I've still never had a smartphone (technically my flip phone, a Kyocera Dura, is an android device, but it can't install apps so I'll consider it suitably "dumb")
Occasionally I need to tote along a tablet because several places (some MLB venues, for one thing) will either require a smartphone, or impose a severe surcharge for the convenience of not using it.
Anyway, I really regret that we didn't impose dumbphone protection laws back when we had a large enough bloc of seniors that didn't "upgrade" to a smartphone yet
The problem is not smartphones per se. They are very handy. They eliminate the need to carry a thick wallet full of physical ID cards, credit cards, membership/discount cards, etc. They help you if you are lost (who even gets lost anymore, with navigation and maps in your pocket). They let you access information and entertainment wherever you are.
The problem is the tracking and invasion of privacy, and that all traces back to ads.
Ads are at the root of all the problems with the modern internet and mobile tech.
> Ads are at the root of all the problems with the modern internet and mobile tech.
Ads aren't the problem. It's really the tracking and invasion of privacy which are the problem. Ads are just the publicly acceptable justification companies will use for invading your privacy. People don't care about giving up their privacy if they think it's just for ads because nobody really cares about which ad they get served. Some people have even been tricked into thinking that personalized ads are for their benefit.
Companies use the data they collect on us for a whole lot more than just advertising though and companies don't want you thinking about that. Even if all advertising were outlawed they'd still be collecting just as much of your data. Information is power and the information they have on you can become power they have over you. Companies are perfectly happy to use that data to set the prices they charge you, to tailor the company policies they apply to you, to deny paying out insurance/healthcare claims, and to make hiring decisions.
They'll use it for everything and anything they can if they think it'll give them an advantage. They've been seen using it for things as trivial as deciding how long to leave you on hold when you call them. The many ways they use your personal data against you is only going to increase as AI makes it easier for them to process their horde of data points in real time.
All the tracking and invasion of privacy is what really needs to be regulated and pushed back against because that data is just going to used against you one way or another.
100% agree on the ad angle. Ads normalised using digital products/services by paying with data and attention.
That is one of the reasons why I would love to see - reasonably priced - paid services, or even have governments offer them (as in: Source is open, hosting is being paid by the government). Given the role social media, the internet and so on plays today, it might make sense to treat this as a common good.
But that side track aside; I think that privacy respecting, ad free products can be offered for cheap, if their goal is only to finance themselves, development and gain a small margin. And true, network effects / buyin is real, but I also think that the market for ad-free digital spaces/services will continue to grow, as hopefully people become more and more aware of how precious and limited their attention really is.
I don’t carry a smartphone, and I also carry a minimalist wallet (extremely thin). I replaced my couple of “discount” cards, which have barcodes, with laminated photocopies.
I don’t get lost because I am familiar with my city.
I can access entertainment at home. Why do you need to distract yourself constantly?
Smartphones just aren’t necessary if you live life intentionally. (We should get rid of targeted ads though.)
> Anyway, I really regret that we didn't impose dumbphone protection laws back when we had a large enough bloc of seniors that didn't "upgrade" to a smartphone yet
I don't think the timeline ever really allowed for that. The time that smartphones started to be mandatory in any sense of that word feels to me to have been after every senior got one.
And even if implemented, I'm unsure how useful and enforced they'd be if every senior then jumped on the smartphone ship 5 years later.
I've seen restaurants that required a QR code to get a menu. I simply walked out. Lots of other places to eat exist with more reasonable practices.
Forcing people to scan a QR code to see a price is a great way to use the data from their device to serve them a different price than the last person who scanned that code was asked to pay.
Anyone else who wants you to scan a QR code as part of a check in process can be told you don't have a phone or that it doesn't work. It's their job to figure that out.
I didn't have my phone physically on me at the time. They did not have paper menus at all. They kind of rattled off a selection of items from memory. I ordered something.
Do you mean leave if they don't have an alternative?
I'm not religiously opposed to QR-code linked menus myself, but it just so happens that the last restaurant I ate at, the QR menu was broken and I was forced to ask for a paper menu anyway.
Now if a restaurant puts a lot of care and curation into a web based menu (and posibly ordering system!), and lovingly craft a complementary QR code to point to it, then why not?
A lot of the time the caring is the important part.
If they wouldn't find another to help me? Absolutely. I can't imagine I couldn't just ask the server a question like "what's cheap and good?" or "I'll take the soup of the day."
Restaurants have thin enough margins already. They aren't turning away a customer for not bringing a phone. There's one tiny burger place just around the corner from me that's delivery/pickup only, not even a QR code, but they have a sign outside saying 10€ combos and they're 15€ on the website... I just asked them. They have very good halloumi burgers and perfectly cooked fries. They were happy to accept my cash, too.
I certainly would, unless it was something I was doing for someone else's sake (like a birthday dinner for someone). Why would I do business with a restaurant that can't be bothered to provide a good experience for customers?
Depending on what type of computer (if not smartphone) you have at hand, you can probably use a search engine to find the same menu. Or ask somebody at your table. Or ask the server. Or point at somebody else's food and say you want what they're having. Or eschew the menu entirely and ask to be surprised. Chef's choice can be fun.
Or leave yeah, I think that's valid. TFA is predicated on the notion of pretty-much-lying to people by telling them you don't have a smartphone even if you do. Leaving a restaurant if you can't find a menu seems like it'd be on similar ideological footing.
The idea is you shouldn't have to have any sort of computer on your person to participate in public life. If a proper eat-in restaurant can't maintain a paper menu then it's an indication of the level of service that's sure to follow.
Perhaps that's the grandparent commenter's idea but I don't think it's the point the article is making:
> So, seriously, I do really like the smartphone idea. It’s just that I don’t have any browser or "social" app on it. And I don’t want anything else than what I have.
> I wish I could say it is all I have, that I’m a true minimalist.
He defines true minimalism as having an _ideologically conformant_ computer, not no computer at all.
Well, yeah, people have been using that phrase for years, if not decades. I'm not sure if you were aware, but they actually trained Claude on human text, so it naturally sounds like the human text it trained off of.
I also have been using a flip phone ever since I got a cell phone. I had to upgrade it once because the old phone only supports up to 3G network or whatever, and my carrier just silently dropped all calls on that network a few years back, so I had to upgrade to one with 4G. My current phone is Alcatel 4051S.
But I also have an Android phone without any data plan attached, which I use only for recording GPS coordinates when I am taking pictures outdoors. I have mostly managed to avoid places that require scanning some code or installing some app.
> technically my flip phone, a Kyocera Dura, is an android device, but it can't install apps so I'll consider it suitably "dumb"
You can actually still sideload app stores (F-Droid, Aurora, etc.) on the Kyocera Dura. I bought mine specifically so I could still put my company-mandated pager app on it. Turns out I was able to get a physical pager instead, so I never had to go the sideloading route.
i bought my first smartphone this year. when traveling I was carrying the android tablet half of the time in my backpack, and even at home more and more you need apps for everything (e.g. lockersat club, gym entry, supermarket loyalty card, etc).
i just gave up. grapheneos + olauncher give me a minimal and open source enough experience to make it somewhat tolerable, but it makes me sad that as a society we've come to expect that you are carrying a computer with you at all times to exist.
I've seen supermarkets that offer targeted "in app only" deals. They're trying to condition people into accepting and being comfortable with discriminatory pricing, where different people pay different prices for the same product depending on who or what they are, or how much money they have.
I need it too for MFA, for instance one local university required it. On another university I can just use a yubikey. That is more convenient since it is small; the tablet is not so handy. I dislike the push towards forcing everyone to have a smartphone, or become a second class citizen in the country.
I do have a smartphone, but I don't seem to feel the pain the author feels about being inundated by QR codes and apps. Maybe I have all the apps I need already? Maybe I just don't mind having an app on my phone because I know that I can set it to basically never bother me. Most of my apps have notifications silenced. My home screen is empty, save the handful of apps I do want. And for the little bit of effort I put forth to tweak the device to my liking, I get the world in my pocket - a full browser, every song I've ever liked, every picture I've ever taken, all my scanned documents, etc - not to mention all my loved ones available at a moment's notice. My battery lasts long enough, and when it doesn't, it's because I was using the device. I just don't understand the complaint I guess. Make the device work for you, not the other way around?
I don't think he's complaining about having a lot of apps, or the ability to have a lot of apps. He's complaining about being required to use apps for hundreds of small interactions every day that don't, or shouldn't, require an app. And he's correct. Companies are doing this not because they think it's better, but because they believe that if they can worm their way onto your device, and insert their cloud service (even if it's initially free), that they can turn you into a more reliable and/or recurring revenue stream in the future, either because you feel locked into their ecosystem so you will buy other products from their lineup, or, even better, buy a subscription service.
Maybe I'm in a tech desert, but I can't remember the last time I was required to use an app for anything. It's a convenient option for my grocery store loyalty card, certain restaurant menus, my HVAC system, etc., but not mandatory. I've heard of restaurants that have no physical menus but I haven't come across one myself.
Depending on where I park in the city, I have to install a different parking app. And create an account, and pay with a credit card via the app. There was a time, however brief, when some of the parking meters just accepted credit cards, or get this, coins.
This is what happens when a large number of people claim they "don't seem to feel the pain" and comply with the data broker's wishes. We all get stuck in the data brokers web, or we have to break the law to park on a public street.
100% this, and it is annoying. I pay for street parking (i'm ok with it, it's a tax base for the city I live in), but i'm not Ok with having to pay .50 per transaction. And i used to carry a stack of quarters in my car. And then you add all the vendors with their proprietary apps in this space, the tracking of the data of what car parked where, when, etc.
I'm suprised they were allowed to remove the coins from the meters, but they were. So people who don't have a premiere phone, because the apps don't work on your old crappy phone, or people who don't have a credit card to feed into the app on the phone, are SOL.
I think the problem is that things that once did not require and realistically shouldn't require apps (like the toilet example - which I can't tell if hyperbole or not) are now "app enabled" by default.
Sure, you have taken the time to curate your mobile experience and silence things but a majority of the people in the world don't do that as it takes more time and effort than they are willing or able to give (why silence things or uninstall apps when you can browse instagram or tiktok for 2 hours). These people are the most affected but don't often know how inundated they are.
> I think the problem is that things that once did not require and realistically shouldn't require apps (like the toilet example - which I can't tell if hyperbole or not) are now "app enabled" by default.
It's ridiculous how often & where tech is required these days where it really shouldn't.
One example: recently I discovered that on the (main) train station in the province capital near me, going to the toilet requires a bank (ATM/debit) card. What?!? FYI: we're talking a city with ~100k inhabitants.
Decades ago, you could just use a toilet. Done.
But ofcourse it needs cleaning, and personnel costs money. So, they'd put up a bowl where people could drop a few coins.
That didn't last long lol. Next: some small mechanism attached to door handle. Insert coin, open door.
Of course, some acts of vandalism & theft later: do away with the cash. And because 'everybody' around here pays with card+PIN 'everywhere' anyway, let's stick that onto the access-to-toilet.
On the surface, this whole progression seems 'logical'. But it's not! You've replaced something that shouldn't require tech at all, or at most a simple mechanical thingie, with something that requires electricity, internet connection, an electronic payments system backend, and may have the ability to track who used what toilet, where, when & bank account involved.
Insane! Issues like 'how to pay for toilet use' play worldwide, and this is the best you could come up with?
The example could be hyperbole, but Home Depot and Lowes both offer a wide selection of "smart toilets" and if we think "oh this is just a weird niche thing that will never catch on" let's remember how difficult it is to not purchase a Smart TV when television shopping these days.
Most appliances have "smart" features now, it's getting hard to avoid. But I've never enabled them. My dishwasher and my clothes washer have both bluetooth and wifi features but I never set them up. I just use the controls on the device. I have no interest in getting information about my appliances when I am not physcially in front of them.
It is kinda funny that “smart” is the branding we’ve converged on for these devices that have unnecessary computer features. Most engineers would, I guess, call it pretty stupid to add a computer to the BoM of your toilet.
Auto-flush, seat warmer, scheduled seat warmer, cleaning cycle, scent dispenser, "you haven't been going as often" sensing, auto high/low flush depending on time on toilet...
Just off the top of my head, and I'm no toilet engineer. I'm sure there are lots of possibilities with just a sensor or two.
Gastroenterologists generally categorize feces into ~7 categories. They can be indicators of a variety of dietary deficencies, including dehydration or insufficient fiber intake. Others can be indicators of a variety of medical issues, up to an including colon cancer. Ubiquitous smart toilets scanning and categorizing our feces would move the needle of overall public health and well-being.
The whole point of the label "smart" is to fill in vague positive thoughts for the customary "..." that comes right before "profit" in the standard /. business plan. And the real problem is that it works.
> Maybe I just don't mind having an app on my phone because I know that I can set it to basically never bother me.
Apps are a problem in more ways than just the nuisance of notifications and having an icon on your home screen.
As long as an app is installed it can run in the background whenever it feels like it collecting and sending data. If you have a physical product that requires an app to use, it may not bother you until you go to use it and it fails because a server shut down or it refuses to run because it silently updated at some point and has now decided that your phone is no longer supported and suddenly the product you paid for is useless.
If you are very careful about which apps you install/refuse to install you'll probably be fine, but most companies that push apps are doing it because they want your device to work for their benefit at your expense.
You're missing the point entirely. You're opting in and enjoying it, great! Do you really believe you chose to opt in? The author is saying that opting out is extremely painful and that THAT is wrong. We should all get to choose if we want to walk around with a smart phone or not. It's now basically required to invest in a privacy destroying device that makes huge corporations that much richer to function in society.
You don't understand why someone would complain about that?
Yes, in that I am of free enough will to choose not to use something or do my homework before making purchases. I'm also not saying that you shouldn't be able to walk around without a smartphone, but choices, like speech, aren't without consequence. If you want to pay for something at a location that only takes cash, but you won't carry cash because it's easily stolen or lost, that doesn't mean they have to accommodate you, it means you're not eating their food. Should they take card? Sure, and you should be able to walk around cashless, but the same choice you get to make, they do as well.
I've run into bizarre situations where smartphones were required. Went to Royale in Boston, and it's bad enough I have to use an app to pay for tickets, but at least I knew that ahead of time and accepted it. But then they wanted me to install another app to use the coat check when I got inside. How would one anticipate the latter ahead of time? Complete lunacy.
Ultimately I declined to use the app and hid my coat under a chair lol and I will not return to the venue.
Turning this around a bit: Businesses should be required to accept cash. We shouldn't need to have a relationship with a bank just to buy food or gas or what have you.
You missed out the parts about "extremely painful" and "basically required", as well as "privacy destroying" and "makes huge corporations that much richer".
So, for the analogy, let's say lots and lots of businesses and public utilities are cash only, and carrying the cash exploits you for Google's profit somehow. Or we could stick to the idea that carrying cash is a theft risk, but let's say the businesses are indirectly in cahoots with the pickpockets through a chain of corruption and that's why everybody requires you to carry cash and be vulnerable.
You can choose not to do it, and your choice is not without consequences that are morally wrong, and you'd be right to complain about that. Otherwise if "not without consequence" implies that you shouldn't complain, then you're offering a viewpoint of it being a dog-eat-dog world, and that's just the way it is, if you resist you'll suffer and you're a fool, so take the easy path and don't worry about the morality. Resignation.
My smart phone is essentially bricked, allowing only text and voice. I have not in the least found it "extremely painful" or "basically required" to have phone connectivity as I only use my laptop for connected activity.
I realize, however, that having both a phone and a home computer may be a privilege that others may not share. That's the rub. Users with only phones for connectivity are made more vulnerable by an exploitative digital system. In that, the author is correct. It's a terrible ecosystem and it begs legislative intervention but I haven't a clue how that is to be accomplished.
My microwave oven, washer, dryer all have wifi, so I could supposedly interact with them via "apps". Nooooooo. I wish I could find the chip involved and "Muntz" it.
> Do you consent to us collecting your data? This form has the only purpose of requesting a copy of ASD-STE100. Details are for record and statistical purposes only and will not be used or disclosed in any form to anyone. You can find out more about STEMG privacy policy here.
Only has a "Yes" option, and so I couldn't submit the form.
I'm currently looking for work and not even 2 hours ago I wanted to look up a company on Glassdoor for the first time in a while. I forgot they were aquired by Indeed. My Indeed login worked, but then I was demanded to give them my phone number to continue. Enough random business have my number so, whatever, but I could not move forward unless I consented to them sending me stuff. Yes, I could use a masked email, apply filters so I never see the junk, etc, but something about that really rubbed me the wrong way so I bailed.
Maybe, but I was using my gmail account anyway, so google already has that particular email info, but does that mean I'm obliged to share it with someone else ?
If there was a "No" response available, as the question suggests, it wouldn't be an issue. But it just annoyed me and felt like a dark practice.
So you filled out a form with your personal data and were about to press the submit button to send it to them, but you don't consent to them knowing that data about you?
It seems the checkbox had its intended effect of serving as a double-check gate about whether you really want them to know that information.
I have a motorola smartphone. I don't have google play installed. I mainly use obtainium for app installation. Its a bare bones phone and it drives my business partner crazy.
"Just log into our instagram account and. . .right, you don't have insta installed on your phone."
"Can you log into our scheduling app and. . . right, you don't have that installed on your phone either."
Some of the more painful things you have to deal with:
- Chromite and Iron Fox filtering out a ton of stuff so a lot of sites simply don't work
- Organic maps is slow and hard to use compared to Google and Apple maps.
- Fairmail that blocks a ton of images and other code - which is good, but had to get used to seeing everything blocked visually.
- Not having any banking apps on my phone. Every time my son needs a few bucks in his account, my wife has to do it if we're out.
- The open source weather apps are not very accurate. Usually within a few degrees, and the radar is hit or miss.
Kind of odd that we have to try so hard to ensure our own privacy. I'm up for a new phone this Fall so I'll most likely be moving to a newer Pixel and will get Lineage or Graphene installed on it.
> - Not having any banking apps on my phone. Every time my son needs a few bucks in his account, my wife has to do it if we're out.
This is the most tyrannical things about smart phones -- banking apps. I get it, the bank wants to ensure the platform is not a liability. But it forces most of us to use one of the only two "trusted" mobile providers on earth: Google or Apple, both of which are American (and I'm an American.) The only alternative is a browser which comes with its own set of problems.
In my experience in the U.S., I can manage my accounts at various banks and brokerages just as well from the website as from a mobile app. I’m ok with them restricting how their apps can be used as long as the browser remains an option. The requirement to use an app for all account management (or for authenticating to a website) seems to be mostly a European phenomenon.
I realize this is true. This is more of a personal choice since apps like Venmo can still track you on Graphene:
GrapheneOS does not strip proprietary tracking code embedded directly inside third-party apps like Venmo. If you log into Venmo, the app collects your financial activity, device analytics, and interactions
Venmo requires a verified account tied to your real identity, phone number, and bank account, meaning the service already knows who you are regardless of your operating system.
Venmo can see your IP address and any location data you permit the app to access, or data derived from your connection
Like I said, its something that's annoying, but this is the cost of keeping my privacy. My wife uses Apple for all her stuff and she understands. By any account I wouldn't say this is a "burden" per se. She opens the app, hits a few buttons and hits sends. Hardly something that I would consider a burden.
In the case of this thread, the OP is protecting themselves from Google tracking by using a de-Googled phone. But they do not seem to care that Google is tracking their spouse.
It's fairly technical and it is very configurable (so it can take some fussing to get it set up the way you like), but it pulls data directly from NWS and has been very accurate for my family.
Business requires sacrifice. I'd get a separate business phone for your business's Instagram and your business's Facebook and so on. You have to have Instagram the same way you have to have an accountant - hold your nose and do it anyway - refusing either one will just ensure your failure.
To each their own, but this seems more like purposefully handicapping yourself (and annoying those around you) over a very much false sense of privacy or “disconnection”. If it works for you then kudos, but I personally see this as an increasingly futile exercise with very little to no positive net return.
I have no business-based "apps". If it's not on F-Droid, I don't have it.
Google Play Store is turned off.
So far, the only thing I've found that absolutely requires a Google account is Waymo. This is probably a violation of common carrier rules, since Waymo is legally a common carrier. That forces Google's terms of service, including the binding arbitration and no class action terms, on Waymo riders.
That's how I roll, but I also have a couple of sandboxed apps like MS Auth that I sideloaded. I learned last year that, not shockingly, major sports venues now require showing digital tickets for entry, but thus far it's been possible to access them with a browser.
My current GCM uses NFC and my phone to connect with my pump. I would like to remove my phone from the loop. Just use the pump to connect to the sensor directly.
When you buy something from a medium-sized shop in India, they would insist for your phone number, as their POS app have that field as almost mandatory. I had to fight at a pharmacy checkout, holding up the queue behind me, as I refuse to give my phone number.
The list is missing a couple of points, including: "My camera isn't working." "I don't have a QR code scanner app." - And, of course, since we've already shown we're fine with bending the truth a little if it helps our case: "I scanned the QR code. It leads to a porn video. Are you going to argue with me about that over a couple of pixels, or will you be so kind to give me the plain URL?"
I do have a smartphone, and every time someone asks me to install something on it, or ask for my phone number for "accumulating bonuses", I say simple and dry "no" looking into their eyes. When there's a queue behind me, they'll just show loading icon on their face a couple of seconds, and then proceed, because of pressure.
Otherwise, when there are no more people, they feel like wasting their and my time, I just stare harder in their eyes, and they feel ill at ease and back up rather quickly.
This is why Google's war on sideloading is so terrible. It does very little to make people safer, and it restricts user's ability to make a free market choice about which companies they transact with.
calling it "Google's war" is an interesting take. No doubt they have added some hoops to jump through and reduced freedoms, but Apple has been leading the charge against installing arbitrary software for decades.
> Somewhere on my desk, I keep an old FairPhone 3 that I repaired after it took a deep plunge into the ocean. It runs the Google-free /e/OS operating system.
But why? The reason is simple: sometimes, you are forced to use an app.
I've never been forced to use an app. I've got a credit union and would close my accounts there and switch to another if they ever forced me to use an app. I refuse to buy any product that requires an app to use.
I do still have a phone though. Family and friends insist on being able to send me texts with photos and videos. It's a compromise I can live with since I've refused to join any of the social media sites they use. Besides texting I do get some use out of it with Termux, VLC, and Newpipe and I might pull something up on wikipedia, but otherwise I don't use it for browsing. It feels like reasonably healthy balance.
I use this method ^ which lets you keep essential apps but otherwise have dumb phone (no browser, no App Store). Highly recommend.
On the other hand, I have turned my laptop into a dumb computer using cold turkey blocker. I've never seen anyone talking about this here. I'm a standard user (for hardening reasons). And set up so I haven't watched YouTube largely for years because it's blocked and not at all in the past few days. It's flexible to configure and then because it's literally impossible to bypass you never try and then just end up living a calm life. (No ai, no reddit, no crappy news sites, etc.)
The only way I can see this working, is if you give your admin pass to a friend, and tell them "Never believe me when I say I need it, always act as if I'm lying".
And hope when you call at 2am needing a fix, they don't give in.
Came here to link this same thread. Have been following this approach for 6 months and its been great. The only non utility apps I have on my device are ChatGPT, Duolingo, and Spotify. I recently removed email.
I'm not nearly as disciplined with cold turkey though.
I want to use GrapheneOS without the ability to access the browser and without the ability to install new apps. At least without a password. A long one written down on paper would be enough friction for me. You could also give it to a trusted person. You can also write/give only a portion of a password and then memorize the other part.
Afaict there's not an effective way to do this like you can on iPhones with Apple Configurator [1].
Removing appstores from secondary profile and browser with ADB has a workaround (which I won't say in case someone uses that setup). Another drawback is enabling ADB is bad for security.
Dumbphones are stupid because they're overpriced, not secure, and lack awesome apps like maps or Signal. And I already have a phone.
I've always admired people who can live without a smartphone. I met one linux contributor at an open source conference who doesn't have a smartphone. He uses an old dumb phone, doesn't have any socials and always carries cash! In a country like India, where every payment runs on a QR code, it's crazy that he can survive without it. He asked me to look up directions to the metro, memorized it, and left.
One other thing is that he isn't socially awkward. He could go up to people, and ask for help, which I think a lot of us tend to avoid, and instead use apps to solve them.
I wonder if the convenience of a smart phone makes social awkwardness worse. As in: I'm already not very socially comfortable but my phone makes it that I never get any practice either.
I've been able to say this truthfully up until 4 years ago. I was perfectly familiar with iOS and Android, and I could pick one up and use it as competently as anyone else. Was the same even when I decided to get one 4 years ago. Not having a Google and Meta account remains true for me. Never had a Meta/Facebook account at any point in time, and I deleted my Google account a decade ago.
It is frustrating dealing with people not willing to accept this is an option people have, and anything requiring an app is a dealbreaker for me. I didn't realize it was quite as bad as the author suggests with his various household items, but I am worried it will continue to get worse in that way without laws in manufacturing partitioning technology from life.
> I still keep in a drawer an old OnePlus 5 I bought in 2017 with a pristine Android system.
How pristine is that when the last supported Android version is 10?
> This phone is sometimes necessary. Like when a known bug in /e/OS prevented my banking app from working for several months.
This surprises me. Until very recently I was using a phone I bought in 2017, which similarly supports no Android beyond version 10.
Since early this year, my bank app started insisting that I upgrade my Android to 11 or higher, and hence stopped working.
More recently, Gmail also started insisting I upgrade Android. As a result I had to get a new phone, which in many ways is worse than my old phone (still 7.2" but worse aspect ratio, no more full fingerprint sensor and much worse battery life).
So the idea of keeping an old phone around in order to bank seems rather odd to me.
I get the arguments against it but what i really want is people having some easy digital way to interface with the tech around them. Having a small on person computer be a client to things in your life seems like a really cool thing to aim for. It just sucks that corporate greed and a breakdown of trust between users and builders has lead to it being an annoyance rather than a peice of a scifi utopia
Some weeks ago, at a pub with some friends, and we were trying to order something. The waiter handles a card with a QR code. The card was approximately the size of an A4 sheet, which could contain pretty much every item the pub offered. Instead, it contained printed ads from nearby shops.
Four people at the table had problems with the app. No one could order anything. Four people, who spend most of their waking hours starring at screens to work, who gathered after some time to chat, were instead starring at their smartphones trying to order something because the app could not possibly work.
> When I buy something, from a small kitchen appliance to a car, I’m now forced to get formal confirmation by the seller that I will be able to use it without installing one, two or three different apps.
I have no idea where is without buying stuff, but other than a car I bought more than a dozen of appliances or devices in the past years and other than obvious ones (label printer), none required an app, or it was pushed by a vendor.
It's a great read! I especially liked the list of assumptions people/companies are making about their interlocutors, when demanding that they install and use smartphone apps.
> "I don’t have a smartphone," is what I tell people and professionals nowadays. This allows me to cut the crap about companies insisting that I install their app or restaurants wishing that I scan a QR code to access their menu on a small screen.
I personally tend to be a bit more direct about this kind of thing. If someone trying to sell me something insists that I need an app, I often say “I am not willing to install or use your app.”
Never had a personal smartphone, just work-issued ones that usually stay on-location after a shift. Yeah, it can drive people up the wall. I don't care lol.
This is the wildest part. It seems that sub-250MB apps are the rarity now. So every 4 apps I install is 1GB. I guess it's good for Apple, since they know you can't back up to your SSD so will then have to buy iCloud (unless you're savvy enough to open up Terminal and make a symbolic link to an external drive – the fact that they don't enable manual changing of the backup location is unjustifiable).
I have been at one restaurant that had a QR code to view the menu, although they did provide a iPad to any customer who needed it. (At the time, I was with someone else who had their own iPad.) It was not very good food (and badly managed) so I do not intend to return there in future.
If you do not want to print the menu in multiple paper copies, then you might consider a single epaper display somewhere that the customers can easily see (anyone with a camera or a camera phone can take a picture; someone with pencil and paper might copy it out by hand).
It's no longer possible to buy any non-low-end TV that is not smart. "Vote with your wallet" doesn't help you much if there aren't any good candidates to vote for.
> A few years ago I got an "Ok" TV, sold in Germany, house-brand of Saturn/Mediamarkt.
I'm guessing this is probably on par with Sceptre TVs in the US.
> My next purchase is gonna be a projector, so I hope those also don't get infested.
Many of those are very sensibly going the route of saying "we assume you want some kind of separate smart-TV stick, so here's a compartment for it with power and HDMI". Not all of them, but many.
People are misreading the author's case as annoyance, that they simply don't like apps or the way society is foisting apps on them.
What I read was what they really hate is being forced to have an account with a handful of American companies to engage with the world.
I totally agree, this situation is intolerable. Your average user should not have to be forced to have a phone managed by one of two American companies to get by in the world. I should not be forced to use Facebook to receive updates from my European embassy whilst abroad. I should not be forced, through the network effect, to have WhatsApp installed on my phone.
America is going nowhere good, fast, and we -- as individuals -- are chiefly tied to this deranged shitshow through our spyware-enabled tech.
I'd ban every American tech company from every device in my country if I had the chance.
I went back to a old Motorola phone not once but twice. Both attempts were unsuccessful. For directions I got a Garmin potable gos navigator. Once I was coming back from somewhere with my kids and it was 10:30 pm. They were hungry and wanted pizza. I used the Garmin gps and went to the restaurant but it was closed. That happened because the gps unit did not have the latest information. My family was mad and I went back to smartphone. The second time my extended family living outside the country were mad because they couldn’t call me on WhatsApp. So I went back to my smartphone. Totally two failed attempts at using a dumb phone.
While I agree with the sentiment that's not a not a convincing list. I could make the same argument and break down essentially anything in life into similar assumptions. For 99% of people it's not a problem in practice.
It has been about six years for me without any phone, even a "dumb" flip phone. I started a new business recently and it has been really difficult to engage in external outreach without a phone, but I am still managing it. Maybe one day, I have to get a flip phone, but I will try to stay away from smartphone as long as I can.
We could all be a bit more humble about the onerous “tools” we’ve built . I have a lot of sympathy for the elderly, and the ridiculous rituals they go through just to book an appointment, fill a subscription, buy tickets to a concert, order groceries.
The McDonalds app is 15+ screens to order a burger. Compare that to walking in a, “hi, how are you, I’d like a Big Mac meal with a Coke, here’s my money, thanks”.
Let’s all have a bit more humility, and even humiliation, for the absurd protocols we’ve imposed on everyone.
Frustratingly, I haven't even had that in-store experience for a while now. You do the same app-based ordering process, but on a big tablet. If there's an issue with your order, it can take several minutes to get near enough to an employee to get their attention.
I agree with all the assumptions, but it is a moving goalpost on being included in society.
Same as in some areas being a productive member of society includes: have a job, have a car, have a permenant address.
The only exceptiosn seem to skew to the top and bottom 10%? And even then it can steer more closet to top/bottom 5%? 1%? Where it doesn't matter you have enough or a complete lack of social proof that it doesn't matter.
My phone is turned off for roughly half my waking hours. The remaining waking hours, I have access to a real computer, or I have reason to not touch a phone or computer at all. A smartphone would be pointless.
I got a Sunbeam F1 in January and have been pleased with it. The hardest part is when I lost it, there is no find-my-phone (at least not that I know of, I should look, they are always adding new features). It has GPS and weather which is perfect for me. I just can't go to restaurants that don't have paper menus, which is fine.
You actually forgot the most important one: your phone should be latest and approved by google or apple.
I have an old iphone that is mint clean and fairly excellent battery, a couple months ago I wanted to travel but didn’t want to take my main in case I lose it, turned out most the essential apps won’t install because your OS is outdated, from bank ones to uber, none! Same goes if you tried to install say a banking app on grapheneos.
Those assumptions were vivid during covid, I know personally some people who happened to be in some countries where the “pass” was only through an app on a smartphone, not even printed or screenshots were accepted, only the app to get your basic human needs.
> turned out most the essential apps won’t install because your OS is outdated, from bank ones to uber, none!
Worse: apps could have been installed previously but stop working anyway, because server 'stops talking' to older versions of an app. It just varies how long it takes before the app becomes useless.
> "I don’t have a smartphone," is what I tell people and professionals nowadays. This allows me to cut the crap about companies insisting that I install their app or restaurants wishing that I scan a QR code to access their menu on a small screen.
I have another approach. I show my GNU/Linux phone, explain that it's neither Apple, nor Google phone and ask how I can download their app for it.
What makes me crazy is like, you have an app that is needed, let's say your bank app or transportation ticket app or a required gov app, or anything like that.
Then, one day you are in a hurry to do something, like buy a ticket for a train that leaves in 3 minutes, or find the number of the train that you are supposed to take in the e-ticket.
So, you open the app and you encounter the following error "A new version is available, please update to continue using the app". No way to discard that and do whatever you have to do in a hurry.
So you think, let's update that fuckin app. Ok, internet is not working well, let's connect to the train station public wifi. Oh they have a broken captive portal that is not loading or redireting you to the login page... ok let's find the captive portal connection ip/url.
All good, internet is working, now we go to the app store, starts the update, wait a minute for download, and...
bipbipbip not enough remaining storage space to install the update. You have to understand them, they needed to pack inside the app, all the PDF with picture of their ecofriendly policy of planting trees each time you swear while using the app, and sadly that increase the app by a few mega bytes...
So then, at this point you missed your train and you hate more than anything else in the world, the *** product manager at company XXX that decided to 1) force using an app, 2) decided to force an update that you can't skip.
> Just in my toilet, I’m supposed to have an app for the seat, an app for the flush and one for the ventilation.
There should be some sort of unofficial rule that if you’re writing something that strains credulity, you should actually link to something that explains it.
I actually don't have a smartphone. Unfortunately I did get a tablet,
as I need it for MFA to access some websites that I need. It's quite
annoying to be forced into this though. There is a push towards making
this mandatory. The ideal perma-ID governments dreamed about.
Do you need the tablet? For the usual 2fa that generates a six digit code you can just install an app on your laptop. Of course it's not actually 2fa but the website doesn't know that.
I wonder if the author has actually tried the QR code menus. It's actually incredibly convenient and some even let you pay right on the website so you ever are having to wait on some server to come by your table. You can get more information about the items on the menu than a physical menu and it is just more pleasant to read in general.
strong disagree. much harder to browse the menu in a tiny screen, many of those websites are written by the cousin and barely work at all, nefarious ux, etc.
> "I don’t have a smartphone," is what I tell people and professionals nowadays
I did this today too. I happened to walk past a branch of my bank, and remembered my debit card is playing up due to wear-and-tear, so I popped in to order a replacement. I made the request and the first response was "do you have our banking app, you can do it on there?". "No".
It wasn't even busy.
(I also happen to have my mortgage with my bank, so paying quite a lot of interest to them each month...)
> I happened to walk past a branch of my bank, and remembered my debit card is playing up due to wear-and-tear, so I popped in to order a replacement. I made the request and the first response was "do you have our banking app, you can do it on there?". "No".
I switched banks over something similar.
I'd had an account with Wells Fargo (and before that with First Interstate before Wells Fargo bought them), dating all the way back to when I was a kid. I'd used that account for everything, for 20+ years, and kept all my assets in there.
I regularly went into the branch to do certain transactions, like making deposits or withdrawals, for any number of reasons. (This was long before you could do any kind of remote check deposit.)
And the teller decided to provide an overt reminder suggesting to do this via the ATM rather than talking to a teller.
That day, I requested a cashier's check for my entire balance, and went to another bank to put it in my account there.
Did you consider if they were trying maybe just to save you the trip/inconvenience in the future by informing you of something most people would be able to use?
Yes, of course. That would be more believable if it were a comment at the end of the transaction along the lines of "just in case you want to save time next time, our app has the feature"
But immediately responding before I've barely finished explaining why I'm here today is a real "fuck you, use the app and stop wasting my time" kind of message
So what do you do if your flushing app breaks? Or the manufacturer goes out of business and flush tracking servers go down? Or google decides to suspend it while you're on the toilet?
Not having a smartphone is a new status symbol flex.
The poorer you are, the more of your life you must waste looking at a screen instead of gazing upon beautiful landscapes and friendly faces.
Still it’s a step up as usual. Next stage will be probably those too poor to afford anti aging vs the muti centenarians that can.
And yet those that can’t afford multi centenarian lifestyle will live super well compared to today poorer class. Hunger, true hunger is eliminated where I live at least. Healthcare too is rather universal.
Good country.
And yet people will be furious at this inequality of lifespan and everyone understands it deeply as „dystopia”.
Medieval peasant would thought he is in heaven and yet we live in a dystopia and that is widely understood and I concur.
> 1. That person owns a smartphone (which is at least a couple hundred dollars).
I live in South Africa, and even the poor townships are full of smartphones these days. My gardener has a fairly recent Samsung. They literally borrow money to buy these things. So if they can afford it, so can you.
It's not that I don't get your point though - it could easily be seen as unnecessary spending when you have all kinds of expenses. But sooner or later, smartphones have become a necessity to get on with life.
Not achieve a societal norm but facilitate everyday tasks with the many, MANY things that are THAT much easier with a smartphone.
Now I get the author’s point, but there’s preferring to be off-grid (which I also tend to be), and there’s purposefully handicapping yourself then complaining about it later.
Look, if you run a blog, post your articles on places like HN and actually interact with the World Wide Web on a frequent basis you don’t get to preach about smartphones being evil devices that “society” imposes on you. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
This is like a biker complaining there’s too many cars on the street. A motorcycle is a smaller vehicle but it’s still very much part of that class of problem they’re so proudly rising against.
Requiring an app to do things often is more time consuming (and unpleasant) than doing it without the app. Other times, the app is so poorly written that it's not worth using.
Once the novelty of "the new toy" (smartphone) wears off, using a smartphone when it's not needed becomes a burden.
---
For example, in the case of restaurants, I do not want to pull out my phone when I am having a conversation with people, therefore, I am greatly insulted when a restaurant requires a QR code to see a menu. I flat out ask for a menu, it's part of the joy of eating out.
---
Edit: I can certainly understand the need to tell someone, "get with the program, get a smart phone." Back when they were getting popular in the US, a stranger asked me for directions on a busy street. I told her where to go, but she "clung" to me and wanted me to show her. This was when I point blank told her that it's time to get a smartphone.
I've still never had a smartphone (technically my flip phone, a Kyocera Dura, is an android device, but it can't install apps so I'll consider it suitably "dumb")
Occasionally I need to tote along a tablet because several places (some MLB venues, for one thing) will either require a smartphone, or impose a severe surcharge for the convenience of not using it.
Anyway, I really regret that we didn't impose dumbphone protection laws back when we had a large enough bloc of seniors that didn't "upgrade" to a smartphone yet
The problem is not smartphones per se. They are very handy. They eliminate the need to carry a thick wallet full of physical ID cards, credit cards, membership/discount cards, etc. They help you if you are lost (who even gets lost anymore, with navigation and maps in your pocket). They let you access information and entertainment wherever you are.
The problem is the tracking and invasion of privacy, and that all traces back to ads.
Ads are at the root of all the problems with the modern internet and mobile tech.
> Ads are at the root of all the problems with the modern internet and mobile tech.
Ads aren't the problem. It's really the tracking and invasion of privacy which are the problem. Ads are just the publicly acceptable justification companies will use for invading your privacy. People don't care about giving up their privacy if they think it's just for ads because nobody really cares about which ad they get served. Some people have even been tricked into thinking that personalized ads are for their benefit.
Companies use the data they collect on us for a whole lot more than just advertising though and companies don't want you thinking about that. Even if all advertising were outlawed they'd still be collecting just as much of your data. Information is power and the information they have on you can become power they have over you. Companies are perfectly happy to use that data to set the prices they charge you, to tailor the company policies they apply to you, to deny paying out insurance/healthcare claims, and to make hiring decisions.
They'll use it for everything and anything they can if they think it'll give them an advantage. They've been seen using it for things as trivial as deciding how long to leave you on hold when you call them. The many ways they use your personal data against you is only going to increase as AI makes it easier for them to process their horde of data points in real time.
All the tracking and invasion of privacy is what really needs to be regulated and pushed back against because that data is just going to used against you one way or another.
100% agree on the ad angle. Ads normalised using digital products/services by paying with data and attention.
That is one of the reasons why I would love to see - reasonably priced - paid services, or even have governments offer them (as in: Source is open, hosting is being paid by the government). Given the role social media, the internet and so on plays today, it might make sense to treat this as a common good.
But that side track aside; I think that privacy respecting, ad free products can be offered for cheap, if their goal is only to finance themselves, development and gain a small margin. And true, network effects / buyin is real, but I also think that the market for ad-free digital spaces/services will continue to grow, as hopefully people become more and more aware of how precious and limited their attention really is.
I don’t carry a smartphone, and I also carry a minimalist wallet (extremely thin). I replaced my couple of “discount” cards, which have barcodes, with laminated photocopies.
I don’t get lost because I am familiar with my city.
I can access entertainment at home. Why do you need to distract yourself constantly?
Smartphones just aren’t necessary if you live life intentionally. (We should get rid of targeted ads though.)
A wallet emits scant telemetry.
> Anyway, I really regret that we didn't impose dumbphone protection laws back when we had a large enough bloc of seniors that didn't "upgrade" to a smartphone yet
I don't think the timeline ever really allowed for that. The time that smartphones started to be mandatory in any sense of that word feels to me to have been after every senior got one.
And even if implemented, I'm unsure how useful and enforced they'd be if every senior then jumped on the smartphone ship 5 years later.
I tried to remove the browser from my smartphone and it was impossible because of all these stupid QR scanning requirements everywhere.
The word "requirements" is doing a lot of work there. I've never met a QR code where scanning it was required of me.
Anecdotal, but I've encountered a number of places where it's more or less required.
- Restaurants: Menu is QR only. In one case, ordering food was QR only.
- Queueing up at my local Costco optical department requires scanning a QR code.
- Various other check-ins for various other government agencies and businesses.
- Urgent care check-in paperwork requiring QR code. No paper, and typing the loooong URL in manually is horrific.
I've seen restaurants that required a QR code to get a menu. I simply walked out. Lots of other places to eat exist with more reasonable practices.
Forcing people to scan a QR code to see a price is a great way to use the data from their device to serve them a different price than the last person who scanned that code was asked to pay.
Anyone else who wants you to scan a QR code as part of a check in process can be told you don't have a phone or that it doesn't work. It's their job to figure that out.
Have you tried saying “my phone is broken”? I doubt it’s as stringent as you think.
I have never had an issue and I don’t carry a smartphone. Usually they just hand you a paper menu or a tablet depending on what you’re doing.
I didn't have my phone physically on me at the time. They did not have paper menus at all. They kind of rattled off a selection of items from memory. I ordered something.
So you'd leave the restaurant if it has a QR menu?
Do you mean leave if they don't have an alternative?
I'm not religiously opposed to QR-code linked menus myself, but it just so happens that the last restaurant I ate at, the QR menu was broken and I was forced to ask for a paper menu anyway.
Now if a restaurant puts a lot of care and curation into a web based menu (and posibly ordering system!), and lovingly craft a complementary QR code to point to it, then why not?
A lot of the time the caring is the important part.
Yea, ditto if they only take orders via tablets. Vote with your wallet.
This happened in an airport restaurant. I asked the server to get me the cheeseburger with fries.
Yes, I have left restaurants because they only offered a QR code menu, and I plan to continue to do that in the future.
If they wouldn't find another to help me? Absolutely. I can't imagine I couldn't just ask the server a question like "what's cheap and good?" or "I'll take the soup of the day."
If they can't be bothered to bring a printed menu when asked, yes.
Restaurants have thin enough margins already. They aren't turning away a customer for not bringing a phone. There's one tiny burger place just around the corner from me that's delivery/pickup only, not even a QR code, but they have a sign outside saying 10€ combos and they're 15€ on the website... I just asked them. They have very good halloumi burgers and perfectly cooked fries. They were happy to accept my cash, too.
I certainly would, unless it was something I was doing for someone else's sake (like a birthday dinner for someone). Why would I do business with a restaurant that can't be bothered to provide a good experience for customers?
yes
Depending on what type of computer (if not smartphone) you have at hand, you can probably use a search engine to find the same menu. Or ask somebody at your table. Or ask the server. Or point at somebody else's food and say you want what they're having. Or eschew the menu entirely and ask to be surprised. Chef's choice can be fun.
Or leave yeah, I think that's valid. TFA is predicated on the notion of pretty-much-lying to people by telling them you don't have a smartphone even if you do. Leaving a restaurant if you can't find a menu seems like it'd be on similar ideological footing.
The idea is you shouldn't have to have any sort of computer on your person to participate in public life. If a proper eat-in restaurant can't maintain a paper menu then it's an indication of the level of service that's sure to follow.
Perhaps that's the grandparent commenter's idea but I don't think it's the point the article is making:
> So, seriously, I do really like the smartphone idea. It’s just that I don’t have any browser or "social" app on it. And I don’t want anything else than what I have.
> I wish I could say it is all I have, that I’m a true minimalist.
He defines true minimalism as having an _ideologically conformant_ computer, not no computer at all.
a bit off topic but the construction of the phrase: some word + "doing a lot of work" sounds so much like a claudism
Well, yeah, people have been using that phrase for years, if not decades. I'm not sure if you were aware, but they actually trained Claude on human text, so it naturally sounds like the human text it trained off of.
I also have been using a flip phone ever since I got a cell phone. I had to upgrade it once because the old phone only supports up to 3G network or whatever, and my carrier just silently dropped all calls on that network a few years back, so I had to upgrade to one with 4G. My current phone is Alcatel 4051S.
But I also have an Android phone without any data plan attached, which I use only for recording GPS coordinates when I am taking pictures outdoors. I have mostly managed to avoid places that require scanning some code or installing some app.
> technically my flip phone, a Kyocera Dura, is an android device, but it can't install apps so I'll consider it suitably "dumb"
You can actually still sideload app stores (F-Droid, Aurora, etc.) on the Kyocera Dura. I bought mine specifically so I could still put my company-mandated pager app on it. Turns out I was able to get a physical pager instead, so I never had to go the sideloading route.
What does mlb require a smartphone for?
i bought my first smartphone this year. when traveling I was carrying the android tablet half of the time in my backpack, and even at home more and more you need apps for everything (e.g. lockersat club, gym entry, supermarket loyalty card, etc).
i just gave up. grapheneos + olauncher give me a minimal and open source enough experience to make it somewhat tolerable, but it makes me sad that as a society we've come to expect that you are carrying a computer with you at all times to exist.
Supermarket loyalty card surprises me there. It isn’t just a physical card? Or a phone number? That’s all I ever use at any of our supermarkets.
I've seen supermarkets that offer targeted "in app only" deals. They're trying to condition people into accepting and being comfortable with discriminatory pricing, where different people pay different prices for the same product depending on who or what they are, or how much money they have.
I thought supermarket loyalty cards were just a QR code of a simple serial number. Is it different where you are?
I need it too for MFA, for instance one local university required it. On another university I can just use a yubikey. That is more convenient since it is small; the tablet is not so handy. I dislike the push towards forcing everyone to have a smartphone, or become a second class citizen in the country.
I do have a smartphone, but I don't seem to feel the pain the author feels about being inundated by QR codes and apps. Maybe I have all the apps I need already? Maybe I just don't mind having an app on my phone because I know that I can set it to basically never bother me. Most of my apps have notifications silenced. My home screen is empty, save the handful of apps I do want. And for the little bit of effort I put forth to tweak the device to my liking, I get the world in my pocket - a full browser, every song I've ever liked, every picture I've ever taken, all my scanned documents, etc - not to mention all my loved ones available at a moment's notice. My battery lasts long enough, and when it doesn't, it's because I was using the device. I just don't understand the complaint I guess. Make the device work for you, not the other way around?
I don't think he's complaining about having a lot of apps, or the ability to have a lot of apps. He's complaining about being required to use apps for hundreds of small interactions every day that don't, or shouldn't, require an app. And he's correct. Companies are doing this not because they think it's better, but because they believe that if they can worm their way onto your device, and insert their cloud service (even if it's initially free), that they can turn you into a more reliable and/or recurring revenue stream in the future, either because you feel locked into their ecosystem so you will buy other products from their lineup, or, even better, buy a subscription service.
> He's complaining about being required to use apps for hundreds of small interactions every day
This is the exaggeration that makes these claims fall flat for me.
How are you getting to hundreds of smartphone interactions per day that require apps?
Just because you don't need to interact with all of them today does not mean that interaction isn't required when needed.
Right, but “two or three out of potentially hundreds” doesn’t mean the same as “hundreds”.
That’s the hyperbole the parent was pointing out.
We’ve had smartphones for a decade and I don’t think I have 100 apps on my phone even if you included the ones that came with my phone.
And daily I maybe use 4-6 apps at most.
Maybe I'm in a tech desert, but I can't remember the last time I was required to use an app for anything. It's a convenient option for my grocery store loyalty card, certain restaurant menus, my HVAC system, etc., but not mandatory. I've heard of restaurants that have no physical menus but I haven't come across one myself.
Depending on where I park in the city, I have to install a different parking app. And create an account, and pay with a credit card via the app. There was a time, however brief, when some of the parking meters just accepted credit cards, or get this, coins.
This is what happens when a large number of people claim they "don't seem to feel the pain" and comply with the data broker's wishes. We all get stuck in the data brokers web, or we have to break the law to park on a public street.
100% this, and it is annoying. I pay for street parking (i'm ok with it, it's a tax base for the city I live in), but i'm not Ok with having to pay .50 per transaction. And i used to carry a stack of quarters in my car. And then you add all the vendors with their proprietary apps in this space, the tracking of the data of what car parked where, when, etc.
I'm suprised they were allowed to remove the coins from the meters, but they were. So people who don't have a premiere phone, because the apps don't work on your old crappy phone, or people who don't have a credit card to feed into the app on the phone, are SOL.
I think the problem is that things that once did not require and realistically shouldn't require apps (like the toilet example - which I can't tell if hyperbole or not) are now "app enabled" by default.
Sure, you have taken the time to curate your mobile experience and silence things but a majority of the people in the world don't do that as it takes more time and effort than they are willing or able to give (why silence things or uninstall apps when you can browse instagram or tiktok for 2 hours). These people are the most affected but don't often know how inundated they are.
> I think the problem is that things that once did not require and realistically shouldn't require apps (like the toilet example - which I can't tell if hyperbole or not) are now "app enabled" by default.
It's ridiculous how often & where tech is required these days where it really shouldn't.
One example: recently I discovered that on the (main) train station in the province capital near me, going to the toilet requires a bank (ATM/debit) card. What?!? FYI: we're talking a city with ~100k inhabitants.
Decades ago, you could just use a toilet. Done.
But ofcourse it needs cleaning, and personnel costs money. So, they'd put up a bowl where people could drop a few coins.
That didn't last long lol. Next: some small mechanism attached to door handle. Insert coin, open door.
Of course, some acts of vandalism & theft later: do away with the cash. And because 'everybody' around here pays with card+PIN 'everywhere' anyway, let's stick that onto the access-to-toilet.
On the surface, this whole progression seems 'logical'. But it's not! You've replaced something that shouldn't require tech at all, or at most a simple mechanical thingie, with something that requires electricity, internet connection, an electronic payments system backend, and may have the ability to track who used what toilet, where, when & bank account involved.
Insane! Issues like 'how to pay for toilet use' play worldwide, and this is the best you could come up with?
The example could be hyperbole, but Home Depot and Lowes both offer a wide selection of "smart toilets" and if we think "oh this is just a weird niche thing that will never catch on" let's remember how difficult it is to not purchase a Smart TV when television shopping these days.
Most appliances have "smart" features now, it's getting hard to avoid. But I've never enabled them. My dishwasher and my clothes washer have both bluetooth and wifi features but I never set them up. I just use the controls on the device. I have no interest in getting information about my appliances when I am not physcially in front of them.
I cannot envision what a traditional, but smart toilet may do.
By traditional, not Japanese or anything of the sort. I'm sure it's also not taking medical samples.
So what on earth could it do?! Report the flushes!?! Why? Are you going to magically decide not to crap as much?
Just baffling.
It is kinda funny that “smart” is the branding we’ve converged on for these devices that have unnecessary computer features. Most engineers would, I guess, call it pretty stupid to add a computer to the BoM of your toilet.
Auto-flush, seat warmer, scheduled seat warmer, cleaning cycle, scent dispenser, "you haven't been going as often" sensing, auto high/low flush depending on time on toilet...
Just off the top of my head, and I'm no toilet engineer. I'm sure there are lots of possibilities with just a sensor or two.
Gastroenterologists generally categorize feces into ~7 categories. They can be indicators of a variety of dietary deficencies, including dehydration or insufficient fiber intake. Others can be indicators of a variety of medical issues, up to an including colon cancer. Ubiquitous smart toilets scanning and categorizing our feces would move the needle of overall public health and well-being.
Yes indeed they would, all the issues with sensor longevity aside.
But, that's not now. So why the app now?
There are smart toilet devices that have cameras, so, it's about as bad as one could imagine.
Probably connected to your wi-fi and with a default password, as is customary for IoT.
The whole point of the label "smart" is to fill in vague positive thoughts for the customary "..." that comes right before "profit" in the standard /. business plan. And the real problem is that it works.
> Maybe I just don't mind having an app on my phone because I know that I can set it to basically never bother me.
Apps are a problem in more ways than just the nuisance of notifications and having an icon on your home screen.
As long as an app is installed it can run in the background whenever it feels like it collecting and sending data. If you have a physical product that requires an app to use, it may not bother you until you go to use it and it fails because a server shut down or it refuses to run because it silently updated at some point and has now decided that your phone is no longer supported and suddenly the product you paid for is useless.
If you are very careful about which apps you install/refuse to install you'll probably be fine, but most companies that push apps are doing it because they want your device to work for their benefit at your expense.
You're missing the point entirely. You're opting in and enjoying it, great! Do you really believe you chose to opt in? The author is saying that opting out is extremely painful and that THAT is wrong. We should all get to choose if we want to walk around with a smart phone or not. It's now basically required to invest in a privacy destroying device that makes huge corporations that much richer to function in society.
You don't understand why someone would complain about that?
> Do you really believe you chose to opt in?
Yes, in that I am of free enough will to choose not to use something or do my homework before making purchases. I'm also not saying that you shouldn't be able to walk around without a smartphone, but choices, like speech, aren't without consequence. If you want to pay for something at a location that only takes cash, but you won't carry cash because it's easily stolen or lost, that doesn't mean they have to accommodate you, it means you're not eating their food. Should they take card? Sure, and you should be able to walk around cashless, but the same choice you get to make, they do as well.
I've run into bizarre situations where smartphones were required. Went to Royale in Boston, and it's bad enough I have to use an app to pay for tickets, but at least I knew that ahead of time and accepted it. But then they wanted me to install another app to use the coat check when I got inside. How would one anticipate the latter ahead of time? Complete lunacy.
Ultimately I declined to use the app and hid my coat under a chair lol and I will not return to the venue.
Turning this around a bit: Businesses should be required to accept cash. We shouldn't need to have a relationship with a bank just to buy food or gas or what have you.
My daughter took a 4 hour train home. She brought money for food. But apparently you can no longer buy food without a bank card on Canadian trains.
You missed out the parts about "extremely painful" and "basically required", as well as "privacy destroying" and "makes huge corporations that much richer".
So, for the analogy, let's say lots and lots of businesses and public utilities are cash only, and carrying the cash exploits you for Google's profit somehow. Or we could stick to the idea that carrying cash is a theft risk, but let's say the businesses are indirectly in cahoots with the pickpockets through a chain of corruption and that's why everybody requires you to carry cash and be vulnerable.
You can choose not to do it, and your choice is not without consequences that are morally wrong, and you'd be right to complain about that. Otherwise if "not without consequence" implies that you shouldn't complain, then you're offering a viewpoint of it being a dog-eat-dog world, and that's just the way it is, if you resist you'll suffer and you're a fool, so take the easy path and don't worry about the morality. Resignation.
My smart phone is essentially bricked, allowing only text and voice. I have not in the least found it "extremely painful" or "basically required" to have phone connectivity as I only use my laptop for connected activity.
I realize, however, that having both a phone and a home computer may be a privilege that others may not share. That's the rub. Users with only phones for connectivity are made more vulnerable by an exploitative digital system. In that, the author is correct. It's a terrible ecosystem and it begs legislative intervention but I haven't a clue how that is to be accomplished.
>Maybe I have all the apps I need already?
>Maybe I just don't mind having an app on my phone because I know that I can set it to basically never bother me.
Maybe when the government decides you're a dissident, they can purchase the location information from all your convenient apps?
My microwave oven, washer, dryer all have wifi, so I could supposedly interact with them via "apps". Nooooooo. I wish I could find the chip involved and "Muntz" it.
> They are willing to accept all the conditions of your apps, including sending you personal data, registering an account, etc.
I've had this exact problem this morning, I wanted to download the ASD-STE100 https://www.asd-ste100.org/STE_downloads.html#article02-2l and they use a request form to get the download.
Unfortunately the last question:
> Do you consent to us collecting your data? This form has the only purpose of requesting a copy of ASD-STE100. Details are for record and statistical purposes only and will not be used or disclosed in any form to anyone. You can find out more about STEMG privacy policy here.
Only has a "Yes" option, and so I couldn't submit the form.
Great success.
I'm currently looking for work and not even 2 hours ago I wanted to look up a company on Glassdoor for the first time in a while. I forgot they were aquired by Indeed. My Indeed login worked, but then I was demanded to give them my phone number to continue. Enough random business have my number so, whatever, but I could not move forward unless I consented to them sending me stuff. Yes, I could use a masked email, apply filters so I never see the junk, etc, but something about that really rubbed me the wrong way so I bailed.
Don't you obviously consent if you're filling in data to a google form? Unless the form answers go nowhere then it's being collected.
Maybe, but I was using my gmail account anyway, so google already has that particular email info, but does that mean I'm obliged to share it with someone else ?
If there was a "No" response available, as the question suggests, it wouldn't be an issue. But it just annoyed me and felt like a dark practice.
So you filled out a form with your personal data and were about to press the submit button to send it to them, but you don't consent to them knowing that data about you?
It seems the checkbox had its intended effect of serving as a double-check gate about whether you really want them to know that information.
Strange as it might seem, I just wanted to download a spec, not be added to any database. regardless of their uses. Is that too much to ask ?
Any anyway, my biggest gripe was the phrasing, don't say it as if I have a choice.
I have a motorola smartphone. I don't have google play installed. I mainly use obtainium for app installation. Its a bare bones phone and it drives my business partner crazy.
"Just log into our instagram account and. . .right, you don't have insta installed on your phone."
"Can you log into our scheduling app and. . . right, you don't have that installed on your phone either."
Some of the more painful things you have to deal with:
- Chromite and Iron Fox filtering out a ton of stuff so a lot of sites simply don't work
- Organic maps is slow and hard to use compared to Google and Apple maps.
- Fairmail that blocks a ton of images and other code - which is good, but had to get used to seeing everything blocked visually.
- Not having any banking apps on my phone. Every time my son needs a few bucks in his account, my wife has to do it if we're out.
- The open source weather apps are not very accurate. Usually within a few degrees, and the radar is hit or miss.
Kind of odd that we have to try so hard to ensure our own privacy. I'm up for a new phone this Fall so I'll most likely be moving to a newer Pixel and will get Lineage or Graphene installed on it.
> - Not having any banking apps on my phone. Every time my son needs a few bucks in his account, my wife has to do it if we're out.
This is the most tyrannical things about smart phones -- banking apps. I get it, the bank wants to ensure the platform is not a liability. But it forces most of us to use one of the only two "trusted" mobile providers on earth: Google or Apple, both of which are American (and I'm an American.) The only alternative is a browser which comes with its own set of problems.
In my experience in the U.S., I can manage my accounts at various banks and brokerages just as well from the website as from a mobile app. I’m ok with them restricting how their apps can be used as long as the browser remains an option. The requirement to use an app for all account management (or for authenticating to a website) seems to be mostly a European phenomenon.
Mobile check deposit is usually app only. I think Ally lets you use their website, but they are an outlier.
I don't need to deposit checks often, but I'd rather not have to mail it in when I do.
True, that is the one feature that is app-only usually. Sounds like someone who wants to go smartphone-free should open an Ally account!
Many work on GrapheneOS
I realize this is true. This is more of a personal choice since apps like Venmo can still track you on Graphene:
GrapheneOS does not strip proprietary tracking code embedded directly inside third-party apps like Venmo. If you log into Venmo, the app collects your financial activity, device analytics, and interactions
Venmo requires a verified account tied to your real identity, phone number, and bank account, meaning the service already knows who you are regardless of your operating system.
Venmo can see your IP address and any location data you permit the app to access, or data derived from your connection
One might by Jelly Star and use it just for banking apps. And have a proper phone with their own free selection of software.
> Every time my son needs a few bucks in his account, my wife has to do it if we're out
So the burden is on her?
When we're out in public? Yes.
If its time sensitive? Yes.
Like I said, its something that's annoying, but this is the cost of keeping my privacy. My wife uses Apple for all her stuff and she understands. By any account I wouldn't say this is a "burden" per se. She opens the app, hits a few buttons and hits sends. Hardly something that I would consider a burden.
I mean, that is the nature of marriage. You both shoulder burdens for each other
Of course, privacy seeking is a selfish personality trait. I'm protecting myself, everyone else be damned.
> I’m protecting by myself
From… what?
In the case of this thread, the OP is protecting themselves from Google tracking by using a de-Googled phone. But they do not seem to care that Google is tracking their spouse.
> The open source weather apps are not very accurate. Usually with a few degrees, and the radar is hit or miss.
If you are in the US, check out wX: https://f-droid.org/packages/joshuatee.wx/
It's fairly technical and it is very configurable (so it can take some fussing to get it set up the way you like), but it pulls data directly from NWS and has been very accurate for my family.
Thanks for the heads up, I'll check it out today!
Business requires sacrifice. I'd get a separate business phone for your business's Instagram and your business's Facebook and so on. You have to have Instagram the same way you have to have an accountant - hold your nose and do it anyway - refusing either one will just ensure your failure.
To each their own, but this seems more like purposefully handicapping yourself (and annoying those around you) over a very much false sense of privacy or “disconnection”. If it works for you then kudos, but I personally see this as an increasingly futile exercise with very little to no positive net return.
I have no business-based "apps". If it's not on F-Droid, I don't have it. Google Play Store is turned off.
So far, the only thing I've found that absolutely requires a Google account is Waymo. This is probably a violation of common carrier rules, since Waymo is legally a common carrier. That forces Google's terms of service, including the binding arbitration and no class action terms, on Waymo riders.
That's how I roll, but I also have a couple of sandboxed apps like MS Auth that I sideloaded. I learned last year that, not shockingly, major sports venues now require showing digital tickets for entry, but thus far it's been possible to access them with a browser.
As a T1 diabetic, I wish that we weren't tying things like medical devices to smart phones. It's just one more failure point.
The traditional finger stick readers are still very available though right? I see them still at pharmacies.
True, but that tech is bad.
My current GCM uses NFC and my phone to connect with my pump. I would like to remove my phone from the loop. Just use the pump to connect to the sensor directly.
What's the alternative though? A smartphone is a device you can pretty much guarantee people will keep with themselves and in good working order.
It's less of a failure point then any bespoke interface device and more durable.
When you buy something from a medium-sized shop in India, they would insist for your phone number, as their POS app have that field as almost mandatory. I had to fight at a pharmacy checkout, holding up the queue behind me, as I refuse to give my phone number.
The list is missing a couple of points, including: "My camera isn't working." "I don't have a QR code scanner app." - And, of course, since we've already shown we're fine with bending the truth a little if it helps our case: "I scanned the QR code. It leads to a porn video. Are you going to argue with me about that over a couple of pixels, or will you be so kind to give me the plain URL?"
> "I don't have a QR code scanner app."
Not the point but they haven't been needed for at least half a decade now. Both iOS and Android's built in cameras detect and scan QR codes now.
Learn to say "no". It's freaking easy.
I do have a smartphone, and every time someone asks me to install something on it, or ask for my phone number for "accumulating bonuses", I say simple and dry "no" looking into their eyes. When there's a queue behind me, they'll just show loading icon on their face a couple of seconds, and then proceed, because of pressure.
Otherwise, when there are no more people, they feel like wasting their and my time, I just stare harder in their eyes, and they feel ill at ease and back up rather quickly.
This is why Google's war on sideloading is so terrible. It does very little to make people safer, and it restricts user's ability to make a free market choice about which companies they transact with.
calling it "Google's war" is an interesting take. No doubt they have added some hoops to jump through and reduced freedoms, but Apple has been leading the charge against installing arbitrary software for decades.
> Somewhere on my desk, I keep an old FairPhone 3 that I repaired after it took a deep plunge into the ocean. It runs the Google-free /e/OS operating system. But why? The reason is simple: sometimes, you are forced to use an app.
I've never been forced to use an app. I've got a credit union and would close my accounts there and switch to another if they ever forced me to use an app. I refuse to buy any product that requires an app to use.
I do still have a phone though. Family and friends insist on being able to send me texts with photos and videos. It's a compromise I can live with since I've refused to join any of the social media sites they use. Besides texting I do get some use out of it with Termux, VLC, and Newpipe and I might pull something up on wikipedia, but otherwise I don't use it for browsing. It feels like reasonably healthy balance.
From my experience modified iPhones make the perfect dumb phones that you will actually end up sticking with and it's free if you already have one.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45171200
I use this method ^ which lets you keep essential apps but otherwise have dumb phone (no browser, no App Store). Highly recommend.
On the other hand, I have turned my laptop into a dumb computer using cold turkey blocker. I've never seen anyone talking about this here. I'm a standard user (for hardening reasons). And set up so I haven't watched YouTube largely for years because it's blocked and not at all in the past few days. It's flexible to configure and then because it's literally impossible to bypass you never try and then just end up living a calm life. (No ai, no reddit, no crappy news sites, etc.)
I have been using my Apple Watch as a dumb phone from time to time.
It's like 4-5 years old and still kicking.
It has Music, Maps and Telephone.
Also my significant other can follow me on Find My Friends to know when I'll arrive.
> On the other hand, I have turned my laptop into a dumb computer using cold turkey blocker.
Very easily bypassed at least on MacOS unfortunately.
Not if you set up a separate admin account and demote yourself to standard user.
I don't think that would patch it. You want me to say what it is?
The only way I can see this working, is if you give your admin pass to a friend, and tell them "Never believe me when I say I need it, always act as if I'm lying".
And hope when you call at 2am needing a fix, they don't give in.
You can store a long password within an app or website and then block that website with a 6 hour delay to unlock.
Whereas I just don't go to websites I don't like. It has a very low maintenance overhead.
Came here to link this same thread. Have been following this approach for 6 months and its been great. The only non utility apps I have on my device are ChatGPT, Duolingo, and Spotify. I recently removed email.
I'm not nearly as disciplined with cold turkey though.
I want to use GrapheneOS without the ability to access the browser and without the ability to install new apps. At least without a password. A long one written down on paper would be enough friction for me. You could also give it to a trusted person. You can also write/give only a portion of a password and then memorize the other part.
Afaict there's not an effective way to do this like you can on iPhones with Apple Configurator [1].
Removing appstores from secondary profile and browser with ADB has a workaround (which I won't say in case someone uses that setup). Another drawback is enabling ADB is bad for security.
Dumbphones are stupid because they're overpriced, not secure, and lack awesome apps like maps or Signal. And I already have a phone.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45171200 this is seriously great if you have an iPhone, I used to use it before I switched to GrapheneOS.
I've always admired people who can live without a smartphone. I met one linux contributor at an open source conference who doesn't have a smartphone. He uses an old dumb phone, doesn't have any socials and always carries cash! In a country like India, where every payment runs on a QR code, it's crazy that he can survive without it. He asked me to look up directions to the metro, memorized it, and left.
One other thing is that he isn't socially awkward. He could go up to people, and ask for help, which I think a lot of us tend to avoid, and instead use apps to solve them.
I wonder if the convenience of a smart phone makes social awkwardness worse. As in: I'm already not very socially comfortable but my phone makes it that I never get any practice either.
I've been able to say this truthfully up until 4 years ago. I was perfectly familiar with iOS and Android, and I could pick one up and use it as competently as anyone else. Was the same even when I decided to get one 4 years ago. Not having a Google and Meta account remains true for me. Never had a Meta/Facebook account at any point in time, and I deleted my Google account a decade ago.
It is frustrating dealing with people not willing to accept this is an option people have, and anything requiring an app is a dealbreaker for me. I didn't realize it was quite as bad as the author suggests with his various household items, but I am worried it will continue to get worse in that way without laws in manufacturing partitioning technology from life.
> I still keep in a drawer an old OnePlus 5 I bought in 2017 with a pristine Android system.
How pristine is that when the last supported Android version is 10?
> This phone is sometimes necessary. Like when a known bug in /e/OS prevented my banking app from working for several months.
This surprises me. Until very recently I was using a phone I bought in 2017, which similarly supports no Android beyond version 10.
Since early this year, my bank app started insisting that I upgrade my Android to 11 or higher, and hence stopped working.
More recently, Gmail also started insisting I upgrade Android. As a result I had to get a new phone, which in many ways is worse than my old phone (still 7.2" but worse aspect ratio, no more full fingerprint sensor and much worse battery life).
So the idea of keeping an old phone around in order to bank seems rather odd to me.
I get the arguments against it but what i really want is people having some easy digital way to interface with the tech around them. Having a small on person computer be a client to things in your life seems like a really cool thing to aim for. It just sucks that corporate greed and a breakdown of trust between users and builders has lead to it being an annoyance rather than a peice of a scifi utopia
Some weeks ago, at a pub with some friends, and we were trying to order something. The waiter handles a card with a QR code. The card was approximately the size of an A4 sheet, which could contain pretty much every item the pub offered. Instead, it contained printed ads from nearby shops.
Four people at the table had problems with the app. No one could order anything. Four people, who spend most of their waking hours starring at screens to work, who gathered after some time to chat, were instead starring at their smartphones trying to order something because the app could not possibly work.
> When I buy something, from a small kitchen appliance to a car, I’m now forced to get formal confirmation by the seller that I will be able to use it without installing one, two or three different apps.
I have no idea where is without buying stuff, but other than a car I bought more than a dozen of appliances or devices in the past years and other than obvious ones (label printer), none required an app, or it was pushed by a vendor.
It's a great read! I especially liked the list of assumptions people/companies are making about their interlocutors, when demanding that they install and use smartphone apps.
> "I don’t have a smartphone," is what I tell people and professionals nowadays. This allows me to cut the crap about companies insisting that I install their app or restaurants wishing that I scan a QR code to access their menu on a small screen.
I personally tend to be a bit more direct about this kind of thing. If someone trying to sell me something insists that I need an app, I often say “I am not willing to install or use your app.”
Never had a personal smartphone, just work-issued ones that usually stay on-location after a shift. Yeah, it can drive people up the wall. I don't care lol.
> I don't care lol.
And this is precisely how I know you care.
Authentication and 2FA, group messaging, and poor map support are the only reason I switched back to a smartphone and I still miss it
> 5. It has enough storage left for your app.
This is the wildest part. It seems that sub-250MB apps are the rarity now. So every 4 apps I install is 1GB. I guess it's good for Apple, since they know you can't back up to your SSD so will then have to buy iCloud (unless you're savvy enough to open up Terminal and make a symbolic link to an external drive – the fact that they don't enable manual changing of the backup location is unjustifiable).
I do not (and never had) a smart phone, either.
I have been at one restaurant that had a QR code to view the menu, although they did provide a iPad to any customer who needed it. (At the time, I was with someone else who had their own iPad.) It was not very good food (and badly managed) so I do not intend to return there in future.
If you do not want to print the menu in multiple paper copies, then you might consider a single epaper display somewhere that the customers can easily see (anyone with a camera or a camera phone can take a picture; someone with pencil and paper might copy it out by hand).
I agree with the thesis that expecting an app is a non-trivial ask of the user, particularly for those with relevant disabilities.
But if you purchase a toilet that needs an app, it’s not really the toilet that obligated you to use the app.
It's no longer possible to buy any non-low-end TV that is not smart. "Vote with your wallet" doesn't help you much if there aren't any good candidates to vote for.
A few years ago I got an "Ok" TV, sold in Germany, house-brand of Saturn/Mediamarkt.
It was the only model in the store that wasn't smart.
My next purchase is gonna be a projector, so I hope those also don't get infested.
> A few years ago I got an "Ok" TV, sold in Germany, house-brand of Saturn/Mediamarkt.
I'm guessing this is probably on par with Sceptre TVs in the US.
> My next purchase is gonna be a projector, so I hope those also don't get infested.
Many of those are very sensibly going the route of saying "we assume you want some kind of separate smart-TV stick, so here's a compartment for it with power and HDMI". Not all of them, but many.
Do smart TVs require an app? Or do they have a self-hosted setup process?
I know at one point Vizio TVs required you to install the app and enable location to be able to setup a new TV out of the box.
Yuck. I still fancy my chances buying an app-free toilet seat for a while.
People are misreading the author's case as annoyance, that they simply don't like apps or the way society is foisting apps on them.
What I read was what they really hate is being forced to have an account with a handful of American companies to engage with the world.
I totally agree, this situation is intolerable. Your average user should not have to be forced to have a phone managed by one of two American companies to get by in the world. I should not be forced to use Facebook to receive updates from my European embassy whilst abroad. I should not be forced, through the network effect, to have WhatsApp installed on my phone.
America is going nowhere good, fast, and we -- as individuals -- are chiefly tied to this deranged shitshow through our spyware-enabled tech.
I'd ban every American tech company from every device in my country if I had the chance.
I went back to a old Motorola phone not once but twice. Both attempts were unsuccessful. For directions I got a Garmin potable gos navigator. Once I was coming back from somewhere with my kids and it was 10:30 pm. They were hungry and wanted pizza. I used the Garmin gps and went to the restaurant but it was closed. That happened because the gps unit did not have the latest information. My family was mad and I went back to smartphone. The second time my extended family living outside the country were mad because they couldn’t call me on WhatsApp. So I went back to my smartphone. Totally two failed attempts at using a dumb phone.
> they couldn’t call me on WhatsApp
Some might consider that a benefit.
Doing the “right thing” has come with inconvenience since time immemorial. It takes a strong personality to persevere.
While I agree with the sentiment that's not a not a convincing list. I could make the same argument and break down essentially anything in life into similar assumptions. For 99% of people it's not a problem in practice.
It has been about six years for me without any phone, even a "dumb" flip phone. I started a new business recently and it has been really difficult to engage in external outreach without a phone, but I am still managing it. Maybe one day, I have to get a flip phone, but I will try to stay away from smartphone as long as I can.
We could all be a bit more humble about the onerous “tools” we’ve built . I have a lot of sympathy for the elderly, and the ridiculous rituals they go through just to book an appointment, fill a subscription, buy tickets to a concert, order groceries.
The McDonalds app is 15+ screens to order a burger. Compare that to walking in a, “hi, how are you, I’d like a Big Mac meal with a Coke, here’s my money, thanks”.
Let’s all have a bit more humility, and even humiliation, for the absurd protocols we’ve imposed on everyone.
Frustratingly, I haven't even had that in-store experience for a while now. You do the same app-based ordering process, but on a big tablet. If there's an issue with your order, it can take several minutes to get near enough to an employee to get their attention.
I include the kiosk on the wall of shame . Just aweful.
But think how high the engagement needles go on the app!
An app only a lawyer (or MBA) could love
I agree with all the assumptions, but it is a moving goalpost on being included in society.
Same as in some areas being a productive member of society includes: have a job, have a car, have a permenant address.
The only exceptiosn seem to skew to the top and bottom 10%? And even then it can steer more closet to top/bottom 5%? 1%? Where it doesn't matter you have enough or a complete lack of social proof that it doesn't matter.
At lease one issue I want to push back on is this one
> That person owns a smartphone (which is at least a couple hundred dollars).
Smartphones can be bought for under $100 these days.
My phone is turned off for roughly half my waking hours. The remaining waking hours, I have access to a real computer, or I have reason to not touch a phone or computer at all. A smartphone would be pointless.
I got a Sunbeam F1 in January and have been pleased with it. The hardest part is when I lost it, there is no find-my-phone (at least not that I know of, I should look, they are always adding new features). It has GPS and weather which is perfect for me. I just can't go to restaurants that don't have paper menus, which is fine.
I do not have one (and it's actually true.) And it's not easy. :-(
“Just in my toilet, I’m supposed to have an app for the seat, an app for the flush and one for the ventilation.”
Ok that explains where the hate for apps comes from…
Installing an app vs scanning a qr code is vastly different. That being said, I won't do either to see s menu.
I’m always in voice group chats , and fellowshipping is more important to me then being digitally free.
I don't use apps. It's a phone with a web browser and camera.
> following assumptions
You actually forgot the most important one: your phone should be latest and approved by google or apple.
I have an old iphone that is mint clean and fairly excellent battery, a couple months ago I wanted to travel but didn’t want to take my main in case I lose it, turned out most the essential apps won’t install because your OS is outdated, from bank ones to uber, none! Same goes if you tried to install say a banking app on grapheneos.
Those assumptions were vivid during covid, I know personally some people who happened to be in some countries where the “pass” was only through an app on a smartphone, not even printed or screenshots were accepted, only the app to get your basic human needs.
> turned out most the essential apps won’t install because your OS is outdated, from bank ones to uber, none!
Worse: apps could have been installed previously but stop working anyway, because server 'stops talking' to older versions of an app. It just varies how long it takes before the app becomes useless.
> "I don’t have a smartphone," is what I tell people and professionals nowadays. This allows me to cut the crap about companies insisting that I install their app or restaurants wishing that I scan a QR code to access their menu on a small screen.
I have another approach. I show my GNU/Linux phone, explain that it's neither Apple, nor Google phone and ask how I can download their app for it.
That’ll get you detained for a while at the border.
What makes me crazy is like, you have an app that is needed, let's say your bank app or transportation ticket app or a required gov app, or anything like that.
Then, one day you are in a hurry to do something, like buy a ticket for a train that leaves in 3 minutes, or find the number of the train that you are supposed to take in the e-ticket.
So, you open the app and you encounter the following error "A new version is available, please update to continue using the app". No way to discard that and do whatever you have to do in a hurry. So you think, let's update that fuckin app. Ok, internet is not working well, let's connect to the train station public wifi. Oh they have a broken captive portal that is not loading or redireting you to the login page... ok let's find the captive portal connection ip/url.
All good, internet is working, now we go to the app store, starts the update, wait a minute for download, and...
bipbipbip not enough remaining storage space to install the update. You have to understand them, they needed to pack inside the app, all the PDF with picture of their ecofriendly policy of planting trees each time you swear while using the app, and sadly that increase the app by a few mega bytes...
So then, at this point you missed your train and you hate more than anything else in the world, the *** product manager at company XXX that decided to 1) force using an app, 2) decided to force an update that you can't skip.
> Just in my toilet, I’m supposed to have an app for the seat, an app for the flush and one for the ventilation.
There should be some sort of unofficial rule that if you’re writing something that strains credulity, you should actually link to something that explains it.
A week ago, a medical office that I had an appointment at kept pestering me to fill out their intake form online. (Multiple, multiple texts.)
I got there the next day, and when they asked me to do the form, I rolled my eyes and said, "do I need to install an app?"
The lady behind the counter asked for my insurance card, scanned it, and told me that I was all set.
What was all that nonsense for, anyway?
I get it, I really hate it too. When I don't want to use my phone, I just leave it somewhere in the house and forget about it for a couple of days.
I love you.
I actually don't have a smartphone. Unfortunately I did get a tablet, as I need it for MFA to access some websites that I need. It's quite annoying to be forced into this though. There is a push towards making this mandatory. The ideal perma-ID governments dreamed about.
Do you need the tablet? For the usual 2fa that generates a six digit code you can just install an app on your laptop. Of course it's not actually 2fa but the website doesn't know that.
> Just in my toilet, I’m supposed to have an app for the seat, an app for the flush and one for the ventilation.
Is this a joke? Are there really toilets that require a smartphone to flush?
This seems hard to believe, but the author already tooted about it (https://mamot.fr/@ploum/117016623130281141) so he may be serious
Have definitely used this one, or “my SIM card doesn’t work in this country”.
My other lie is “I don’t carry cards.” Works best whilst holding up a Benjamin.
At some point, if you say something like that you'll probably be just given one.
I wonder if the author has actually tried the QR code menus. It's actually incredibly convenient and some even let you pay right on the website so you ever are having to wait on some server to come by your table. You can get more information about the items on the menu than a physical menu and it is just more pleasant to read in general.
strong disagree. much harder to browse the menu in a tiny screen, many of those websites are written by the cousin and barely work at all, nefarious ux, etc.
> "I don’t have a smartphone," is what I tell people and professionals nowadays
I did this today too. I happened to walk past a branch of my bank, and remembered my debit card is playing up due to wear-and-tear, so I popped in to order a replacement. I made the request and the first response was "do you have our banking app, you can do it on there?". "No".
It wasn't even busy.
(I also happen to have my mortgage with my bank, so paying quite a lot of interest to them each month...)
> I happened to walk past a branch of my bank, and remembered my debit card is playing up due to wear-and-tear, so I popped in to order a replacement. I made the request and the first response was "do you have our banking app, you can do it on there?". "No".
I switched banks over something similar.
I'd had an account with Wells Fargo (and before that with First Interstate before Wells Fargo bought them), dating all the way back to when I was a kid. I'd used that account for everything, for 20+ years, and kept all my assets in there.
I regularly went into the branch to do certain transactions, like making deposits or withdrawals, for any number of reasons. (This was long before you could do any kind of remote check deposit.)
And the teller decided to provide an overt reminder suggesting to do this via the ATM rather than talking to a teller.
That day, I requested a cashier's check for my entire balance, and went to another bank to put it in my account there.
Did you consider if they were trying maybe just to save you the trip/inconvenience in the future by informing you of something most people would be able to use?
Yes, of course. That would be more believable if it were a comment at the end of the transaction along the lines of "just in case you want to save time next time, our app has the feature"
But immediately responding before I've barely finished explaining why I'm here today is a real "fuck you, use the app and stop wasting my time" kind of message
So what do you do if your flushing app breaks? Or the manufacturer goes out of business and flush tracking servers go down? Or google decides to suspend it while you're on the toilet?
> Or google decides to suspend it while you're on the toilet?
If anyone at Google is reading this, please answer urgently, my legs are starting to go numb.
if the Buddha had a smart phone, it would be a Mudita Kompakt.
Not having a smartphone is a new status symbol flex.
The poorer you are, the more of your life you must waste looking at a screen instead of gazing upon beautiful landscapes and friendly faces.
Still it’s a step up as usual. Next stage will be probably those too poor to afford anti aging vs the muti centenarians that can.
And yet those that can’t afford multi centenarian lifestyle will live super well compared to today poorer class. Hunger, true hunger is eliminated where I live at least. Healthcare too is rather universal.
Good country.
And yet people will be furious at this inequality of lifespan and everyone understands it deeply as „dystopia”.
Medieval peasant would thought he is in heaven and yet we live in a dystopia and that is widely understood and I concur.
> The poorer you are, the more of your life you must waste looking at a screen instead of gazing upon beautiful landscapes and friendly faces.
"Must", perhaps. But plenty of people of any wealth are addicted
It’s also easier to be addicted when you can’t afford any alternatives and thinking about the future makes you anxious.
> Not having a smartphone is a new status symbol flex.
It’s pretty much like those vegans people tend to make fun of: it’s performative. It’s humble-brag-fuelled activism that craves audience approval.
I don't eat meat or watch television. I'm whiter than you.
No one actually believes you if you say that. Even if it is true.
> 1. That person owns a smartphone (which is at least a couple hundred dollars).
I live in South Africa, and even the poor townships are full of smartphones these days. My gardener has a fairly recent Samsung. They literally borrow money to buy these things. So if they can afford it, so can you.
It's not that I don't get your point though - it could easily be seen as unnecessary spending when you have all kinds of expenses. But sooner or later, smartphones have become a necessity to get on with life.
Affordability is not the OP's point.
I don't disagree with you main point but thought this was funny:
> They literally borrow money to buy these things. So if they can afford it,
Borrowing money would indicate they can't afford it. But I think you mean "afford the risk in order to achieve a societal norm".
Not achieve a societal norm but facilitate everyday tasks with the many, MANY things that are THAT much easier with a smartphone.
Now I get the author’s point, but there’s preferring to be off-grid (which I also tend to be), and there’s purposefully handicapping yourself then complaining about it later.
Look, if you run a blog, post your articles on places like HN and actually interact with the World Wide Web on a frequent basis you don’t get to preach about smartphones being evil devices that “society” imposes on you. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
This is like a biker complaining there’s too many cars on the street. A motorcycle is a smaller vehicle but it’s still very much part of that class of problem they’re so proudly rising against.
It’s theatre. Pure and simple theatre.
It's not about the money, it's about time.
Requiring an app to do things often is more time consuming (and unpleasant) than doing it without the app. Other times, the app is so poorly written that it's not worth using.
Once the novelty of "the new toy" (smartphone) wears off, using a smartphone when it's not needed becomes a burden.
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For example, in the case of restaurants, I do not want to pull out my phone when I am having a conversation with people, therefore, I am greatly insulted when a restaurant requires a QR code to see a menu. I flat out ask for a menu, it's part of the joy of eating out.
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Edit: I can certainly understand the need to tell someone, "get with the program, get a smart phone." Back when they were getting popular in the US, a stranger asked me for directions on a busy street. I told her where to go, but she "clung" to me and wanted me to show her. This was when I point blank told her that it's time to get a smartphone.