Archive link: https://archive.ph/PgtUk
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.
This is partly corporate greed and partly a failure of the Web. A website should be all you need. You shouldn’t need a separate app for every little thing.
What they mean is iPhones have pitiful storage levels for the huge amount of money they cost
This is why everything apps are so popular in many parts of the world. Using a mini-app from the internet running within another app is far preferable to downloading a whole app you may never need to use again. The way they do it in China is so seamless even if you’ve never visited the business before. There’s never any special account creation or entering of payment information.
Obviously it’s pretty terrible in terms of user privacy since the everything app has basically unchecked access to all of your personal information and habits, but the convenience is incredible and feels decades ahead of how apps work in the US.
This is why everything apps are so popular in many parts of the world
What’s wrong with a web browser? I know it’s not as seamless, but it’s far less limiting and literally any company can create a site, regardless of their size. There’s systems like Google Pay that avoid you having to enter your credit card details on every site.
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.
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.
A huge number of apps these days are web sites compiled into an app, and it shows. For example, an app should be able to remember your address and payment information without signing into an account, yet so many don’t. Almost like they want to force you into signing up. Why might that be?
Just give me a mobile web page if you’re going to do that shit.
I have an app for my sprinkler system and it’s a fucking nightmare. Not only is it basically just a web API, it’s so transparently just a glorified browser with access to exactly one site that frequently my phone thinks that app will work for whatever else I’m trying to open.
Document? Sprinkler app. Web Page? Sprinkler app. Installing from a source other than Google? Oh you better believe the sprinkler app can do that.
Doing anything takes longer to load than it would take me to walk from anywhere on my property to the fucking box and hit whatever button I need to hit.
It frequently forgets what I entered for preferences. I can tell it a week ahead what days I want it to skip but if I do that more than 24 hours on advance I might as well not have done it at all.
Oh you want to make a payment online? Let your sprinklers do that for you. YouTube video? Sprinkler app. YouTube video about fixing your fucking sprinkler system? Sprinkler app.
Apparently the one thing it can’t do is effectively manage my water usage. It’s ONE job
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 :)
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 have never actually tried, it’s just suggesting it as an app that can do those things.
Yeah this is begging for !homeassistant@lemmy.world to replace that app.
