Why apps? (2023 Update)

Desktop browsers don't count anymore. There are billions of phones to attract marketing messages, and very few desktops.

I view this arrangment in our favor. We are not bothered much by ad campaigns and can go about our business of collecting information relatively unhampered. There may be a few useful aps on cellphones, but we can usually find similar or the equivalent for desktops.

So rejoice that marketers are passing us by.

(Opinions lightly held by a private citizen)

I have been wondering that myself, and I also see it as a step back.

Not sure if working outside the browser gives them more control over the device, perhaps some - I remember facebook constantly suggesting I use their app, "better than the browser" (I don't use it, never tried it really, I am not much of a facebooker although I have a profile etc.). May be there are many people capable of writing apps - this must have been made really easy - and they need to be kept busy, who knows.

Apps are supposed to be more secure and more convenient. Many apps can store accounts and passwords directly, since you are supposed to have the phone under control all the time. That is until you lose the phone.

Have been trying to get an Android OS running on a PC, just in order to communicate with hardware using a bluetooth link - which is what mfr app provides.

Android cannot recognize, access or use most of PC hardware, to do this. Complete flop.

Android not ready for anything other than use as toy.

RL

Have you tried this ?

lørdag den 8. januar 2022 kl. 16.33.18 UTC+1 skrev legg:

there are 3 billion active Android devices ...

The way they ask for ridiculously broad permissions should be a clue.

"Why does Walmart need access to my camera, phone, and messages?"

One guess.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I use FaceBook for business and hate it. It is very clumsy and difficult to search for past conversations. Flagging stuff like you can do with most email readers appears to be lost. Unfortunately most of the customer base I need is on FB so I struggle with their lousy interface and miss the days when a post I made offering technical advice was viewed (possibly) by more than a dozen or two people who subscribe to that FB Group.

FaceBook is a fool's wasteland and shows no sign of improving as it appears to only care about the present, not the past, nor can you plan for the future. It is only following the money of advertisers...I trust that people will get bored with it at some point - I consider it a fad.

John :-#(#

I think sometimes it is just lazy developers that doesn't bother picking what they actually need

if it scans barcodes it need access to the camera, it might need access to messages to read a message with something like a discount coupon

Thankfully in 2022 you can still use Usenet:

Lol! The app for my go to airline can't pull up my flight info unless I tell it the confirmation number! What idiots came up with that idea? The ones who decided to make it work *just like the web page*! What is the point of being logged in if it's going to ask me questions it should be answering! '

Let's just say there aren't a lot of closed-source apps on my phone.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Because people don't use the browser nearly as much as they used to in general, the average browser-user only goes to like 10 sites 95% of the time anyway.

The Web of the 1990s with lots of independent content is gone, the web of 2022 consists largely of three things in 2022: Content produced and/or controlled by giga-buck corporations, advertisements, and shit basically nobody looks at.

Apologies for the redundancy. but the Web is becoming as redundant as some of my typing when I'm running late on my first cup of coffee

Right, the WWW is destined to become a mostly-dead technology, like FTP and Usenet. The average 20 year old of 2040 will have no idea what HTTP is or how to access a "web site" any more than the average 20 y/o of

All that would have to happen for the WWW to mostly die as a mainstream technology is for Google to decide it's not worth the trouble to scrape it anymore and get out of the search-engine business entirely, which is a plausible thing to happen in the next decade or two.

You can trust them to purposely invent ways to make the broad permissions seem legitimate, so that they can better spy on you as a result.

Jeroen Belleman

Emulators inherently have no access to hardware.

I've tried booting Android from USB - supposed to allow access but needs the OS to do so - hardware model and driver dependent.

RL

The option of buying an android tablet and setting it up to run the app seems the only current alternative.

Why? because Google doesn't want to do the work of creating a real OS. Revenue from toys id apparently enough.

RL