Technology

You can do almost anything with a website that you could do with an app. The only reason they are pushing the apps so hard is because they can collect a lot more data than a website can.

My favorite part of the 30 day dumb phone challenge I did recently: I couldn't install your crappy app even if I wanted to.

A little over halfway through the challenge, was paying for my order at a local eatery, and the cashier started plugging their new app and rewards points and digital coupons and shit. I was like "I'm gonna stop you right there: flip phone." and pulled it out of my pocket and brandished it like I was the sheriff of Luddite-ville.

Kinda like this, but "Flip phone!"

TBH I dont use an app for anything that can be done in the browser, especially when mobile websites ask me tl get their app.

I recently re-downloaded the Michaels app while I was in the Michaels checkout line just so I could apply a $5 coupon that the register failed to read from the app anyway.

There's your problem right there.

Does this author not understand how dumb this makes him look? You downloaded an entire app, in the checkout line, for a $5 coupon on something you were likely overcharged for in the first place?

Even when you’re lacking in a store-specific app, your apps will let you pay by app. You just need to figure out (or remember, if you ever knew) whether your gardener or your hair salon takes Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, or one of the new bank-provided services such as Zelle and Paze.

If only there was a universal form of payment that you could keep in your pocket and pull out to use anytime with very minimal interaction. Maybe a card or something.

Apps are all around us now. McDonald’s has an app. Dunkin’ has an app.

Why are you using them?

Every chain restaurant has an app. Every food-delivery service too: Grubhub, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Chowbus.

Why are you using all of them??

Every supermarket and big-box store. I currently have 139 apps on my phone. These include: Menards, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Joann Fabric, Dierbergs, Target, IKEA, Walmart, Whole Foods

Why the fucking hell do you need any of these?!

This is literally the 2024 equivalent of your mother having a dozen toolbars in Internet Explorer because she kept clicking on coupons.

Just go to the place, pull out your credit card, pay the cashier, and leave. How the hell does any functioning adult blame the technology when they have this little self control?

If the apps wouldn't be slow React Native or whatever "multiplatform framework" crapware, then I'd actually say that well designed, native Swift UI (iOS) or Material (Android) apps can enhance the user experience for a lot of services that are otherwise offered via website. Native integrations with shortcuts, widgets, fully supporting accessibility features of the OS etc.

The problem is most apps are just low-effort web app conversions.

A huge number of apps these days are web sites compiled into an app, and it shows. For example, an app should be able to remember your address and payment information without signing into an account, yet so many don't. Almost like they want to force you into signing up. Why might that be?

Just give me a mobile web page if you're going to do that shit.

I just go without.

the overwhelming majority of apps are nothing but websites wrapped in apps that strip away all the privacy and protections anyway, and demand far to many permissions for shit that are completely irrelevant to their purpose (because they want to siphon literally everything out of your phone and monetize the information).

I'd rather miss a deal, a sale, or whatever, than to deal with that shit.

Used get my haircut at one of those "no appointment needed" haircut chains. Then they got an app, and every time I went it was "Why aren't you using the app? You need to use the app. Next time use the app. Download the app on your phone. It's gonna be an hour wait because you didn't use the app."

Now I just go to a local place.

Just yesterday, Mrs. Warp Core was trying to enroll with an online service. The self-service email confirmation link refused to function correctly in Firefox on a desktop operating system (Windows in this case). It worked flawlessly on Firefox+iOS. Said link also shuttled the user straight off to the phone app.

I'll add that nearly ever other aspect of their public facing web, including the online chat support, worked flawlessly everywhere I tried it. This all just reeked of hostile design.

When asked about why this is, I simply said:

The browser provides good security and choice for the user. Apps provide good security and control for the vendor.

Open source social media app: 30MB full size.

Privative social media app: 300MB install + 500 MG data full size 700MG

Go figure. I could have thousand of apps. If they were not packed with intrusive software to get all my data and to lock the company IP.

I legitimately do not have enough space on my phone to install all the crappy bloatware of all the stores I go to. They quite literally ask the impossible of me.

Not sure anyone actually read the article, cuz yall are talkin about apps vs. web sites, and data collection. Two points which are briefly covered, but ultimately shrugged off in favor of the larger thesis:

Smartphones … meant [companies] could use their apps to off-load effort. … In other words, apps became bureaucratized. What started as a source of fun, efficiency, and convenience became enmeshed in daily life. Now it seems like every ordinary activity has been turned into an app, while the benefit of those apps has diminished.

I’d like to think that this hellscape is a temporary one. As the number of apps multiplies beyond all logic or utility, won’t people start resisting them? And if platform owners such as Apple ratchet up their privacy restrictions, won’t businesses adjust? Don’t count on it. Our app-ocalypse is much too far along already. Every crevice of contemporary life has been colonized. At every branch in your life, and with each new responsibility, apps will keep sprouting from your phone. You can't escape them. You won’t escape them, not even as you die, because—of course—there’s an app for that too.

It’s not simply the code delivery mechanism, and it’s not whether the data exchange is safe from prying eyes… It’s the fact that a digital UX has invaded every aspect of human interaction, including mourning.

download our app

Nah

delete account...

And the app is just a glorified website (Electron app).

One big supermarket chain here has an app where you get a few cents bonus discount on already discounted items with the app coupon. The in-store announcement praises it as the first place of some insitute's supermarket app ranking. Even if that institute were legit, the ranking fair and the spot well-deserved, I always felt like that's a competition with no winners.

Do most people even know what a phone app is??!

This piece has no real point. No hidden info, no resolution, no exposé, no call-to-arms really.

It's just "there are way too many apps", which we already knew.

What a weak article.

You know what else is overrun? Paywalls or other “requirements” where I need to signup and/or pay to access something that should be free.

Don’t get me started on those fullscreen ad interstitials that force me to watch an ad I’m not interested in before I can continue either.

Let’s face it, the Internet today fucking sucks and it’s partly to do with these so-called news outlets like the Atlantic.

I miss the days when barely anyone heard of the web. Sure, it wasn’t as feature rich, but then again, those features are overly abused in the name of capitalism anyway. It’s like those strip malls that have nothing but shitty restaurants, nail salons, and tax preparers. Gone are the days of fun stores like hobby shops, comic book stores, local mom & pop toy stores.

They just sucked the fun out of it all. 😡

Amount of store apps on my phone: zero.

My wife has an app that is basically a card holder. Instead of pulling out a loyalty card, she pulls up the one app that has all of them scanned/copied. It's great.