The Tyranny of Apps

Apple News seems to exist to be the opposite of everything Apple is doing to improve the user experience of ordinary web sites. Where I can hide distracting items (great feature) or use content blockers on a web site, on Apple News, I'm stuck with whatever hideous ads and horrible layout they inflict on me. I'm sure the combination of these two opposite movements is no coincidence. Undermine ad buys on the regular internet and try to drive people to buy ads on your own locked in system.

The thing that gets me most is how badly laid out and horribly designed the ad experience is in News app. But maybe they have data showing that obtrusive and ugly ads get more attention?

China has turbo charged this with WeChat and AliPay. As a foreigner it's really hard to get anything done without having at least one of them hooked up to a credit card, and then a data plan obv.

I find it really annoying that I have to order my coffee in an app, especially since I can't read chinese but speak it well enough to order a mid sized cup of hot coffe with no mil or sugar.

I solved it by handing my phone to the person at the desk, telling them what I wanted so that they could enter the order in my app and hand the phone back so that I could pay. Absolutely ridiculous.

ON the other hand there are a bunch of apps I really like. My banking app, my eID, my commutercard, the app that automatically unlocks my front door when I get home.

Isn't it the same tyranny where websites require the latest version of Google Chrome to display a page with just a "hello world" (and do not inform the user about this requirement when they are unable to display it on a good old browser)?

Since your example is completely made up, I wouldn't say so.

I recently had to approve the release of a research paper at JAMA (as one of many, many, authors). It is not possible to do this on Safari, because when you go to the URL to log in to approve, there is an overlay of some kind of privacy message. In Safari, this does not display, and there is no way to dismiss the overlay. There is no message — just the overlay background. I've complained about this several times, and the only response I get is "use Chrome".

And then you did and you could sign the document? Or did you try Firefox? Or turn off apples security measures for that site?

Meanwhile me and my wife can buy a grocery bag filled with yesterday's bread and pastries for 4usd. Something our 86year old former neighbor would love (she told us when we visited) but first she would have to buy a smartphone because Too Good to Go only works with the app.

There is no alternative for her. And when of she got the phone she would have to learn how to use it.

The bigger issue with Chrome is how Google jag learned from Apple that they can notorise plugins as a way to remove ad blockers.

So all of a sudden I got ads on YouTube. Then I switched to Firefox.

Apps are so much worse than the web.

What kills me is that even if you install the app, it’s mostly just a wrapper for a web page that doesn’t work in the first place. My wife and I were at Safeway last weekend, and there was a “digital only through the app” coupon for soup. I expressed disappointment, and would have walked on because I refuse to install those pieces of 💩, but my wife was game. She installs their app, logs in with her Safeway account, and scans the barcode. No discount found, can’t even locate the item (because frigging Campbell’s soup is so uncommon…?). The label on the shelf says the day it expires, and it’s not for several days. She scanned half a dozen things across the store, and not a single one triggered an actual discount. It’s like the bad old days of clipping physical coupons, except that the coupon is a lie and they’re selling your personal information on the side.

> She scanned half a dozen things across the store, and not a single one triggered an actual discount.

When I talk about the computer industry falling apart, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. This kind of experience is now universal and endemic. So much is just fundamentally broken, and now the general expectation -- at least among all the people I'm in contact with -- is that nothing will work the way it's supposed to.

It doesn't seem to matter whether it's a web page or an app...

> it’s mostly just a wrapper for a web page that doesn’t work in the first place

...and this is largely the reason why.

Another annoyance is devices that can only be operated using an app. When the app is inevitably sunset and stops working due to gratuitous API changes in OS updates, you end up with an expensive doorstop.

"I solved it by handing my phone to the person at the desk, telling them what I wanted so that they could enter the order in my app and hand the phone back so that I could pay."

That's also how a lot of Chinese people do it, so you're using it as intended.

"When the app is inevitably sunset and stops working due to gratuitous API changes in OS updates, you end up with an expensive doorstop."

I've also had the experience that perfectly working apps can't be installed on my phone because the store thinks they're no longer perfectly working apps, or that they won't work on my phone. Fortunately, on Android, I can at least download the APKs and install them myself.

Nearly all of the above examples could have been QR code links to a simple website.

But I don't know whether developers just aren't taught to do that anymore, or the incentives are for personal data monetization above all else.

Installing the app gives them instant user data, usually followed by a flood of permission prompts on first open to give them even more.

"Features" are added that just so happen to require Bluetooth access, precise location, local network scanning, microphone, camera, and above all push notifications for background tracking.

Once all that is implemented, nobody ever got around to actually testing the functionality of the website. It doesn't matter whether the user actually gets the coupon. We'll deal with that later. We've already gotten way more value out of the user even if they don't buy anything from the store.