It sucks. It's all bullshit to steal attention. It could all be websites. The whole latest iteration of the internet was to make it possible to do stuff that used to require dedicated programs using websites. I loath it.
this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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chapotraphouse
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If everything becomes an app you can eliminate the web browser entirely, and thus the "public" internet itself, completely and totally.
A digital enclosure and elimination of the commons.
But capitalists would never! That doesn’t sound like the behavior of the rational market
It's been running through my mind ever since we had a bunch of threads here discussing the fact capitalists might crack down on social media as being too far out of their control.
The whole concept led me to wondering how I would go about it, what would be the most efficient and least visible? What would feel like a natural transition? And this is what I came up with, it's what I would be discussing in their little private golf games about how to solve their little "problem" with the internet being such an untameable beast.
Even if they do it slightly differently, the concept of enclosure-but-digital works all the same.
I wonder if that’ll be the thing that causes people to riot
Who am I kidding, it will probably be bundled with treats or something equivalent
Nah if they're smart about this then it would be performed slowly over a long period of time and people will accept it as the natural outcome of things... "Progress"
Everyone that remembers the internet when it was better will talk about the good old days, much like already occurs with current internet vs pre social media.
People won't be able to articulate it easily and with no smoking gun outlining that it was a deliberately planned out practice there will be no method of agitating through it.
I recently had to call a help line because my parents washing machine had an app instead of manual. The app was discontinued.
Imagine this, but with an insulin pump
That should be illegal. What a wonderful ecosystem of unforced risk SV has built.
You aren't permitted to not own an android or apple smartphone with an active number and internet access. You aren't visible as an individual to corporations or even many governments without one. I don't see this getting better any time soon either.
I assume I've only been able to get away with it because I'm disabled. Seems like they've been trying harder and harder to break me.
Pinephone FTW 
The Pinephone probably does everything you actually want a smartphone to do (modulo crappy hardware), but not the things you are required to have a smartphone to do. Like depositing a check at your bank, or your work's 2FA that uses Duo Mobile rather than something standard like TOTP.
At this point, your best option is probably GrapheneOS, followed by LineageOS for MicroG plus all the hacks needed to get it to pass SafetyNet. The writing is on the wall for the latter at least, and the best option going forward will probably be a sacrificial phone you keep turned off 90% of the time and only use for those things.
from my experience tinkering with it years ago the OG pinephone has awful performance due to its very old SoC. No matter what distro or GUI i used it was unbearably stuttery and slow even just swiping through the home screens.
the pinephone pro theoretically should be a lot more modern and performant (its also more expensive), but i dont have one yet so i cant say too much on it
I daily drove the PinePhone for around 3 years, and only just a few days ago switched to de-googled android. It was really cool, and I had fun with it, but it wasn't exactly the most pleasant experience if you wanted to actually do anything besides texting or phone calls.
Which phone are you using rn? I was looking at a couple different options since my crappy Samsung is on its way out
I'm using a OnePlus 6T with DivestOS. I initially got it a while ago to run postmarketOS, a Linux distro, because it has some of the best Linux support of any android phone. I ran postmarketOS on it for a while, but the lack of camera support was annoying. I'm probably going to try to dualboot postmarketOS and DivestOS. It's like $100 on eBay, and you are going to need to install your own ROM because they dropped official support. The one I got was locked to T-Mobile, but it's easy to reflash it so it isn't anymore.
I would honestly suggest an older Pixel w/ GrapheneOS, it'll probably have better specs and GrapheneOS seems cool.
Nobody's pointed out the fact that this is also literally offloading clerical work to the customer.
Everything is such a giant pain in the ass now.
99% of companies want you to download their app just so they can push notifications to your phone on an OS level even when the app is closed or the phone is on sleep, unused. You can't do any of that with a website that's closed out
The other 1% are Google Maps, Uber, Snapchat, etc. where you actually need an app to handle all these features
I tell all my doctors/therapists/bank tellers how much I hate apps every time they try to get me to download something that could easily just be a website
You're not old everything's just getting enshittified
The kicker is when the app doesn't work without an internet connection -- I wanna find the devs responsible and scream, "You've just built a very shitty website with a mandatory proprietary browser!"
I know you probably know this but it's not usually the devs who push for an app.
yeah, I know... if you have to make me download and install a file, it should at least maintain some level of functionality without network access. I get that's an ideal and most devs are not afforded the flexability or the time for that and it mostly comes down to clients not really knowing what they want or need.
I can speak as a professional software engineer with more than a decade in the industry: it is never the devs that push for delivering a subpar user experience. It is always a product decision made by the guys signing our paychecks
Apps fucking suck and it sucks that every service needs an app and that the more critical the service the worse the app works. Oh I need to download an app to check why my electricity is out and oh the app is incredibly cumbersome and poorly designed and oh after going through three screens and giving you my blood to login it just spits out a “try again later” error no matter what I do? Cool 
Making everything into an app also traps us in their ecosystem. If every service you use has an app then you aren't going to move to a different service, because then you'll have to download yet another app for the competition. Then you'll have to juggle multiple apps for the same thing. which encourages us to default to whatever is easiest by just sticking with the app we already have.
But also, I fucking hate talking to people on the phone lol
I don't know what it is, but I love talking on the phone. I'm more of an introverted person, so it might be because I'm not talking face to face, or because there's a set purpose for the conversation the whole time, but I'm one of the few (maybe only) people I know who actively love chatting on the phone. Sometimes I'll call my one friend, usually about something home improvement or maintenance related, and we'll chat for over an hour. I think since it's becoming more and more rare and less of a necessity also plays into why I enjoy it haha.
Phonecalls give me unbearable amounts of anxiety. It's better since I've been voice training, but I still don't like it - I think I'm perpetually terrified from being unable to see the other person's expression and body language (which is nonsense anyway, expression and body language aren't like secret mind reading codes that let you know someone's true intentions or something!)
I think I burnt myself out after being a middle schooler that would sneak the landlines phone in my room and spend literally 3 hours on the phone every night orsnk calling with friends lol. Now I dread phone calls and actively avoid them
my parents bought a new stove and for some reason it uses bluetooth and has an app or something?? every time my sister gets near the thing, she gets a notification to pair to the stove
This is honestly the most hellish thing ever…
Stove: "I'm lonely, can we pair?"
I was given a mug that keeps its contents at 135°F for 80 minutes. If I want a different temperature, I need to install the app 
Agreed. The last time I had issues with my debit card I tried calling the bank and got put on hold until an automated voice told me there was another number in the app that gave app users faster responses. Made me a little nuts.
Did Marx write much about externalities?
So much of modern suck is making me do the work that the company should be doing.
The same amount of work gets done on a national level but now it's off the company books so on paper it looks more profitable.
i bought a couch at ikea once and when I inquired about delivery, they were like "scan this qr code". My phone at the time didn't have a built in QR reader and reception was trash so I told her my phone couldn't do that. She was even more taken aback and told me to go to a url, which was just task rabbit. The link wasn't working so I asked if she had anything else, she finally caved and was like "yeah, here" and we filled out the delivery info. It was cheaper and a day earlier, and was a guy and what seemed like his son in a box truck. I helped them carry the boxes up and tipped them 40 bucks.
Why couldn't i just fill out the "deliver here please" form first thing????
The other day I opened a yahoo news link and it automatically redirected to the app store and google was like "hey wanna enable the thing where we automatically install apps on your phone when you tap a link??" and I almost yelped out loud.
Tech growth is the real apocalyptic scenario. It’s been a really slow burn, so most people won’t acknowledge it.
But yeah, most apps are an afterthought because the executives and product people know it’s what the people want, but they don' think its that big of an undertaking. So, they trust it to be designed and implemented by either third party an outsourced dev company who won’t support it after launch. Or built in house by an overworked IT team who are learning Swift and Java as they go and won’t be with the company long enough to support it.
I've always hated it, even when it was cool and I was young.
Debatable. I’m starting to think that Silicon Valley nerds didn’t stop to think whether they should appify everything even though they could.
Some guy 10 years ago: “You know what this toaster could use? An app. Imagine how much time you’d save by not having to press a button on the physical toaster. You’d net 3 hours of P RO D U C T I V I T Y every year!”
They do it because the apps are a much easier way to track people's activity when using their product so it saves them money on R&D (plus they can sell the data to other companies to make even more money).
I feel like a large part of it is the enshitification of things that should be more convenient. Like I like the idea of being able to order food ahead of my break so that all I have to do is pick it up and have more time to enjoy it, but it feels like as time goes on more and more thing break and suddenly the convenience factor goes out the window.
Also some of the terms and conditions are fucking wild. For example the McDonalds app now has you agree that if you order through the app you wouldn't be able to sue them or something like that. I'm sure there was a thread on here about it.
Nah I’m young and I hate it too
To paraphrase a wise man, WHAT KIND OF FUCKING MCDONALDS HAS AN APP?
I went to a restaurant where you needed to install a specific app TO GET IN THE QUEUE. Not to order, mind you, juste to get a notification when your turn approaches.
My SO wanted to go so I had to stand there, in a normal line in front of the place for 20+ min while hearing people complaining that the android version didn't even work! My SO was lucky that the apple store had it and we could get in.
It could have been an email. It could have been a paper you take when getting there. The worst for me was that the place was hip because it was decorated as a japanese fish market, so the paper ticket would have made so much sense. But no, the management just want to steal your data (I figure).
I refuse to download apps. If it requires an app that I don't already have then I'm not using whatever it is.
the worst is when they force you to sign into facebook or google to make an appointment or do something with them. how about no, bye
My fave are parking meter apps. Every town uses a fucking different one, and when the fuck else do I use parking meters besides when I'm visiting a place? If I live there I usually have the ability to find free parking. So every fucking town I go to I have to download another app, which I use once, and I have to put in my debit card info which is annoying. Keeping a bag of quarters in my glove box was way easier.
Welcome brother! 
idk I don't want to call anyone ever