I hate how everything requires you to download a shitty proprietary data harvesting app nowadays when everything can be done just fine without an app.
I hate how everything requires you to download a shitty proprietary data harvesting app nowadays when everything can be done just fine without an app.
I have recently started a new position and am required to use an app that has three Facebook trackers, one of them being a Facebook location tracker according to Exodus App Privacy in order to get your food when it would literally work perfectly fine ordering to a real cashier or shit even a website rather than having to download an app.
I have also read many stories of people that live in apartments that require them to use a mobile app for god damn LAUNDRY. All you need, is a card reader, and it will work perfectly fine like it has been for the longest time.
Privacy concerns aside, it is just annoying that you need this app and that app and this app and that app and it just clutters space on your phone. Security concerns too as now they have all of this additional info on you online, such as your phone number your email your real name, instead of just your credit card info like a card reader would have. And I am willing to guarantee that their security model is absolute horseshit because they have such a small team of engineers working on the app and the servers.
Literal enshitification
Magne
A person's music taste seems to crystalize at some point in their teenage years. The bands you loved at 15-17 are probably the bands that you'll love forever.
Likewise, I'm finding that my relationship with information services as a whole probably crystalized a while ago, and the new era of "apps for every individual thing" is just wholly unappealing. Give me a web browser to interface with your information. If I can't get it done with that, I'm more likely to move on to some even older tech and skip your product altogether.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm late to bingo. And get off my lawn.
Me: "seems to" "at some point" "probably" while making a minor, secondary point. Others: Severely Triggered
Dunno I can't stand the music I listened to in my teenage years.
The bands you loved at 15-17 are probably the bands that you'll love forever.
Thank god that wasn't the case. Listened to some awful shit as a kid
Me neither. I wonder if that's even true, because i see a lot of people changing tastes with age.
PWAs for the win!
Everything that's normal between age 10-20 is just as it is.
Everything you get to know between 20 and 30 is the hot new shit.
Everything after age 30 is just another fad you don't want to invest time to get to know anyway
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
- Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
- Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
- Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
That's altogether BS. The bands I listen to have changed constantly since my teenage years. That's just an excuse to become a ranting old man.
Wait come back!! You dropped your cane!
One of the credit card companies I use has a website that won't work properly anymore in my phone's browser.
My wife has a card through this company as well and she uses their app with no problems.
I have zero interest in installing their app so once a month I fire up my surface pro just to pay that damn bill.
It used to work just fine in the phone browser though.
Should probably just cancel that shitty account one of these days.
An interesting experiment on the music thing. Top songs on your 13th birthday, at least for US/North Americans. https://www.birthdayjams.com
Wonder what they use your birthday for?
I don't know if anyone growing up these days would actually like mobile app requirements if they took the time to think about why they're required. Source: I'm one of them.
Most people young or old don't think about it and don't care.
I’m finding that my relationship with information services as a whole probably crystalized a while ago
You are correct but it goes further:
Any tech that existed before you start school is completely natural and quite boring.
Any tech that is invented while you still care about new tech (this can be anywhere between 15 and 45 as it depends on the person) is exciting and cool.
Anything after that is squarely in get off my lawn territory and a bit scary and confronting.
Not necessarily... I grew up already in the era of apps, but have the same attitude. And I actually did actively use a smartphone during my tween and early teen years.
I don't think that's true. I like what I liked what I was a teen but more in a nostalgic kind of way. I definitely didn't like harder metalcore in my teens the way I do now lol.
Nice bullshit armchair Freud u hating every change due to immaturity or unwillingness to learn doesnt mean we do too
I realize you may just be venting but consider complaining to your college administration either via your student council or by yourself.
It should not be the norm to have to tell a stranger where you are to eat food.
You are paying for your education even if you are doing so via a loan and that gives you the right to tell them how you feel about them invading your privacy. In college and in jobs authority figures routinely try to control you and it is worth learning to take a stand against such abuses.
They literally could not give one fuck less. They are probably being paid or otherwise are getting some other kind of kickback to push these apps. Colleges are...I hesitate to say greedy, but let's call it "capitalistic".
I agree with the sentiment, but if no one ever complains things are guaranteed to not change. At least this is, at the very least, an exercise in explaining your own viewpoints and understanding the workings of an institution. That is a skill and lesson that is valuable in the professional world.
via your student council or by yourself.
This is literally what the student council exists for! Also, OP could join student council! As a graduated student government nerd I highly recommend it!
Worth noting the college probably did it because they want to appear to be technologically advanced. As part of Student government I visited a campus that had no public water fountains but did have a gigantic touchscreen map about the size of a normal printed map that conveyed no extra information that a printed map would. It was very clear what motivations were behind those decisions
I went to college before it was app everything and our student id's were smartcards. Dining plan associated with the smartcard. Just stick it in the reader when you show up and you're good. You could put cash on your card then use it for the vending machines or laundry or any little incidental on campus. If you needed cashed added to your account, your parents could go online and do it, or you could. That was the only online component. The entire system just worked without any fuss or privacy concerns or anything.
Almost without any privacy concerns. When I went to college around the turn of the millennium, I worked at the main food court on campus. We had a card system just like you're describing. When we swiped the student's card to pay for their meal, their student ID would come up on my screen. Their student ID was their SSN. Back then the first three digits of a person's SSN was based on the state they lived in when they got their number assigned. For most people that was when they were a baby or at least very young, and for most people that's the state they did most of their growing up in. I used to have most of the codes memorized, so when I'd swipe someone's card and see that they had an SSN from someplace that wasn't the state where the university was, I'd mention it. "Oh, hey, you're from Ohio? My aunt lives in Ohio."
Yikes! That was a privacy nightmare. We were fortunate that the university assigned a personal ID on enrollment. I think the only place that had access to the social was the front office. Of course some of the students worked at the front office. I hope they were required to sign an NDA.
Yeah it worked this was in the late 90s except your ID was a swipe card and it really only worked on food. You also had to go to the business office with a check to deposit more funds. Online was still dial up for most people.
That's still how it works where I am, but the little devices to renew your card every semester are broken half the time, so yay
Yeah, same but they also worked as bus passes.
The number of business that just expect that everyone has already downloaded and installed their app has become ridiculous.
Best Buy now demands an app be installed for order pick up. They are so sure you'll have already done that there are no instructions in their parking lot for pick up that don't include the app, no way to call them, and the lot employees say, "Just use the app and we'll get your order." It's like the 20% tips programmed into just about every payment machine these days. No, I won't leave you a 20% tip for handing me a receipt.
Even when going to Best Buy's service desk the reps looked at me like I was crazy. "No, I won't install your app to pick up an order" was met with confusion and open irritation. Fuck that.
And don't get me started on 'Reddit is better in our crappy Reddit app.'
Dude same here for the Reddit prompt ! I browse incognito without a profile just to see some headlines... and every ten minutes or if I got to a risque sub, it will stop me and ask for the app download or if I want to stay on the browser..... if I wanted the app.. I would have gotten it.. I am on the browser for a reason...
Fast food is about 30% more expensive if you refuse the app.
Personal experience:
Tim Hortons
Wendy's:
That's always the case in the beginning with those apps. And once they have market dominance and/or the shareholders want their ROI, they increase price and hope people still use it. See Uber for example.
Yeah, I hate that. At an old job, sometimes people would go around and take lunch orders before running to Wendy's, Hate Chicken, or Chipotle. I'd way rather give my coworker cash and let them have the bonuses and discounts and crap while I maintain the privacy afforded to cash-only Chads. It's still an L though because we're still giving the companies money.
Jesus, it's like they want you to order online from a third party instead of paying them.
All the best buys I know of are shutting down. Doing the ol' circuit city.
Weird. I can just go to the mobile Best Buy site, pull up my order from my account, and get the barcode they need to scan from there. No need for the app.
I can do the same with the desktop site.
IMO people should not have to know a company's policies and go through their website to make a purchase. Anyway, it would have been nice if they put that information on the sign in their pickup area, or their pickup reps or desk clerks mentioned it when I told them I didn't have the app. Instead they made it clear that everyone should either already have the app or install it because they said so.
Way, way too many companies and organizations (like the OP's) are pulling this kind of crap.
Reddit is better in our crappy Reddit app.
Oh fuck reddit for doing that.
How can people push back on this insanity? I don't want 500 goddamn apps on my phone nor do I want 500 accounts on "portals" or what fucking ever your calling it today.
I agree with OP, but how do we resist the borg?
The 80s movie classic War Games has the answer:
STRANGE GAME...THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS NOT TOO PLAY...
In things where I can't avoid an account, I use an email alias (personally I use Mozilla Relay, but Proton Pass offers logins as well if I recall.
Edit: for clarity, this adds at least a level of abstraction from my actual data. It's not the only thing I do, such as blackhole DNS via PiHole, VPN in other scenarios, Tor for others (for those curious, pihole and Tor don't work at the same time, and pihole and VPN generally doesn't either without extra work and it's not compatible with every VPN).
One way is to just lie and say you only have a flip phone. There are probably millions of old people that refuse to use smartphones because they don't understand them and there no reason you can't pretend to also have a dumb phone.
GREAT idea! I have both a flip and a smart phone.
My apartment complex wants me to download some third-party app just to pay my rent, instead of using their perfectly serviceable web portal. I assume they're getting a data harvest kickback that's buried in several layers of fine-print legalese, which will be used to send me targeted spam and junk mail. And that data will be sold and re-sold to other parties ad infinitum. Whatever they can collect about my personal life, for sale to any asshole with enough cash in their pocket. Fuck that. I shouldn't have to deal with this bullshit just to keep a roof over my head.
I was visiting family in the city I grew up in and we decided to go to this place that now charges for parking. It's a city lot. I figured I have to get this app to park. The city app.
First, it was a nightmare of horrible bad UX and half-assed customization. Second, it took about 15 minutes of bs to pay for parking (time outs, a couple 2fa's, we need you to use a social but we haven't set up that login path correctly). Finally, get parking paid, my wife is losing her mind thinking I'm an idiot because it took so long, and then the spam calls started. I literally wasn't into the building and I was getting spam texts and robo calls. I'm not talking "goods and services I might like" , this was "Canadian border services has determined you have unpaid fines" voicemails and "hi, i just found your number again can u text" type stuff. Just wild.
Oh I feel this in my soul. I am pregnant and have a two year old.. I was and am a huge customer of pampers (and enfamil formula for when my two year old was little) the apps have kick backs... and against my better judgement z I broke down and got these apps for the kick back.... I regret it.. my email is overwhelmed with spam suddenly... an email I worked hard to get all the spam out of a few months ago.. I am also getting random calls and voicemails for services I would never use. It's so frustrating.. I just wanted to the points for the products I normally buy to save a few pennies... but can't do it with out my data being harvested and being spammed with crap
Does your lease precise you have to use the app or own a smartphone ? If not, get a cellphone, like those new 3210. Call them, ask them how to install, or visit their office. Play it dumb. Of they tell you to get a smartphone, tell them to provide you one.
Or use your bank's bill-pay service. They'll mail a check or send it electronically (which is effectively the same as using a debit card).
My favorite barber was booked out recently, so I just walked into the next one across the road, which looked new and had no customers inside. Asked for the haircut, and he said sure, what's your name and email address? I was confused and asked why he would need that, and he said it's for his app to book appointments and charge customers.
I walked out without getting a haircut.
Good, that's the only way people like that will change
That may be why he had no customers
Same thing but with a phone number. They were baffled that I didn't want to give my phone number for a haircut.
And furthermore: Most of these shitty apps are nothing more than overblown API clients. Which means they didn't want to build a website and operate a webserver, so instead you provide the processing power for the UI yourself. These apps usually can't do anything on their own, if you are offline, becaue all the value is generated remotely by the actual server.
The modern software experience sucks much!
When you have a website, you also provide the processing power for executing JavaScript and rendering HTML+CSS.
Why they would prefer an app (that's by definition less compatible) is unknown for me, but I can attempt to guess it's simpler for some reason.
My apartment “upgraded” us to digital locks and now we have to use an app to unlock our door. I was so pissed the entire time they were installing them. I don’t like the idea that the locks could run out of battery and keep us out, and I feel much more insecure in my apt. It also feels like our comings and goings can be spied on now. I hate this future.
The worst part of that is if your apartment management company gets phished then that person can now get into everyone’s apartment without setting off red flags to other residents since they can just unlock and walk right in.
Or some hacker decides to change the code...
Also annoying: you can't leave the house without your tracking device anymore :/
I installed something similar at my house, just a keypad, not app connected. It's awesome. But a key will still unlock it. They are wonderful if it's not connected to the Internet.
Electric locks are supposed to fail safe. So if they run out of battery, they should remain open, not closed.
I once had a dorm room lock run out of battery. It is beyond annoying, I'm sorry for your loss.
I had the same thing happen. I also found out that's if I kicked the door hard enough the lock gave way rather than brake.
Hopefully you're looking at different place now
Hey if you ever have to kick your door in make sure to take one or two steps and firmly flatly plant your foot on the door as near to the handle/knob/latch as you can. Try to step into and kick through it in stride. You'll need as much of your weight thrown into the kick as you can. Remember how pissed you were while they were installing the new locks youll need that
Do not use your shoulder you will injure it
Beautiful!!
You can get number pad locks, no app just press the buttons. But yeah battery.
If only we had some physical object that could never run out of power, let's call it a "key"...
House insurance does not cover digital house lock
I seem to remember some lawsuits about that situation
If the battery goes out do to something like power outage or something else and it remain locked, that sounds like the perfect excuse to "accidentally" start a fire and then claim you were trapped in your home due to the door not unlocking. Bonus points for acting like it shook up your whole life because you lost a lot of your possessions because the complex/building/whatever decided to remove physical locks.
Extra bonus points if a power outage or whatever genuinely locks you in, a fire breaks out, and you get hurt. In that case, if you have renters insurance, you may not only receive payout for that, but also for suing them if the door remained locked while there was no power.
Fire regulations require a crash bar to be able to leave a building regardless of the lock
An app in itself isn't a bad thing.. it's the requirement that is wrong. Everything these days does seem to be geared around data mining and control. That well has to be getting awfully dry because it's getting worse and worse.
You can't even use many products without having an app that needs to be connected online so it can read your contacts and searches and such. Sites are getting harder to use if you have a DNS ad blocker or VPN on. Not sure where it ends..
It ends when out corporate overlords achieve the state of life depicted in Wall-E.
No.
It ends when we eat our corporate overlords. I look forward to sprinkling Torgo's Executive Powder on my favorite dish.
I wish I could disagree with you but the path does seem pretty clear.
I can only speak from the experience of one app at one company, but data we collected was for troubleshooting. Mainly because customers will email us stuff like "your app doesn't work!!!!! Worst company ever!!" And absolutely no identifying information whatsoever. To make matters worse they'll email with an email that they didn't give us as a customer so how in the world are we supposed to help‽
So we collect enough data so whoever in the company might need to help them can actually do so.
There's a lot of "this app is impossible to use!!!" That we find out with enough data collection is just them refusing to hit the GIANT button in the middle of the damn screen that would solve their problem. I hate users.
I believe we answered questions in the Apple and Google stores that says that we collect information and send it to 3rd parties (because analytics platforms are technically 3rd party) but not to sell it. I don't know if that distinction is clear on the stores though.I used to work in a job where we had a niche ebook reader app in the major app stores. My favorite review that someone left?
1 star, Worst game ever.
Collecting data relevant to the app is ok and logical. It's collecting unrelated personal info I gave a problem with.
And i can sympathize with you regarding users. I design control system interfaces and sometimes I go to extremes to make it good for idiots. And i still get calls at 7am, have to drop everything else and drive 40 miles just to point out the giant red ALARM text i specifically put there to make things easier. It's on the first fucking page!
It's nice that remote access is easier now but some of these facility managers... i don't know who puts their pants on for them because they don't seem to be able to navigate treacherous logic and reason.
I hope I didn't just quote your whole post, still trying to figure out boost hah
Can't agree more. And the issues go beyond data harvesting. For example, recently, I lost my phone and carried on for a while without it, only to realize we're building a society in which we are slowly losing our citizenship rights if we don't have a phone. I found myself locked out from many things, and having to go so many alternate routes, that I had to get a new phone quickly.
It all happened so subtly, and I saw it happening, but still, it's hard to believe we came to this point without the people manifesting some sort of opposition. I get even more worried about the developing countries, where not everyone can properly afford a phone.
I think we are the frogs being boiled in the pot of enshittification
I've been called a crazy conspiracy theorist since 2009 and my first Android. Hated all the sync/tracking Google was doing that was killing my battery then. Disable Google, and now I get a full day's battery, back then.
People still don't listen to me about this issue, 10+ years later.
That's the reason I stopped using a smartphone in 2020. Never has much problem thus far except for Steam, which required using their app for confirming the trades (even for simple items worth fractions of a penny). I now use an Android VM for this.
Funny you mention enshittification, I just watched a talk from Cory Doctorow who coined that term and he pointed out the reason for insisting on an app is that it means you can’t block ads without violating the DMCA. Browsers can have adblocker extensions, apps cannot (unless you hack them.)
it means you can’t block ads without violating the DMCA. Browsers can have adblocker extensions, apps cannot (unless you hack them.)
I imagine this is just going to lead to more people using DNS ad blockers. My phone literally can't access your ad server, sorry.
Private DNS FTW!
On Android:
- Swipe down and select settings (the gear)
- Search for: DNS
- Select Private DNS.
- Select Private DNS again.
- Select Private DNS provider hostname.
- Enter: dns.adguard.com
- Select Save
- Enjoy most ads being blocked in apps.
- Might work poorly on public wifi (Walmart wifi for example doesn't work with a private DNS set).
On Apple:
- Fuck if I know.
As an app developer some people just get hard for an app and don't know why they would want one.
It's rarely some big plan just an ego thing
If DNS ad blockers get popular enough, there are easy enough workarounds. The workarounds have tradeoffs such as security or stability, but they'll serve the ads for at least the current year.
This one? It came up as the next post on sync:
That’s the one!
That’s why I use the browser for pretty much everything.
oh noo not the dmca. i love following the dmca with all my heart
I'm sure we've all experienced this...
Go to example.com
"Ooops! It looks like you're on a mobile device, which we for some asinine corporate reason don't support on our desktop site! No "enable desktop site" won't make this message go away because we make an unreasonable effort to deny you access to our site. Go to mobile.example.com instead."
Goes to mobile.example.com
"Just kidding! What, you think we were actually going to let you access this without installing something? No, fuck you! This page is literally just a full screen ad for our app and has no access to any other part of platform, download it and agree to it's fifty permissions before we'll even give you a glimpse of our content!"
When you download the app, it's just a web page packaged with all the tracking software.
I insist on doing as much as I can on my mobile browser to reduce the number of apps I have and only use apps that I feel are useful. Forcing me to use an app for trivial things just means I won't use your service at all.
Works pretty well, and one of the things I like about Lemmy is that the mobile browser experience is perfectly fine, it's good in its simplicity.
Yep. Firefox > Desktop Site > Add to Home Screen. Not perfect but works fine in most cases.
Yes, this is a trend I've been commenting on for...well it seems like a very long time.
It's clearly enshittification in nearly every single case; the more clueless johnny-come-lately tech-trendsters want to label me as just being old-fashioned or something when I bring it up. Trying to explain to them what is going on is usually a pointless exercise, as they have been steeped in a new==better mindset that is nearly ironclad and since they didn't use reason to get themselves into that position, but instead, emotion, trying to reason them out of it is not going to happen...
And they get bombarded by app developers and consultants telling them they MUST have an app or all these bad things will happen to them.
A while ago, I started keeping a personal library/journal/etc. using Logseq. I could fire up Logseq in any browser on the planet, connect to my notes, and jot down whatever idea I had in the moment, all in a FOSS journal that stored my notes in plaintext markdown.
Then ... I don't know what happened, but 100% of their effort went into building an app, which then required them to build a (paid, proprietary) sync service, all rather than just releasing a self-hosted build of the web interface so I could spin up my own note-taking server. (Please don't suggest alternatives; I've probably tried them all.) To "preserve privacy" and promote "local first", I had to download an app and rely on a closed-source backend to do something I could trivially accomplish on my own. If my platform doesn't support the app, no notes, unless I rely on the increasingly unmaintained web "demo" that does exactly 100% of what I need from the service, despite dozens of features missing compared to the app version.
But the kicker is that I cannot install things on my work computer. At all. Not portable apps, nothing. I will get a phone call from infosec if I even try, because we are a heavily regulated company. So if I have a bright idea at work, a thought I want to preserve, find a good article, etc., I have to go to another device. I have to interrupt my workflow, change my focus completely, and, probably, lose half of what I wanted to capture.
The thing is, I don't think they're data farming. I think they're running a really good project! Users were begging for an app. "When are you going to release an app?" was a common question forever, because a whole generation of dingleberries cannot be bothered to go to a website that does the same thing, faster, and better than any app.
I'm still going to mention Zettlr and you can't stop me.
Though it doesn't have mobile apps and you'd have to use your own method of syncing the files, so not really what you'd need anyway.
There really isn't a lot of FOSS apps than can replace Obsidian, while also being local-first and usable without an account, is there?
Logseq is really, really close. It's basically a page I can start writing on, forcing minimal organization through bullets but otherwise freeform. Backlinking, plugins (meh), plain markdown. It's just so good. It doesn't require me to do anything other than write. It used to be entirely browser-based, syncing through a github repository. They could have released a self-hostable version of that and I would have been over the moon. Or, alternately, a self-hostable version with non-local storage so I could store my notes on a notes server I control. But they went with the app + sync service route. Understandable but sad.
So I just rolled my own sync through a git server and it works fine (other than iOS, which requires a maddening setup, but that's not logseq's fault).
I looked at Zettlr once or twice (thank you for mentioning it). Obsidian makes me crazy with all the UI fiddly bits and configuration. I tried. Oh how I tried. But it just didn't work with my brain. (It's the exact same reaction I have to KDE -- there's just TOO MUCH and it sets me off in unproductive directions, and that's not a criticism of either project as such.)
I refuse to use services that demand you use their app.
Services only need a website for the most part, not only is this easier for development cost but it is simplier to create a mobile friendly website instead of creating an Android app, iOS app and a desktop app.
To be fair, there are frameworks like Flutter nowadays that let you build your app once in one language and it will build/compile an iOS, Android, and web app for you.
True, I am all for Flutter and Tauri. However websites are better for sevices since it is not likely the company will release a fully open source app or APIs for developers to build apps for the service. There are many web clients out there that are open source and allow for a good private web experience.
And even if a company does release a FOSS app, it is hard to get the company to release the app on alternative app stores like F-Droid.
Also I do not want a million apps on my phone taking up space, that could be running in the background and harvesting my data. Websites or PWA are like one-time apps you load in the browser, use and the close to discard, especially when you use your browser private mode.
instead of creating an Android app, iOS app and a desktop app.
Why do that when you can just have a buggy and crappy experience taylored specifically for each device?
Need an account just to use my new gaming console. Another account to play Diablo IV. I bought the goddamned console and game. I had to sign into an app for the console. Why can't I just play the game? The Samsung display that I got for the console (I have a projector, so I needed something for daytime use) is a "smart" display. That wanted me to create an account with an app on my phone. I just woke up, so if I rambled, oh well.
I think we're at the point where everything will suck to the greatest degree from now on. There's no room left for business not to suck (Amazon ads on Prime unless you pay more, as an example). Goodbye anything that isn't terrible.
In a functional society we would see the government regulate enshitification and protect consumers, but at least in the US, we are not seeing that. Only hope is that the EU can curb this trend somehow and the world follows suit
And related, if your hardware product requires me to create Yet Another Account just to plug it into my computer and have it work, I'm returning it.
I opened a bank account at Bank of America. Apparently it was just a matter of course to make people install the BOA app before opening an account. I practically had to fist fight them to get them to drop it. It was like they got commissions for every app install or something. Scary, honestly.
At least I learned from the experience that "I actually don't have the Play Store on my phone" isn't a good way to get them to drop it. I guess next time I get hard sold on an app, I'll go the "I'll decline the app, thanks" route. We'll see whether that works or not.
I wonder if "oh I'm using some Nokia dumb phone" would have gotten them to stop
I figured "my phone's weird and I don't have the Play Store and can't really install the app" would do it, but it really really didn't.
Two different people pressured me to install the app. Both pressured me hard to show them (not at the same time, one after the other) that I didn't have the Play Store. (And, yeah, I should have walked out before it got that far, but I'm not proud to admit I didn't.)
The second one pressured me hard to go to such-and-such URL and download the BOA app in a way that didn't require the Play Store. (Honestly, I was an extremely late adopter of smart phones. I didn't and still don't really fully know my way around them. And didn't know you could just download an APK via a browser and install it. To be fair, I guess I still don't know that for sure, because it didn't work when this guy got me to do it.)
After that didn't work I was like "it's not like BOA doesn't have a web app, right?" and hevery disapprovingly told me "but you know the web app isn't secure." I can't say I've been literally shocked speechless many times in my life, but this was is one of them. (This was after I told him I'm a software engineer by trade. In fact, I'm a web developer and I'm the web application security guy on my team. Ha!)
I think "it won't work on my phone" made these folks go into tech support mode. That surprised me. I figured they'd be fairly tech inept and not really want to get into a whole technical discussion. Which is why I'm thinking "I'd rather have a buffalo take a diarrhea dump in my ear than install your app" might bypass the "tech support" conversation to the distainful lecturing one.
How about a "I don't trust your app"
And then when they persist, go to the store and ask them for each permission why the app needs it.
This is what I told my employer’s IT system. They have an app for non-standard 2fa that I had no interest in configuring so now I just get phone calls.
Not surprised; BOA is the fucking Taco Bell of banking. The only one worse that I can think of is Wells Fargo.
Was gonna argue with you till you mentioned Wells (and I've had both Boa and Wells).
Screw banks, just left Wells for a credit union. Much better experience, saves me $500/year from the start.
I went to join Planet Fitness, they insist on an app. They watched me leave. Kroger charged more than advertised, ooooh it was a digital coupon only available through the app. I left the item with the cashier. Order out? Only on an app? I guess I didn't want to eat that so much anyway.
Edit to add: I don't know how we are going to deal with apps that are forced upon you, that feels really gross especially if you are younger, like at your school. Forced commodification should be illegal.
Not going to do it, it feels controlling and abusive and I've worked too damn hard to let that shit go on.
This won't help in the above case so it's a little off topic. But I got rid of Twitter on my phone and still use Twitter on my phone - Basically you just open twitter.com in Firefox, and go to the menu and click "Install". Now you get a launcher icon to an "app" but it's just the website hosted by the browser.
Instantly saves 150Mb, stops it doing evil shit and because it's hosted in Firefox I get to block all the ads.
I would advise doing this with any app which has a desktop / mobile version and see what happens - Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn etc. Some social media sites will nag you to install the app but some won't or will be functional in spite of it.
I'd still go a step further and use a more privacy respecting frontend where possible. Not all of them will allow the use of an account though, so if interacting with the content is important to you, then those are obviously not an option.
OMG fokng genius. Tqq mate for the tip. I'm using it for google news
Reminds me of the Always Sunny ep where Dennis tries to get a bubble tea
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Always Sunny ep where Dennis tries to get a bubble tea
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Dennis: ...it's not yout fault. You didn't create the system... we're both victims here.
Bubble Tea Kid: What?
Or the Paddy's Wagon where he screams at the two guys to use their app when they just want to buy two beers.
Sounds very hackable. Have you considered getting a degree in information security and penetration testing? All you have to do is hack all the systems to give you free lunches and access your neighbor’s laundry and anything else you can think of. Then write a thesis about how you spent several years messing around with the world around you. It’s science if you write it down.
Jesus, that's brilliant.
Large parts of the City of Toronto bike share—public infrastructure—requires such an app. Taxpayers without an iphone or android computer can't access the services they already paid for.
actually toronto bike share has a card too, I don't know if can be used for single trips, but you can request one.
so does bike sharing in my city (Warsaw, Poland), but you can alternatively call a hotline and rent via dialer menu or simply by talking to a consultant.
Does the uni not cater to older people who don't have a phone? They probably have old systems in place for them if you insist to them you don't have a phone.
This. Squeeky wheel gets the oil
i want to go to a restaurant and get a physical menu, instead of having to dl an app using a QR code.
My favorite is when the QR code just points to their website, and you still have to choose a location, scroll through several pages of bullshit to find a menu, and select from a list of special menus to find the right one.
That's IF you can get the QR code to even work, because it's been sitting on a table for 3 years and has long since passed the point of usability.
yeah, dining out is a pure luxury, especially these days; i want to feel the paper and see the typesetting and take in the whole thing at once, not scroll thru 3 items at a time on a shitty pdf that doesn't render quite right, on my fucking phone, like i do everything else
Oh so much this!!! I hate having to use their QR codes. I was told that using most new QR through our phones give these sites using them, access to our recent photos on the camera app.. I have a two year old I don't want people looking at whom I don't know...
It absolutely does not give them access to anything unless you install their app.
QR codes are okay. They may be an annoyance, but they're not nefarious or harvesting your data. (Again, unless you provide that data in another way, such as an app.)
The website may ask for your location, but the browser will prompt you for that. If you're at the restaurant it's fine to hit "only this time".
Just put my oldest child in school this year and I had to download FOUR apps. Four fucking apps. Why? This could have been a Progressive Web App and a push notification service. There is no need for this.
Have you considered refunding the child?
I think a lot of the time for universities it's cause they're not building their own custom tools for this stuff, just using off the shelf solutions that they can implement locally. So they just grab one app or system for each different thing they need instead of building one connected one.
Yeah I'm a programmer at a community college and this is like us. Although we don't have any apps, we have different web apps that we use. My current job is trying to use the APIs for each of them to try and build cards in one central web app that bring in the functionality from the other web apps to minimize the amount of time you spend going from web app to web app
You often can use web apps (of sorts). Most of those apps mirror the functionality of an already existing mobile web page. Then you just make a little web app container of that mobile site.
Progressive web apps don't work for shit on ios. Why bother developing it for Android users only when you'll need an alternative regardless?
I remember when no one had an app. 2011ish, only fucking banks made Android apps since corps were still unsure if Android (or the other competing standard app stores) were going to be worth their effort to develop.
I remember reading the permissions required by apps on install and committing to mobile web browsing if I was on my phone...and this was before most companies even understood every consumer had walking geolocation in their unknowing pockets suddenly.
And this is why I root. Then I can control perms on a granular level.
Even better now that Magisk supports modules, and has things like LXposed, which provides very good perms control.
Next phone will be mostly Google-free just for these reasons.
Anyone with any power or any product is going to milk every single penny they can out of every single interaction they have. There are no ethics in business. No one cares about your privacy, and they only care about laws if they think they'll lose money by breaking them. Otherwise, these laws don't exist for them because they get in the way of more money.
We're a world where the biggest fucking cunts also have the biggest market share of our culture.
"No one cares about laws"... Well, getting caught at least, lol. They couldn't give a shit otherwise.
Even then, the fines are generally so small it's just an operating expense.
I took an old phone and fully reset it to use for all these shitware apps. I've looked into buying an anonymous SIM card so it won't be at all connected to me, but the underlying assumption seems to be if you want that you must be a drug dealer. Best I've found is mysudo, which requires payment, but it's really not much, and only stores the minimum on their side. Gives you an anonymous email and phone number. The other problem with all these apps is the engineers are given at best half the time they need to do a good job, so they're always buggy, insecure, and have a shitty UI. But some project manager managed to show Impact and get a bonus.
Reminds me of the episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where they pick up people in the "Paddy's Wagon" and Dennis forces them to use a painfully overblown app just to buy a couple of beers. It seems to have cooled off a bit but the rush for every little business to have its own app reminds me how every pizzeria and dry cleaner felt the need to have a website and social media presence.
I have 3 goddamn parking apps I have to keep on my phone, each with its own account, just so I can park in various cities when I travel. I'm sure my data is 100% secure too...
This idea actually turned me off using Sync for Lemmy or other apps that have their own ad injection capability, as you have to pay to turn off ads but the ad tracking payload is still baked into the app, so is it really off or is it on but not showing the ads that it is still tracking data for in the first place?
Same here. I ended up using C9nnect for Lemmy as it doesn't collect any data.
Agree, but other options are punished. Back in the early days of Reddit Sync, he made a Reddit Sync Pro app that never had ads at all, but Google punishes duplicate apps. So there's not really a good alternative option due to the ecosystem.
Is it otherwise free? People seem to hate ads but love using free stuff.
Does Lemmy.world have ads? Cuz thats the free stuff I'm using, a front end glorified RSS feeder is a stretch to allow even more ad tracking.
All these forced cloud applications annoy the living shit out of me as well.
Swiss Post did that too, you used to be able to buy "stamps" (well codes you would write on the envelope serving the same function as stamps) over plain old SMS. They they stopped that since they have that new whatever service. That service works on a PC browser, but on the phone browser the function is not available, no there you need the app. For fucking no reason at all.
Just a thought, but have you tried requesting the desktop site from your mobile browser? I've had luck with a few websites that have missing features on their mobile pages.
It's so easy to forget that setting exists.
I tried that but it didn't get me around it, I don't remember if the site just didn't respect the browser request or if it was unnavigable...
Swiss post is the worst... Abusing the state monopoly given to them to push their shitty login platform for EVERYTHING.
I bet this platform is as safe as all the rest...
the SMS stamp was really really great
that said i'm pretty sure the Post doesn't harvest your Data
Just assume everybody harvests your data. There’s no way to prove that they’re not liars and just doing it anyway.
There are several examples of companies and government agencies that have been caught doing things and retaining data they shouldn’t - only after a breach released all the info.
Home Depot wasn’t supposed to store credit cards but they did it anyway in violation of PCI, for example.
Everyone that doesn't have the brains to institute good security harvests your data. It's just for someone else that they're doing it.
I'm about to suggest another app for you to install. :p
If you're using an android phone (I don't know if it exist on iOS) install the DuckDuckGo app. It has a feature called "App Tracking Protection". It is supposed to block all trackers. I think it works as one of the games i have installed on my phone takes about a minute longer to load, compared to without the tracking protection. I think this is the next best course of action (apart from not installing / using the required apps).
To add to that, if you just want this form of tracking protection without the browser that comes with it, the app Tracker Control does exactly the same.
Good to know. I also make use of the free Duck.com redirecting email address so the DDG app is nice to have. Besides, you can never have too many browsers ;p
It really makes me sad more of these services haven't embraced PWAs. Being able to run your app protected by uBlock origin is truly the best of both worlds.
My response to this is that I refuse to use apps like that. For example, the only app I have on my phone is a OSM+ (maps). (As well as core basics: clock, contacts, camera, phone app, etc.).
I've never once scanned a QR code, I don't have any phone apps that require an account for anything whatsoever.
...
And I can say that as time goes on, I feel more and more like I'm in the minority. I'm seeing restaurants where you are meant to order with a phone; and I'm seeing people paying for stuff with their phone; and during covid contract-tracing times, there were a lot of different things that assumed the use of a phone... I just hope that there are enough people in the world with values similar to mine such my life doesn't get harder due to phone apps being required for more and more things.
The argument I keep seeing against fast food being too expensive is "use the app! It's cheaper". Fuck that. I bought frozen junk food and an air fryer. McDonald's can keep their 15$ meals*
*Disclaimer that I don't actually know how much a meal is these days, but I know it's gone way up. Also, I do still buy from McD when I need to shit out a hangover. Sue me.
I'm old enough to remember when you could get a McD's meal for £6. These days, on the rare occasions I go there for me and my wife, I'm looking at around £25. It's shocking how much more expensive it is.
Seriously email your IT and/or privacy team at the university level. I work at a university and that would be removed ASAP for sharing PII. If you're in the US or UK it's a major violation of your privacy. Unfortunately most IT offices aren't involved in many of the decisions and many of the people making those decisions are complete ignorant to the situation.
Is there not an app that can partition these apps that we are made to download. So the companies are happy that they are installed. But they have no real access to your real data. The app could feed it fake info when requests are made.
But when you have the app actually open maybe give it real GPS access as they are store specific on most of their apps.
So…an advertiser hell sandbox
Are you using apple or android? If you are using android check out adguard. It runs a local VPN and filters that shit out. I've actually had to white list some apps like geico because it broke them and they weren't using (as far as I can tell) any fb or other data collection trackers.
While this is the recommended way for us tech savvy people to block trackers, it still doesn't change this enshitification shift with data harvesting apps.
Not arguing that. I'm simply providing an option for those situations where you have no choice. Your other option may be to buy an old pixel or something and use it only for those apps that you can't not use.
And as far as tech savvy? No, even the tech unsavvy to install it and set it up. Adguard isn't pihole, you don't have to run your own server, it does all of the work and if you can manage to browse tiktok or Twitter, you can use the app to white list any apps that need it to function properly.
I have seen maybe 10 ads in the past decade between adguard, noscript, etc. The times I've seen ads has been because I had to turn off adguard for a reason or forgot that I had a specific browser whitelisted for a reason.
Trackercontrol is also pretty nice
As a musician, I have to maintain an artist account on all the major social media platforms. It’s frustrating that a lot of features for posting only exist on their respective mobile apps instead of making them available on the web version where I have all of them neatly arranged in tabs on my laptop browser. Instead, I had to install all their apps on an extra phone (because I don’t want those things on my primary personal phone). Not to mention how hard it is to edit content on a tiny phone screen instead of a full browser window on a laptop.
In addition to the emulator someone mentioned, you might want to try scrcpy, which lets you control and view your phone on your computer. No root needed and easier to use than an emulator.
Maybe an Android Emulator can at least help with the tiny screen problem.
+ More isolation without the need of an extra phone.
If you're feeling angry, there's an app for that :-)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.calm.android
I work on the enterprise apps team at my university. We'd dump that so hard you'd think we were using it to get liftoff. Definitely complain. Also, it's not inclusive to students without smart devices (they exist!).
If they do still have the option for manual use (with ID card scanners), there are a number of membership card / ID card wallets that are free on most platforms. You can just type the barcode into the app, and it'll make a virtual card that can be scanned. Same convenience, no physical plastic. If you're not offended by Google products, Google Wallet works pretty well. Or Stocard, but I'm not sure what level of tracking they implement. Granted, you're still installing an app, but you get to pick your poison a bit, instead of being railroaded into Facebook shenanigans.
They put Bluetooth in our apartment complex laundromat and if you don't have a smart phone or Internet service on your phone, you don't do laundry.
That type of shit needs to beade 100% illegal! I'd absolutely stage a riot in the complex laundromat if I were living there!
As with most property management companies, they'll just tell you, "Hey if you don't like it, move". I think they may have put a small blurb in the apartment complex newsletter a month prior but nobody reads those. Also, I had just upgraded to a phone that had mobile data, otherwise, I could not have used the machines because they no longer had coin slots and the app must connect to the Internet to use it. I also had a large bowl of quarters left over that I ended up using at the car wash... Which will soon be cashless also.
It took me a a couple of years and 3 phones before I started using Graphene OS as intended without many extra apps at all. Doing everything in vanadium without any stalkerware is far better. After nearly a year of heavy daily use, the battery still lasts two days on a charge with a decent margin of battery left by day two.
If you ever take a deep dive into the AOSP user permissions space and learn how it achieve an idiot-user "safe" environment, you'll see why everyone wants their own stalkerware user app for data mining. In a nutshell, the app dev is similar to a Linux user within their app's sandbox. They have as much or more privileges than the user in that space. Additionally the zygote launcher automatically loads most apps into memory all the time on Android to supposedly save init response time. In practice, it is a fraction of a second and completely irrelevant on human time. It's just an excuse to run stalkerware 24/7 IMO
All I can say it's the fault of marketing and the statement of "we want more information from our users, but we don't know exactly know what information to collect, so we collect everything possible in hopes to see some connection and predict what the user wants". I wish companies would actually ask the user what they want. Do users want to use their phone? Cool, make a nfc enabled card that can be added to the phone's wallets, and give users a portal to manage their funds if needed, no more app needed.
Honestly its fucking annoying literally had to make several user profiles just for my work life and my other invasive activities
It was so much better 20 years ago when all the shitty proprietary data harvesting apps came pre-installed with Windows.
(Yeah, I know they still do that, just slightly more covertly.)
I use the work profile via Insular/Island, and certain apps I don't like but do want I put in there, and freeze whenever not in use.
I also hate apps which request for unnecessary permissions. I have a dashcam which has an app to view the recorded videos. The app requires bluetooth as well as gps location info. Bluetooth is understandable but I don't see the need for GPS. Unfortunately for me I can't seem to get mock locations working properly on my phone. It also refuses to work if i do not give it location permission. :(
For locating the camera with BLE. Needs to see relative location, only possible with location permission. Turn it off after pairing.
"Nearby devices" permission has been created for this very thing.
If I turn it off after pairing, it'll refuse to connect the next time.
This is actually how Android used to handle pairing with BT devices. As I understand this has been adressed in Android 12 and now giving permission to pair with an exterior device does not mean giving location to the app.
One potential solution is to use an old phone and keep accounts/apps that you HAVE to deal with solely on that device. Dont use the device for anything else. Use it only on wifi. Keep it at home.
Keep it at home
Keep it turned off.
I'm totally sure all these shithouse apps adhere only to the strictest standards in regards to data security also...
I've moved mostly to progressive web apps that truly stop when you close them. For sure they will try to use trackers when they're running but you can stop that with pihole or NextDNS if you're on the move with your mobile. You can regain some control if you have the motivation to do so. If you have to install an app, you can still block tracking via these methods and more.
Is anyone actually making progressive web apps?
It's pretty common. I ditched Amazon, Instagram and a bunch of other apps for their PWA equivalent. You can find pretty comprehensive lists on the interwebs and it's growing.
Feels like we're in a TechnoFuedal society
Wait until you need an app to visit your child's grave
Lol. This is how I know I'm old.
From 2013. https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/1e5acw/ha_i_dont_want_your_fucking_app/
Haha and Reddit ofc asks you the same. But I have the feeling that it's more widespread practice nowadays. I haven't seen this in Europe that strongly yet though. Seems like there are more proective data regulation laws.
If an "app" has a web version I'm definitely on that. My exception would be installing it if thats not available via a webpage or so. Plus having a full control over my device (magisk/kernelsu + modules) and app manager on fdroid, warden to disable such trackers with the help of adaway.
One thing pissed me off was my banking institution, disabled its normal functionality (now only acts like a cpanel for your account) over webpage and the full functionality was transfered to the app (which contains 20 trackers) why tf you need that for in a financial app? Im done with them.
I got an apartment from a housing company that came with a "smart" Bluetooth washing machine. Of course it works just fine without using Bluetooth, but if I so were to wish to use such services, I would need to provide access to Bluetooth, WIFI, and location all the time. As in, I'm not allowed to turn that off.
First of all, ew.
Second of all, RIP your phone's battery if you're forced to keep Bluetooth on.
I will never throw it my mother in law's stove or washer or dryer. I think all are 1950s-80s and repair parts and manuals are available all over online. Rather than fighting LG or Kenmore or Samsung or whoever and getting screwed after spending big $$$ on a smart appliance, I just buy a part, usually <$100, and fix it myself. I have a few more delicate items that I wash in my parents washer because it is more gentle, but it also doesn't clean as well as the old machines. Power consumption doesn't matter so much in this case because there's solar on the roof offsetting the extra usage, and from an environmental perspective, replacing a machine and disposing of an old one has a cost as well.
The thing I really can't understand, and a likely consequence of the ubiquity of apps, is all of the people who can't seem to function without them.
Like when the Reddit exodus to the threadiverse happened, people started immediately crying for Lemmy apps. And it doesn't seem to matter that much how bare-bones or unstable one might be - the important thing is that it's an app. That's all that seems to matter to them.
It's as if they aren't even aware of the fact that these are all websites, so they all work in a browser - as if to them, an app is a necessity and they can't figure out how to accomplish anything otherwise.
Well when the mobile site is purposely a worse experience with nags and many dark patterns, I can understand that!
That's why it bothered me. I used reddit and exclusively use Lemmy on mobile. The reddit mobile website is completely unusable and their official app is too.
I should setup a trash phone for all those spyware applications, maybe add all kinds of neat information there for them to steal too. It would be so much bother though as I would also have to get prepaid creditcard or something like that should I want to actually buy anything. I wonder if anything like that even exists. Maybe then I could use those stupid electric scooters lying all around, though I kind of dont want to even touch them since they most likely never get disinfected and are touched by hundreds every week or day.
If you installed the apps on a new "spam" profile on you phone would that isolate them for from the main profile?
I wouldnt install them on any phone that has any worthwhile information. Some older phone that would just lie unused otherwise is much better for this.
Yes, at least on android you can sandbox apps.
Tangentially related, but I hate eating at Chili's because they have little screens on every table. I don't mind restaurants having a ton or TVs because they're playing sports games and people want to watch them. Each of these POS machines has constant ads playing though. You can pay with it (and probably order stuff) but you can also pay to play games. It's insane.
I still find it kinda funny how everything was made to be run on some sort of browser instead of in its own program, and now they want you to use an app to run these things instead of the browser, that in turn opens a browser in the back ground....
I figured out that at my local university still technically gives out physical ids. Know one wanted to tell me how but eventually a figured out that a local debit card from my bank could be counted as an ID
This is why if a service cannot be used in a hardened browser, I usually pass.
I am okay-ish about a service collecting some of the data I generate while using the service, but not much beyond that.
Not sure if you're on iPhone or Android but I root my OnePlus 9pro and use several ad blockers and privacy apps. A good one is xprivacylua, because it doesn't just block trackers but instead feeds them phony data so it interferes with the function of the app as little as possible. I would recommend you install shamiko as well to prevent apps from detecting that your phone is rooted. I'm sure there are similar options for iPhone but I'm not familiar it's been too long since I've had a jailbroken iPhone.
I'm guessing the reason for most things forcing you to use an app is less because of data harvesting, and more because it increases repeated use.
When you have to go to your browser and remember to check a website it's harder to create a habit. If you have an icon flashing on your home screen every day it's much easier to remember to go to their site. Sure you can "Add to Home screen" functionality, but average users don't even know that exists.
It also feels like a bespoke app is more "professional" than a website, despite many apps secretly just being a website anyway.
That said, they are definitely harvesting your data. I just don't think that's the main reason for most apps.
NextDNS.io can block the trackers in the apps
I'm going to proide an opposing viewpoint: apps will always have a more native feel, have better performance, have more capabilities, and have entirely different goals compared to web apps.
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You don't need an app to do data harvesting.
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Users have very different expectations for websites and mobile apps. They look different, they feel different, they function different, and the UX is very different.
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Performance performance performance. Html/css/JavaScript/browsers/whatever are incapable of competing against 60-120fps natively written apps. That sidebar drawer navigation can NEVER feel native in a browser because swiping from the left to open it either works, but takes a second to open, or forced you to go back to the last page.
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The additional vertical real-estate cannot be understated.
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It is a lot more effort to deal with differing browser behavior on the web. Adding mobile experience into that is even more annoying. Developers work on a desktop and will forget about mobile devices at literally every possible moment.
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You have zero control and a user can leave at a moment's notice even in the middle of critical flows. In an app, you can quick store this information away or continue it in the background. On desktop, you have zero chance to react to it since the browser will destroy-the-world the moment the user wants to go away, which leads to a ton of defensive programming, more chances for errors, and lower performance overall. Death by a thousand cuts.
I'm a developer, if you hadn't been able to tell. I am responsible for mobile responsivity on the website and it's a massive goddamn pain in my ass every waking hour of the day, and fixing it definitively is impossible with the actively hostile browser landscape leading to whack-a-mole bugfixing that needs to be done. I also point to my previous point of "devs forget about mobile constantly." I'm tired. Don't even get me started on the fixes for one browser breaking literally every other browser, leading to complete refactors of layout being necessary. This has happened more than a few times in the last year alone.
I'm actively pushing for a mobile app because we have complete end-to-end control of the experience. If something works, it just works, and it won't be broken on a random Friday or Sunday when google or apple decides to push an update to their shitty fucking browser that breaks half of the site with less than zero notice. iOS is especially fucking terrible in this regard. Every single update to safari brings horrendously breaking changes that fuck my life up.
Playing to the higher-ups by enticing them with top-of-mind awareness and having a place on their homepage is a means to an end. I want my life to not be shitty fucking web dev. When something works, I just want it to work and not require checking against every single browser in existence dated back seven years because people don't update.
I think you've gotten a bit confused. He's not saying that we should do stuff in the browser, he's saying that a phone/computer doesn't need to be involved at all.
They also said "everything" in the title multiple times.
This is a lot of nonsense. While it's true that you can do tracking with websites, the level of exposure and kind of data that can be collected is vastly different.
Performance of a web app in this day and age is negligible. If your web app cannot run well on a device from the past five years, then your web app is awful.
The vertical real estate is a non-starter argument.
It is a lot more effort to deal with differing browser behavior on the web.
This is why web standards exist.
Developers work on a desktop and will forget about mobile devices at literally every possible moment.
This has nothing to do with coding, hardware, or anything technical. This is 100% a project management/attitude problem. Good teams deal with this properly.
You have zero control and a user can leave at a moment's notice even in the middle of critical flows.
If you can't deal with this gracefully then your app flow needs to be redesigned.
I'm tired
I want my life to not be shitty fucking web dev.
You need a new job. It sounds like you're both under paid and over worked. You sound like you've hit burnout. You either work for some small company or even a startup that "can't afford" more devs or you work for a larger company that has learned they can get more work out of you for paying less than a new hire that would either push back or outright quit.
When something works, I just want it to work and not require checking against every single browser in existence dated back seven years because people don't update.
You need to invest in automation testing. Manually testing everything is just stupid. Even when developing a new feature or a bugfix, most of the work should be done by some kind of testing suite, like Selenium.
On one hand, I agree that a native app is a more integrated and seamless experience. But unfortunately that's been ruined by all the crap out there, and it's made even more egregious with everyone and their dog wanting an app for everything.
We don't need apps for every little thing in my life! No, I'm not installing an app for my Bluetooth toothbrush. Get outta here with that crap.
And it's even worse when these apps are riddled with ads when they have no right to be! I already bought the product, they advertised that it has an app. I didn't want the app in the first place, so why am I seeing ads?
And there's a really warm and scalding place in hell for devs that spam my notification bar with "we haven't seen you in a while!" and "check out our sale on these things you do not care about!".
It's a complete violation of my trust and a complete lack of respect for their users.
So no, native apps can get lost. They have their place but for most things a web app will do just fine.
Others have pointed out things like paying for laundry machines and even paying for rent are now being forced to use an app. That's 100% unacceptable.
It's a similar thing with city parking. Most places where I live require an app now. And what makes it even worse is that each city and town use a completely different service! So if I want to park when I go to these places I have to have multiple apps installed JUST FOR PARKING.
Edit: btw, I'm a dev also, and I entirely disagree with most of your points
Performance of a web app in this day and age is negligible.
Hard disagree.
The vertical real estate is a non-starter argument.
Hard disagree. You lose much of the top and bottom of the screen to useless information, and different browsers do different things with them when you start scrolling which easily causes jank in some relatively common use cases.
This is why web standards exist.
Too bad it makes no difference and there are still differences in how browsers function. Just yesterday I discovered an issue in Firefox where
overflow: hiddenis required to get certain things sized properly inposition: absoluteproperly even though it shouldn't change how things are sized. iOS also often deviates from the norm.As far as browsers are concerned, standards exist to be broken.
If you can't deal with this gracefully then your app flow needs to be redesigned.
It currently CAN deal with it gracefully because we've specifically built it to be able to handle it properly. It doesn't change that we've wasted many man-hours and tracked down numerous bugs for something that should not even be a problem in the first place. It also ended up significantly less readable and puts a higher barrier to understanding the codebase itself. We spend more hours putting up annoying safeguards for things that shouldn't be a problem than we do making new features.
You need a new job. It sounds like you're both under paid and over worked.
I'm not underpaid in any sense of the term and I'm not over worked. I just absolutely despise everything about the web dev and specifically JavaScript ecosystem, and the absolute distain towards writing anything performant at even the slightest expense of developer experience. I'm tired of the memory hog and leak prevalent garbage web apps that exist literally everywhere.
You need to invest in automation testing.
Too bad that's not my decision. The architect is actively against automated browser testing because it runs too slowly. Even then it wouldn't resolve the actual issue.
so why am I seeing ads
I fully agree with you on that front. If you've bought and paid for a product and the app is required to use kt, then the dev-required support for the app should be baked into the product rather than relying on subscriptions or ads.
They have their place but for most things a web app will do just fine.
Yes I absolutely love that I can have a total of four web apps open before my browser slows to a crawl due to excessive garbage collection for these shitty react apps that are forced to clone the universe every 2.7 nanoseconds. I adore my computer's lack of ability to have any amount of ram available that's not dedicated to Firefox or whatever shitty chrome reskin you decide to use. They start slow as shit due to 50MB bundles, have shitty caching, error every other day, and don't feel at all like an actual mobile experience because desktop and mobile navigation are fundamentally different experiences which often requires supporting two separate versions of the layout anyways in order to have an "okay" experience. And even if you can miraculously ignore all of that or do some dirty JavaScript war crimes to make it less of an issue, then half the gestures you normally do either end up hard refreshing the page or forcibly send you to the last page in the browser instead of just opening the fucking navigation drawer. Don't even get me started on electron.
Web dev is shit, chrome is trash, Firefox is barely better, and all we've successfully managed to do in two decades of browser and frontend framework development is centralize the web further, prevent any other browser from ever being created due to the absolutely ridiculous feature-set barrier to entry, turn browsers themselves into the kitchen sink with the entire house around it as well, and create a new shitty framework every other year that does the exact same thing with the exact same pitfalls because they still don't fix the fundamental stain on the world that is JavaScript.
I'll take a normal app over a web app any day of the week. I've never used a web app on my phone that was in any way better than the mobile counterpart. Even if they effectively look exactly the same. Not a single time had the web app been any better.
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I find most apps provide a much better experience.
I guess unpopular opinion but experience of a good app is significantly better than the experience of even a good mobile website. Especially if I’m frequently going back and forth between pages and whatnot.
The data harvesting is a huge issue but it’s clear that most people don’t give a shit and / or aren’t savvy enough to understand what’s actually happening. Though I think iOS and Android have both done a good job exposing what data apps are collecting on your and if you are conscious of it, the info is there for you.
I use Android, and I guess it "exposes" what permissions a given app is asking for, but in the end that's bullshit anyway. You download some app for a fast food joint or whatever and immediately it demands all the permissions under the sun: Microphone, location, contacts, call history, media, etc., etc., which are all things it clearly doesn't need. But it's worthless that the OS tells you this, because the fucking thing refuses to work if you deny it any of these ludicrous permissions, so it's become a boy-who-cries-wolf thing by now and users just click through the prompts without reading or understanding them.
If the app is libre software than ok.
I actually don't like it partially because of the privacy bit, but also because of all the apps needed for everything for myself and my kid's stuff I have run out of room on my phone. I had to go through today and find things to delete and my phone is still prompting me to "archive" apps because my available storage is so low. It says I will be able to restore the app if need be, but I shouldn't need that many apps that they fill up my entire storage.