I wouldn’t mind these apps if there was actually a technical need for them beyond just being a Chromium component, but with added data slurping and pointless notifications.
If I have to use an app to use your product/store, I won’t use your product/store, with a side helping of go fuck yourself on top.
It’s true in many ways. If I buy McDonald’s without the app I pay more for it. If I fill up my gas tank without an app like upside, I pay more for it. There are services that aren’t even available to people without modern phones (I refuse to call them smart phones). Maybe we need legislation to ensure all available discounts, services and benefits are available to customers equally regardless of how they engage services.
It costs less with the app bexause you pay with your privacy and dignity. Now tgey can A/B test your behavioural patterns like a lab rat and create models to tweedle your knobs just right for optimal value extraction at the specified satisfaction level of you type or personnal prifile.
Then they can use what they learned against non-app users that are also human. It won’t be as accurate but they’ll probably guess your profile type just from environmental and anonymizer data footprint.
From tge cctv camera, gait tracking, face recognition, automatic demographic analysis, the car model and plate number you came with, your vocabulary grade when talking to the clerk and of cpurse the treasure throve of data they can buy from your credit card company, they’ll be able to know you as well as if you had the app. They might even end up knowing you better than yourself.
THIS IS ACTUALLY SO REAL FUCKING SMARTPHONES I HATE STEVE JOBS FUCK YOU WHY DID YOU RUIN TECHNOLOGY.
ok rant over, but seriously though, it’s so fucked how you basically just need a smartphone to do ANYTHING these days. I don’t want a phone, i have no use for one.
sounds like you DO have a use for one…
i mean sure, but do i WANT to use it for that? No, i just want to fucking pay for my shit and leave. I don’t want your stupid little QR codes, i don’t want your silly little NFC, just accept card or fuck off.
Just because you can invent some schizophrenic use for a smartphone, doesn’t mean i have a use for it.
Not sure if we can really blame Steve Jobs for this though, he wasn’t around when things turned to shit. The iPhone he introduced was merely a phone, web browser, email and music player.
I think it’s fair if we blame Tim Apple for this and the other big tech CEO’s of the recent past.
it was his idea, his vision. I blame him post mortem, because steve would’ve wanted the ecosystem to work flawlessly, and regardless of whether or not he was here today, we would have the same problem.
I use a dumbphone. I’m not buying a smartphone just so I can play these stupid games, and I’m not installing an app for every fucking business I interact with. I realize there will one day be a point where I won’t be able to do things I need to do without one, but until then I have no desire for one. Fortunately they haven’t made the parking meters here require a smartphone yet.
My grocery store still uses loyalty cards for most discounts (which is irritating enough), but also has “digital coupons” that require an app so I can’t get that. Theoretically I could go to their website and print them off but that’s not worth the effort. I have to pay close attention to the price signs they put up because some of them say “with digital coupon” in small print, meaning “not for you, bitch”. You know who doesn’t pull this kind of shit? Walmart. So I wind up getting a lot of my groceries there so as not to be discriminated against.
Flipphones… I want a full keyboard phone again. Maybe even a slider full keyboard. Those were the days.
Apps… I evade most apps as much as i can or if i must use closed source apps, i will put them in a secondary profile.
I have a flip phone with a touchscreen so I can type via the onscreen keyboard. When I bought it I wondered how well it would work since the screen is so small, but it works great! So much easier than using the keypad. BTW it also has maps with voice navigation.
Oh that is pretty cool!
I’m open to hear if you guys disagree with me, but that is not simply about not having a smartphone as much as it is about not having cell service, not using data service. If a person uses a libre VoIP app, there is no need for cell service, and people actually can live happy lives disconnected from internet when they are outside or in public.
Society must revert their mentality and not expect constant immediate access to everything. Absolutely nothing happens on the internet for personal activity that can’t wait a few hours or the next day.
I use phone only for direct communication, zero multimedia, zero social media on phone. Everything else is done on computer. Especially banking, that is on computer website only for security, never on phone. I despise and resent using a phone for websites
It is more about being able to constantly spy on everyone. Funny how this exact sentence would have labeled one as a conspiracy nut not too long ago.
Constantly online means constant (more or less) analytics, means constant data to throw in the big computer to make you buy more shit or vote for the shit party.
I think I would agree due to when I have been sitting in public somewhere with others sitting around, they have clearly been programmed by their phone, subservient to their master. I do also wonder if there is an IQ element to it. Having a lower level of personal intelligence so they have been conned into believe that they must have a phone that is connected to internet at all times everywhere.
Spend 2 months without cell service, without mobile service, and you will see how far gone many, many people are. I’m fully serious about live without cell service for 2 months, the world does not look the way you think it does.
Society must revert their mentality and not expect constant immediate access to everything. Absolutely nothing happens on the internet for personal activity that can’t wait a few hours or the next day.
yeah ok so, counterpoint, you pull up to an EV charging station (it’s tesla because of course it’s tesla) please show me where the card reader is. I’ll wait.
oh but what about the non tesla charging stations you might say. those are still iffy right now, i’m hopeful they’ll improve in the future, but a lot of them have readers (that may or may not work) and a phone app (that may or may not work) also whose to say they don’t just fucking disappear.
Bad example. Tesla chargers don’t use an app, they assume you have an account set up with a credit card on file. Most people do that through the app but I don’t think you have to. Once it’s set up, it just works with no further interaction.
Or are you doing this as a non-Tesla customer? Yeah that’s not as smooth yet
Bad example.
what are you going to do setup android emulation so you can install the tesla app (which might not work in emulation because that’s sus, but maybe they dont have good security anyway lmao) sure, you can set it up once, but like, what do you do if your credit card is cancelled, or the app suddenly stops accepting purchases because “you haven’t been online in a week” and it’s for “security purposes” or some other stupid shit like that. This is the entire reason card based payment exists lmao. Why are we just reinventing it.
i guess theoretically if it’s a webapp you could do it on the browser, but then like, how is it going to link information back to you personally? Unless you own a tesla, where you basically just save your payment info on the car directly at that point. Maybe they will invent credit card 2 electric boogaloo. Are they going to start installing NFC/RFID into charging ports for payment link info? Seems silly to me.
If you own a non tesla, this is as you mentioned, a huge issue, considering that NACS is the charging standard for all of north america now.
Worst case scenario, call support to put a credit card on file with your account. This is what I did when I ran into problems with the app (turns out I was too eager trying to use it before they were done setting me up).
When you use a supercharger, at least as a Tesla, there is a handshake where your car identifies what account to use, then it just works
You definitely lose a lot of convenience features if you don’t use the app, but I believe you can do it, if you want it enough
Edit: just use a web browser. I verified I can login through my web browser to manage my account, my products, my payment method. Not the car features though. I have no idea if this is new, but just use any web browser
Any time I’m required to use an app for something that could be a website, I leave the app a one star review.
I am still using a flip phone. My new goal is to make it to 2027 marking two decades of rejecting the smartphone era. Each time I consider compromising something gets even more awful about smartphones and I double down on saying no.
Don’t lose hope, lead the resistance!
Out of curiosity, how many flip phones have you used since 2007?
As best as I can remember, I’m on my 6th.
Well… I expected better longevity, to be honest.
everyone wants to force you to use apps instead of websites, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of apps are just websites…in a app wrapper, because normal websites and normal browsers have inbuilt protections for you.
Apps don’t.
Idiots install apps, give them the 400,000 permissions they ask for, then go on their merry way…ignorant to the fact that they just installed a data vacuum on their phone thats siphoning everything off of it to be used and sold and resold for marketing purposes… Even the phone itself its not safe, cause its sitting there, listening to your conversations, even when not on a call, to more “Accurately” spam you with bullshit.
Phones are not listening and if you have proof post it. No security researcher has ever posted this.
It’s called “Active Listening”
https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/
See:
- MindShift
- Cox Media Group (Alternative non-subscriberwalled link here)
There should be a warning label on any establishment or product that requires a smartphone to use.
How about this:
At the apartments I recently moved out of, there were no quarter slots on the washing machines. They were an app that required a bluetooth connection to pay.
So if you lived there and didn’t have a smartphone? Go fuck yourself, you don’t get to do laundry.
Unless you bothered to check the laundry room when you were looking at the apartment, you wouldn’t know. No warnings.
The more insane thing here for me is the fact that there isn’t a washing machine inside your apartment.
(btw lived in such once, apparently the owner wasn’t very wealthy. We washed everything by hand)
It’s actually incredibly common in US apartments for laundry to be a common area.
Having a unit in your apartment means you’re at least well-to-do. Poor people can mostly go fuck themselves.
Well-to-do? That is weird, because here not having a washing machine in the apartment would be weird even for a poor person.
I use GraphineOS on my Pixel 7 and even I feel penalized for caring about my privacy. Its absolutely nonsense, not everything needs an app.
Yeah. My bank is one of the few UK banks whose app won’t work with Graphene, which is irritating. Also, the lack of Wallet access for payment cards is annoying.
But all in all everything else works fine.
Lloyds? they’re closing my local branch as well really need to go in and close the accounts tbh.
Yep, Lloyds.
They were absolute bellends when I tried to get it sorted to transfer the money to another bank as well, sat there insisting my “phone had been hacked/had a virus” and only actually moved my bloody money after I threatened a official complaint.
I flat-out refuse to do business with any that requires I use an app. I won’t even scan a QR code for a restaurant menu; that’s my cue to go eat elsewhere.
I don’t mind the whole online menu thing. It’s probably an environmental net positive, but it’s bs if they don’t have ANY physical copies for those who can’t or don’t want to for whatever reason.
If they wanted me to install something, though, that’d be a 100% instant nope.
An online menu requires power to be used (on people’s phones and the server). Is that really a minor contribution in comparison to printing paper and maybe laminating it?
Considering your average printer is a piece of shit that needs to be replaced quite often, yes, using a website is probably more energy efficient.
That and those servers are going to be running anyway. Powering a simple restaurant website is a grain of sand on the beach of internet usage.
I for one cheer and root for my flip phone friends.
I’d never do it, but we have one at work and he’s singlehandedly causing so much grief at work. Because none of the engineers wanna use a security app for login. They want a fob.
IT refuses to pay for fobs and wants us to use an app, but they also don’t want to pay for a phone for anyone in engineering just to use the security app because it opens a floodgate of people with company phones.
It’s just wonderful to watch this fight from the sidelines sipping tea.
what’s the rationale for IT not wanting to pay for the fobs?
Presumably they’re expensive and someone needs to manage them.
My company’s approach is “we’ll pay your phone bill if you use an Authenticator app on your phone.” Cheaper for them, plus they don’t need to buy company phones or fobs, and who’s going to complain about their phone bill getting paid?
A previous company tried similar but required putting your phone under enterprise management. A lot of us disagreed with that
They’re not expensive at all.
Well, my old company sure made a ridiculous profit selling them. You may be looking at the cost per fob hardware, but not including the management cost. They are much more expensive than an authentication app, plus authentication apps are mostly managed by someone else, and you don’t have distribution overhead
what exactly is the management cost here?
at my old company they simply ordered a yubikey for you amd forgot about it. nobody kept track of it. i didn’t even need to return mine when i was leaving. the part they manage is the user account. the hardware you get once and use for added security…
