Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App | Our phones are being overrun

The cloud is many things, but most of all, it's a trap. When software is delivered as a service, when your data and the programs you use to read and write it live on computers that you don't control, your switching costs skyrocket. Think of Adobe, which no longer lets you buy programs at all, but instead insists that you run its software via the cloud. Adobe used the fact that you no longer own the tools you rely upon to cancel its Pantone color-matching license. One day, every Adobe customer in the world woke up to discover that the colors in their career-spanning file collections had all turned black, and would remain black until they paid an upcharge:

The cloud allows the companies whose products you rely on to alter the functioning and cost of those products unilaterally. Like mobile apps – which can't be reverse-engineered and modified without risking legal liability – cloud apps are built for enshittification. They are designed to shift power away from users to software companies. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it. A cloud app is some Javascript wrapped in enough terms of service clickthroughs to make it a felony to restore old features that the company now wants to upcharge you for.

I legitimately want to scream sometimes as I feel the continual death of local computing and actual software, and it depresses me to no end how few businesses or users see it for what it is.

And it's exactly this: a trap. A trap users people are racing into, and they have no idea, at all, how bad it's going to get when the doors close behind them.

The rest of us are left with little recourse. Looking at the difference between Outlook and New Outlook is genuinely depressing because that's the future we're all being shepherded into against our will. I swear, in like 10 years, Windows will mostly just be a kiosk for Edge.

Also desktop mode to circumvent those phone detection systems and trying to force an app.

Ha, sucker, you think your non-Internet-connected lightbulbs make you safe? My Internet-connected lightbulbs have sent my online-car to wardrive your neighbourhood and sniff your Zigbee network!

…if you see my car please tell it to come back to me, I need to go to the shops…

I get emails from school, with a link that opens a 3rd party app, which only displays a link that opens in the default browser. I've asked the school to just send me direct links to the announcements, but they say they can't. The site doesn't require authentication, but the URLs have UUIDs so I can't just guess what the link would be. The app is quite literally just a data exfiltration layer that does everything it can to make sure you can't bypass it. Good luck getting any other parents to give a shit though.

All of the banks I've used in the past utilize email or SMS for 2FA, which isn't the most secure, but doesn't require an app.

I returned a bunch of smart outlets I got at Home Depot after I got fed up with waiting for the app to launch just to turn a light on or off.
I also don't want to have to talk to it, so switching to Home Assistant with Zigbee button remotes has made my experience so much better. And on the plus side, everything still works when the power or Internet goes out because I've got it on battery backup.

And then there's guys like me. I don't announce when I'm coming. I grab the items myself, and then I pay in cash. Nonsequential bills. I'm like a ninja! I can't be traced! Shashasha!!!! Pocket sand!

Then on the way home, if I see someone following me home, I make 3 left turns. If they're STILL following me? I turn around, and I shoot them........a dirty look!

What? I'm not a psychopath. I just don't like being followed.

I recently ordered something from Walmart (I try to avoid it, but I could not find this one thing elsewhere) and you get a link in your email to notify them when you're in the pickup bay. The link goes to their app. I tried going to the website through Chrome, to no avail. It kept sending me to try to download the app. I did not. I don't shop there often enough to justify it. I drove to the pickup bay and lo and behold, the sign had a phone number you could call; a very pleasant person answered, asked my name, and I had my order in a few minutes.

I do have a couple grocery store apps for 2 reasons: 1 - there are some extremely low prices that you can only get by "clipping a coupon" within the app, and 2 - loyalty points do turn into cash back.

Safeway (a west coast grocery chain) has implemented it in the worst way possible, though. They had a physical loyalty card which you scanned at checkout/self checkout, which let you access lower prices. But now they have even lower prices only through the app. The app, however, 1 - does not let you enter your old loyalty card number, combine points and cleanly separate from the old method and 2 - you cannot use the damn thing at self checkout. You have to have a checkout clerk scan your barcode in the app, which is insane. I'm just glad Safeway is not my main grocery, because if it were I would have to change to some other grocery.

They just sell the data. If they need user data (beyond basics) they might buy it from a data mining company.

That's what I used to do, but a good portion of the time they'd continue their spiel to try to change my mind. Have only had to brandish the dumb phone once, but so far it's got a 100% shut down success rate.

Yeah........try that in CVS.

"No no, I'd rather NOT have a reciept that's 3 miles long, because I bought a candy bar....."

But we already cut down 3 trees just for you!

"No."

"Oh, you're taking this irrelevant slip of paper! We have armed guards to make sure you do! There is a world war 2 tank outside that will crush you, and blow up your car! I know it's not really a war worthy tank, and in that sense it's obsolete, but it can still more than handle your toyota geo. Now then....take....the....reciept!

NEVER!!!!

GUARDS!!!!

And then a Kill Bill-esque fight scene breaks out. You know, like when she fought the crazy 88s. Except instead of a group of ninjas headed by a 14 year old Japanese girl, it's a group of swat team members headed by a 17 year old CVS register worker wearing a red CVS vest that he uses as a choking hazard on you in the fight.

Your goal is to dodge bullets, matrix style, while disarming one guard to shoot the rest of the guards dead, so you can fight this CVS employee one on one, as wave after wave of reinforcements constantly change the dynamic of the battle.

Finally, after defeating all the guards, you return to your car to return home, and as you make your turn onto the main road, thats when you see it. A world war 2 era tank firing mortors at you, as you're forced to weave all over the road. Other cars exploding, you're all over the road, a helicopter has joined the chase. Suddenly the helicopter is firing air to surface missles, and as you dodge them, they blow up the tank.

The helicopter then lands right in front of you on the highway. As you prepare for the final battle, the door opens it's your wife. You both embrace, and take off in the helicopter. Forever on the lamb. Always running from the threat of CVS employees that can strike at any time.

It's not that they're going to convince me, it's that it's annoying they keep trying (likely by management)

Doesn't really sound like a company that I would want to do any business with then.

Huh, is that why I haven't used yelp in years?

What’s that other shitty company that constantly pesters you to download the app every time you average the site? Teddit?

Most folks I know like that are not strapped for cash.

Whoa. What group do you run in? Literally everyone I talk to on a daily basis is.

I actually just thought through an average day, and the people I talk to regularly. I've had conversations with each and every one of them over the past few months about how we've had to make major changes to our lifestyles in one way or another because the money is going out faster than it's coming in. We're all solidly middle-class, for whatever that means anymore.

So what circles are you in where not everyone is looking for every possible discount they can get? Saving $5 on groceries means I can afford another gallon and a half of gas. I can't afford to be principled about privacy when those are the stakes. But it doesn't mean I have to like it.

People who are proud of getting a good deal via an app break my heart. Most folks I know like that are not strapped for cash. They just like the feeling of getting a bargain. They don’t consider that the prices are artificially inflated.

Thats why Prime Day is such a big deal.

People think they are getting awesome deals cause its 50% off, are not going and checking price trackers to see the item had a HUGE price spike a week before Prime Day.

But they think they got 50% off and that gives them that massive dopamine rush, and that encourages more spending.

The Lowe's app is actually really handy. You can look up any item and it will tell you the exact isle and bay it's in for your store. No more wandering around or hunting for an employee to ask. It's the only store app I actually keep on my phone.

tiktok brain

Hell I use my garden diary selfhosted service via a webapp (hortusfox).
Just put a direct link on my homescreen. With the included favicon it almost looks like a native app.

shit that's amazing

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 :)

Just request a copy of the source code! Oh wait

Can [email protected] help with that?

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 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.

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.

Harvest data more efficiently for our corporate overlords :)

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.

Push Notifications, Mediacontrol with locker screen..

Some stores require you to use the app for order pickup. Why they have the Menards app installed I have no clue. They've always been way behind with e-commerce, but their website works perfectly fine.

I think you’re presenting a terribly myopic viewpoint. A lot of companies make the process of interacting with them so painful if you don’t use their app, that you feel hounded, harassed, and yeah, in some cases, forced to use their app. Do you really think your idea here hasn’t been considered by the author? Of course it has, because like most older people (in their 30s and 40s), that’s how it always used to be. The author is complaining that the way it is today, it can be difficult or borderline impossible to do the very thing you seem confused about.

Yes, as annoying as apps for everything is, very few are necessary, or even useful. I have had no problem going though life with minimal apps.

5 USD is a lot.

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.

The first, if it's Kroger, don't have to use a phone #, or yours at least. But honestly I'd recommend not getting groceries there.

Doesn't WeChat do more than instant messaging, though?

Wow, that sucks. I imagine government policy has a significant influence here...

That's less an endorsement of PWAs and more a condemnation of how garbage the native app always was.

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.

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.

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.

Web browsers don't integrate to a single account and payment system, nor do they preemptively load entire websites before you start browsing. So you're always waiting for actions to complete or for images to load which feels slower. Mobile websites also tend to be very bloated slowing things down further than if the same functions were done natively in an app. There's also no consistency between websites so you never know when something will/won't work nor how far away you are from checkout. And then to top it all off there's browser compatibility, which is typically pretty poor for anything that isn't Chrome/Safari.

If a web browsers could really do the same thing all these companies wouldn't feel the need to make their own device specific apps.

I swear that has to be illegal