Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App | Our phones are being overrun

You can do almost anything with a website that you could do with an app. The only reason they are pushing the apps so hard is because they can collect a lot more data than a website can.
- As Cory Doctorow put it, "An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it."
  
  The cloud is many things, but most of all, it's a trap. When software is delivered as a service, when your data and the programs you use to read and write it live on computers that you don't control, your switching costs skyrocket. Think of Adobe, which no longer lets you buy programs at all, but instead insists that you run its software via the cloud. Adobe used the fact that you no longer own the tools you rely upon to cancel its Pantone color-matching license. One day, every Adobe customer in the world woke up to discover that the colors in their career-spanning file collections had all turned black, and would remain black until they paid an upcharge:
  The cloud allows the companies whose products you rely on to alter the functioning and cost of those products unilaterally. Like mobile apps – which can't be reverse-engineered and modified without risking legal liability – cloud apps are built for enshittification. They are designed to shift power away from users to software companies. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it. A cloud app is some Javascript wrapped in enough terms of service clickthroughs to make it a felony to restore old features that the company now wants to upcharge you for.
  I legitimately want to scream sometimes as I feel the continual death of local computing and actual software, and it depresses me to no end how few businesses or users see it for what it is.
  And it's exactly this: a trap. A trap users people are racing into, and they have no idea, at all, how bad it's going to get when the doors close behind them.
  The rest of us are left with little recourse. Looking at the difference between Outlook and New Outlook is genuinely depressing because that's the future we're all being shepherded into against our will. I swear, in like 10 years, Windows will mostly just be a kiosk for Edge.
- This is the main reason why I seldom install anyone's "app".
  Most of these apps aren't true apps anyway, they're just customized browsers that lead you to a website and are free to collect as much data from you and your phone as they want.
  I'll go on your website first if I have to and 9 / 10 I get what I want. Besides, I'll only ever visit the service once or twice so I don't need to install a permanent app on my phone for that.
  
  Also desktop mode to circumvent those phone detection systems and trying to force an app.
- I wish. Every fucking bank has their own shitty app for 2FA instead of just using standardized and proven TOTP, no way around that.
  Same about school apps the article mentioned since it's connecting to their (one of many) proprietary system, no website for that.
  And recently got into the home automation rabbit hole. Lots of devices that require their fucking app, sometimes with mandatory cloud account, just to connect! And people in reviews even praise how easy it is, it's infuriating! I don't need light bulbs connecting to the internet, thank you very much.
  
  Ha, sucker, you think your non-Internet-connected lightbulbs make you safe? My Internet-connected lightbulbs have sent my online-car to wardrive your neighbourhood and sniff your Zigbee network!
  …if you see my car please tell it to come back to me, I need to go to the shops…
  
  I get emails from school, with a link that opens a 3rd party app, which only displays a link that opens in the default browser. I've asked the school to just send me direct links to the announcements, but they say they can't. The site doesn't require authentication, but the URLs have UUIDs so I can't just guess what the link would be. The app is quite literally just a data exfiltration layer that does everything it can to make sure you can't bypass it. Good luck getting any other parents to give a shit though.
  
  All of the banks I've used in the past utilize email or SMS for 2FA, which isn't the most secure, but doesn't require an app.
  
  I returned a bunch of smart outlets I got at Home Depot after I got fed up with waiting for the app to launch just to turn a light on or off.
  I also don't want to have to talk to it, so switching to Home Assistant with Zigbee button remotes has made my experience so much better. And on the plus side, everything still works when the power or Internet goes out because I've got it on battery backup.
- The number I remember seeing was that on average, app users are seven times more profitable than web users. Sorry, no citation.
  I suspect there's some selection bias in that regular/loyal users of a particular product or service are more likely to install the app, but it also affords the company greater access to send notifications and collect data. On the rare occasion that I install some random company's app for a specific benefit, I remove it when I'm done.
- Around here, Target (department store chain) will let you order stuff through their app and pick it up in the store parking lot. If you order through the web you have to wait around inside the store to get it. I still won't install the app but this issue annoys me.
  
  And then there's guys like me. I don't announce when I'm coming. I grab the items myself, and then I pay in cash. Nonsequential bills. I'm like a ninja! I can't be traced! Shashasha!!!! Pocket sand!
  Then on the way home, if I see someone following me home, I make 3 left turns. If they're STILL following me? I turn around, and I shoot them........a dirty look!
  What? I'm not a psychopath. I just don't like being followed.
  
  I recently ordered something from Walmart (I try to avoid it, but I could not find this one thing elsewhere) and you get a link in your email to notify them when you're in the pickup bay. The link goes to their app. I tried going to the website through Chrome, to no avail. It kept sending me to try to download the app. I did not. I don't shop there often enough to justify it. I drove to the pickup bay and lo and behold, the sign had a phone number you could call; a very pleasant person answered, asked my name, and I had my order in a few minutes.
  I do have a couple grocery store apps for 2 reasons: 1 - there are some extremely low prices that you can only get by "clipping a coupon" within the app, and 2 - loyalty points do turn into cash back.
  Safeway (a west coast grocery chain) has implemented it in the worst way possible, though. They had a physical loyalty card which you scanned at checkout/self checkout, which let you access lower prices. But now they have even lower prices only through the app. The app, however, 1 - does not let you enter your old loyalty card number, combine points and cleanly separate from the old method and 2 - you cannot use the damn thing at self checkout. You have to have a checkout clerk scan your barcode in the app, which is insane. I'm just glad Safeway is not my main grocery, because if it were I would have to change to some other grocery.
- that's two apps today
  Bonus: there are no keys
- I was thinking about that a while back. There's got to be some sort of upper limit to collecting data being useful. I mean at some point it becomes more economical to just buy the data from one other thousands of companies data mining phones rather then going to all the trouble of building and maintaining your own data mining app.
  
  They just sell the data. If they need user data (beyond basics) they might buy it from a data mining company.
- This is almost completely true, but I would add the caveat that PWAs (progressive web apps) are not as easy to discover and less familiar to install as an app in an app/play store. It might also be because it's in Apple and Google's best interest to not streamline that. But it's still an obstacle nevertheless.

My favorite part of the 30 day dumb phone challenge I did recently: I couldn't install your crappy app even if I wanted to.
A little over halfway through the challenge, was paying for my order at a local eatery, and the cashier started plugging their new app and rewards points and digital coupons and shit. I was like "I'm gonna stop you right there: flip phone." and pulled it out of my pocket and brandished it like I was the sheriff of Luddite-ville.
Kinda like this, but "Flip phone!"
- I just tell them 'no'.
  
  That's what I used to do, but a good portion of the time they'd continue their spiel to try to change my mind. Have only had to brandish the dumb phone once, but so far it's got a 100% shut down success rate.
  
  Yeah........try that in CVS.
  "No no, I'd rather NOT have a reciept that's 3 miles long, because I bought a candy bar....."
  But we already cut down 3 trees just for you!
  "No."
  "Oh, you're taking this irrelevant slip of paper! We have armed guards to make sure you do! There is a world war 2 tank outside that will crush you, and blow up your car! I know it's not really a war worthy tank, and in that sense it's obsolete, but it can still more than handle your toyota geo. Now then....take....the....reciept!
  NEVER!!!!
  GUARDS!!!!
  And then a Kill Bill-esque fight scene breaks out. You know, like when she fought the crazy 88s. Except instead of a group of ninjas headed by a 14 year old Japanese girl, it's a group of swat team members headed by a 17 year old CVS register worker wearing a red CVS vest that he uses as a choking hazard on you in the fight.
  Your goal is to dodge bullets, matrix style, while disarming one guard to shoot the rest of the guards dead, so you can fight this CVS employee one on one, as wave after wave of reinforcements constantly change the dynamic of the battle.
  Finally, after defeating all the guards, you return to your car to return home, and as you make your turn onto the main road, thats when you see it. A world war 2 era tank firing mortors at you, as you're forced to weave all over the road. Other cars exploding, you're all over the road, a helicopter has joined the chase. Suddenly the helicopter is firing air to surface missles, and as you dodge them, they blow up the tank.
  The helicopter then lands right in front of you on the highway. As you prepare for the final battle, the door opens it's your wife. You both embrace, and take off in the helicopter. Forever on the lamb. Always running from the threat of CVS employees that can strike at any time.
- I was like "I'm gonna stop you right there: flip phone." and pulled it out of my pocket and brandished it like I was the sheriff of Luddite-ville.
  I...is the implication you would have no other choice but to install their app if you didn't have a flip phone?
  I'm baffled by these comments. Who the hell is actually listening to these people and installing apps on their phone just because a cashier mentioned it?
  
  It's not that they're going to convince me, it's that it's annoying they keep trying (likely by management)

TBH I dont use an app for anything that can be done in the browser, especially when mobile websites ask me tl get their app.
- I'm the same way. The less apps there are on my phone, the better. Also, using the web app is the only way to block ads on certain sites such as Instagram or Twitter.
- then there are companies like yelp who disable their mobile site and make their desktop site as shitty as possible on mobile to force you to the app.
  
  Doesn't really sound like a company that I would want to do any business with then.
  
  Huh, is that why I haven't used yelp in years?
  
  What’s that other shitty company that constantly pesters you to download the app every time you average the site? Teddit?
- I wish for a browser addon to just block those app download requests when it smells them. The answer's only gonna be no for all that, dawg.~
  I only have the Starbucks app so my fancy Sunday coffee is done right and they don't call me Corey Sangeetha or Coarse Kangaroo.

I recently re-downloaded the Michaels app while I was in the Michaels checkout line just so I could apply a $5 coupon that the register failed to read from the app anyway.
There's your problem right there.
Does this author not understand how dumb this makes him look? You downloaded an entire app, in the checkout line, for a $5 coupon on something you were likely overcharged for in the first place?
Even when you’re lacking in a store-specific app, your apps will let you pay by app. You just need to figure out (or remember, if you ever knew) whether your gardener or your hair salon takes Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, or one of the new bank-provided services such as Zelle and Paze.
If only there was a universal form of payment that you could keep in your pocket and pull out to use anytime with very minimal interaction. Maybe a card or something.
Apps are all around us now. McDonald’s has an app. Dunkin’ has an app.
Why are you using them?
Every chain restaurant has an app. Every food-delivery service too: Grubhub, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Chowbus.
Why are you using all of them??
Every supermarket and big-box store. I currently have 139 apps on my phone. These include: Menards, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Joann Fabric, Dierbergs, Target, IKEA, Walmart, Whole Foods
Why the fucking hell do you need any of these?!
This is literally the 2024 equivalent of your mother having a dozen toolbars in Internet Explorer because she kept clicking on coupons.
Just go to the place, pull out your credit card, pay the cashier, and leave. How the hell does any functioning adult blame the technology when they have this little self control?
- People who are proud of getting a good deal via an app break my heart. Most folks I know like that are not strapped for cash. They just like the feeling of getting a bargain. They don't consider that the prices are artificially inflated. They don't need the sale item. And in the long run they'll probably end up paying more when the stores know their purchasing habits and have A/B tested them enough to know how to provide as little as possible while charging as much as a customer can stomach.
  If a coupon requires an app, I don't by that item. Especially when it comes to groceries. When it comes to store cards, most let you use a phone number instead of scanning the card. So plug in a random number at checkout. You can often get a hit on the first try. Then pay in cash. Dirty up someone else's data and give these stores nothing on you. Seriously, if people keep giving in, it's guaranteed to get worse. First the store card, then the app, what's next?
  
  Most folks I know like that are not strapped for cash.
  Whoa. What group do you run in? Literally everyone I talk to on a daily basis is.
  I actually just thought through an average day, and the people I talk to regularly. I've had conversations with each and every one of them over the past few months about how we've had to make major changes to our lifestyles in one way or another because the money is going out faster than it's coming in. We're all solidly middle-class, for whatever that means anymore.
  So what circles are you in where not everyone is looking for every possible discount they can get? Saving $5 on groceries means I can afford another gallon and a half of gas. I can't afford to be principled about privacy when those are the stakes. But it doesn't mean I have to like it.
  
  People who are proud of getting a good deal via an app break my heart. Most folks I know like that are not strapped for cash. They just like the feeling of getting a bargain. They don’t consider that the prices are artificially inflated.
  Thats why Prime Day is such a big deal.
  People think they are getting awesome deals cause its 50% off, are not going and checking price trackers to see the item had a HUGE price spike a week before Prime Day.
  But they think they got 50% off and that gives them that massive dopamine rush, and that encourages more spending.
  
  The Lowe's app is actually really handy. You can look up any item and it will tell you the exact isle and bay it's in for your store. No more wandering around or hunting for an employee to ask. It's the only store app I actually keep on my phone.
- Honestly, if there were a simpler way to sell their personal data to retailers for people who want to do so, that probably would be more appealing for the users.
- This just in: Author/professor/CEO whose books/classes/company are about manipulative technologies… voluntarily installs manipulative technologies.
- Why the fucking hell do you need any of these?!
  Yup, I have none of them, and I still get a pretty good deal.
  Most of my spending is at Costco, and they send me a paper ad once/month, which I'll go through and add relevant stuff to my list (in a separate app). But even if I don't get a discount, their prices are still better than most (e.g. eggs are normally $2.50 or so per dozen, whereas the grocery sells them for $4+). If I'm going to spend more than normal, I'll check a few sites before going out (or ordering online), and sometimes I'll ask the store clerk to price match to avoid multiple stops. The one place I have an app for is on my old phone, and it's for Target because they actually have decent sales sometimes. I don't check very often, but I will when I'm going to go buy a bunch of gifts for birthdays or holidays or whatever (and again, I'll check multiple sites first), and I use the 5% off w/ the Target debit card.
  I literally don't bother with any loyalty programs. My grocery store's loyalty program isn't needed for discounts, it's only for a discount on gas at some gas station I don't go to (and isn't even next to the store). There's another with a better loyalty program (they have their own gas stations), but they're further away and it would cost me more in gas to go there than I'd save.
  So if we need something, we'll look for coupons or whatever before setting out, we don't use an app or loyalty program. I'm pretty sure we end up wasting a lot less money this way.
- I stopped reading the article after it just became a list of apps. Felt like a thinly veiled ad, and if not, annoying af.
  
  tiktok brain

If the apps wouldn't be slow React Native or whatever "multiplatform framework" crapware, then I'd actually say that well designed, native Swift UI (iOS) or Material (Android) apps can enhance the user experience for a lot of services that are otherwise offered via website. Native integrations with shortcuts, widgets, fully supporting accessibility features of the OS etc.
The problem is most apps are just low-effort web app conversions.
- The problem is most apps are just low-effort web app conversions.
  If only that. Web apps are relatively well sandboxed. Most dedicated apps (that should be websites) are designed to harvest as much data as they can and spam you with notifications/ads.
  
  Hell I use my garden diary selfhosted service via a webapp (hortusfox).
  Just put a direct link on my homescreen. With the included favicon it almost looks like a native 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
  
  shit that's amazing
  
  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).
  
  Can !homeassistant@lemmy.world help with that?
  
  Just request a copy of the source code! Oh wait
- Just give me a mobile web page if you’re going to do that shit.
  There's some apps that just load a site, but the site refuses to load if you load it in a regular browser? Why?? Spoofing the user-agent would probably work around that, but I haven't tried.
- Even pretty basic websites will remember filled out data without an account, it's just pure laziness if a full on app doesn't do it.

I just go without.
the overwhelming majority of apps are nothing but websites wrapped in apps that strip away all the privacy and protections anyway, and demand far to many permissions for shit that are completely irrelevant to their purpose (because they want to siphon literally everything out of your phone and monetize the information).
I'd rather miss a deal, a sale, or whatever, than to deal with that shit.
- well it is not just that, websites stopped working properly. I almost always run into a problem trying to book a ticket from an airline company's website.
  
  I recently had a rather baffling experience trying to preemptively avoid this by downloading the stupid app right away, only to discover I needed the website version anyway.
  I was attempting to add my Known Traveler Number to an already booked trip with Southwest Airlines, booked by someone else. I was able to link the trip to my account right away in the app, no issue. And I could see the KTN field for my ticket sitting there, empty, greyed-out, and not interactible. I opened up the moble version of their website, completely unsurprised to find it was identical to the app, except for the detail that the KTN field there was functional. Put in the information, changes reflected in the app instantly, and I was in the TAS-pre line that afternoon.
  Why did the two versions obviously built from the same codebase have two different sets of capabilities? Why was the website the more capable of the two this time? I have no clue. All I know is I never want to be a developer at a corporation where I'd have to be responsible for this flavor of trash.
- When the app is prompting you to accept cookies

Used get my haircut at one of those "no appointment needed" haircut chains. Then they got an app, and every time I went it was "Why aren't you using the app? You need to use the app. Next time use the app. Download the app on your phone. It's gonna be an hour wait because you didn't use the app."
Now I just go to a local place.
- This is what CalDAV is for. We don’t need apps. We don’t need Calendly or Google Calendar or some BS.
  
  As someone who needs to let other people schedule time on my calendar without wanting to give them every detail about my personal life I find Calendly to be incredibly useful. But I direct everyone to their website instead of the app, which I've never used.
- I just cut my own hair.
  But yeah, this trend is frustrating. When I get food from Jimmy Johns or a handful of other quick meal places, they bring up the app every single time. Yeah, I could get a free sandwich or whatever occasionally, but I really don't want yet another app on my device. If that choice resulted in a worse experience, I'd find a different service.

Just yesterday, Mrs. Warp Core was trying to enroll with an online service. The self-service email confirmation link refused to function correctly in Firefox on a desktop operating system (Windows in this case). It worked flawlessly on Firefox+iOS. Said link also shuttled the user straight off to the phone app.
I'll add that nearly ever other aspect of their public facing web, including the online chat support, worked flawlessly everywhere I tried it. This all just reeked of hostile design.
When asked about why this is, I simply said:
The browser provides good security and choice for the user. Apps provide good security and control for the vendor.

Open source social media app: 30MB full size.
Privative social media app: 300MB install + 500 MG data full size 700MG
Go figure. I could have thousand of apps. If they were not packed with intrusive software to get all my data and to lock the company IP.
- I use the Voyager Web App lol, only gotta store browser cache and cookies. Take that private social media!

Not sure anyone actually read the article, cuz yall are talkin about apps vs. web sites, and data collection. Two points which are briefly covered, but ultimately shrugged off in favor of the larger thesis:
Smartphones … meant [companies] could use their apps to off-load effort. … 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.
It’s not simply the code delivery mechanism, and it’s not whether the data exchange is safe from prying eyes… It’s the fact that a digital UX has invaded every aspect of human interaction, including mourning.
- 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.
  Except that's just straight up not true. You can't escape it? You can't escape installing the Michaels app to get a $5 discount coupon?
  I'm absolutely flabbergasted by what I'm reading here because I have no idea what the hell any of these people are doing in their lives where they're collecting this many apps out of necessity. This is entirely selection bias. They seem to be incapable of resisting the pull of trashy, useless apps, and insist the whole world is.
  Nothing is stopping you from walking into any of these businesses, getting your purchase, paying with a card, and leaving.
  
  I think you’re presenting a terribly myopic viewpoint. A lot of companies make the process of interacting with them so painful if you don’t use their app, that you feel hounded, harassed, and yeah, in some cases, forced to use their app. Do you really think your idea here hasn’t been considered by the author? Of course it has, because like most older people (in their 30s and 40s), that’s how it always used to be. The author is complaining that the way it is today, it can be difficult or borderline impossible to do the very thing you seem confused about.
  
  Yes, as annoying as apps for everything is, very few are necessary, or even useful. I have had no problem going though life with minimal apps.
  
  5 USD is a lot.

I legitimately do not have enough space on my phone to install all the crappy bloatware of all the stores I go to. They quite literally ask the impossible of me.
- I have yet to see an app that does something a website could not do...
  
  Harvest data more efficiently for our corporate overlords :)
  
  most apps are just containerized websites.
  You know why?
  Cause browsers do a lot to protect your data from invasive sniffing.
  but if you containerize it in an app, you can remove all those pesky safety measures Which lets you turn a customer into a product by siphoning up all their data and information.
  
  Push Notifications, Mediacontrol with locker screen..

download our app
Nah
delete account...
- Literally me

And the app is just a glorified website (Electron app).

Do most people even know what a phone app is??!

One big supermarket chain here has an app where you get a few cents bonus discount on already discounted items with the app coupon. The in-store announcement praises it as the first place of some insitute's supermarket app ranking. Even if that institute were legit, the ranking fair and the spot well-deserved, I always felt like that's a competition with no winners.

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.
- Yeah. The Atlantic kinda sucks.
  
  It used to be a sort of second-rate New Yorker, except now The New Yorker is a second-rate New Yorker.
  Harper's is still decent though. It's pretty much how it's been for years.
- It’s behind a paywall for me. Good to hear I don’t have to bother with an archive link

You know what else is overrun? Paywalls or other “requirements” where I need to signup and/or pay to access something that should be free.
Don’t get me started on those fullscreen ad interstitials that force me to watch an ad I’m not interested in before I can continue either.
Let’s face it, the Internet today fucking sucks and it’s partly to do with these so-called news outlets like the Atlantic.
I miss the days when barely anyone heard of the web. Sure, it wasn’t as feature rich, but then again, those features are overly abused in the name of capitalism anyway. It’s like those strip malls that have nothing but shitty restaurants, nail salons, and tax preparers. Gone are the days of fun stores like hobby shops, comic book stores, local mom & pop toy stores.
They just sucked the fun out of it all. 😡
- I have to look for datasheets quite ofen and every damn company requires you to log into their shitty login system to get them.
  It's exhausting

Amount of store apps on my phone: zero.
My wife has an app that is basically a card holder. Instead of pulling out a loyalty card, she pulls up the one app that has all of them scanned/copied. It's great.
- Nice. I used to have a handful, and now I just don't bother with the loyalty program at all. My local grocery's program is mediocre at best (discount at a gas station I don't use) and isn't even required to get discounts, so I don't bother. And they don't even need an app, just a phone number, so I just refuse to tell them my number because I'm getting zero value from it.
  Likewise for pretty much everything. The only one I actually use is Target, and that's because I get 5% off using their debit card, plus some random discounts through the app. I don't go there very often, but when I do, I'll generally time it when there are some good discounts to stack (usually it's for birthdays or school, and I have a month or so leeway in when I go).
  So yeah, no store apps for me.
  
  The first, if it's Kroger, don't have to use a phone #, or yours at least. But honestly I'd recommend not getting groceries there.

This....is a BATTERY SUCKING LIE PEOPLE!! - Aldi ad

I actually often prefer using apps over websites, because my phone is quite slow and using a browser is often way slower than an app.
- Particularly since some companies have made their websites intentionally shit so that you'd be encouraged to use the app instead. I noticed that with out local flavour of door dash, where the website got slower and clunkier and generally more shit right around the same time that the "Use our app!" banners got more obnoxious.
- This doesn’t have to be the case but developers have been chasing bloated fads/frameworks for the over a decade instead of being reasonable with their technology. Résumé-driven development…? YAGNI.

The most ironic part...
.... an ad for an app for the article....

I recently switched to GrapheneOS and decided to avoid the Google Play store entirely, and honestly, the inconveniences have been pretty limited. The only bank I've had trouble with is Citi, everything else (I've tried several others) work fine through the browser. Likewise for most services I use, the web version works fine, though occasionally I'll need to use the "desktop" version.
Some services just don't work properly on the web, but most of the ones I used to use through an app work just fine. Give it a try, maybe together we can send a signal that apps should only exist when they provide value.
- It still depends. I live in China and the internet here suckass. Every product, say taobao(Amazon), xianyu(eBay), Alipay(PayPal), WeChat(instant msg), banking, etc. that is crucial to your daily usage mandatories an application. The API is closed and the webapp has no functionality other than a banner with "go fuck our mobile app". The only way to bypass these privacy beast apps is to live in an isolated wood cabinet with self-sufficient agriculture.
  
  Doesn't WeChat do more than instant messaging, though?
  
  Wow, that sucks. I imagine government policy has a significant influence here...

I wish sites that do have PWAs would stop funneling people towards their app.
Especially Patreon, where patronages started using their app would be 30% more expensive for their users than patronages started through their website because of the Apple (and probably Google) tax. Patreon is aware of this tax but keeps advertising their fucking stupid app! You have a Progressive Web App that's works perfectly! Stop it! Get some help!
- Twitter had some great outcomes when they rolled out their PWA: https://web.dev/case-studies/twitter
  Twitter Lite is now the fastest, least expensive, and most reliable way to use Twitter. The web app rivals the performance of our native apps but requires less than 3% of the device storage space compared to Twitter for Android.
  65% increase in pages per session
  75% increase in Tweets sent
  20% decrease in bounce rate
  yet they kept pushing their native apps, probably because they can collect more data through them. The web is way more sandboxed than regular apps.
  
  That's less an endorsement of PWAs and more a condemnation of how garbage the native app always was.
- I have never encounteted a PWA that works better than a website OR an app - this from users actual usability viewpoint. They are a cancer, that sits right in between the worst of both worlds.

- And then you go to the website on your phone and you get "Install our handy dandy little app" pop-ups every time you open a new page. If only they wouldn't do that.
- Damn that's wild reading this from an app

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.
- It's not a failure of the web, it's a failure of corporations to accept their place as just a tab in my browser. It's also easier to track users, exploit vulnerabilities, etc. from within a mobile app.
  
  Also, push notifications. Most things could be done from a browser, but corpos have to have their push notifications.
  It doesn't matter if you're the guy who turns every notification off and manages all those... 9/10 people won't.
- If all I'm doing is looking at your catalog, it should work in a mobile browser. That way if I - a Tarheel - find myself in the midwest, I can go "does Menards have 1/4-20 hanger bolts?"
  I'll install an app if it runs mainly on my phone, like a media player or a calculator or maybe even a file viewer. Mobile games...that ship has sunk, frankly.

I like apps for stores I frequent. Most people do.
Having 150+ is a personal problem.

But I mean, you gotta install an app if you want that functionality. The key thing is if you do or do not have full control of that app. While you allow it freedom in your 🤳📱, is it doing stuff you are not aware of that you don't want it to do. Like I found an app to do a sound sweep. Great, but will it go thru my contacts while I'm at work? It is going to learn about who I work with because it has blue tooth access. That's just nefarious shitty business that should be illegal. Either tell me what it does or don't do anything other than want you say it does. I also write my own apps for photography stuff and I wouldn't want to have to go ask a judge if I can please use my phone for specific programming I want to do.

https://xkcd.com/1367/

What they mean is iPhones have pitiful storage levels for the huge amount of money they cost

Isn’t that the promise of App Clips? iOS and Android both allow you to run a mini app temporarily for shopping and not cluttering your system.

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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- How is that better than a web browser? Web browsers were supposed to be the "everything app".
  
  Web browsers don't integrate to a single account and payment system, nor do they preemptively load entire websites before you start browsing. So you're always waiting for actions to complete or for images to load which feels slower. Mobile websites also tend to be very bloated slowing things down further than if the same functions were done natively in an app. There's also no consistency between websites so you never know when something will/won't work nor how far away you are from checkout. And then to top it all off there's browser compatibility, which is typically pretty poor for anything that isn't Chrome/Safari.
  If a web browsers could really do the same thing all these companies wouldn't feel the need to make their own device specific apps.
- Us lemmings will never be comfortable with this level of centralisation.

Nobody makes your download any damn app. You can just not do it.
- I remember getting a boarding pass from an airline that was only offered in their app or printed at the airport, no email/download image/PDF option. I didn't have to install their app, but I would have had to waste time at the airport otherwise. I removed it when I was done and left it a negative review.
- Couldn't even get into a baseball game recently without having to download an app
  
  I swear that has to be illegal
- Bro wtf. I can’t pay for a parking spot without a feckin app.
- In many cases this means avoiding the service altogether. So long as you are good with that, then yeah by all means, don't download it or use the service. I don't use plenty of services because I don't want their app. Instagram is one of those.