This is partly corporate greed and partly a failure of the Web. A website should be all you need. You shouldn’t need a separate app for every little thing.
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.
What they mean is iPhones have pitiful storage levels for the huge amount of money they cost
This is why everything apps are so popular in many parts of the world. Using a mini-app from the internet running within another app is far preferable to downloading a whole app you may never need to use again. The way they do it in China is so seamless even if you’ve never visited the business before. There’s never any special account creation or entering of payment information.
Obviously it’s pretty terrible in terms of user privacy since the everything app has basically unchecked access to all of your personal information and habits, but the convenience is incredible and feels decades ahead of how apps work in the US.
How is that better than a web browser? Web browsers were supposed to be the “everything app”.
This is why everything apps are so popular in many parts of the world
What’s wrong with a web browser? I know it’s not as seamless, but it’s far less limiting and literally any company can create a site, regardless of their size. There’s systems like Google Pay that avoid you having to enter your credit card details on every site.
Among other things said, you lose access to push notifications / scheduling which a lot of apps are reliant on.
You could have those come in an email instead, but now it’s not personalized to the app or notification type, and if you’re like me, I actually disable alerts on my gmail because most of the things in there aren’t important and it was too disruptive.
Even the best websites don’t feel as smooth as native UI elements, and somehow browser compatibility is still a very common issue. Signing in with Google and using gpay for checkout is kind of close, but each website has different design elements complicating the experience while giving up the same amount of your personal data as if using an everything app.
Us lemmings will never be comfortable with this level of centralisation.
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.
Just give me a mobile web page if you’re going to do that shit.
There’s some apps that just load a site, but the site refuses to load if you load it in a regular browser? Why?? Spoofing the user-agent would probably work around that, but I haven’t tried.
I have an app for my sprinkler system and it’s a fucking nightmare. Not only is it basically just a web API, it’s so transparently just a glorified browser with access to exactly one site that frequently my phone thinks that app will work for whatever else I’m trying to open.
Document? Sprinkler app. Web Page? Sprinkler app. Installing from a source other than Google? Oh you better believe the sprinkler app can do that.
Doing anything takes longer to load than it would take me to walk from anywhere on my property to the fucking box and hit whatever button I need to hit.
It frequently forgets what I entered for preferences. I can tell it a week ahead what days I want it to skip but if I do that more than 24 hours on advance I might as well not have done it at all.
Oh you want to make a payment online? Let your sprinklers do that for you. YouTube video? Sprinkler app. YouTube video about fixing your fucking sprinkler system? Sprinkler app.
Apparently the one thing it can’t do is effectively manage my water usage. It’s ONE job
Document? Sprinkler app. Web Page? Sprinkler app. Installing from a source other than Google? Oh you better believe the sprinkler app can do that.
Android apps tell the system which URLs they can open. If you click a Google Maps link, it can prompt you to open it in the Google Maps app. It sounds like whoever created the sprinkler app misconfigured the app and it’s saying that it can open all URLs, not just the URLs it cares about. They probably read a tutorial about how to make a webview in Android and didn’t know what they were doing :)
Is it actually opening up the Sprinkler app for all those other purposes, or giving you a choice dialog? If it’s actually opening up the app, maybe installing Intent Intercept would at least make it a choice dialog, as it also tries to open everything (just to show information about the request; it’s a dev tool).
I have never actually tried, it’s just suggesting it as an app that can do those things.
So, giving you what I called the choice dialog. That makes sense. Intent intercept wouldn’t help then, it would just give you one more basically irrelevant choice to do all the things (although it’s useful for developers).
shit that’s amazing
Can !homeassistant@lemmy.world help with that?
If I could rip that thing off the wall and replace it with a spigot I would.
My wife wants it, and she cares more about the grass than I do.
Just request a copy of the source code! Oh wait
Yeah this is begging for !homeassistant@lemmy.world to replace that app.
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.
I wish sites that do have PWAs would stop funneling people towards their app.
Especially Patreon, where patronages started using their app would be 30% more expensive for their users than patronages started through their website because of the Apple (and probably Google) tax. Patreon is aware of this tax but keeps advertising their fucking stupid app! You have a Progressive Web App that’s works perfectly! Stop it! Get some help!Twitter had some great outcomes when they rolled out their PWA: https://web.dev/case-studies/twitter
Twitter Lite is now the fastest, least expensive, and most reliable way to use Twitter. The web app rivals the performance of our native apps but requires less than 3% of the device storage space compared to Twitter for Android.
65% increase in pages per session
75% increase in Tweets sent
20% decrease in bounce rateyet they kept pushing their native apps, probably because they can collect more data through them. The web is way more sandboxed than regular apps.
That’s less an endorsement of PWAs and more a condemnation of how garbage the native app always was.
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.
I just cut my own hair.
But yeah, this trend is frustrating. When I get food from Jimmy Johns or a handful of other quick meal places, they bring up the app every single time. Yeah, I could get a free sandwich or whatever occasionally, but I really don’t want yet another app on my device. If that choice resulted in a worse experience, I’d find a different service.
This is what CalDAV is for. We don’t need apps. We don’t need Calendly or Google Calendar or some BS.
As someone who needs to let other people schedule time on my calendar without wanting to give them every detail about my personal life I find Calendly to be incredibly useful. But I direct everyone to their website instead of the app, which I’ve never used.
You can break those up into private vs. public calendars
Great, now I have two calendars to manage.
I mean most calendar apps like the default in LineageOS & ikhal aggregate calendars & have a simple selection + coloring for the two calendars. It isn’t rocket surgery.
Okay, now how do I get that second calendar’s availability to someone who isn’t using CalDAV so we’re not playing email ping-pong trying to find a time to meet?
Why assume everyone else has Google?
I recently switched to GrapheneOS and decided to avoid the Google Play store entirely, and honestly, the inconveniences have been pretty limited. The only bank I’ve had trouble with is Citi, everything else (I’ve tried several others) work fine through the browser. Likewise for most services I use, the web version works fine, though occasionally I’ll need to use the “desktop” version.
Some services just don’t work properly on the web, but most of the ones I used to use through an app work just fine. Give it a try, maybe together we can send a signal that apps should only exist when they provide value.
It still depends. I live in China and the internet here suckass. Every product, say taobao(Amazon), xianyu(eBay), Alipay(PayPal), WeChat(instant msg), banking, etc. that is crucial to your daily usage mandatories an application. The API is closed and the webapp has no functionality other than a banner with “go fuck our mobile app”. The only way to bypass these privacy beast apps is to live in an isolated wood cabinet with self-sufficient agriculture.
Doesn’t WeChat do more than instant messaging, though?
Yes, it steals your soul, spies on you for the cccp and sells your privacy to anyone with a buck fifty (except to you).
Yes. From my experience, it is an everything app and you can pay for things instead of using alipay.
You mean the built-in browser with shitty nonconsistent API? Yeah it’s used widely. Some crazy dudes even put earthquake forecast on it.
How does it work?
Wow, that sucks. I imagine government policy has a significant influence here…
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.
When the app is prompting you to accept cookies
well it is not just that, websites stopped working properly. I almost always run into a problem trying to book a ticket from an airline company’s website.
I recently had a rather baffling experience trying to preemptively avoid this by downloading the stupid app right away, only to discover I needed the website version anyway.
I was attempting to add my Known Traveler Number to an already booked trip with Southwest Airlines, booked by someone else. I was able to link the trip to my account right away in the app, no issue. And I could see the KTN field for my ticket sitting there, empty, greyed-out, and not interactible. I opened up the moble version of their website, completely unsurprised to find it was identical to the app, except for the detail that the KTN field there was functional. Put in the information, changes reflected in the app instantly, and I was in the TAS-pre line that afternoon.
Why did the two versions obviously built from the same codebase have two different sets of capabilities? Why was the website the more capable of the two this time? I have no clue. All I know is I never want to be a developer at a corporation where I’d have to be responsible for this flavor of trash.
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.
Nice. I used to have a handful, and now I just don’t bother with the loyalty program at all. My local grocery’s program is mediocre at best (discount at a gas station I don’t use) and isn’t even required to get discounts, so I don’t bother. And they don’t even need an app, just a phone number, so I just refuse to tell them my number because I’m getting zero value from it.
Likewise for pretty much everything. The only one I actually use is Target, and that’s because I get 5% off using their debit card, plus some random discounts through the app. I don’t go there very often, but when I do, I’ll generally time it when there are some good discounts to stack (usually it’s for birthdays or school, and I have a month or so leeway in when I go).
So yeah, no store apps for me.
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.
I have yet to see an app that does something a website could not do…
most apps are just containerized websites.
You know why?
Cause browsers do a lot to protect your data from invasive sniffing.
but if you containerize it in an app, you can remove all those pesky safety measures Which lets you turn a customer into a product by siphoning up all their data and information.
I work in a manufacturing environment. A few years ago they decided they needed a company social media app. They hired, or more likely were sold the idea by Salesforce and built this stupid ass website, then went on a fucking War campaign to get people to install the app on their phone.
They demanded. They begged. They removed functions of HR to the app exclusively. When we protested they simply said no, no room to negotiate, no give. You will use the app or you will not have access to certain information required to do your job. When they closed the plant one day and posted it on the app, they threatened to write up an entire shift that showed up to work anyway without knowing any better.
Because apparently, when you get up at 4 am the first thing you’re supposed to do every day is check an app on your phone to see if you have work that day.
They used to just push out a robo call.
When we have committee meetings with HR they go something like this.
HR: how can we get you guys on the app Committee: how can we retrieve these functions from the app HR: you can’t Committee: that’s your answer.
There have been at least 6 versions of this meeting that I have been a part of.
Most of my coworkers are older than me. Few of them have fancy phones, generally the most basic phone you can get. A number of my coworkers are on parole or work release and have limited access to smart phones for one reason or another and literally have no access to the app.
I was chatting with one of the IT gals recently and apparently resistance to the app is pretty widespread. When I said “venture capital IT firm” she gave me a high five.
They want everyone using this thing and maybe 15% of the company has it. Then they switched to Workday.
It hasn’t gone well.
I’m surprised you guys havent started the push of “If you are going to force us to have this app for essential day to day work, then you need to provide us with phones to put it on, because we can not be expected to devalue our personal devices with excess work related use”
I did mention at one of these meetings that we wouldn’t give them space on our personal devices for free, it did not change their tune. The union has been hammering them on it during negotiations but I doubt they’ll budge on that and we have bigger issues to deal with so they won’t let it be a sticking point.
Someone should analyze the app and see what permissions it needs, cause it could be a much bigger sticking point than anyone realizes if its spying on your phone activities.
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Clarify the app is required by the company (hr) for your job duties as mentioned when it was stated every employee’s responsibility to ensure the work site is open via a phone app. They’ll be happy to confirm that.
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Go see your master agreement about tools supplied by company. That will be in even passable contracts because it’s usually an audit issue.
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Ask company for tool as per contract. “This device here is not a work device and is neither secured nor managed by I.T.” was what we said.
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Ask your shop steward to ask the union to explain to the company that their HR is demanding the use of tools the company will not then provide, which is a concern under section 17p5b.1 “proper tools and training as provided during workday for onsite work required by employees”
If they’re dicks you can try to hit them up for training on how to use the phone.
Teams is why we all have fancy pixel7 company-issued phones. TEAMS. And, since only one guy is on standby after-hours, the rest of them are shut off at 4:49 pm. So lame.
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Harvest data more efficiently for our corporate overlords :)
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 wish for a browser addon to just block those app download requests when it smells them. The answer’s only gonna be no for all that, dawg.~
I only have the Starbucks app so my fancy Sunday coffee is done right and they don’t call me Corey Sangeetha or Coarse Kangaroo.
I’m the same way. The less apps there are on my phone, the better. Also, using the web app is the only way to block ads on certain sites such as Instagram or Twitter.
then there are companies like yelp who disable their mobile site and make their desktop site as shitty as possible on mobile to force you to the app.
Huh, is that why I haven’t used yelp in years?
Doesn’t really sound like a company that I would want to do any business with then.
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.
