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.
Yeah. The Atlantic kinda sucks.
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.
My favorite part of the 30 day dumb phone challenge I did recently: I couldn’t install your crappy app even if I wanted to.
A little over halfway through the challenge, was paying for my order at a local eatery, and the cashier started plugging their new app and rewards points and digital coupons and shit. I was like “I’m gonna stop you right there: flip phone.” and pulled it out of my pocket and brandished it like I was the sheriff of Luddite-ville.
Kinda like this, but “Flip phone!”
I was like “I’m gonna stop you right there: flip phone.” and pulled it out of my pocket and brandished it like I was the sheriff of Luddite-ville.
I…is the implication you would have no other choice but to install their app if you didn’t have a flip phone?
I’m baffled by these comments. Who the hell is actually listening to these people and installing apps on their phone just because of cashier mentioned it?
It’s not that they’re going to convince me, it’s that it’s annoying they keep trying (likely by management)
I just tell them ‘no’.
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.
What on earth are you people talking about?
I got CVS all the time for random things, I’ve never once been pushed to use an app.
Really? You never used kung-fu to disarm swat teams, killing dozens with their own guns, while never taking damage yourself? You never sped through your local streets as tanks shot mortors at your toyota geo?
You’re telling me your wife never saved you with rockets fired from a helicopter in a high speed highway chase?
Yeah…you didn’t read a single sentence of the comment you replied to, did you? Aw hell. What makes me think you’ll read THIS far into the message??? Tiktok is just what this generation has been needing. An entire generation of kids who don’t waste their time reading!
I don’t go to CVS because they make the whole experience exhausting.
May I introduce you to RadioShack? Where they used to prompt you to sign up for a credit card, ask to record your personal info on a RadioShack loyalty card system (that nobody seems to remember), and one time, the lady asked me to impregnate her. I’m unclear if that was RadioShack policy, or if she was just itching. Either way it was kind of messed up, because I was 14. I looked and sounded older, but I was 14. She was like 30ish.
Gonna just leave us hanging on this one?
I stopped going to Radio Shack when they made purchasing a hassle too. Loved them as a kid in the 80s when I was doing build your own electronics.
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.
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.
Where are you shopping where you are routinely encountering cashier’s that are this pushy about the apps? The overwhelming majority of cash register attendance are underpaid employees that are just trying to get you through the line. They said the line because they have to say the line, but most have no intention of really trying to sell you on it.
Once upon A time, these things were just rewards programs, with the key ring bullshit. Were you signing up for each and every one of them too?
and sounds like more fun!
Not gonna lie, it was. lol. That’s one of several reasons I decided to keep it as my daily driver. It’s technically a smart phone, though, I just had all the smart stuff disabled for that challenge. I’ve since enabled those back, but it still looks enough like a dumb phone that I can convincingly bluff with it.
Which phone is it? Might have to check it out.
Cat S22 Flip. Not without it’s quirks, but I like it well enough. Had to digital detox, and it was great for that.
What apps do you have on it? Maybe some stuff like email or messaging app like Signal?
I just tell them I don’t have a phone. Even if I’m still holding it in my hand. Most don’t want to engage. They likely figure they’re not payed enough for that.
Same.
Cashier: “What’s your phone number?” (For the store tracking/rewards/whatever)
Me : “Don’t have one!” (As I remove the credit card from the case on the back of myphone)
Nobody has questioned it once. They don’t want to ask in the first place but are forced to.
Huh. Doesn’t happen often I guess but typically when I’m asked for a phone number or email I refuse or say I don’t have one and it really throws people off and they usually refuse to complete the form or do whatever the hell it was they were doing.
Might vary by locale? Around here (South US) it seems like every single store has their own rewards/discount/whatever system that requires your phone number but it’s not necessary for the transaction… It’s just an extra info grab.
Sometimes the user facing POS/credit card reader will let you handle it (enter/skip) but many places rely on the salesperson to ask and then enter it or skip.
But, I also don’t get around much so my experience is limited.
Just say ‘no thank you’
download our app
Nah
delete account…
Literally me
And the app is just a glorified website (Electron app).
The most ironic part…
… an ad for an app for the article…
You know what else is overrun? Paywalls or other “requirements” where I need to signup and/or pay to access something that should be free.
Don’t get me started on those fullscreen ad interstitials that force me to watch an ad I’m not interested in before I can continue either.
Let’s face it, the Internet today fucking sucks and it’s partly to do with these so-called news outlets like the Atlantic.
I miss the days when barely anyone heard of the web. Sure, it wasn’t as feature rich, but then again, those features are overly abused in the name of capitalism anyway. It’s like those strip malls that have nothing but shitty restaurants, nail salons, and tax preparers. Gone are the days of fun stores like hobby shops, comic book stores, local mom & pop toy stores.
They just sucked the fun out of it all. 😡
I have to look for datasheets quite ofen and every damn company requires you to log into their shitty login system to get them.
It’s exhausting
I legitimately do not have enough space on my phone to install all the crappy bloatware of all the stores I go to. They quite literally ask the impossible of me.
I have yet to see an app that does something a website could not do…
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.
I work in a manufacturing environment. A few years ago they decided they needed a company social media app. They hired, or more likely were sold the idea by Salesforce and built this stupid ass website, then went on a fucking War campaign to get people to install the app on their phone.
They demanded. They begged. They removed functions of HR to the app exclusively. When we protested they simply said no, no room to negotiate, no give. You will use the app or you will not have access to certain information required to do your job. When they closed the plant one day and posted it on the app, they threatened to write up an entire shift that showed up to work anyway without knowing any better.
Because apparently, when you get up at 4 am the first thing you’re supposed to do every day is check an app on your phone to see if you have work that day.
They used to just push out a robo call.
When we have committee meetings with HR they go something like this.
HR: how can we get you guys on the app Committee: how can we retrieve these functions from the app HR: you can’t Committee: that’s your answer.
There have been at least 6 versions of this meeting that I have been a part of.
Most of my coworkers are older than me. Few of them have fancy phones, generally the most basic phone you can get. A number of my coworkers are on parole or work release and have limited access to smart phones for one reason or another and literally have no access to the app.
I was chatting with one of the IT gals recently and apparently resistance to the app is pretty widespread. When I said “venture capital IT firm” she gave me a high five.
They want everyone using this thing and maybe 15% of the company has it. Then they switched to Workday.
It hasn’t gone well.
I’m surprised you guys havent started the push of “If you are going to force us to have this app for essential day to day work, then you need to provide us with phones to put it on, because we can not be expected to devalue our personal devices with excess work related use”
I did mention at one of these meetings that we wouldn’t give them space on our personal devices for free, it did not change their tune. The union has been hammering them on it during negotiations but I doubt they’ll budge on that and we have bigger issues to deal with so they won’t let it be a sticking point.
Someone should analyze the app and see what permissions it needs, cause it could be a much bigger sticking point than anyone realizes if its spying on your phone activities.
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Clarify the app is required by the company (hr) for your job duties as mentioned when it was stated every employee’s responsibility to ensure the work site is open via a phone app. They’ll be happy to confirm that.
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Go see your master agreement about tools supplied by company. That will be in even passable contracts because it’s usually an audit issue.
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Ask company for tool as per contract. “This device here is not a work device and is neither secured nor managed by I.T.” was what we said.
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Ask your shop steward to ask the union to explain to the company that their HR is demanding the use of tools the company will not then provide, which is a concern under section 17p5b.1 “proper tools and training as provided during workday for onsite work required by employees”
If they’re dicks you can try to hit them up for training on how to use the phone.
Teams is why we all have fancy pixel7 company-issued phones. TEAMS. And, since only one guy is on standby after-hours, the rest of them are shut off at 4:49 pm. So lame.
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Push Notifications, Mediacontrol with locker screen…
One big supermarket chain here has an app where you get a few cents bonus discount on already discounted items with the app coupon. The in-store announcement praises it as the first place of some insitute’s supermarket app ranking. Even if that institute were legit, the ranking fair and the spot well-deserved, I always felt like that’s a competition with no winners.
I actually often prefer using apps over websites, because my phone is quite slow and using a browser is often way slower than an app.
Particularly since some companies have made their websites intentionally shit so that you’d be encouraged to use the app instead. I noticed that with out local flavour of door dash, where the website got slower and clunkier and generally more shit right around the same time that the “Use our app!” banners got more obnoxious.
This doesn’t have to be the case but developers have been chasing bloated fads/frameworks for the over a decade instead of being reasonable with their technology. Résumé-driven development…? YAGNI.
out of spite I don’t use my phone to “play” on.
Isn’t that the promise of App Clips? iOS and Android both allow you to run a mini app temporarily for shopping and not cluttering your system.
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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.
TBH I dont use an app for anything that can be done in the browser, especially when mobile websites ask me tl get their app.
I wish for a browser addon to just block those app download requests when it smells them. The answer’s only gonna be no for all that, dawg.~
I only have the Starbucks app so my fancy Sunday coffee is done right and they don’t call me Corey Sangeetha or Coarse Kangaroo.
I’m the same way. The less apps there are on my phone, the better. Also, using the web app is the only way to block ads on certain sites such as Instagram or Twitter.
then there are companies like yelp who disable their mobile site and make their desktop site as shitty as possible on mobile to force you to the app.
Huh, is that why I haven’t used yelp in years?
Doesn’t really sound like a company that I would want to do any business with then.
What’s that other shitty company that constantly pesters you to download the app every time you average the site? Teddit?
For reddit, just type in
old.reddit.comand those nags disappear.true but also old reddit is awful to navigate on mobile.
This…is a BATTERY SUCKING LIE PEOPLE!! - Aldi ad
