I think it’s worth amending this to just “apps can kill”. I volunteer with search and rescue sometimes and have seen several people get into bad trouble due to reliance on phones for maps. Sometimes it’s dead batteries or just breakage without a backup plan, but no doubt other times it’s changing behavior in the app itself, OS decided to wipe cache, app has bad info, whatever.<p>You can say that people should know better but sometimes dead tree maps are not available, and anyway there’s no doubt that they are on the way out. The “safe/reliable” way might even seem to be up for debate, since phones can be more waterproof than paper, less likely to blow away when you’re on top of a mountain, serve as a backup flashlight/emergency comms, etc. But all it takes is a company that decides to force auto update and a PM that decides feature churn increases engagement and creates job security, and who knows what will break?<p>It is kind of like packaging that’s a choking or asphyxiation hazard.. if you’re doing anything that affects millions of people, it’s almost ALWAYS a safety issue even if you don’t usually think of it that way. No big audience or big user base without big responsibilities. Sure you’ll probably not be held liable in law suits, but on the other hand you should probably feel bad if you’re killing people due to indifference /negligence when thinking through edge cases.
This is really the fault of the insurance company (they geo-locked the app, Apple is just respecting that).<p>But really the idea of in-network hospitals for emergency services is nuts. Like, checkups, chronic issues—fine, your instance provider might have some preferences. But if it is an emergency (a situation in which you might die) and you have to figure out which hospital to go to first: Apple can not fix your malfunctioning society.
Article: I didn't care about a corporation restricting people's freedom until it hurt me.<p>Comments: Its not the corporation, its the government. Its not the corporation, its just the way things are. Its ok the corporation restricts freedom, everything is a tradeoff and everyone does this. Gollygee I hope this gets better.<p>real elevating curious conversation here /s that never self reflects, is our culture of software making the world worse? will one day our intentional naivety around power fail to protect us from that truth?
A lot can be said about Apple and walled gardens for sure, but is it fair to mostly blame Apple for the region locked insurance app, rather than the app developer? That was the developer’s choice to do, not Apple’s. Hopefully Anees’ insurance also has an website and contact numbers for emergencies. Android supports region locking and has some region locked apps too, it appears, according to Google. Is the Android version of the app in question not region locked on Android? We don’t know since he used an emulator. Maybe region locking is easy to get around if you’re technical, but in an emergency for most non-technical people, the outcome will be the same on Android as it is on Apple, no?
I was unopinionated about Apple's walled garden until the events of last week. Now I'm pro side-loading. If you've been on the fence, hope this changes your mind.
I went to a foreign country in 2019 and got a local SIM card, I couldn't install the ISP's app (I don't remember why I needed it, to make sure I got the quota that the seller promised?) because the app was region-locked.. huh, should I change my Google account's region just for the period I'm that country?
I've been trying to sign up for Apple TV for the past several days, as we wanted to catch up on some of the Apple shows.<p>There is an Android app, and that installs smoothly enough, but trying to start a subscription initially errored out on both my & my wife's phones.<p>I then tried to create a new user through the Apple website, and got stuck on this screen, which was throwing 500s every time I clicked on the continue button: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/17zawel/continue_button_not_working_on_apple_id_privacy/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/17zawel/continue...</a>.<p>After a couple of days that screen cleared, but then I found that their website won't take payment from me (I'm based outside of the US, but have a US billing address, so that's likely the cause of that.) I did find that their app at this point allowed me to subscribe through Google Play subscriptions (once I had gotten this account fully setup), so that almost got me to the finish line (except for some reason I got blocked and decided to start again with a new account, so back to square 1).<p>I'll also note that (of course) they don't support chromecast (as I think all or most other streaming apps available on Android do); the workaround is apparently to open the Apple TV site in chrome and cast from there.<p>Kind of a shitshow, overall.
I hope one day we realize that the internet (and probably humanity) wants to be global and our region-based governance doesn't really make sense.<p>Maybe one can hope.
Not sure what the proposal is exactly, that all there should be no international restrictions on commumications?<p>It feels like how a minor problem (in the sense that the app is poorly planned) is escalated into a device/os and then a country + international problem<p>If your goal were to fix this issue for other people on your situation, you would push for your insurance to disable geolocation instead of complaining about the existence of geolocation which is opening a can of worms you have no bearing in and don't understand.<p>Fix your garden before you fix the world.
I think you should be able to load whatever software you want on your phone (though technical speed bumps are good, imo).<p>But this is far from the biggest problem in this story.<p>e.g, if it’s important to be able to access the information available through the app, why is it locked?<p>Why isn’t that important information available on a regular web site?<p>Why do you need to install an app before getting emergency medical attention, anyway?<p>While sideloading might let you work around a broken bureaucracy from time-to-time, that’s not a very effective way to improve the system.
No, what "can kill" is being in a country where the health services do not treat seriously ill people without question.<p>Sympathy will be limited when that country is also a repressive dictatorship, if you have gone there of your own accord.<p><a href="https://www.amnesty.org.uk/united-arab-emirates-uae-free-speech-repression-injustice-censorship" rel="nofollow">https://www.amnesty.org.uk/united-arab-emirates-uae-free-spe...</a>
I've always been conflicted on Apple. On the one hand, the attention to detail in the hardware and software is generally unmatched, and everything in the ecosystem works seamlessly.<p>On the other hand, I think my personal values make me ideologically opposed to locked-down hardware/software that you don't get full control over (with associated freedom/repairability implications) and Apple products are some of the most restricted in that regard.<p>The current compromise? I'll buy all Apple devices for convenience... once I have enough money to not care.
Very weird 'article'. Apple has to provide the ability for app developers to lock their applications away from certain regions and countries where it may not be legal to provide the app or service. Whether the insurance company is using that functionality properly is not up to Apple.<p>• The insurance company decided their information can only be accessed via an app, not Apple.<p>• The insurance company decided their app should be region locked to UAE, not Apple.<p>It seems like HN bait to turn this into an opportunity for an anti-Apple rant. Anyone who from the US travels abroad frequently will discover quickly that their banking apps are region locked, via the network, and you often have to use a VPN that looks like you are back home in the US to be able to access their apps or services. Apple has nothing to do with any of this. It doesn't matter if you're on iPhone or Android, it's network level.<p>It's fine to be against this practice, but turning it into something directed to a single company as if it is their responsibility entirely is just... well, at worst, it doesn't seem honest, at best, it seems naive or ignorant.
Why not calling a phone number to ask the insurance directly? Apps should NEVER be relied upon for life-critical stuff, there are just too many risks. Phone is widely accessible, mobile or not.
This headline reminded me to do my weekly log into Facebook to see if anyone on Marketplace has responded to me.<p>I hate that it's functionally become the only way to sell things online.
Why wouldn't the insurance company have a web app with this information?<p>The web solves nearly all of the problems Apple and Google have created with their ecosystems.
I'm sure horde of Apple fanatics and useful idiots will gladly throw your wife under the bus, because:<p>* Just buy an Android if you don't like it<p>* This is not the <i>Apple way</i><p>* My grandma has much better experience this way, because I don't have to <i>some made up reason why this is impossible on Android</i><p>* Green bubble<p>* Much more secure this way<p>* I don't like when someone has different use case than I do<p>* It would be even worse on Android<p>* Think of the kids<p>Did I forget something?
Yes, walled gardens are bad, but in this case it was the combination of walled garden, region restrictions for vital health info, conflicting region restrictions, health info not being available outside the app, and a healthcare system that itself is completely broken. Each of these is stupid and dangerous, and if even one of them hadn't been the case, the author wouldn't have had this problem.<p>It's a whole ecosystem of enshittification.
The author wants us to believe that their insurance provider reduces their customer service success to the single factor of whether or not someone has an Android phone?<p>Unmitigated bs.<p>Use your web browser and find an in-network hospital via the website. Like a person.<p>This article stretches the limits of credibility.<p>Garbage premise and clickbait title.<p>I could continue on to talk about the "walled garden" issue, but I don't think that step is even warranted given the facts.
Imagine if police and fire emergency services operated like this - you had to get private fire and police insurance, and if your home was on fire you would need to have an app on your phone telling you which fire departments were 'in-network' in order to ensure you weren't accidentally bankrupted (if the out-of-network service would even respond, once they checked your economic credit score).<p>The real takeaway here should be that life-or-death outcomes should never depend on some buggy app installed on your phone and maintained by a for-profit company that's more interested in protecting shareholder profits and executive salaries than in providing the critical service in question.
The author never names the insurance company. I can't help but wonder if it's because they later realized there was a web app the whole time, and the ios/android apps were entirely optional.