this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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chapotraphouse

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[–] naom3@hexbear.net 40 points 2 months ago

This but unironically

[–] blame@hexbear.net 38 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

on the other hand, stop putting apps in webpages

  • Apps were not supposed to be given a constrained execution environment that is years behind what the hardware can do
  • Years of internet and no real world use-case for using anything other than Lotus 123
  • Wanted to do something else for a laugh? We had a tool for that: It was called "Games"
  • "Yes please let my hardware be useless without internet access" - Statements dreamed up by the utterly Deranged
[–] DJDarren@thelemmy.club 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Bold of you to assume that the websites wrapped up as apps are in any way useful if you lose internet access.

[–] blame@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

Apps wrapped up as apps are useful without internet access.

[–] Vent@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Service workers are supported by every web browser and enable websites to work offline. They can even do periodic background pushes/refreshes.

My dream is that one day PWAs replace 90% of apps in existence today.

[–] blame@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Love running apps in a worse operating system running on top of my operating system

[–] Chronicon@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

depends what the app is. If its proprietary trash I'm forced to interact with because capitalism, you know I want it in firefox with ublock and as locked down as possible.

If it's something relatively trivial I use once or twice and never think about it again? Better to not have that lingering around on my device.

A good web app is leagues better than several bad native apps, but good, standards-based native apps are almost always better. I'm taking libreoffice over google docs any day, but for more obscure stuff a web-app means I can run it on any device with a browser, not just whatever single OS it was developed and maintained for.

[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 38 points 2 months ago

First, there was web browsers which you could use to access most everything on the net. Then came apps. Then people started getting sick of having too many apps and started wanting all-in-one apps madeline-deadpan

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 33 points 2 months ago

The browser is a tool designed to give the user control over how pages are rendered. Capitalists hate that.

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 30 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"Apps" are bazinga shit and any economic or social pressure pushed on me to use them pisses me off.

"I'm here for an appointment." kiryu-dame-da-ne

"Oh, just scan the QR code and sign up for the app." berdly-smug

kiryu-slam

[–] SkingradGuard@hexbear.net 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Apps" are bazinga shit and any economic or social pressure pushed on me to use them pisses me off.

This makes me sad because phone apps should just be touch-friendly programs that you use on your phone, which should be as useful as any program you install on a PC.

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago

This makes me sad because phone apps should just be touch-friendly programs that you use on your phone, which should be as useful as any program you install on a PC.

That's how it should have been with phone games. They should have been just games on your phone, not what they typically are now: hypermonetized trash, gacha and otherwise.

[–] The_sleepy_woke_dialectic@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Right? A computer is a computer. I can theoretically run any arbitrary program on this thing. So why is every phone app so objectively shitass?

There's momentum on phones to make programs that aren't for the existing user, they're for the new user, the potential next user. They go so far as to define first time users' experience as "user friendly". Well I'm a user too and it certainly isn't very friendly to me when I have to go hunting for a feature you took away last week and hid somewhere.

Also, any time a UX designer says the word " cluttered" they should be immediately shot because that word means "this app is too useful and it might scare grandma if she sees three too many buttons"

[–] SkingradGuard@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think with the cluttered thing, it really depends on what the app is trying to do. Sometimes it works sometimes it just results in too many taps to get where you want.

But you're right, there's this tendency to do minimalist design for minimalism's sake. I think it's mainly to do with the corpo influence on tech, especially with mobile apps.

A lot of these "apps" would have been tray programs or terminal one liners as well. Making that into a whole app is a form of clutter.

[–] AmericaDelendaEst@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well I'm a user too and it certainly isn't very friendly to me when I have to go hunting for a feature you took away last week and hid somewhere.

At some point it should be punishable by law to change shit.

Like imo someone should hang for the slow steps Reddit is taking to kill old.reddit.com when people CLEARLY FUCKING LIKE IT AND PREFER IT TO THEIR FUCKING APP.

I've used old.reddit.com for years because the mobile site is just fucking garbage. And it just works, so much better. It's infinitely faster. The app is even worse than the mobile site.

Like all this fucking time and energy wasted on work making shit nobody wants

[–] The_sleepy_woke_dialectic@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

We need to create a new cool af retro sci fi guillotine for the tech companies' CEOs because they ruined computers and the internet. I'm thinking either laser guillotine or like a gigantic Jacob's ladder in reverse. I'm open to suggestions.

[–] AmericaDelendaEst@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I learned laser bongs are a thing, maybe we can start the design there

[–] The_sleepy_woke_dialectic@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Damn we gonna smoke the rich? Do you get a high from that or is it just for flavor?

[–] AmericaDelendaEst@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I think it just uses lasers to heat up the weed but idk I've never used one. But like, what if we make one, but bigger? you've heard of the gas chamber, the bourgeoisie will fear the laser chamber

Hmm is it like a disco rave inside and they have to jump over the lasers for hours until they can't anymore? Can we televise this?

[–] KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Clutter is a real thing, but it's something that's present all the time when it really should not be and is so in an obstructive way, such as ads, locked out premium features, reminders of premium features they want you to buy, wasted empty space, etc. In contrast something like a settings menu definitionally cannot be cluttered (at worst it can be disorganized or poorly labeled) because it's something that's rarely touched and which needs to be exhaustive in its contents.

So apps tend to be actually extremely cluttered in bad ways (because monetization is real clutter), while also being infuriatingly barebones. They're the actual worst thing and should simply stop being a thing.

I agree with every word rat-salute-2

[–] Gorb@hexbear.net 30 points 2 months ago

Mfw when when app maker makes app but app is website in a browser window and somehow worse kombucha-disgust

[–] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 29 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Using the cemetery app to find haunted headstones sounds like something out of a game.

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Pokemon go toward the light hillgasm

[–] Crowtee_Robot@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago

Those Trump staffers weren't taking pictures, they were trying to find the right gravesite using the MyArlington app.

[–] GaveUp@hexbear.net 29 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I used to work on the notification system of a big crypto exchange before I got fired for being a shit employee lmao

Other that a few intensive purposes like Uber, TikTok, Google Maps type apps, companies only create apps and heavily push you to download them so they can shove push notifications to your phone. It's basically impossible to do 99% of that using a website (fine grained controls of what notifications, collecting analytics, delivery speed, proper scheduling, etc.) cause then you'd have to go through the browser's notification system

[–] DJDarren@thelemmy.club 12 points 2 months ago

Yeah. I bought a TV a few months back using a store’s credit card. 12 months interest free. Sweet.

Every month I visit the site and pay that month’s amount. Few weeks back I get an email to say that I can only pay the bill via their fucking app from now on. They literally do not offer a way to pay off their card that doesn’t involve installing their app.

It’s fucking mad. I genuinely can’t work it out. The app doesn’t have ads, I don’t let it push notifications, nothing like that. It’s on iOS, so fuck knows what it can see of my shit.

[–] SadSadSatellite@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm not installng shit. App only features means I'm never supporting your company.

In the same vein, video ads on a gas pump puts a store on my blacklist

[–] AmericaDelendaEst@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In the same vein, video ads on a gas pump puts a store on my blacklist

I mash buttons until it mutes and then write in "MUTE THIS SHIT" next to it

[–] Chronicon@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

they disabled the ability to mute at a major chain near me. I stopped driving (that wasn't the only reason but it was driving me insane)

[–] EatPotatoes@hexbear.net 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

These kind of campaigns/posts whatever are cute and admirable like "buy physical media" or wanting buttons in your car. But they show a fundamental lack of understanding how weighted everything is towards data now.

Nothing can be permitted to stop the surveillience and dark patterns as we go deeper into monopoly capitialism. It's the last frontier.

[–] SoyViking@hexbear.net 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I used to make a living making apps and while there are legitimate use cases for running software applications on handheld computers there are a hundred times more apps than there are good use cases.

[–] roux@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago

I have 2 apps on the Play Store. One is something I actually mostly just made for my wife that helps her figure out how well balanced her DnD dice are. It's just called Dice Weight Calculator. But when you search for it, a ton of virtual dice roll apps come up. There are dozens, if not hundreds of them.

The worst are when someone takes something that already exists and slaps ads on it. It's as difficult to find a good sudoku app on the play/app store that isn't riddled with ads or wants you to make an account as it is to find a bad one in my Linux package manager. What value did you provide making yet another shitty sudoku app? None, yet you serve me ads? The gall!

[–] LanyrdSkynrd@hexbear.net 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My old internet provider had a function on their website that would do something to fix your Internet connection from their end. I lost internet one day and went to use it, but they replaced the mobile version of their website with a page telling me to download the app. Fine, I'll download the app, which is clearly just a wrapper for the website. But for some reason you can't access that function through the app.

[–] SchillMenaker@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

One of the best days of the last two years was when att fiber rolled into my neighborhood and I got to cancel Xfinity. All telecoms are evil but there's a special place in hell for Comcast.

[–] Chronicon@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

its truly horrible.

You need their app to do port forwarding now, and instead of not paying modem rental fees, there's actually a fee for bringing your own modem now.

[–] AmericaDelendaEst@hexbear.net 13 points 2 months ago

I agree so fucking much jesus christ. I would ban all apps as dictator

[–] WaterBowlSlime@lemmygrad.ml 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Isn't the rest of the meme advocating in favor of snapchat.com? The closing line should be something more like "Hello I would like to download the hexbear app"

[–] largerfather@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

i would advertise on the hexbear app

[–] WaterBowlSlime@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 months ago

The only ads allowed on the bear app would be for beans and pig feed

[–] Wheaties@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

yeah, not sure why it's like that

[–] TheLepidopterists@hexbear.net 12 points 2 months ago
[–] viva_la_juche@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I have a folder of these things and I hate using them but in a lot of cases you’re over paying if you don’t use their apps or missing out on free shit and honestly every dollar counts in my situation lol

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

you’re over paying if you don’t use their apps or missing out on free shit

It's not really "free" and the economic coercion is intentional. I understand your precarity but I fucking hate that it's made that way.

[–] viva_la_juche@hexbear.net 10 points 2 months ago

Yeah I shouldn’t have said free, i was just thinking about how they frame the rewards at the time and really meant reduced cost but yeah that’s exactly what it is. they do have people over a barrel and definitely should be illegal