For me the hierarchy goes something like this: Floss native app (dt & mobile) > floss electron app (dt & mobile) > website > non-floss app
What does the L stand for?
Free
?
Open
Source
SoftwareIs it Legal?
Libre
For the uninitiated, free/libre is “free” as in “free speech”. As opposed to free/gratis, which is “free” as in “free beer”.
I am the head of a large banking app / web in Europe. We have about 40 MiO logins per month, 39 (edit: millions) are done with the app.
Personally I would prefer the web version of everything important like banking always - but the customers are all preferring apps. So yea guess where I allocate my budget.
It sucks but that’s how people operate these days
“It’S bEtTeR iN ThE aPp”
The app: Last updated January 2023
I regularly use apps that haven’t been updated for longer, and 20-year-old PC programs. The worse thing is if old versions are purposefully deprecated too early, I don’t have Play Store.
This is fine for apps that don’t use remote APIs and aren’t actively having breaking changes made to them on a regular basis, but that doesn’t apply to most of these nagging “use our app!” companies.
App permissions required:
- name
- address
- contacts
- financials
- life history
- kinks
- current relationship status
Side rant: I refuse to download the McDonald’s app. That’s the first question they ask (and increasingly, any fast food joint asks) when you roll through the drive through. “Are you using the app today?”
No I’m not fucking using the app today. I just want an ice cream cone. Ok!? I don’t need or want to download another goddamned app and manage another set of credentials when it takes me less time to say, “Can I please have an ice cream cone?” And for you to respond with, “I’m sorry but our ice cream machine is broken.” than it does for me to order a fucking ice cream cone on the stupid app.
I mean hells bells I’m a software engineer. I make my living designing [often unnecessary] software [which provides little tangible benefit]. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to have an app to go through a fast food drive through or use household appliances. I will die on this hill. Ok, maybe not die, but I will be severely wounded on this hill.
Ironically, I find McDonald’s has one of the better reward systems in their app. I also enjoy being able to punch in my order on a screen with any modifications I want such as extra pickle, no lettuce, etc… instead of relying on the shitty speaker to pick it up only to hear a guy be like “Did you say cherry coke?” “No, diet coke” ugh
Also free fries on Friday.
The app then will then save points that tot can use for discounts or products, but if you try to redeem the points the point of sale thing can’t process the order and payment fails.
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Thankfully there aren’t as many great mobile webpages left anymore that I would really care about if they made me use their app. Pre-Edit: I think thankfully is the wrong word.
Still, it’s storage and heckin’ executables on your device. Everyone should get an option to use a website, even if just a poorly laid-out one, unless the vast majority of users only interact in a way that only works with local executables (like video calls). You should not need an app to check an IKEA order status on your phone (yes, they do that, see my other comment).
And I’m aware that video calls on some platforms can - and do - work in browsers but I won’t blame anyone who rejects their boss’s proposal to create a video call app in HTML/CSS/JS.
Agreed. My comment was more meant as an affront towards what mobile webpages are becoming in general. I only ever browse on my phone if there really is no other option at all.
Years of using the Links browser in my youth might have shaped my views though.
Amazon
Ebay Kleinanzeigen
Splitwise
Reddit
MEGA
Youtube, of course
Idk Amazon web works fine, I usually use the app but I don’t remember having issues with the web.
They for sure dislike secure browsers. Also the UI in general is horrible, of the website on Desktop too. Its blurry? The App on the other hand looks good
They for sure dislike secure browsers
What do you mean with this? I haven’t used Amazon in a while so I have no idea what shenanigans they’ve gotten up to
Captchas everywhere, you get logged out always, need a phone number etc.
That’s how you know it’s working!
Really? I haven’t seen that. No Captchas ever I think.
The phone number could be for the 2FA but no idea, I don’t think I have seen it, for 2FA I have the usual authenticator, that said they have my phone for sure at least for shipping but maybe I did get asked for it and I don’t remember, they have it for shipping anyway so…
But logged out… no issues there if anything it works like Facebook where not sure what they have but the session last forever…
Of course I am using my Amazon from Spain there might be differences, like just due the laws alone I expect differences on the American one.
Building a great mobile website is much harder than building a great mobile app, so I understand when they just don’t build a great website to begin with, but taking away an existing website, yeah, that sucks.
You need one anyway for desktop users. A desktop-first website will usually be more accessible and easier to onboard, especially for infrequent users.
Example: To track a package, a certain store emailed me a button whose destination is this monster of a URL:
https://labia.page.link/?link=https://order.fart.cum/cz/history/%23/lookup?orderId%3D4206913372%26lid%3DAE91DCC0397DEADBEEF42069ACAB707BE6A1800B5ACEFAC3AAC3C14159265359&apn=com.labia.fart.app&afl=https://order.fart.cum/cz/cs/purchases/4206913372/?lid=AE91DCC0397DEADBEEF42069ACAB707BE6A1800B5ACEFAC3AAC3C14159265359&ibi=cum.labia.fart.app&ifl=https://order.fart.cum/cz/cs/purchases/4206913372/?lid=AE91DCC0397DEADBEEF42069ACAB707BE6A1800B5ACEFAC3AAC3C14159265359&ofl=https://order.fart.cum/cz/cs/purchases/4206913372/?lid=AE91DCC0397DEADBEEF42069ACAB707BE6A1800B5ACEFAC3AAC3C14159265359&imv=1.24.0&amv=2915(Numbers and some strings were changed but the gist and 604-character length remains.)
The main function of such a long URL is to redirect desktop users to
https://order.fart.cum/cz/cs/purchases/4206913372/to see the tracking info while mobile users get directed to the app store to get an app (or view the link in the app if they have it). These are (probably) Google Firebase links and they’re absolutely terrible. While they make life slightly easier for existing app users (saves one click but only if they go through the email), this implementation makes it way harder for others to reach the content. Either you get the app, log in there and part with fucking 300 MB of storage, or if you have no mainstream App Store, storage or time, you are forced to do a workaround: Desktop Mode (that may or may not work), rewriting the URL (difficult because it’s so long and includeshttps:several times, may require hex-decoding), or finding a computer. All this just to check one order from a store you’ll forget about next week.I have demonstrated that instead of just getting sent the desktop-friendly URL (and perhaps seeing a floating “Open in app” button at the destination), most users are put through extra nuisance that took effort to implement. Sure, some customers are frequent enough to use the app while most are happy with a website but once the business invests in the app, they will absolutely make sure everyone is pushed there despite it being less convenient for both parties.
extra nuisance that took effort to implement
I think this point needs to be stressed more. It is dead simple to write a website that works well on mobile phones. In fact, the first ever website, without CSS, without any JS, without fancy HTML5 features, is mobile friendly: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
It’s only when you start adding useless bells and whistles like floating shit in from left and right, tons of animations, side-by-side displays, overlays and whatnot that you need to start being competent to make it work on mobile.
Most apps would do fine without a website. Most everyone has a phone, but a fair number of people don’t have a desktop or laptop. And pretty much everyone who has a desktop or laptop also has a phone.
A number of currently popular apps don’t have a website, let alone a mobile friendly website.
You’re missing the main point: A web app works for both desktop and phone users. A mobile app doesn’t.
And I, for one, don’t have a smart phone, though I’ll admit I’m lonely in this position.
You are not 100% alone. I technically have a smartphone but use it as a mini (5") tablet. My SIM is in a feature phone because greedy T-Mobile (Telekom in Deutschland) will not give me more than 1 MB/day for a decent price.
A webapp sometimes works fine for phone users. There are things that websites can’t do on mobile. For example, on iOS, only the latest OS version has support for push notifications from PWAs, and even then, they can’t make noise or vibrations. They are always delivered silently. PWAs are also always rendered with WebKit on iOS. WebKit doesn’t support a number of features.
Yes, a mobile app doesn’t help desktop users, but there are waaaaaaaay more mobile users than desktop users.
on iOS, only the latest OS version has support for push notifications
they can’t make noise or vibrations
I mean, for an email app, that’s kind of a big deal.
Only if you absolutely need some crucial bit of information the moment it arrives, in which case, email isn’t for you, since messages can take up to 3 days to arrive.
That depends on what kind of service you provide.
Games more complex than 2048, video calls? Sure.
Short video platform? Maybe.
Commerce? Absolutely not.Yes, that’s why I said most instead of all. And to be clear, I’m not a fan of apps without websites, that’s just how things are.
Building a great mobile website is much harder than building a great mobile app
Are you a web developer and an equally good app developer to make such a statement?
Ad the app is just an ugly wrapper around Chrome custom tab.
If all I did was inspire Lemmy meme community to make stock photo memes, I’m happy
We see you, and we’re proud. o7
Awwwww
Bonus: the app is just an Electron wrapper to their website.
Despite your platform having a common webview.
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does Ventoy work for your use case ? write the ventoy image onto the usb, then you can copy/paste .iso files onto it without formatting. real neat for booting different systems from a single usb
just use dd or Popsicle (popsicle has a native gtk gui) or Ventoy
If you have the iso image, you can write it with the command dd to your stick / sdcard
I stopped using programs like etcher for flashing iso’s after i found out you can just run
cp /path/to/your/file/example.iso /dev/[insert device here]For example
sudo cp ./Downloads/archlinux-2023-09-01.iso /dev/sdbI love it because it just works on any linux machine, always. Of course, this is maybe not fit for your usecase.
You can also use dd, tee or even echo, the archwiki has a good section on flashing iso’s.
I always love the many little implications of this genius “everything is a file”-architecture. Thank you Ken Thompson.
Ah yes enslaved chromium
Discord: I’m in danger
It literally takes 20% of the CPU of my i5-10400 randomly, and even 40%
The app
But the name is Discord Updater. Is the app using that name in the task manager?
Yup
App takes up 300 mb despite being clearly just the mobile site wrapped in a webview.
I’m having a decent experience with progressive web apps. Even posting now with a PWA for Lemmy. It’s given me a bit more control over the bloat and background processes that might be there unwitting to me. Or requiring me to investigate . I don’t enable background notifications or anything like that however. I also direct my DNS traffic thru PiHole but that’s another conversation.
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All the more reason to download a script blocker.
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You don’t have to block all scripts and the few sites which are unusable without them aren’t worth visiting.
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If you download the app anyway, make sure that the first thing you do is to disable the notifications. Many apps have that as their sole purpose.
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My doctor’s office has done this to me when I’ve called in to get help with a prescription issue I was having. Literally just gave me instructions for how to message my doctor through the app. 🫠 Mfer I’m calling because I don’t want to use it! It sucks ass too because it always takes like a week to get a one sentence reply that only addresses half of what I asked.
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