Modern life is so tied with smartphones living without it is increasingly becoming harder

wabafee@lemm.ee to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 680 points –
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Yeah, I love my phone and the whole world it opens up, having access to so much information in my pocket. But I also hate how tied we are to them now. I bought tickets for a gig recently and the only way I can access them is by downloading an app (that I'm only going to use for this one gig). What if I didn't have a smartphone? What if I didn't want to take a smartphone to a gig? You aren't allowed to go to this gig without one, and it's a small thing, but I don't like how the option is out of your hands.

Pretty much every supermarket in the UK now requires you to download an app so you can access their offers. I hate this so much.

The most ridiculous part are services insisting you install an app when everything their app does could be in a progressive web app. PWAs are less work to develop as they can run on any device with a browser. For fast food and clothing brands especially, I think PWAs are a no brainer. (Unless you want to track your customers coughTimHortonscough)

It's your last point there. They want you to install an app because said apps can collect a lot more data points on a fool consumer than a web app.

Decathlon you need a smartphone for their loyalty card. Only upside is you don't have to get receipts for their 1 year return policy.

In my country (Czech Republic) you can tell them your email address that is tied to your account

My family got a new KitchenAid stove and I wanted to set a stop time for the oven while we went for a walk. I am able to do this on my shitty oven at our apartment.

I had to connect the stove to wifi, download an app, make an account, and link the stove. All to set a timer. Even then of course there was an error linking them.

Usually I wouldn’t have done that but I was really looking forward to the walk. I was one of the first adopters of Hue lights and used to be excited for smart home stuff. But this is so stupid.

Wondering if it’s some sort of data collection thing and also there’s no way a kitchen appliance company focuses on security and making their wifi connected devices secure.

So dumb.

I never buy any appliances with WiFi or any IoT shit, I draw a hard line there. That shit is cancer.

I'm willing to buy smart appliances, but only if they are LAN only and connect to HomeAssistant. No data collection, no privacy policy, no outside access

It is pretty ridiculous. They started doing the same thing with app ticket at Red Rocks in Colorado. So I have an ancient android phone I use for that shit now, doesn't even have a sim card in it. Has the ticket app and I may put a grocery store app on it at some point, but otherwise it's factory fresh. They can keep their grubby apps off my real phone.

There’s always a way to get tickets without using an app.

It just takes LOTS OF MONEYYYYY