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

My doctor&#x2F;&#x27;s office was just forced to switch to app-instead-of-website for patient interation. Ironically, the old and this new software came from same megacorp I work for (different department, same story). The old web interface was rather good and rather sensible-practical-sane. It was almost as if someone had asked a doctor what he actually needed for his patients, and then understood his answer and also managed to actually implement and deliver it.<p><pre><code> The new smartphone app.. Not so much. It looks more like some MBA types managed to solve &quot;what is the cheapest thing we can get away with, lawfully?&quot;</code></pre> Internally, I know it is because the original dev team has been gutted, development outsourced to india, and just a skeleton crew from the original team manages the chinese-whispers process with the huge indian team.<p>As a result, the use case flow (IE the only way you can operate it..) of the app, goes as follows:<p>1 close the app 2 launch the app and sign in 3 do ONE action 4 enjoy the result of the action 5 repeat from 1..<p>You might wonder why that is.. Well, that is because your software is not allowed to display any errors - because that might indicate there were bugs.. So instead, whenever an error happens, you just display the &#x27;... still loading..&#x27; animation... forever. So, technically, there are no errors, no bugs.. &quot;IT IS JUST TAKING TOO LONG TO RESPOND&quot;. (spoiler: it will NEVER respond, because hidden behind the screen, is a series of unhandled web api errors..)<p>But again, as an &quot;internal&quot; employee, I have seen our management claim all this is a huge success (client paid&#x2F;pays).<p>Back to using it: When I have to interact with my doctor, I write the texts on my PC, and mail them to myself. Then I cut&#x2F;paste them from gmail into this wonderful app.

One thing this article doesn’t mention is how this all falls apart when you spend time in more than one country.<p>My UK bank (Barclays) won’t let me install their app on my US iPhone (i.e. my phone that uses a US based iCloud account). Tesco won’t let me use their loyalty app. I can’t install an app that’ll let me order Starbucks or McDonalds in the UK (I only have access to the US versions of these apps). I can’t watch Star Trek because the US paramount plus app detects I’m in the UK and I can’t install the UK version.<p>I could switch to a UK iCloud account but then when I’m in the states everything falls apart the other way round.

It&#x27;s funny how people in this thread keep saying &quot;well if you&#x27;re going to complain about people being penalized for not using apps, you might as well complain about people being penalized for not using telephones&#x2F;cars&#x2F;internet&quot;... and yes, I am going to complain about all of those things. I imagine that many or most homeless people don&#x27;t have reliable access to any of the above. I have an anxiety disorder that makes it hard for me to drive or talk on the phone, and I&#x27;m sure there are many people with more extreme conditions for whom it&#x27;s impossible. There are people like Richard Stallman and members of certain religious communities who have strong moral objections to using certain technologies. Society should accommodate all sorts of people and all sorts of ways of living.

I’m fascinated by this phenomenon of apps proposing solutions that are far worse than the previous existing solutions.<p>For example:<p>1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters.<p>2. Tinder is worse than IRL speed dating.<p>3. Duolingo is worse than language classes.<p>4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.<p>5. Etc<p>It really makes me frustrated as someone who builds software and generally thinks it improves the world…

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

My brother doesn&#x27;t have à smartphone (by choice).<p>For example, he cannot access his bank account via his desktop anymore. He have to go to his agency in person.<p>Well we all did that for years so it&#x27;s just annoying, because he still have the possibility to do it and it&#x27;s his choice.<p>But what will happen if all the brick and mortar close ? When will it be mandatory to get a smartphone for his bank app, just to have access to his money ?<p>And it&#x27;s just an example...

I think this article is city-centric. I am in a rural area <i>in the US</i> and I have only had a <i>smart</i> phone for 2 years and have never installed any apps beyond Mumla that I use for my own self hosted uMurmur server. I have never browsed the web from the phone. My life today is just as it was in the 1970&#x27;s in that regard. All the businesses here have printed coupons. There are local printed newspapers. I have zero dependency on any <i>&quot;smart&quot;</i> features of phones unless one considers texting to be a smart feature given that was not a thing in the 70&#x27;s. I do not expect any of that to change. The people here like keeping things simple. With exception of Amazon <i>to get things small shops here do not carry</i> I could even kill my internet connection and life would go on just fine. I would probably even get healthier. All the local businesses know me by name so I guess that makes up for a lack of cookie tracking.

I avoid apps too if I can. So rare that the app does anything a website can&#x27;t. Indeed most apps are implemented with embedded browsers.<p>It&#x27;s about tracking, and push notifications. Full stop.

My city has parking meters that I can&#x27;t use because the website has a broken credit card form and the app &quot;isn&#x27;t available on your version of Android.&quot; And of course they don&#x27;t accept cash.<p>It&#x27;s a farce.

I had a tangential experience to this phenomenon lately. I moved continents a few years ago. Eventually I had to switch my Play Store country to where I moved. That restricted my access to certain versions of apps but my downloaded apps continued to function anyway.<p>Then, a few months ago, I finally bought a new phone. I quickly found out that there was no way I could get this one banking app from my home country on the new phone (other than switching my country setting again, which isn&#x27;t worth the potential hassle right now). Fortunately, I could still do online banking with on my browser...right?<p>I try to login to my online banking. They say they will send me an OTP on my registered mobile number. Makes sense, and, thanks to the wonders of roaming, I will be able to receive it. Except...instead of just sending me the actual OTP like any sane platform would do, I had to first confirm that I was, indeed, trying to sign-in to online banking by replying &quot;YES&quot; to their SMS prompt. And due to the wonders of SMS roaming protocol, though I could receive their messages, I simply could not reply to them no matter which gods I invoke.<p>Security design by committee. I curse the manager who though this was a necessary and valuable addition to the whole OTP scheme.<p>It&#x27;s not so much a &quot;convenience tax&quot; as in the article but, I guess, a penalty for moving countries. I have no choice now but simply to just settle this when I go on vacation to my home country. There is probably no convenient resolution to this even when I am in the correct geospace.<p>PS. I have two banks from home country and I was able to install the other bank&#x27;s app in my new phone without a hitch. I try to avoid cynicism but this simply has the stink of Managerial Software Engineering Best Practices all over it.

Not only do I need a smartphone for &quot;everything&quot; in my live.(managing my local gym membership for example) I also only have the choice between two us companies: Google or Apple. I had an ubuntu smartphone at some point but it&#x27;s practically useless. If I want a appointment with my doctor in Germany living in the same street as I, the Californian Company Google has to be involved for some reason.

People are writing this off, but it eventually becomes impossible not to own a smartphone; an expensive device, with an expensive monthly plan, and an absolutely terrible privacy record. Eventually more businesses will require smartphone usage just to use their services. There could even be a time when government services require it.

One thing not mentioned yet is what happens when you&#x27;ve got a cheaper phone filled with photos and videos. At various times I&#x27;ve had to spend a few minutes deleting things just to download some stupid 100 meg app that I need to use for a total of 5 minutes to complete some basic task.

App store monopoly hurts us way more than it is talked about. Suddenly, not only we are not to chose which devices to use to access what could be a simple website. Now unrelated third party decides if we have access to it based in, for example, country of residence. Or at all. Apple routine forces censorship on our phones as if it was it&#x27;s property.<p>I still believe it was a tragedy that Microsoft folded their attempt into mobile. To explain my level of desperation, I feel our next best hope here is China.

It is not even about privacy and safety or freedom of choice really. Besides very soon - in this duopoly you really will not be owning phones or even access to apps would be limited&#x2F;controlled to more draconian measures than it is today.<p>Anyways. I took an auto ride few weeks back and an old gentleman picked me up. He did have a tattered smartphone. But he didn&#x27;t have the UPI app or a QR code (QR is the way here; UPI the instant payment thingie in India). He was not agitated but really looked embarrassed and helpless and told me in broken English he tried a few times but he forgets many kinds of PINs and messes up and his bank account gets blocked and then he has to run around with documents to get it unblocked and then again. I had some cash and I was able to pay him. But it&#x27;s horrible. There are people for whom cash is the ONLY way. Even going to the bank (or ATM; which anyway is still a difficulty for me) means sometimes half to one day&#x27;s work gone. Just like that. This has a lot to do with political climate changes. So many people get trampled over without any check and balances because they have the vote without a voice or any real power.<p>I think a lot of us, and for many of us who tap and pay at a Starbucks as if it&#x27;s bill there lowest currency denomination in our consciousness, never stop to try and understand this and realise this. This is not merely inconvenience in huge part of this planet - it&#x27;s a real life pain. I don&#x27;t think even this article considered such a case&#x2F;life struggles due to smartphones and everything getting tied to a SIM et cetera.

I&#x27;m glad to see people talking about this. I&#x27;d love to see a new right: The right to not have your phone on you.<p>For whatever reason. Maybe it was stolen. Maybe it&#x27;s being fixed. Maybe the battery is dead.<p>(Maybe you don&#x27;t want to get a Google or Apple account. But that&#x27;s not the only use case.)<p>All public services and essential services (government services, banks, car parks, etc) should respect this right. It&#x27;s bizarre that people think it&#x27;s such an outlandish request.

It’s especially bad for elderly people. I have elderly family members with cancer and other serious issues who struggle because medical offices expect contact to be only in app messages and chats. When these patients call on the phone and say they need to talk to someone on the phone because they struggle with accessing other forms of communication they still often only reply back in the app&#x2F;website. Some are elderly and rural enough to have grown up without electricity or running water until they were adults(yes, they grew up in the US). They still don’t have smartphones. They have &lt;1mbit Internet. 2FA is a major hurdle for them. Some have vision problems that make reading text difficult. Some are hard of hearing and struggle with the phone too. So many people are left behind by trying to make patient communication efficient for the staff and documented for their electronic records systems. No one is thinking about what’s efficient and effective for the patients they serve, and no one will because doctors have huge debts to pay and have to work for the Wall Street crowd.

&gt; And at the bakery chain Greggs, you can collect loyalty “stamps” for free food and drink and get “exclusive app-only gifts”. You currently get a free hot drink just for downloading the app.<p>&gt; McDonald’s is running a high-profile promotion called Deal Drop, where it offers items at “bargain” prices, such as a classic Big Mac for £1.49 (normally £4.99) and a children’s Happy Meal for £1.99 (normally £3.59) – but all of the discounts are available exclusively with the company’s app.<p>The article paints a painstakingly detailed photo of the UK&#x27;s app culture, but fails to explain exactly why app users are entitled to such discounts. What exactly is McDonald&#x27;s doing with your data that is worth a whopping £3.50 Big Mac discount, and more?? Why is the app so important?? I have never found an article that does more than scratch the surface on this topic. Any suggestions?

The big group that keeps getting ignored are older people who actually do have smartphones, but find them increasingly difficult to use as they age, due to how fiddly touch interfaces can be and visuals designed by and for people in their 20s, not 70s and 80s.<p>Typing on a smartphone is impossible for my 70-something father, even on the larger models.

A factor not mentioned in this article is people not being able to install apps because they&#x27;ve run out of space.<p>I&#x27;ve seen this a bunch with people who buy the less expensive phones with smaller amounts of storage: they take photos until their phone is full, and now if they need to install a new app they have to delete something else (including potentially their photos) to make space for it.

I have a big issue with this, and the truth is that the majority of people simply do not care and&#x2F;or do not understand the implications.<p>By tying your service to a smartphone your are basically refusing to provide service if the costumer doesn&#x27;t agree to Apple&#x27;s or Google&#x27;s TOS. If the app doesn&#x27;t complain about emulation or something different than Android or IOS you are in luck, but that&#x27;s not the case with most banking apps. And that&#x27;s only talking about people who don&#x27;t have it by choice and have money to buy one.<p>For me, once, it went beyond: I took my first dose of the Covid vaccine, and the second dose&#x27;s date would still be announced. I asked where it would be available to the nurse, &quot;On the Instagram page of the &lt;local health body&gt;&quot;. &quot;But i don&#x27;t have Instagram&quot; i said, and the nurse shrugged. It requires both a phone and a social media account with your real info, but since absolute nobody complains about it they just do because it&#x27;s easier.<p>This will continue as long people are complacent with it. In some places the government is required to provide you services, by law, by any means available and not depending on 3rd party service, but they do require apps anyway and people stay quiet. Phones as an alternative is fine, it&#x27;s a tool, but should not be an obligatory device for you to be considered an human being.

It mentions parking which is a similar category of annoyance, but I think the multitude of mutually incompatible apps for EV charging pose a real barrier to adoption too. Maybe not in a way people are explicitly aware of, but it certainly makes up part of the stories about difficulty and inconvenience with public charging.<p>I can pay for petrol with any card or, if I&#x27;m feeling really old school, by going into a building and handing a person cash. Someone like my mum, who still likes to draw the cash she&#x27;ll need for the week and spend that, wouldn&#x27;t even entertain the idea of having to download and maintain a suite of apps for every brand of charger.<p>Apps are a good convenience option for those that want them, but they shouldn&#x27;t be the only option, especially not for something as essential as fuelling your car. I would welcome regulation on these, even a baby step of &quot;all chargers must accept contactless payment&quot;. I&#x27;d like to see manned charging stations and cash options too—and I say that as someone who pays for everything by card—but I fear in the short term that might hamper infrastructure rollout.

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

Yes! I&#x27;ve often said &quot;software engineers should be doomed to use what they create. Or at least watch others try to use it.&quot; One example is our local Costco parking garage. They replaced the old push-button ticketing kiosk (which had nothing wrong with it) with one that had a touchscreen. Many times the line is backed up and one day I saw why. The guy was pushing the touchscreen button as if it were physical, and it wasn&#x27;t registering the tap. He was using multiple fingers and mashing instead of using one finger and doing a clean tap inside the digital button.

Xfinity sent me a new cable modem this week.<p>Came with zero instructions for set up, just a QR code. Scanned the QR code and it took me to install an app. I begrudgingly installed it.<p>The app had me hit next a few times before scanning a different QR code on the bottom of the modem. That was the entire process.<p>I guess you just have to pay for installation if you don&#x27;t have a smart phone? It offered for $150+ when I agreed to the new modem.

Resist! If a bank forces you to use a surveillance device (smartphone) to do Internet banking or forces you to install invasive apps on your PC, don&#x27;t.<p>TAN apps were still reasonable. TAN generators too, though the hardware sucked and used an insane amount of batteries. Then banks forced apps and smartphones and that is the point where to say no thanks.<p>They are still required to perform transactions by filling out forms with a pen. It sounds like a lot of work but it really isn&#x27;t. Use cash or credit cards and cut down the number of manual transactions.

I saw on Usenet about &quot;Digitalzwang&quot;. Here is the quotation:<p>&gt; The German movement &quot;Digitalcourage&quot; has coined the term &quot;Digitalzwang&quot; (compulsory digitalisation) for this feature. For instance, some public funding programmes cannot be used unless you have access to a PC (a smartphone is not sufficient) hooked up to the internet.<p>&gt; Digitalcourage support responsible digitalisation by offering help in the usage of secure authorisation and encryption but strictly disapproves of any form of compulsory digitalisation. People who refuse using public data networks, whatever their motives, must have equal rights as everybody else.<p>What they describe is not quite what the linked article describes, but is similar and is related.<p>I would further say, that in addition to that (and the stuff mentioned in the linked article), you should not be required to use computers with specific complicated software (including web browsers), or to use computers (including smartphones) or credit cards at all, if that is applicable to whatever you are doing working with. There is also the issue of a smartphone running out of battery power or otherwise not working, even if you do have it.<p>(I have once been in a restaurant where a app is required, although customers who do not have a smartphone can borrow a iPad from them. This is not as bad, but still it is not as good as just not requiring it at all.)

I use my phone primarily for messaging. In fact, I often forget and have the Anti-Distraction mode turned on, so I only get important comms but no app notifications.<p>SIDENOTE<p>People need to chill out with the word &quot;tyranny&quot;. It&#x27;s like saying that you are being &quot;assaulted&quot; by a different opinion, or claiming that ordinary platform moderation is &quot;censorship&quot;. You are not being terrorized, assaulted, or censored.<p>There are people in the world who are truly subjected to those things, and you have NO idea what that&#x27;s actually like.

&gt; The consumer group is among those to have highlighted Lidl’s loyalty scheme, Lidl Plus, as one that is only accessible via an app, with an email address also required.<p>At least here in Finland Lidl Plus is one of the few which can be used by just entering a phone number.<p>That said, all &quot;loyalty programs&quot; should be outright banned. They stifle competition, make pricing less transparent and discriminate against the less well off.

The entire history of technology is our becoming dependent on one invention after another, such that anyone with any interest in the area(s) that invention touches no longer has a realistic choice not to use it. They may technically be able to, but only through outsize sacrifice that leaves them worse off than they would have been before the thing was invented.

I didn&#x27;t own a smartphone until 2022. Now, after three years of carrying this dopamine-slothed brick, I’m ditching it—but first, let’s autopsy the “security” demands forcing ownership.<p>Peak security theater: banks (at least in Europe) mandate smartphones as “safe,” yet the device itself is the ultimate attack vector.<p>- 2FA apps? Single point of failure (SIM-jacking, zero-days, bricked phone = locked out of life).<p>- Mandatory apps? Swapped phishing for supply-chain attacks + 24&#x2F;7 location leaks.<p>- Biometrics? Your face now lives in a corp database that will get breached.<p>The irony? A YubiKey was objectively safer: no GPS, mic, or app permissions. But we’ve normalized “security” as surrender to surveillance capitalism. Banks want your data, not hardware tokens.<p>Smartphones manufacture threats:<p>- AirTag stalking requires… a smartphone to detect.<p>- Signal&#x2F;encrypted chat? Tied to a phone number (→ ID → surveillance graph).<p>- “Find My Phone” = backdoor with a UX polish.<p>The system isn’t securing you, it’s securing access to you. Every forced 2FA method is another node to map, monetize, and manipulate.<p>btw. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41310150">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41310150</a> - old ASK NH of mine, i still welcome ideas.

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

United Airlines used to accept credit cards to pay for meals during the flight. It worked great. At some point they dropped that and replaced it with something that involves their slow bloated buggy app that crashes on my phone. So I stopped buying their meals.

I chose to use a flip phone over a previous Android phone around 10 years ago when ISPs&#x2F;Phone providers showed that security lapse issues for them was just a cost of doing business. I used to store private client info in Exchange and sync it, but I could not, in good conscience, continue to do so with the knowledge of that information&#x27;s exposure.<p>I recently worked with NetGear support to have a new router replaced after we determined the firmware was known to be problematic, and the only way the level 2 support person had of correcting it required their app.<p>So fortunately, there may still be ways around working with IT without a &quot;smart&quot; phone, and I will continue to blaze that trail as needed.

I know people who love having specific apps for everything, but I generally find them a much worse user experience than the browser. Can&#x27;t select&#x2F;copy text. Sometimes if it&#x27;s a terrible developer you can&#x27;t paste. Can&#x27;t arbitrarily zoom in.<p>I know Android now lets me copy from the screen but it still flows incorrectly sometimes, like copying from a PDF.

&quot;&quot;&quot;Many tech experts also argue that apps are generally more secure than websites...&quot;&quot;&quot;<p>&quot;Many&quot;, like, maybe the ones who are trying to sell you on an app development contract? But not many others!

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

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

Somewhat unrelated to the piece, but this is the second website I’ve seen in two days that appears to not have properly merged an edit?<p>“ The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, says many people are overwhelmed by the multitude of apps they have to use, “when in reality you want one that you like and you’re happy using and that you can use everywhere”.<p>Six years ago the Department for Transport started developing a “national parking platform” (NPP) designed to enable drivers to use one app of their choice to pay for all their parking. It has been trialled by a number of councils, but a big question mark hangs over its future as public funding for the project looks likely to be withdrawn.<p>The RAC’s head of policy Simon Williams says many people are overwhelmed by the multitude of apps they have to use, “when in reality you want one that you like and you’re happy using and that you can use everywhere”.<p>Six years ago the Department for Transport started developing a “national parking platform” (NPP) designed to enable drivers to use one app of their choice to pay for all their parking, and it has been trialled by a number of councils. However, a big question mark now hangs over its future as public funding for the project looks likely to be withdrawn imminently.”<p>I think the other one was an npr piece posted on HN yesterday? Is there a bug with wordpress or are people just getting sloppy?

It&#x27;s unfortunate the article accepts the questionable argument about apps being more secure - companies say that to soften people up to handing out personal data access that apps enable.

Forcing apps on people keeps the Apple&#x2F;Google duopoly in place. Every alternative mobile OS fails unless it has an Android compatibility layer. And even then it will fail because Google&#x27;s anti-competitive Play Integrity API won&#x27;t work, and many users will be unable to use bank&#x2F;payment apps.

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

Toronto, Canada. Tried to pay for street parking using their machine and with credit card. It spat out some gibberish on display that flashed too fast to read. Parking ticket guy was hanging around so I asked him WTF is going on. He said I must use the app or he will give a ticket. I tried to argue with him that they must still accept the other form of payment and I do not want to pollute phone with the app. He said that he does not give a shit and will issue ticket regardless of what fucking Toronto&#x27;s parking website pages say.

I was in a full service restaurant a few months ago, and they were steering everybody to scan a QR code for their menus. Had eaten there several times before and this was new. I demanded a physical menu, even though the waiter said it might be outdated. Wanted a beer, but the drink menus were no more. I stared the waiter down and snapped, &quot;WATER!&quot; You must push back or else they&#x27;ll think their lazy changes are fine. Maybe next time they&#x27;ll expect me to bus the table?

My anecdote for the pile is that my apartment complex uses one of those apps to pay for laundry services, but is slightly less expensive than the coin based counterparts <i>on the same machine</i>.<p>What&#x27;s even worse is that the app is incredibly poorly made such that occasionally some payments just fall into the void and either start the machine for free or require a double charge. Anytime I have reached out to complain about these I just get told to bring my phone closer to the machine.

I see that this thread is full of a lot of very valid complaints about the hellish world we&#x27;ve created. But my reaction when these things come up is to point out that we effectively demanded this with our revealed preferences. We&#x27;re at the triangulation of people <i>preferring</i> to use their phones for most things, while also demanding the lowest price possible. At a certain point, it&#x27;s natural for companies to realize they can make more money—which is their reason for existing—by discontinuing products and lines of services that can be replaced by cheaper alternatives. I think everyone (over a certain age at least) has had the thought that brick and mortar stores all seem to be gone, and the realization that it&#x27;s because everyone shops online, and then, if they are self-aware, the realization that they&#x27;re part of that process. This is that at a somewhat zoomed-out scale.<p>Government services are a different case. I suppose they feel cost pressure as well, but it&#x27;s right to expect them to accommodate more people than private businesses.

And in the good old day. Apple will force its hands on these sort of issues. But 10 years after Apple Pay and the Claims to replace your wallet. They are still millions miles away from doing it.<p>In many ways Apple without Steve Jobs feels more Google and Microsoft but with better taste of software and hardware.<p>&gt;<i>&quot;So the people who make the company more successful are the sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the ‘product people’ get run out of the decision-making forums. The companies forget how to make great products. The product sensibility and product genius that brought them to this monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product vs. a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. </i><p>&gt;&quot;And they really have no feeling in their hearts about wanting to help the costumers.” *

There is certainly an analogy here to servers that respond to HTTP (&quot;websites&quot;) that ignore the concept of &quot;user agent&quot;, i.e., the user chooses the client, and try to force the &quot;www user&quot; to choose a certain &quot;web browser&quot;, usually one funded by advertising.<p>In the case of handheld computers (&quot;smartphones&quot;) the situation is even more restrictive. The &quot;mobile user&quot; is forced to use both s specific operating system and a specific client in order to communicate with servers that respond to HTTP (&quot;backends&quot;), where the former is controlled by a company wholly or partially dependant on surveillance, data collection and the sale of online advertising services as a &quot;business model&quot;.

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

Where I live in the US, only fairly recently have I started encountering parking where you <i>cannot pay</i> without doing it over the internet on a device. I haven&#x27;t seen any where you need an app specifically, but you do need a smartphone or internet capable device. I am very annoyed by this.

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

I&#x27;ve left gyms and restaurants because of this crap.

Another thing that irritated me is app designers assuming I have email on my phone. I don&#x27;t, I use it for work and will use my laptop when I want to check email. Too many apps send you a &quot;magic link&quot; in your email to login with no alternative.

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

I write small utility apps that are often used by friends, families, the teams my kids are on, etc. None of them are overly complicated or aiming for award-winning polish. While I personally like installed apps, many people seem to prefer a link they can click. To accommodate that, I&#x27;ve been leaning towards Flutter as an acceptable compromise. The installed app has some better characteristics regarding device integration and storage, but I&#x27;ve been pleasantly surprised at how well the web versions work. When run on phone it’s hard to tell (visually) that it’s not the app. (UX is laggier though.)

I don&#x27;t have a permanent address nor a permanent (mobile) phone number. It&#x27;s impossible to do so many things without these. I have to use my mother&#x27;s address and my mother is currently suing me in court, so go figure how much mail reaches me. Without a permanent address, you can&#x27;t open a bank account, you can&#x27;t use many government services,... It&#x27;s a &quot;required&quot; field on many online forms. It&#x27;s such a pain because they don&#x27;t need those info to give me the services they offer...

In many countries, the secrecy of your mail is protected by law (secrecy of correspondence)<p>There is -as yet- no laws as strong for &#x27;telephones&#x27;. But people communicate a lot more by mobile phone than by snail mail these days!<p>I think people should be free to do or discuss whatever they want via their phones, just like is permitted for paper mail. Phones should should get very stringent legal protections, including at borders, just like for paper mail.

I don&#x27;t mind having a phone, but the only way I&#x27;ll put personal information on it is if I have root access and can run a firewall. anything else and it&#x27;s not my phone.<p>more and more apps are starting to reject rooted phones. I&#x27;m dropping them for now, but I worry that at some point I&#x27;ll have to carry a decoy phone for essential apps. or maybe I&#x27;ll learn to just not put anything more personal than the stuff required to use the essential ones like health care and transport.

Just saying, 99% of the app could be replaced by a browser bookmark.<p>Of course some companies don&#x27;t want it so they make their website unusable to smartphone.<p>There isn&#x27;t really much that technically would prevent people from using their web browser to pay the parking or to pay McDonald.<p>You can have geolocation on browser too, save your account, take picture and so on.<p>It&#x27;s just better for these companies if we have their app because we can&#x27;t use ad blocker and just close the browser. The app, it can send data 24&#x2F;24.<p>For instance, I have yet to find an llm or ai chatbot app that doesn&#x27;t force me to have the Google play store enabled on my phone and to be logged in with my Google account.<p>What the FCK they care if I have a Google account on my phone to be able to use chatgpt, deepseek, Mistral, lama and others ? More and more do that, recently the app I used to use to track food quality (Yuka) did that too.<p>The more thing goes, the less app I use and the more I rely on web browser. And those who refuse to work in browser, i just ditch them.<p>I feel like we reached a plateau years ago and now things are going downhill with android and iPhone.

I help run a symposium, and we are back to using paper program books, as our programmer volunteer moved on to other things and we couldn&#x27;t update the iPhone and Android apps, but we were able to make a web app of the schedule which we&#x27;ll probably continue using as we don&#x27;t need to do two different things.

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

I hate this trend with a passion. Digital can make a lot things easier, but frankly speaking for a majority of those use cases a mobile website will do just fine as well.<p>My bank is digital only and doesn&#x27;t have any local branches. That works for me and is fine. It&#x27;s not like I&#x27;m switching banks every few weeks. They still have an all phone line access as well though. You can call people round the clock to do transfers, get your balance, etc. Even my analog grandmother has her bank account with them.<p>On the other hand, you have restaurants and other businesses that just over do it. There is a restaurant around my work place that I went to once or twice a month. Nothing special but fair prices and good lunch menus. Then they went all digital. Want a menu? Scan this barcode. Want to order? Create an account and place you order with your table number. Want to pay? You can click pay on your phone and enter your details. Don&#x27;t have a phone? Totally sorry, we don&#x27;t have any printed back-ups and our servers don&#x27;t have any card terminals anymore anyway.

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

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

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

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

I bought tickets for a concert, had to download an app<p>Had to give my phone number to reserve a table today<p>Tickets on your phone for airline, it&#x27;s not all bad saw some elder couple with flip phones (they&#x27;re able to get by without a smart phone)

Although I have a smartphone, I understand the problem. It amazes me how many businesses create so many unnecessary obstacles between the user and the purchase these days. It doesn&#x27;t make sense to me.

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

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

That&#x27;s like saying the tyranny of credit cards prevents me from enjoying discounts in some venues. Or that the tyranny of educational system prevents me from working as a doctor.<p>No, I don&#x27;t like installing apps for every stupid parking lot or restaurant. But calling it &quot;tyranny&quot; is clickbait and bad journalism. I pay more for my sons bus pass because I don&#x27;t want him to have a smartphone.<p>That&#x27;s a choice I made. My solution isn&#x27;t to make everyone else pay more because the same discount can&#x27;t be given without a smartphone. I see why businesses would want to reward me when I let them send me push notifications. Again, not even remotely tyranny. If anything this is tyranny of bad writing.

Solution: restore noscript&#x2F;basic (x)html interop, where it can do a good enough job (like most online services where doing a few years ago...).

I never install apps, and I don&#x27;t have any problem with private companies offering discounts or whatever via apps. The market will do its thing.<p>But where I have a big problem is when my local government requires me to install apps to do basic things like parking. It would almost be okay if the apps were developed in house and were open source. But of course they&#x27;re not. And anyway there&#x27;s no reason they can&#x27;t just be web based.<p>So now I just don&#x27;t pay for parking and I pay the ticket if I get a ticket...

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

That&#x27;s why I&#x27;m building a Web map app. The Web is universal. It&#x27;s already very capable.

Some of these website-in-apps drive me fucking nuts. They will switch you to the app, ask for validation through email, and then when you go to check the email, it loses your place in its internal browser, sending it back to the login screen, and so the number you&#x27;ve retrieved is worthless unless you know how to specifically minimize the app on the screen, which it will not tell you beforehand how to do. The bouncing back and forth is annoying and idiotic.

Yeah, that&#x27;s how that works. The world moves on and progress happens. You don&#x27;t have to necessarily like it, or embrace it. But if the entire world is moving a certain direction and you decide to not move with it, that fine. But it&#x27;s a choice you&#x27;re making. You may not like that the entire world is going from horses to automobiles, but if you refuse to embrace them you can&#x27;t be surprised when the grocery store is now a 3 hour walk away.

It is not &quot;unfair&quot;. We <i>choose</i> to resist technofascism.

So are those without millions or billions of dollars.

I was just whini- er, <i>talking</i> about this, this morning.<p>The main issue is that end-users not only <i>accept</i> crappy software, they <i>pay</i> for it (sometimes, quite a bit). They also recommend it to others, give it good reviews, and subcultures of &quot;tech-macho&quot; workarounds to bugs cause people to actually <i>prefer</i> crap. It&#x27;s infuriating (to me, but not, perhaps, to many tech companies).<p>As long as that keeps happening, the quality of software is going to remain in the shitter. It doesn&#x27;t make economic sense to write good software. Writing high-Quality software is a <i>lot</i> more expensive than writing crap.<p>My software tends to be pretty high-Quality, but that&#x27;s mainly because it is free software, and I tend to work alone, so its scope is quite limited. I would not expect a commercial company to develop software the way that I do. It would just cost too much.

...following some excerpts from an article in the NZZ (swiss newspaper): &quot;Right to an offline life and much more: French-speaking Switzerland is becoming a global pioneer of a new digital fundamental right&quot;. Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nzz.ch&#x2F;schweiz&#x2F;die-romandie-mausert-sich-zur-weltweiten-pionierin-eines-rechts-auf-digitale-integritaet-ld.1857060" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nzz.ch&#x2F;schweiz&#x2F;die-romandie-mausert-sich-zur-wel...</a><p>Neuchâtel is including &quot;digital integrity&quot; in its constitution, and other cantons could follow. The National Council had criticized a proposal as purely symbolic. But the consequences are visible in Geneva.<p>The first time it could be dismissed as an accident, the second time not: that&#x27;s what Alexis Roussel, the driving force behind a fundamental right to digital integrity, says. Roussel, a member of the Pirate Party and former president, is in good spirits. After Geneva in 2023, his home canton of Neuchâtel also enshrined the new fundamental right in the constitution on November 24. Both times the people voted yes by a very clear margin: 94 percent in Geneva and almost 92 percent in Neuchâtel.<p>From the new legislative period in 2025, the Neuchâtel constitution will therefore guarantee not only the right to physical, mental and psychological integrity, but also the right to digital integrity. The new right only applies in relation to the state. It includes, for example, the right to security in digital space, the right &quot;not to be monitored, measured and analyzed&quot;, the right to an &quot;offline life&quot; and the right to be forgotten.<p>[...]<p>In Geneva, Alexis Roussel is already seeing the first consequences of the right to digital integrity. Secondary school students there no longer use the office software Microsoft Office, but the non-commercial alternative Libre Office. The education department explained the change to the newspaper &quot;Le Temps&quot; by saying that Microsoft has been receiving personal data such as names and email addresses since an update to its licensing terms. However, the canton is only allowed to process data at foreign companies if they are &quot;adequately&quot; protected there.<p>[...]<p>In the canton of Neuchâtel, too, the new fundamental right is already being mentioned in concrete terms in political debates. The liberal municipal councillor Catherine Zeter said on RTS television about the planned closure of the post office in Boudry that the company would probably prefer to offer its services only digitally. But, said Zeter, this &quot;completely&quot; violates the right to an offline life that the people of Neuchâtel have just decided on with their new fundamental right.

Not a single word about covid related apps?

Ticketmaster is the worst of these for me. They have a near monopoly, and started forcing this shit on everyone a few years ago with covid as the excuse. Now going to one of their concerts is like taking an international flight.<p>Forget privacy, forget having a paper stub as a souvenir (not even an option), forget paying with cash. As I avoid ticketmaster, I&#x27;ve avoided most concerts the last few years... only going to small local venues, which provide the options above.

I for one will never ever do any kind of banking or monetary transaction on a Smart Phone.<p>As for other apps, I just have a couple of simple games and Firefox, which I only use when in waiting an office for am appointment. So far where I am, it is not an impediment.

This is mostly overblown, but the really annoying cases are the UK government themselves! Both the NHS app and HMRC app provide access to things you can&#x27;t get to just from the web, <i>even though they are just webview apps!!</i> It&#x27;s so dumb.<p>But generally... just buy a phone and download the apps. I imagine in the 1800s someone wrote an article &quot;those without telephones are unfairly penalised&quot;. This is just a modern version.

This entire article is fodder for techbros to circle jerk about how impactful they are despite any productivity gains being marginal or nonexistent.<p>It&#x27;s goes further into nonsensical territory when a progressive shows up and starts complaining about how the people who don&#x27;t want to participate in society are being unfairly punished. That being poor is somehow not only a problem, but also YOUR problem.

It&#x27;s not just those without smartphones who are penalized. It&#x27;s those without Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and spying imposed by Apple or Google on their devices.<p>I run GrapheneOS on an older Pixel. It does everything I need it to do: alarms, offline maps and navigation, end-to-end encrypted communications, podcasts, audiobooks, music, photos, weather, and even phone calls. All without any DRM or spying.<p>Now let&#x27;s talk about the downsides in this article: shopping discounts, parking, entertainment, fast food, and banking.<p>Shopping discounts: The deal is that they get to track me and advertise to me, and they cut some percentage off a purchase here and there. No deal. I&#x27;ve discovered so many great products by moving away from big retail shops that engage in this kind of activity. I mostly shop at Trader Joe&#x27;s, which has no coupon&#x2F;discount&#x2F;loyalty nonsense. For the occasional trip to another supermarket, I simply key in &lt;local area code&gt;-867-5309. Works every time.<p>Parking: I ride my bicycle or take public transportation almost everywhere, so parking is a moot point for me. But for the rare occasion when I drive to a place where I have to pay for parking, most everything accepts a credit card. If it doesn&#x27;t, most everything else has a website that I can go to in Vanadium or Waterfox. It&#x27;s actually very rare that I find I actually have no choice but to download and install a DRM&#x27;d app in order to park somewhere. In fact I don&#x27;t recall that ever actually happening to me. Not to say that&#x27;s not a possibility in the future.<p>Entertainment: I despise large crowds, and almost everything that&#x27;s exclusively done through Ticketmaster et al. is of absolutely no interest to me. If I&#x27;m not sitting down in a cozy venue within 10-15 or so feet from the performers, I&#x27;m just not interested.<p>Fast food: I don&#x27;t eat fast food. Discounted Big Macs isn&#x27;t my idea of a good time.<p>Banking: My bank&#x27;s web site works fine on Waterfox. But if I&#x27;m going to be managing my money I&#x27;d much prefer to do it on my computer. If I want a reasonable return on my deposits I simply park most of my cash in a money market ETF. It&#x27;s plenty convenient and is simply not a big issue for me.<p>I&#x27;ll add a few more.<p>Rideshare: I find traditional taxis are everywhere I&#x27;ve recently visited, tend to be driven by more interesting people, and they accept cash, no problem. I&#x27;ve had plenty of bad experiences with rideshares and have never had a bad experience since switching to traditional taxis. Knock on wood.<p>Audiobooks: I get ODM files from my local library. The audio files you download via ODM aren&#x27;t DRM&#x27;d.<p>Ebooks: My offline Kobi reader works great. Kindles can be cracked with WinterBreak. Again, the library. DeDRM is your friend.<p>Email: Fastmail app from apkcure.com.<p>Chat: Signal.<p>Airlines: Check in on Waterfox, take a screenshot of the ticket&#x2F;QR code. If that doesn&#x27;t work, check in at the airport and get a printed boarding pass.

lmao i think its those with smartphones are unfairly penalized

So, what&#x27;s this story getting unfairly penalized for? It&#x27;s been bumping around between page and 2 and 3 after it had more than 80 upvotes and not even half the comments; meanwhile there&#x27;s a story with not even half the votes, that is also <i>older</i>, which is firmly near the top.

Very weird logic. As the article points out, this is an intentional choice for many people. So you shoulder the consequences, that seems fair to me?<p>I don&#x27;t currently drive a car, and to be honest, I have anxiety about driving. I could bitch about how US is hostile to people who don&#x27;t drive, to the point that it&#x27;s difficult to go to places&#x2F;get things done, but that&#x27;s useless. I can 1) move to NYC and never leave the city 2) get a car, work on my anxiety, and start enjoying life or 3) talk to Guardian and complain all day long. 1) is not actually a bad choice, and literally millions of people choose that, but I am working on 2) because that&#x27;s the sensible thing to do. If I intentionally choose not to drive, not because of a physical disability or not being to afford a car, I bear the consequences.

&gt; He does own a smartphone – an Apple iPhone he bought secondhand about three years ago – but says: “I don’t use apps at all. I don’t download them for security reasons.”<p>Yes and?<p>He makes a choice and he is being penalized for it. Presumably the benefits for him outweigh the costs. For Richard Stallman they do.<p>There is no innate human right to grocery store coupons or private parking lots.

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

It feels on a par with illiteracy. The motives and circumstances are different, but it&#x27;s got a similar level of assumption. It&#x27;s kinda rare and requires significant adaptation, so it&#x27;s just way easier to assume it doesn&#x27;t happen.<p>I don&#x27;t think that a law to help people get smartphones is the answer, the way we made literacy education mandatory. But it&#x27;s rapidly going to be seen as a handicap.

&gt; Some of the best savings rates are offered by app-only providers – made up of banks and “electronic money institutions” (EMIs), which do not have their own banking licence, but put your money in a bank that does.<p>Okay, this wins for euphemism of the week. &quot;We&#x27;re not a bank, we&#x27;re a money institution!&quot;

The US government hands out smartphones with service for free. Elsewhere you can get used phones for practically nothing. Most places have wifi these days so you don&#x27;t even need to pay for service just to use an app at a store.<p>Not having a smartphone is a choice. Nobody is obligated to support you in that choice. It&#x27;s not &quot;unfair&quot;. Not everything you dislike is &quot;unfair&quot;.<p>What&#x27;s actually unfair is the app store monopolies that dictate what you can and can&#x27;t do with the phone you &quot;own&quot;. But I don&#x27;t really expect The Guardian to understand the true issue.