The reason this is done is because you can see everything your browser is doing, but you can’t see everything an application is doing without disassembling it.
I want very much to go back to websites. Apps are stupid.
the reason is children. for some reason the most recent generation of kids requires apps instead of sites. god forbid they have to remember an address.
just look at the fuckload of people who cant use lemmy without an ‘app’
this is one of my peeeves
My high school computer teacher once ranted about this to us. He said the younger students are lacking the basic concepts of computer stuff. They are spoiled too much to not even know what a file browser is.
That’s the parents fault too for not teaching the kids.
Eeh, I see it as a gray area. Majority of millenials, myself included, grew up learning about novel technologies as they developed. We learned how to use desktop computers and browse the internet during a ‘golden age’ of innovation. They became part of our everyday lives and are second nature to us. The next generations don’t fully have that experience but are expected to natively know their way around a computer since they’re so ubiquitous in our lives. In reality, they know how to use smart phones and chromebooks but aren’t getting the experience of working on a real desktop computer.
Regarding teaching kids the basics, I’d put it on the schools, not the parents. Do schools still have computer labs? That’d be where proper computer skills should be taught. If parents can help at home that’s great, but I don’t think it should be expected that every kid is going to have a real computer at home to learn on (versus phones, tablets, chromebooks, etc).
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He’s the computer teacher. Maybe he should teach them about computers
He did teach them. He was just comparing different generations of students.
One of the reasons I like apps for Lemmy is for notifications.
Coincidentally, one of the reasons companies like apps is for notifications.
Your mobile browser supports notifications per site like an app. It even supports custom icons per site when the notification pops up.
You don’t even know if the telemetry leaving your phone to the app server is using TLS encryption, you just let them hail-mary football-throw send it.
I don’t understand why we insist on bending over and freely giving away our data to fucking apps.
I don’t understand why we insist on bending over and freely giving away our data to fucking apps.
Some people are extremely averse to the discomfort of the slightest speedbump in their computer/phone usage and are more than willing to give their “worthless” data in return.
One benefit an app for something like Lemmy offers is significantly better customization.
thats a copout for the site sucking. lemmy looks like someone forgot the css. one of the reasons i chose mbin, its not fugly and very user-configurable.
no app required
one of the reasons i picked dbzer0 is that the layout just looks Better (ie doesnt look like someone forgot the css) :]
I mean, I think part of it is because they grew up interacting with apps because parents were, mostly rightly, restricting their children from use of the greater unrestricted web. Every modern parent I know had children who knew which apps on mommy or daddy’s phone they were allowed to touch - their games or youtube kids or whatever. These apps provided easy safeguards for parents to rein in their child’s internet experience. Even if these methods weren’t perfect in their attempt (Elsagate and all that), this was still good practice for allowing your child access to modernity in the times you couldn’t fully devote your time to overseeing their activity with relative confidence they were probably not watching wildly inappropriate content.
In a perfect world parents and educators would also be devoting time to teaching their child to navigate the internet and allowing them monitored (with physical eyeballs, not tracking) online browsing time, but I don’t think we can rightly fault the kids for not having received that. Rather than grumbling about the situation, I think we’d be better served accepting it for what it is and instead approaching the topic from a stance of: how do we teach them better behavior and help them unlearn these bad habits?
edit: typo
You don;t need to put “edit: typo” in your comment. /lh
I’m aware, but I do it to ensure readers that the content of my message hasn’t changed in the time since the edit, I’m just cleaning up the syntax. It’s a matter of attempting to provide a consistent face.
If it’s a service I use regularly on my phone like Lemmy then an app usually does provide a better experience. The UI is usually better optimised and they tend to load faster. However if I’m only using it once, or if I’ve just visited your site then stop trying to get me to use the fucking app! That goes for Reddit as well, I have the app installed but if I’m just trying to view a post because I googled something I don’t want to be forced into the app
Yeah, but there are companies like McDonald’s who killed online ordering on the website to force you to their app. I will not reward that behavior. I don’t want any company’s app on my phone that does nothing a website couldn’t. I just went to a show with some shitty Ticketmaster competitor that required you to have their app to access your tickets (AXS I believe ) Great, you made a competitor to Ticketmaster that’s even worse than Ticketmaster. Shit’s ridiculous.
im with ya!
we spent the better part of 2 decades building dynamic viewport websites specifically for mobiles devices to use the same website as desktops only for them to force everyone into a fucking app
I think ticketing is one actual good use-case for apps because there’s opportunity to provide features the browser doesn’t, for example offline ticket access for when you’re going to a remote festival and 100k people on the same cell tower bogs down internet speeds, or a QR code page optimized for scanning – I think that speeds up the process for everyone involved. Same for flight or train tickets. Could you download the ticket or a screenshot yourself? Sure, but as we’re discussing, computer literacy (and forethought) is on the decline.
it’s called a PDF. also openable in your browser.
I used this on amtrak just last week, and there was, in fact, a QR code on the PDF of my ticket. the only reason I had to slow down was because I had my screen’s brightness turned all the way down, and the scanner couldn’t read it; a problem I also would have had if I’d been using the app.
I agree with you, but just will also point out that apps can force your screen brightness up when you click on the ticket/scannable QR etc. I have seen grocery store apps do this when you click the ‘my card’ section. This is a good use case imo.
amtraks app does not do that. im not sure my (phone’s) browser, being a phone app, can’t.
a lot of the features they MIGHT be able to use better they are actively stripping out. lyft, for example, no longer sends notifications except by sms unless you let them hijack your OS to show you ads. there really is non good excuse to choose the app for any commercial thing.
which isn;t to say i don’t have any other apps on my phone. encrypted messengers, an instrument tuner, orbot. just no silicon valley style corporate apps or ‘this could just be a website’ apps. except amtrak, to try it, because i trusted it a little more. apps are still abusive shit.
Great suggestion for an alternative, but as stated that requires some forethought and extra steps like downloading the PDF and keeping it somewhere retrievable whereas purchasing through the app can automatically do that and make it very easy to find. I think some might enjoy that convenience, and I think that’s a good example of apps having value over a browser experience.
i download the PDF when I buy my ticket. it’s literally one click extra. in fact, I download it when I OPEN the PDF when I buy my ticket-if I’m not using an amnesiac browser, it’s literally the same amount of taps as the app to just leave that window open.
that’s not actually true-I have used the app, and its MORE steps, using amtrak as a specific example, literally this month.
I’m happy that you’ve been able to have a positive experience forgoing using apps in some specific instances, but again as stated my point is more generally that sometimes apps can have functionality that provides more convenience than a browser and we don’t seem to be furthering that topic with this tangent. Have a good one 👋
I’m not a child. But I already have an entire OS running on my phone. Why would I run a browser on top (with all of its UI clutter) so I can use an app.
If I’m going to use an app often, for more than a couple minutes each time, I’m gonna use an app. If I’m just visiting a site for the first time, or I’m just going to stay there a couple seconds (search engines), I’m using the web browser.
Browsers are for browsing the web. Apps (run by the OS, not by a web browser) are for doing things.
Browsers are for browsing the web. Apps (run by the OS, not by a web browser) are for doing things.
hahahahhahhaahahha
im deep in the corporate, non-app web-based environment. this comment is so out of touch. i get that its your POV, but its not even close to the broader reality that most apps are just packaged websites and that browsers are nearly fully virtual machines and incredibly capable.
again, the apps exist generally because they want to capture more data than the browser allows (they are exploiting you). theres very little functionality that cant be run in the browser directly.
That sounds like a shit app. I just don’t use those. And if I have to use them, it’s rarely enough that they fall into browser’s scope.
A large quantity of apps are thinly disguised browsers “stuck” on a specific web page and with extra tracking and data collecting capability. I’d wager all shopping apps are this.
They just haven’t seen the light yet - I feel like most people from every generation are app’d up.
fair
I prefer using Lemmy with an app because apps are better designed for my screen than an website. It’s kind of rare finding an website that looks good on portrait.
right, the lemmy website is garbage. many others are not. i have zero issue using mbin, accessing lemmy content without an app on my mobile device in portrait.
no app needed, but its because mbin is designed as modern sites should be. dynamically scaled to the requested interface.
again, if your website isnt absolute garbage no app is required.
no they’re brilliant, for exactly the reason you said.
I would also like to go back to websites, which are much less evil.
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I hate that websites will purposely block a perfectly working website feature if it sees you’re on a mobile just to refer you to their mobile app.
FUCK websites that require a login, i’m looking at you twitter, you need to be sued over this shit.
Insta. Facebook. In fact all social media that only lets me see 3-4 messages before demanding I log in. Fuck. You.
it’s actually so bad, i genuinely have started to not use the internet outside of like, youtube, npr sometimes, and wikipedia. And archive.org because it’s actually fucking useful.
You can actually use Facebook in a somewhat acceptable way without an account.
Really? It seems like it’s 50/50 if I can even open a link I’ve searched up without it immediately demanding that I log in.
For me it always showed a banner asking me for an account, but you can immediately close that one.
What how?
If I want to see what someone has posted I search for the name, click ob The profile and im am then able to see what they posted.
i wanted to download a singular PDF file yesterday, and apparently i needed to be logged in to do that? I’m not making a fucking account on whatever scribble.com is for a singular PDF that will help me find my Kojima-name wtf
it’s even worse in the field of science, honestly fuck journal publishers, you can all eat dicks. None of you do anything important for humanity.
Well Twitter is awful anyway, so no big deal…
i would be inclined to agree with you, but don trump jr posted an image about tim walz drinking horse cum, and i just had to see if it was real. Because well uh. Obviously. (yes it was real)
and that is when I just drop that company forever.
Go to browser settings on mobile and switch on desktop mode. Fuck them sites.
Oh sowwy, this splitwise feature is only available in the app. There’s just no way to make it work in a browser that isn’t the one our app wraps around, you gotta understand.
imgur is evil
this unironically
An app for a fucking cemetary!? Nuh-uh
I hear it’s dead now anyway.
Laurel Hill is a historical cemetery with a few historical figures buried there. Actually, I think Adrian Balboa’s fictional grave is there, too. The app has audio tours and information about the architecture and stuff.
could still be a website.
Probably, but making it an app allows users to pre-download the whole thing beforehand so they don’t need to depend on cell data when they’re out in a field.
You can just download the HTML files
Hahaha
but I… it… it’s a PDF, its stored on my phone. I downloaded it. I actually still have it, if I need to prove I was on the train. its not in the app anymore, but I still have it here.
you know you can’t make a PURCHASE on an app without network access, right? like, it has to interact with your bank and generate the code (and that’s done on their server, so you can’t make yourself free tickets) and update “this ticket is valid” in the system. the app is literally just a web site with fewer features. all the important math happens on the server. usually, not even a timetable is stored locally, and it still has to be retrieved from the network, it doesn’t even cache, I bet. I could check, but I would have to find my phone.
I think you replied to the wrong person?
download the whole thing
all the functional parts are server calls, app or website. all of them. buying a ticket involves authenticating with both the owner’s server and my bank. that’s a network thing. can’t download my ticket til I do that, site or app. even looking at a timetable (i dont see where in the app I can do that? but point to point trips) on the app doesn’t work when im in airplane mode, but I know for a fact my browser caches, and if I’ve looked recently or left the page open, it will still be there when I come back.
there’s no advantage of an app, unless you’re doing fancy graphics shit, which eats battery like a mother fucker and makes low end devices much more unhappy.
Ew, reading?
(Joking btw)
But I don’t want a app to get audio tours.
I want a app to make their body spin 360 degrees. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
How about an app where you can take a picture of a tombstone and it’ll show you a live webcam of the inside of the coffin?
That’s how you get a haunted phone
My most boomer opinion
Most of these memes are ironic, but this one is actually true. These apps could just be websites, but instead they’re bloated spyware
Many of these apps could just be menus.
Even menu websites are chock full of Javascript for no reason. It could be a JPEG!
Menus should be PDFs so they are searchable.
Don’t get rid of ordering online, I have bad vision and like sitting for 30 minutes deciding what to buy and how much is way too much to spend on the food I’m getting
As a programmer who used to fix accessibility problems with iOS apps, I’d like to say that one good thing about apps vs. websites is that apps are generally much better than websites for people with vision problems. But they aren’t! At least the ones I was fixing sure weren’t.
Voyager app users
Anybody who wants to offer me an open source app that doesn’t spy on me is totally fine, especially when the app kicks ass.
- sent from Voyager
Can you explain this? I’m a very stupid person.
Voyager started off as a website(wefwef.app) but is now also an app
website
.app
🤔
They have played us for absolute fools!
Voyager’s app is still the website though
Voyager is a Lemmy client.
Unironically this. There’s nothing these stupid apps do that they couldn’t do on a fucking browser from 2018. If you want people to use the stupid app over the site, then please have only the stupid app and ditch the “just pretending it works” site and for fuck’s sake, don’t make the stupid app a javascript mess, because THAT could’ve been a fucking site instead.
The secret is that tons of apps are just web browsers in a costume.
Buddy, these apps could have been done in php and ajax 15 years ago
I know. It grinds my gears how sites of 15+ years ago worked better and loaded faster than the shit we have today.
And the web versions have and constant lightbox that asks you to download the app every fuckin breath you take. Instagram and Twitter being the worst of them all. For the second I don’t even touch it. For.instagram I got barnista. And that’s cause my wife uses Instagram sometimes .
There’s nothing these stupid apps do that they couldn’t do on a fucking browser from
20181998Reminder that the original Space Jam site is still intact
Nice, talk about nostalgia
It has moved URLs, the site is still there but they just moved the files to a new URLs.
I love how the Concentration game has a (144k download) warning. At average 32k dial up speeds, you’d have to wait roughly 2 minutes for it to fully download.
Dunkin Donut’s website just doesn’t work. The app is mandatory. Noped out of there real quick lol
Dunkin: “fahk yah! Just wahlk in and Ahsk for yah damn cafee and egg bahgle.”
Is here a joke here? All I see is truth.
Yeah someone called it out in the comments.
This template is for over the top exaggerations.
TFW someone makes a desktop app but it’s literally just a bundled chrome browser page
Lychee, a slicer software for 3D printing, immediately comes to mind. It’s a fucking electron app. It also only works if you login to a fucking account, even the free version, because fuck you. Oh, and free users have to sit through 30 seconds of advertising whenever they click “Slice”, because fuck you again
there is an alternate universe out there where every shitty social media website has good rss services and doesn’t degrade you for not using the app
I am really confused about this meme template, didn’t its usage used to be satirical (not sure if that’s the right word)? I remember seeing ones like “Nobody ever needed maths”, but recently I am seeing them inverted where the subject matter is actually criticised for being useless. Instead of claiming something useful to be useless. Can someone explain? when did the usage shift?
it’s pseudo post-satire is how i like to think about it. It’s satirical by nature, but it’s gone so far, that it’s not quite straight satire, some of the points made are genuinely accurate.
it’s a meme just don’t think too much
Please pair this with: Stop forcing me to make an account for your useless fucking service. It’s a pain in the ass and only serves your corpo tracking while I get nothing in return
I agree it’s annoying, but I’ve been using temp-mail for accounts I’ll only ever use once and mysudo for accounts I’ll need longer and it’s been working well. Except ticketmaster doesn’t accept voip numbers for your phone.
okay, that’s why you want it, but, like, why should they care?
if you’re not willing to do violence; why should they care?
That escalated quickly.
no, it took a few hundred years/all of recorded history.
One of the most ironic things is if you willingly download the app version of a website, hoping it would speed things up and reduce internet data usage, just for the app to be using WebView or some other micro-browser engine which will essentially be the same as if you were visiting the website using your browser as before.
Thanks for nothing.
The few times I visit Facebook I just do it from a web browser on my phone, I’m not letting them spy on me 24/7 just so I can check on a couple groups
So I bought a new mouse, of course it came with RGB nonsense. Before purchasing I checked it could be disabled.
Software to control RGB? 300MB. Who knows what the hell else that’ll be doing.
Plugged it into my Linux laptop, download OpenRGB, 1.7MB application that supports more than just this brand. Turn off the rgb, click save to device.
Same energy - whole different thing. I remember in 2005 having to install a special printer software. You can install the drivers, but to understand error messages, you needed “the suite”.
So furious at the ordeal, I hoped that the future, we don’t have to deal with this.
Apparently the future hates us and we are STILL dealing with this
Bro, my city just made an app it has a news button, a quick link to city code compliance and a quick form for reporting illegal fireworks. City is depreciating email newsletter and website for app and facebook. and I hate so many places advertising decent deals behind apps. I am not downloading an app for every fastfood chain and grocery store. Stopped going to del taco, mcd and Wendy’s over shitty apps.
Controversial opinion. I love apps.
(Only because in my company, we created a app team to hire more developers and while our website absolutely doubles as a really fucking good web app, we hinder it in order to keep our app developer homies employed.)
im convinced 99% of app development is just for enhanced tracking and telemetry. Most are a browser in app anyway
I used to work for a very large cable company. All of our apps were championed by VPs who had strong personal connections to InfoSys, who got most of the contract work to create and maintain them. Almost nobody actually used the apps - the developers used various tricks to enormously inflate the apparent numbers of users. So essentially they were a mechanism for one large corporation to siphon millions of dollars from another large corporation. My life became a lot happier when I finally realized this and stopped giving a shit about anything.
