just not put anything more personal than the stuff required to use the essential ones like health care and transport.

grg02• 1 year ago

I've left gyms and restaurants because of this crap.

blackeyeblitzar• 1 year ago

I hate having to use a metro app or bank app or app for conferences or whatever. Who knows what the privacy and security of all these are. I am sure it’s a matter of time before they all get breached.

danjc• 1 year ago

Not the point of the article but for most apps, there is no technical reason for them to be installed apps rather than web apps.

la_fayette• 1 year ago

In Germany you would mostly be forced to fill forms on paper and send it back and forth by mail, do payments in cash or use support hotlines on the phone, which take a long waiting time to get to somebody... Apps would be fine :-)

dwedge4• 1 year ago

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.

lucb1e12• 1 year ago

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

deergomoo• 1 year ago

It mentions parking which is a similar category of annoyance, but I think the multitude of mutually incompatible apps for EV charging pose a real barrier to adoption too. Maybe not in a way people are explicitly aware of, but it certainly makes up part of the stories about difficulty and inconvenience with public charging.

I can pay for petrol with any card or, if I'm feeling really old school, by going into a building and handing a person cash. Someone like my mum, who still likes to draw the cash she'll need for the week and spend that, wouldn't even entertain the idea of having to download and maintain a suite of apps for every brand of charger.

Apps are a good convenience option for those that want them, but they shouldn't be the only option, especially not for something as essential as fuelling your car. I would welcome regulation on these, even a baby step of "all chargers must accept contactless payment". I'd like to see manned charging stations and cash options too—and I say that as someone who pays for everything by card—but I fear in the short term that might hamper infrastructure rollout.

postepowanieadm• 1 year ago

Not a single word about covid related apps?

dennis_jeeves24• 1 year ago

One word: Orwellian.

riedel• 1 year ago

It is even worse: people with smartphones not running software from either Google or Apple are penalized. I have huge problems right now because the only second factor from one of my banks (that also has the inbox for my insurances) is a Android app that requires play protect.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 1 year ago

I was just whini- er, talking about this, this morning.

The main issue is that end-users not only accept crappy software, they pay for it (sometimes, quite a bit). They also recommend it to others, give it good reviews, and subcultures of "tech-macho" workarounds to bugs cause people to actually prefer crap. It's infuriating (to me, but not, perhaps, to many tech companies).

As long as that keeps happening, the quality of software is going to remain in the shitter. It doesn't make economic sense to write good software. Writing high-Quality software is a lot more expensive than writing crap.

My software tends to be pretty high-Quality, but that's mainly because it is free software, and I tend to work alone, so its scope is quite limited. I would not expect a commercial company to develop software the way that I do. It would just cost too much.

afandian• 1 year ago

I'm glad to see people talking about this. I'd love to see a new right: The right to not have your phone on you.

For whatever reason. Maybe it was stolen. Maybe it's being fixed. Maybe the battery is dead.

(Maybe you don't want to get a Google or Apple account. But that's not the only use case.)

All public services and essential services (government services, banks, car parks, etc) should respect this right. It's bizarre that people think it's such an outlandish request.

causal• 1 year ago

The increasing necessity of the Internet is also why giving companies the power to exile someone from the Internet is an extremely broad power that is increasingly like a prison sentence. E.g. the recent cases of publishers demanding ISPs cut off users who have pirated content.

elric3• 1 year ago

Maybe the currently shitty transatlantic political climate will force politicians to think about the reliance on 2 US tech companies for every single piece of mobile software.

The UK tried to force Apple to Do Evil and failes. Who's to the say the US wouldn't be (or hasn't been) more successful?

If I were a politician relying on WhatsApp for secure communications (as many over here seem to be), I'd be very worried.

dennis_jeeves24• 1 year ago

It's bizarre that people think it's such an outlandish request.

Bizarre but not surprising. Tyranny of the masses.

fc417fc8022• 1 year ago

I refuse to use service specific apps (on personal devices) and let the chips fall where they may. So far the vast majority of stuff continues to work ...

sirjaz• 1 year ago

Democratize it and of you require an app on the phone that same app needs to be available on all major pc OSes. Problem solved.

zzo38computer• 1 year ago

I saw on Usenet about "Digitalzwang". Here is the quotation:

The German movement "Digitalcourage" has coined the term "Digitalzwang" (compulsory digitalisation) for this feature. For instance, some public funding programmes cannot be used unless you have access to a PC (a smartphone is not sufficient) hooked up to the internet.
Digitalcourage support responsible digitalisation by offering help in the usage of secure authorisation and encryption but strictly disapproves of any form of compulsory digitalisation. People who refuse using public data networks, whatever their motives, must have equal rights as everybody else.

What they describe is not quite what the linked article describes, but is similar and is related.

I would further say, that in addition to that (and the stuff mentioned in the linked article), you should not be required to use computers with specific complicated software (including web browsers), or to use computers (including smartphones) or credit cards at all, if that is applicable to whatever you are doing working with. There is also the issue of a smartphone running out of battery power or otherwise not working, even if you do have it.

(I have once been in a restaurant where a app is required, although customers who do not have a smartphone can borrow a iPad from them. This is not as bad, but still it is not as good as just not requiring it at all.)

MisterBastahrd• 1 year ago

Some of these website-in-apps drive me fucking nuts. They will switch you to the app, ask for validation through email, and then when you go to check the email, it loses your place in its internal browser, sending it back to the login screen, and so the number you've retrieved is worthless unless you know how to specifically minimize the app on the screen, which it will not tell you beforehand how to do. The bouncing back and forth is annoying and idiotic.

casey2• 1 year ago

This entire article is fodder for techbros to circle jerk about how impactful they are despite any productivity gains being marginal or nonexistent.

It's goes further into nonsensical territory when a progressive shows up and starts complaining about how the people who don't want to participate in society are being unfairly punished. That being poor is somehow not only a problem, but also YOUR problem.

ge96• 1 year ago

I bought tickets for a concert, had to download an app

Had to give my phone number to reserve a table today

Tickets on your phone for airline, it's not all bad saw some elder couple with flip phones (they're able to get by without a smart phone)

elric3• 1 year ago

Forcing apps on people keeps the Apple/Google duopoly in place. Every alternative mobile OS fails unless it has an Android compatibility layer. And even then it will fail because Google's anti-competitive Play Integrity API won't work, and many users will be unable to use bank/payment apps.

HellDunkel• 1 year ago

Some even want to unleash the tyranny of apps upon our children at school. Can you imagine? Brainrot is a thing.

byyoung3• 1 year ago

lmao i think its those with smartphones are unfairly penalized

Pavilion2095• 1 year ago

Although I have a smartphone, I understand the problem. It amazes me how many businesses create so many unnecessary obstacles between the user and the purchase these days. It doesn't make sense to me.

TexanFeller• 1 year ago

It’s especially bad for elderly people. I have elderly family members with cancer and other serious issues who struggle because medical offices expect contact to be only in app messages and chats. When these patients call on the phone and say they need to talk to someone on the phone because they struggle with accessing other forms of communication they still often only reply back in the app/website. Some are elderly and rural enough to have grown up without electricity or running water until they were adults(yes, they grew up in the US). They still don’t have smartphones. They have <1mbit Internet. 2FA is a major hurdle for them. Some have vision problems that make reading text difficult. Some are hard of hearing and struggle with the phone too. So many people are left behind by trying to make patient communication efficient for the staff and documented for their electronic records systems. No one is thinking about what’s efficient and effective for the patients they serve, and no one will because doctors have huge debts to pay and have to work for the Wall Street crowd.

sobakeitso2• 1 year ago

I went through this a year ago. My 95 year old dad was in rehab after major heart surgery and they wanted to communicate with him through a clunky android app. It was enraging. He could barely use the TV remote and they wanted him to navigate an app that kept crashing, forcing him to log in with a username and corporate-approved password. Absolute horror. I feel for you.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 1 year ago

There is certainly an analogy here to servers that respond to HTTP ("websites") that ignore the concept of "user agent", i.e., the user chooses the client, and try to force the "www user" to choose a certain "web browser", usually one funded by advertising.

In the case of handheld computers ("smartphones") the situation is even more restrictive. The "mobile user" is forced to use both s specific operating system and a specific client in order to communicate with servers that respond to HTTP ("backends"), where the former is controlled by a company wholly or partially dependant on surveillance, data collection and the sale of online advertising services as a "business model".

steelframe10• 1 year ago

It's not just those without smartphones who are penalized. It's those without Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and spying imposed by Apple or Google on their devices.

I run GrapheneOS on an older Pixel. It does everything I need it to do: alarms, offline maps and navigation, end-to-end encrypted communications, podcasts, audiobooks, music, photos, weather, and even phone calls. All without any DRM or spying.

Now let's talk about the downsides in this article: shopping discounts, parking, entertainment, fast food, and banking.

Shopping discounts: The deal is that they get to track me and advertise to me, and they cut some percentage off a purchase here and there. No deal. I've discovered so many great products by moving away from big retail shops that engage in this kind of activity. I mostly shop at Trader Joe's, which has no coupon/discount/loyalty nonsense. For the occasional trip to another supermarket, I simply key in <local area code>-867-5309. Works every time.

Parking: I ride my bicycle or take public transportation almost everywhere, so parking is a moot point for me. But for the rare occasion when I drive to a place where I have to pay for parking, most everything accepts a credit card. If it doesn't, most everything else has a website that I can go to in Vanadium or Waterfox. It's actually very rare that I find I actually have no choice but to download and install a DRM'd app in order to park somewhere. In fact I don't recall that ever actually happening to me. Not to say that's not a possibility in the future.

Entertainment: I despise large crowds, and almost everything that's exclusively done through Ticketmaster et al. is of absolutely no interest to me. If I'm not sitting down in a cozy venue within 10-15 or so feet from the performers, I'm just not interested.

Fast food: I don't eat fast food. Discounted Big Macs isn't my idea of a good time.

Banking: My bank's web site works fine on Waterfox. But if I'm going to be managing my money I'd much prefer to do it on my computer. If I want a reasonable return on my deposits I simply park most of my cash in a money market ETF. It's plenty convenient and is simply not a big issue for me.

I'll add a few more.

Rideshare: I find traditional taxis are everywhere I've recently visited, tend to be driven by more interesting people, and they accept cash, no problem. I've had plenty of bad experiences with rideshares and have never had a bad experience since switching to traditional taxis. Knock on wood.

Audiobooks: I get ODM files from my local library. The audio files you download via ODM aren't DRM'd.

Ebooks: My offline Kobi reader works great. Kindles can be cracked with WinterBreak. Again, the library. DeDRM is your friend.

Email: Fastmail app from apkcure.com.

Chat: Signal.

Airlines: Check in on Waterfox, take a screenshot of the ticket/QR code. If that doesn't work, check in at the airport and get a printed boarding pass.

enos_feedler• 1 year ago

I have a friend in hong kong who is an international teacher. Wanted to take a sick day but needed to see a doctor to get a note. then needed an app. but the app is only available for hong kong app store users. She basically could not take a sick day from work.

Kim_Bruning• 1 year ago

In many countries, the secrecy of your mail is protected by law (secrecy of correspondence)

There is -as yet- no laws as strong for 'telephones'. But people communicate a lot more by mobile phone than by snail mail these days!

I think people should be free to do or discuss whatever they want via their phones, just like is permitted for paper mail. Phones should should get very stringent legal protections, including at borders, just like for paper mail.

fennecbutt• 1 year ago

So are those without millions or billions of dollars.

GarnetFloride• 1 year ago

I help run a symposium, and we are back to using paper program books, as our programmer volunteer moved on to other things and we couldn't update the iPhone and Android apps, but we were able to make a web app of the schedule which we'll probably continue using as we don't need to do two different things.

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

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