>Their premise is, of course, quite reasonable. Apps replaced clunky mobile websites with something clean and custom-made. They helped companies forge more direct connections with their customers, especially once push notifications came on the scene. They also made new kinds of services possible, such as geolocating nearby shops or restaurants, and camera-scanning your items for self-checkout. Apps could serve as branding too, because their icons—which are also business logos—were sitting on your smartphone screen. And apps allowed companies to collect a lot more data about their customers than websites ever did, including users’ locations, contacts, calendars, health information, and what other apps they might use and how often.
>
>By 2021, when Apple started taking steps to curtail that data harvest, the app economy was already well established. Smartphones had become so widespread, companies could assume that any customer probably had one. That meant they could use their apps to off-load effort. Instead of printing boarding passes, Delta or American Airlines encouraged passengers to use their apps. At Ikea, customers could prepay for items in the app and speed through checkout. At Chipotle or Starbucks, an app allowed each customer to specify exactly which salsa or what kind of milk they wanted without holding people up. An apartment building that adopted a laundry app (ShinePay, LaundryView, WASH-Connect, etc.) spared itself the trouble of managing payments at its machines.
>
>In other words, apps became bureaucratized. What started as a source of fun, efficiency, and convenience became enmeshed in daily life. Now it seems like every ordinary activity has been turned into an app, while the benefit of those apps has diminished.
>
>…
>
>I’d like to think that this hellscape is a temporary one. As the number of apps multiplies beyond all logic or utility, won’t people start resisting them? And if platform owners such as Apple ratchet up their privacy restrictions, won’t businesses adjust? Don’t count on it. Our app-ocalypse is much too far along already. Every crevice of contemporary life has been colonized. At every branch in your life, and with each new responsibility, apps will keep sprouting from your phone. You can’t escape them. You won’t escape them, not even as you die, because—of course—there’s an app for that too.
As someone who has always purchased a phone with the least amount of storage possible, this trend to the app-ification of everything has certainly been noticeable. It’s possible in some cases to access the websites of the relevant services through a browser, but sometimes companies severely restrict people’s abilities to do so even though their app is nothing but a wrapper for the web interface. This last point is the most contentious for me: apps that are nothing but wrappers for a web interface should be depreciated. Companies should be thinking hard about the value proposition that an app might bring, and it’d better be substantially more than the website otherwise why bother.
EnigmaticDoom on
I just hate how hyperlinks launch apps.
SuperToxin on
I just stop using whatever it was. It immediately turns me off.
1nGirum1musNocte on
Im sick of having to delete 3 new games every time my device updates
TehWildMan_ on
If your app is literally just a web browser in a frame, it doesn’t need to be an app
Fight me on that opinion.
elmatador12 on
It’s the same with companies requiring logins before doing anything.
No, I shouldn’t have to nor do I want to create an account to apply for a job.
ljog42 on
>Apps replaced clunky mobile websites with something clean and custom-made
On iOS, maybe, I don’t have an iPhone but I’ve heard they’re a bit more careful about what they allow on the app store.
But on Android ? Most apps are terrible, they freeze, they crash, they can’t handle 2FA (you switch to your banking app to authenticate and when you come back you have to start all over again), they keep sending you to actual websites…
On top of that every company seems to have “partners” whose apps you are required to install. You’re applying for a job ? App. Manage subscription ? App. Buy tickets for an event, concert, museum, public transportation system ? App. Registering before taking a plane ? App. Checking in an hotel ? App. I’ve been standing in the street trying to install an app countless times.
Such bullshit.
RBR927 on
A local restaurant has an app that you have to download to place a mobile order.
They have a tab in the app to select a location for your order.
They only have one location.
ViscountVinny on
I got an email for some random sets of dice I bought off a Facebook ad. There’s a tracking link in it. I click it, on my desktop, opening in my browser. The same browser I used to buy the dice and open the email.
It flat-out refused to give me any tracking info, just a QR code to download an app. The purchase record on the store was the same way.
I just forgot about the dice. It took months for them to arrive. I wonder why they didn’t want to make it easy to track that.
Glum-Geologist8929 on
I got an idea for an app, it’s all fastfood app in one.
heelspider on
Commenting from a crappy Reddit app. Are they ever going to roll out basic features?
jonr on
“This app could have been a <form></form> somewehere”
tristanjones on
It is for data gathering. You have access to a lot more data as an app on a phone than as a website on a browser.
It won’t stop
Kumquat_of_Pain on
While this is true, there are so many apps you just don’t need. Honestly, browser works for most of what I do on a phone. Exceptions are some smart home (still chafed about Alexa web interface being discontinued), music/video (Netflix, Spotify, etc.), payment/banking.
In fact, I would say that the web interface is generally BETTER. Using the Firefox mobile browser, I can install script and ad blockers, play YouTube and others with the screen off, etc. If it doesn’t load, a lot can be fixed with “Desktop Mode” toggle in the browser.
Lastly, default installed apps can be disabled.
mugwhyrt on
The push for apps is infuriating because for a lot of stuff there’s no reason it can’t just be a regular website. We already have this amazing free and open technology for transmitting information and for some reason every company decided that actually it would be better to force everyone to use their bloated app instead of a web browser.
I’m not stupid, I get that those companies want you to use your app because it lets them track you better. But I think it’s ridiculous that we all put up with it and that companies somehow get away with pretending the app is good because it’s a “better experience”. It’s not a “better” experience, they just made the website run like shit so you’d be pressured to use their app instead.
compuwiza1 on
I should only need one app: A web browser.
B12Washingbeard on
And a lot of these apps don’t work unless you make an account. Instant delete.
elmassivo on
I just use mobile web for nearly everything through Firefox mobile.
You can use plugins with it and I use ublock origin so I generally get a better experience even than people who use the app.
My phone uses so little data/power that my battery frequently lasts for 2 days at a time and I only spend around $20 a month for phone and data through Google Fi.
ScaryfatkidGT on
That was a ridiculous short article?
franck_condon on
The apps are not there for the users, its okay, we get it, you want access to our data. But for those sites (you too, reddit) who send non-stop pop-up reminders: listen, I’ve owned and operated a smartphone for more than a decade now. So maybe I know what an app is, and when it’s useful to me or not, and when I need it l can find it myself.
So when I decline, again, it’s not because I’m stupid. I just don’t want it. Respect that choice and don’t be condescending by asking over and over again.
Bullymongodoggo on
A few years ago I cleaned out a ton of apps off of my phone. I have a handful of non stock iOS apps and do a lot of stuff in the Firefox browser. Yeah it’s annoying to use Reddit on Firefox but fuck them, and anyone else, who tries to force us into using junk apps.
tacticalcraptical on
Then just don’t do it. If you can’t access it through a browser, then strongly consider whether this app is something you need. Most of the time it probably isn’t.
If you don’t count games, emulators and built-in apps, I have 8 apps installed, mostly for things like local file management, bank accounts, VPN, Slack, personal server media streaming and authenticators. Everything else can just be a browser bookmark.
lordpoee on
I went to McDonalds not thirty minutes ago or so. I went to the kiosk and it said I had a $1.35 full fry. Hate the app and kiosk so much, it’s just been a boiling rage with all the forkin apps and kiosk. I said fork it today and just went to the desk and paid regular price, just so I didn’t have to fork with the app and kiosk. I can get a fry for $ 1.35 so long as you can track my spending habits eh? FORK YOU
DrEnter on
If only there was a single app that would use some kind of standard protocol that people and businesses could use to show me these things. Maybe using some kind of large, interconnected network of computers?
limbodog on
They want an excuse to have access to all your phone’s data, that’s all.
Milk-honeytea on
Then don’t download so many? Who has this problem?
Apps are the users on mobile devices, not the person holding it.
Most apps exist mainly to capture the extra usage data exposed by the platform. They should just be websites.
The_Real_Mr_F on
Counterpoint: I like apps. They’re generally a cleaner experience, faster to load, keep me logged in longer, and I can organize them into folders for quick access. In a browser, it’s much easier to lose your place in a page by browsing to another one and forgetting you had the first page open in that tab, or closing a tab without thinking about what sessions you may have had going, etc. the difference is especially noticeable with any kind of form-based pages, like ordering food or filling out medical forms and such. Any time I start filling out a form on a mobile browser, I always wish it were an app instead. I’m on an iPhone, so maybe android is different, but I’m team App.
Launch_box on
Congratulations on parking at our parking lot. Please download this app to pay for it that only works for this 20 spot lot.
teachbirds2fly on
Pretty much every car privately run car park in the uk has it’s own app, and there is no consistency anywhere in one city could be expected to have 3 or 4 apps let alone if went to different city or region. It’s insane.
PCA in MN here. They recently decided pavilio is better than timesheets. Mandating use of an app grates on me so hard.
surSEXECEN on
At one time Apple touted app clips, but they never caught on. What happened? That was supposed to fix this issue!
corialis on
I admin a website that uses a third-party vendor platform. They offer a branded mobile app but I haven’t gone through the hassle of deploying it because it’s literally the mobile browser view in an app. It doesn’t do anything that takes advantage of mobile features like a camera, geolocation, or accelerometer. I’ve had a few business people ask why we don’t have an app, but no one that is actually targeted as a user has asked for it lol.
Bubbaganewsh on
I just say no and I’m not going to whenever I get asked “Have you downloaded our app?” I get sick of being asked all the time.
qubedView on
AliExpress, I feel icky enough visiting your site. I am NOT installing your app..
flower4000 on
I’ve felt this way since apps starter splitting up 10 years ago, I deleted my Facebook over requiring two separate apps it’s just sloppy.
creiar on
Whatever happened to Apple App Clips? I haven’t seen anything about since they presented it, and it was made to stop this very thing, was it not?
39 Comments
>Their premise is, of course, quite reasonable. Apps replaced clunky mobile websites with something clean and custom-made. They helped companies forge more direct connections with their customers, especially once push notifications came on the scene. They also made new kinds of services possible, such as geolocating nearby shops or restaurants, and camera-scanning your items for self-checkout. Apps could serve as branding too, because their icons—which are also business logos—were sitting on your smartphone screen. And apps allowed companies to collect a lot more data about their customers than websites ever did, including users’ locations, contacts, calendars, health information, and what other apps they might use and how often.
>
>By 2021, when Apple started taking steps to curtail that data harvest, the app economy was already well established. Smartphones had become so widespread, companies could assume that any customer probably had one. That meant they could use their apps to off-load effort. Instead of printing boarding passes, Delta or American Airlines encouraged passengers to use their apps. At Ikea, customers could prepay for items in the app and speed through checkout. At Chipotle or Starbucks, an app allowed each customer to specify exactly which salsa or what kind of milk they wanted without holding people up. An apartment building that adopted a laundry app (ShinePay, LaundryView, WASH-Connect, etc.) spared itself the trouble of managing payments at its machines.
>
>In other words, apps became bureaucratized. What started as a source of fun, efficiency, and convenience became enmeshed in daily life. Now it seems like every ordinary activity has been turned into an app, while the benefit of those apps has diminished.
>
>…
>
>I’d like to think that this hellscape is a temporary one. As the number of apps multiplies beyond all logic or utility, won’t people start resisting them? And if platform owners such as Apple ratchet up their privacy restrictions, won’t businesses adjust? Don’t count on it. Our app-ocalypse is much too far along already. Every crevice of contemporary life has been colonized. At every branch in your life, and with each new responsibility, apps will keep sprouting from your phone. You can’t escape them. You won’t escape them, not even as you die, because—of course—there’s an app for that too.
As someone who has always purchased a phone with the least amount of storage possible, this trend to the app-ification of everything has certainly been noticeable. It’s possible in some cases to access the websites of the relevant services through a browser, but sometimes companies severely restrict people’s abilities to do so even though their app is nothing but a wrapper for the web interface. This last point is the most contentious for me: apps that are nothing but wrappers for a web interface should be depreciated. Companies should be thinking hard about the value proposition that an app might bring, and it’d better be substantially more than the website otherwise why bother.
I just hate how hyperlinks launch apps.
I just stop using whatever it was. It immediately turns me off.
Im sick of having to delete 3 new games every time my device updates
If your app is literally just a web browser in a frame, it doesn’t need to be an app
Fight me on that opinion.
It’s the same with companies requiring logins before doing anything.
No, I shouldn’t have to nor do I want to create an account to apply for a job.
>Apps replaced clunky mobile websites with something clean and custom-made
On iOS, maybe, I don’t have an iPhone but I’ve heard they’re a bit more careful about what they allow on the app store.
But on Android ? Most apps are terrible, they freeze, they crash, they can’t handle 2FA (you switch to your banking app to authenticate and when you come back you have to start all over again), they keep sending you to actual websites…
On top of that every company seems to have “partners” whose apps you are required to install. You’re applying for a job ? App. Manage subscription ? App. Buy tickets for an event, concert, museum, public transportation system ? App. Registering before taking a plane ? App. Checking in an hotel ? App. I’ve been standing in the street trying to install an app countless times.
Such bullshit.
A local restaurant has an app that you have to download to place a mobile order.
They have a tab in the app to select a location for your order.
They only have one location.
I got an email for some random sets of dice I bought off a Facebook ad. There’s a tracking link in it. I click it, on my desktop, opening in my browser. The same browser I used to buy the dice and open the email.
It flat-out refused to give me any tracking info, just a QR code to download an app. The purchase record on the store was the same way.
I just forgot about the dice. It took months for them to arrive. I wonder why they didn’t want to make it easy to track that.
I got an idea for an app, it’s all fastfood app in one.
Commenting from a crappy Reddit app. Are they ever going to roll out basic features?
“This app could have been a <form></form> somewehere”
It is for data gathering. You have access to a lot more data as an app on a phone than as a website on a browser.
It won’t stop
While this is true, there are so many apps you just don’t need. Honestly, browser works for most of what I do on a phone. Exceptions are some smart home (still chafed about Alexa web interface being discontinued), music/video (Netflix, Spotify, etc.), payment/banking.
In fact, I would say that the web interface is generally BETTER. Using the Firefox mobile browser, I can install script and ad blockers, play YouTube and others with the screen off, etc. If it doesn’t load, a lot can be fixed with “Desktop Mode” toggle in the browser.
Lastly, default installed apps can be disabled.
The push for apps is infuriating because for a lot of stuff there’s no reason it can’t just be a regular website. We already have this amazing free and open technology for transmitting information and for some reason every company decided that actually it would be better to force everyone to use their bloated app instead of a web browser.
I’m not stupid, I get that those companies want you to use your app because it lets them track you better. But I think it’s ridiculous that we all put up with it and that companies somehow get away with pretending the app is good because it’s a “better experience”. It’s not a “better” experience, they just made the website run like shit so you’d be pressured to use their app instead.
I should only need one app: A web browser.
And a lot of these apps don’t work unless you make an account. Instant delete.
I just use mobile web for nearly everything through Firefox mobile.
You can use plugins with it and I use ublock origin so I generally get a better experience even than people who use the app.
My phone uses so little data/power that my battery frequently lasts for 2 days at a time and I only spend around $20 a month for phone and data through Google Fi.
That was a ridiculous short article?
The apps are not there for the users, its okay, we get it, you want access to our data. But for those sites (you too, reddit) who send non-stop pop-up reminders: listen, I’ve owned and operated a smartphone for more than a decade now. So maybe I know what an app is, and when it’s useful to me or not, and when I need it l can find it myself.
So when I decline, again, it’s not because I’m stupid. I just don’t want it. Respect that choice and don’t be condescending by asking over and over again.
A few years ago I cleaned out a ton of apps off of my phone. I have a handful of non stock iOS apps and do a lot of stuff in the Firefox browser. Yeah it’s annoying to use Reddit on Firefox but fuck them, and anyone else, who tries to force us into using junk apps.
Then just don’t do it. If you can’t access it through a browser, then strongly consider whether this app is something you need. Most of the time it probably isn’t.
If you don’t count games, emulators and built-in apps, I have 8 apps installed, mostly for things like local file management, bank accounts, VPN, Slack, personal server media streaming and authenticators. Everything else can just be a browser bookmark.
I went to McDonalds not thirty minutes ago or so. I went to the kiosk and it said I had a $1.35 full fry. Hate the app and kiosk so much, it’s just been a boiling rage with all the forkin apps and kiosk. I said fork it today and just went to the desk and paid regular price, just so I didn’t have to fork with the app and kiosk. I can get a fry for $ 1.35 so long as you can track my spending habits eh? FORK YOU
If only there was a single app that would use some kind of standard protocol that people and businesses could use to show me these things. Maybe using some kind of large, interconnected network of computers?
They want an excuse to have access to all your phone’s data, that’s all.
Then don’t download so many? Who has this problem?
Says [The Atlantic App](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-atlantic-magazine/id397599894).
Apps are the users on mobile devices, not the person holding it.
Most apps exist mainly to capture the extra usage data exposed by the platform. They should just be websites.
Counterpoint: I like apps. They’re generally a cleaner experience, faster to load, keep me logged in longer, and I can organize them into folders for quick access. In a browser, it’s much easier to lose your place in a page by browsing to another one and forgetting you had the first page open in that tab, or closing a tab without thinking about what sessions you may have had going, etc. the difference is especially noticeable with any kind of form-based pages, like ordering food or filling out medical forms and such. Any time I start filling out a form on a mobile browser, I always wish it were an app instead. I’m on an iPhone, so maybe android is different, but I’m team App.
Congratulations on parking at our parking lot. Please download this app to pay for it that only works for this 20 spot lot.
Pretty much every car privately run car park in the uk has it’s own app, and there is no consistency anywhere in one city could be expected to have 3 or 4 apps let alone if went to different city or region. It’s insane.
Couldn’t agree more. This has been discussed for a LONG time (from 2011) [https://jenson.org/mobile-apps-must-die/](https://jenson.org/mobile-apps-must-die/)
PCA in MN here. They recently decided pavilio is better than timesheets. Mandating use of an app grates on me so hard.
At one time Apple touted app clips, but they never caught on. What happened? That was supposed to fix this issue!
I admin a website that uses a third-party vendor platform. They offer a branded mobile app but I haven’t gone through the hassle of deploying it because it’s literally the mobile browser view in an app. It doesn’t do anything that takes advantage of mobile features like a camera, geolocation, or accelerometer. I’ve had a few business people ask why we don’t have an app, but no one that is actually targeted as a user has asked for it lol.
I just say no and I’m not going to whenever I get asked “Have you downloaded our app?” I get sick of being asked all the time.
AliExpress, I feel icky enough visiting your site. I am NOT installing your app..
I’ve felt this way since apps starter splitting up 10 years ago, I deleted my Facebook over requiring two separate apps it’s just sloppy.
Whatever happened to Apple App Clips? I haven’t seen anything about since they presented it, and it was made to stop this very thing, was it not?