The most ironic part…
… an ad for an app for the article…
And the app is just a glorified website (Electron app).
download our app
Nah
delete account…
Literally me
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.
It’s behind a paywall for me. Good to hear I don’t have to bother with an archive link
Yeah. The Atlantic kinda sucks.
It used to be a sort of second-rate New Yorker, except now The New Yorker is a second-rate New Yorker.
Harper’s is still decent though. It’s pretty much how it’s been for years.
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.
It’s not a failure of the web, it’s a failure of corporations to accept their place as just a tab in my browser. It’s also easier to track users, exploit vulnerabilities, etc. from within a mobile app.
Also, push notifications. Most things could be done from a browser, but corpos have to have their push notifications.
It doesn’t matter if you’re the guy who turns every notification off and manages all those… 9/10 people won’t.
If all I’m doing is looking at your catalog, it should work in a mobile browser. That way if I - a Tarheel - find myself in the midwest, I can go “does Menards have 1/4-20 hanger bolts?”
I’ll install an app if it runs mainly on my phone, like a media player or a calculator or maybe even a file viewer. Mobile games…that ship has sunk, frankly.
A huge number of apps these days are web sites compiled into an app, and it shows. For example, an app should be able to remember your address and payment information without signing into an account, yet so many don’t. Almost like they want to force you into signing up. Why might that be?
Just give me a mobile web page if you’re going to do that shit.
I 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
I think all of this stuff is just a big fad. Many people have already been switching back to “dumb” devices.
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 :)
Almost certainly. If the guy who was making yandere simulator was tasked with a sprinkler app, it wouldn’t be much worse than it currently is.
I don’t know shit about fuck when it comes to programming, but I know bad programming when I see it.
I don’t know shit about fuck when it comes to programming, but I know bad programming when I see it.
Thanks for this! I often wonder if non-programmers can see this. Such horrible programmers. And embarrassingly low bar for company outsourced it.
Some find it scary that AI might take programmers’ jobs. I like to think that it’s these type programmers being replaced, and I’m kinda keen on having that.
shit that’s amazing
Just request a copy of the source code! Oh wait
Yeah this is begging for [email protected] to replace that app.
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).
I’m sure it can’t actually do any of those things, but it would be nice if it would stop suggesting that it could when I try to open up certain things
Can [email protected] 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 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.
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.
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?
Open source social media app: 30MB full size.
Privative social media app: 300MB install + 500 MG data full size 700MG
Go figure. I could have thousand of apps. If they were not packed with intrusive software to get all my data and to lock the company IP.
I use the Voyager Web App lol, only gotta store browser cache and cookies. Take that private social media!
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.
What they mean is iPhones have pitiful storage levels for the huge amount of money they cost
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.
I have never encounteted a PWA that works better than a website OR an app - this from users actual usability viewpoint. They are a cancer, that sits right in between the worst of both worlds.
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…
Don’t download the app then. You don’t need it. Whatever it is. You don’t need it. Whatever bullshit productivity promises someone made to you, it was a lie meant to trick you into installing their spyware. All smartphone apps are spyware. Period. Call a restaurant instead of using UE/DD, send a text rather than whatsapp, tiktok is brainrot and totally unnecessary, any and all social media platforms all work inbrowser (although, they themselves are also spyware, so it’s best to not use Facebook, IG, TT, Snap, or any other similar platform). The only useful thing that smartphones offer that wasn’t previously just fine on other devices is an internet browser in your pocket.
And then you go to the website on your phone and you get “Install our handy dandy little app” pop-ups every time you open a new page. If only they wouldn’t do that.
Damn that’s wild reading this from an app
