I have an app for programming my chicken coop. My 401k company just created an app for onboarding new participants.

These should have been mobile friendly webpages.

  • exohuman@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Often, the apps are there just to collect ad information for you in a way browsers don’t allow.

    • Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      Ding ding ding. It’s all about the tracking data. Also, notifications. They want to be able to buzz you with spam, to remind you that the app exists.

    • Teodomo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Is there a way to insulate apps in my phone from looking at stuff they shouldn’t? Kinda like Firefox Multi-Account Containers.

      • exohuman@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        On iOS, in the App Store entry for each app there is a section called “App Privacy.” You can use that section to see what data the app will collect. I do not know how to prevent it from collecting that data once it is installed.

  • Cam@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I hate propietary apps that are just services or stores and especially when they refuse to have a website and make you download their app.

    I do not need 200 apps on my phone. Just one web browser app will do.

  • Ozzah@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    And not every program needs an installer.

    Just because I downloaded a program to write ISOs to a USB drive, does not mean it needs to be installed on the system. Unless it’s something like MS Office, why does it need to be installed? Just give me a zip file, I will extract it and delete it when I don’t need it anymore.

        • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You can tell he’s not a FreeBSD user because he doesn’t have to dive in and alter the source to make it compatible.

      • lunarul@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, who needs an installer when you can just ./configure, then ./make and ./make install, just stopping to fetch and build missing dependencies occasionally, upgrade some others, then retry.

        • Falmarri@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Or just download a standalone binary. Or don’t download anything because most things are in your package manager.

      • KonekoSalem@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        Windows doesn’t require you to install most things though. Developers just choose to do so unnecessarily sometimes.

        Why hate windows for this of all things? Isn’t it normal to “install” packages in Linux as well?

        • Falmarri@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Via your package manager. Not by downloading some random nonsense a random developer decides should write who knows what their system files

    • danwardvs@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      If you’re on Windows and looking for a portable ISO burner, Rufus works great and is a 1.4mb portable .exe for that. It works great for when I overwrite Windows with Linux.

      • ares35@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        my directory of ‘portable’ programs has about sixty different things in it. some of which are used daily and are either in the path or are windows’ default for something.

  • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    My 401k company just created an app for onboarding new participants.

    “If you’d like me to run company software, you’ll have to provide a company device for me to run it on.”

    Never install work software on a personal device. Security, Privacy, Expectations (regarding personal resources).

    Along with this, never use personal software/accounts/services with company devices. You can’t be sure who’s watching and can’t be sure you’ll have a chance to remove/collect your personal data before being locked out of said device.

    • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s not their employer. It’s the company they have their 401k retirement plan with.

      Empower, John Hancock, fidelity, vanguard, whoever.

    • TheMightyCanuck@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      100% this. I put my foot down at my last job after finding out their app demanded device location when it wasn’t being used.

      I got the fuck out the next week. Place is already sliding downhill fast

  • aname@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    I rather have an app and a way to control the chicken coop offline that depend on the internet connection to whether my chicken coop works or not. That is in my opinion a right place for an app instead of a website.

    Most online services don’t need an app though.

    • FrankTheHealer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Like some kind of self hosted solution on Nextcloud or something. Maybe linked in with Home Assistant or able to access it remotely via Tailscale.

      Feels like overkill but if I had the time and the money, I would love to tinker with a system like that lol

  • reddig33@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Totally agree. I’m hoping web apps make a comeback as well — a lot of apps in App Stores are just websites in an “app wrapper”. Start rejecting that shit and tell people to publish it as a web app.

  • grrrmo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I hate how all smart devices need their own apps. Lights, vacuum cleaners, doorbells, fans, etc. super annoying to go through my phone and see so many random apps.

    • aname@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      I rather have an app when I need that stuff to work regardless of the internet connection.

      • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        As if apps weren’t basically just thin skins over browsers and needing internet connections anyway…

  • shiroininja@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I agree. Same with every business doesn’t need a freaking app. It’s why I’ve avoided the app development sector of programming in my career. I don’t want to crank out shitty apps for every local business for the rest of my life. talk about boring.

    • kratoz29@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      The most useful PWA I have found is Voyager, and its app counterpart is way better IMHO.

      Native android/iOS apps are way smoother for daily navigation, you also get some perks like notifications and that.

      • KonekoSalem@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        I have not tried out voyager, but just from looking at it’s GitHub, it’s essentially just a web browser packed in a native app anyways.

        Performance shouldn’t really be different from browser app to local app this way unless something is done wrong, or there’s some specific functionality, like async I/o that’s still unsupported.

        Notifications are also a thing in web browsers nowadays. Most device features that you can access in a separate app are actually supported by now.

        • Aa!@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Nah, Voyager is primarily a pwa that works entirely in your phone’s browser.

          They recently packaged it with a browser into an APK because lots of users asked for a “native app” for some reason. But the pwa is still there, and is still the main way it is developed

          But no front end for Lemmy should ever need to be an app.

    • Chozo@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Because not everybody likes the stock interface of Lemmy. Same thing with Reddit, and why people chose to use third-party apps there, as well. Web apps aren’t always designed in the most intuitive ways for every user, and sometimes a native app can fill those UI/UX gaps, or add features that aren’t possible through a PWA.

      • Another Catgirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        why PWA and not a plain web app? I think the only difference is that PWAs can ve turned into a pinned pop-up window (that acts a bit like an electron app) when using a chromium-based browser.

        • Chozo@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Even then, there’s a lot of feature you end up missing out on. Even just basic navigation has to be done via the browser’s default navigation options. Even simple things like long-pressing something on the page will typically only give you access to your browser’s long-press menu (though that’s not always the case, in my experience very few web apps handle this effectively).

          Personally, I prefer the experience of a native app. But I get why it’s not appealing to all people.