For example:
1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters.
2. Tinder is worse than IRL speed dating.
3. Duolingo is worse than language classes.
4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
5. Etc
It really makes me frustrated as someone who builds software and generally thinks it improves the world…
I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
> 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.
Duolingo isn't really a replacement for classes (which are obviously a magnitude or few more expensive) but self learnings books, tapes and such (IMHO it's mostly inferior to those too but not by a such high degree).
Can't disagree about Tinder/etc. though.
It used to be even better in the sense that you'd only start and then end parking without having to pre select a time. But I think too many people, me included, forgot to end the parking when taking off and paid way more than they actually parked for.
But they don't because they make more money by profiting from people who forget to "clock out" when they are done parking.
They could at least start with adding proper CarPlay and Android Auto support so you can just end the parking from the infotainment. But I think there can be at most a single engineer working on this app if at all. Up until a couple months ago it didn't even have the option for a persistent notification to remind you that you had an ongoing parking...
> But they don't because they make more money by profiting from people who forget to "clock out" when they are done parking.
fwiw, at least in this case, the app that profited from you not clocking out got shut down and bought out by the app that asks you to pre-set your parking time. Which I guess is still not great, but at least somewhat of a step up.
I assume they’re contracted out to the lowest bidder.
In my city the payment schedule on the app significantly lags the meters/official rates. Fine when prices go up, but pretty annoying to app-users when the app charges more than the official parking rates. Maybe if they get their merchant account sanctioned for too many chargebacks someone will take notice.
Here in Nashville, they sold out our public street parking to a private company. Now instead of coins in a meter for the time you want, you have to buy at least an hour for $1.75 (or more), pay by scanning a QR code (which is misprinted on the signs) unless you're in one of the spots where there's a working pay machine, and it now is enforced 24/7 instead of having holidays and weekends off (IIRC it was also free after 6, which was great). Also they had two hour limits where you can't simply move your car, you have to park somewhere they don't check for an indeterminate amount of time. How is any of this an improvement unless you get a cut of the money?
(1) via machine: insert my card into the machine, get ticket, leave
(2) via app: spend 10 minutes registering an account, email, password, phone number, wants verification via email or phone number, wants me to register my credit card and the agree to them selling all my data.
IF on the other hand, they just made it use some kind of common e-cash and no registration, no tracking, no account, I'd be 100% for it.
For places where I don't expect to return (or only rarely), sure, having to do an app is annoying. But for places where you expect to use it often enough, it can be a time-saver, after the initial time cost of setup.
I have seen meters that have smaller increments, like sub-10-minutes, but when the increments cost something like 50 cents, it's hard to really care that much.
It's easy to lose a random piece of paper. Whereas people are generally extremely aware of where their phone is at all times.
My ID is in my wallet. A sheet of paper doesn't fit in my wallet. So I have to put the folded paper in a pocket, where it might fall out when I take out my gloves, or I forget if I put it in my backpack, and in which pocket, etc.
A sheet of paper is extra. My phone isn't. And I sure as heck don't bring a phone with low charge to the airport... when I know I'm probably going to be using it for hours... and I've got my charger with me anyways in case I somehow did.
Also, some people do keep their ID on their phones, either directly on the back of the case (I've seen it more on young women, maybe because lack of pockets) or with something like a magnetic wallet
Its been a while since I've heard any issues with it. I prefer the physical card still.
I have never ever in my life lost my ID or my phone. I have lost paper boarding passes on several occasions.
The failure modes of a phone don't really matter; if the phone fails for some reason (still has never happened to me), I can always ask a gate agent to print me a boarding pass.
I just like not having to keep track of an extra thing. Travel is already often stressful; having one fewer thing to keep on me and avoid losing is nice.
I think of it as multitasking. A paper ticket means I can focus on reading etc on device, while the ticket can serve its purpose. I keep all pertinent materials in a pouch in front of me however so not hard to find.
It's one less thing to worry about when I just want to get on the plane. My paper ticket isn't going to lock before I get to the gate, or not be bright enough. I won't have to "play" with my ticket to keep it active and proper for the scanner.
That's not a thing. They're literally just cameras looking for a QR code.
And unlocking your phone and adjusting brightness is pretty effortless, I dunno. I already do those things lots of times a day.
Then you print a boarding pass at the kiosk? But I've cracked a phone once in ten years, it's not really something I'm worried about.
And paper isn't reliable. For most people, you're much more likely to lose a random sheet of paper than for your phone to suddenly permanently stop working.
Those kiosks are gone from many airports. You're going to have to wait in line to get anything printed. And if you fly Ryanair it will cost you over 50 euro.
Some airlines in Europe check both the boarding pass and the passport/identity card at the boarding gate, to ensure people haven't swapped boarding passes within the airport. I think I see this on flights outside the EU, but I'm not sure.
It takes time to look up a passenger on a computer.
The plane will be delayed if they have to do that for everyone while boarding.
I'm just speculating but if they can simply do a name+DOB-based lookup at a counter, it seems to me like the boarding pass thing might just be for historic reasons where people would feel weird if they are suddenly tracked based on personal details instead of a ticket
And yet for me one time earlier this year said QR code on my Graphene OS phone scanned fine at the TSA checkpoint but refused to scan at the gate, leading to mayhem as the crew couldn't figure out for nearly an hour why the number of people sitting on the plane wasn't equal to the number of people who they registered as boarding.
I think I held up an entire flight for nearly an hour because the QR code on my Graphene OS Android phone scanned fine at the TSA checkpoint but didn't scan at all at the gate. They ended up letting me on the flight without properly registering that I boarded in their system. That triggered some crazy security hold that prevented the crew from obtaining permission to pull back from the gate.
> boarding passes at home before they leave for the airport
It’s been years I’ve heard or seen anyone doing it. Even my parents in their 70s get theirs at the airport.
I just don't want to have to worry about my device being available during boarding nor do I want to have to stop at a kiosk.
Just print at home, go through security and scan at the gate.
I don't think most people worry about that at all. Why wouldn't it be available? If you're heading to the airport from home, your battery is charged.
And if your phone somehow breaks on the way, you print at a kiosk.
It seems far more likely that I'd lose a random piece of paper on the way to the airport than lose my phone...
I live in a major US city and get hit up for cash by the homeless sometimes. When I explain I do not have a cellphone to them when they ask for money through some cash app. They look bewildered. Just 20 years ago I was the only one carrying around such a device for IT reasons. Now I am putting limits on my digital life, and it makes me socially "weird".
Almost nobody carries around small cash or change anymore.
And social services provide the homeless and those in poverty with free smartphones, since they're far more effective at ensuring communications with social services.
So how is the world weird? It all seems quite rational and reasonable to me.
Everything else, I can either use a digital wallet for, or an instant bank transfer (Which I've been given to understand are a bit more of a hassle in the US)
I'd basically never expect to be without a device for an extended period of time, specially not in an airport
I am aware of the single point of failure though, so I do take particular care of not running out of battery, keeping an accesible spare, and some cash around for emergencies I just never use it
Most people get pretty bored going to the airport, in line at the airport, waiting for boarding, waiting to take off, during the flight.
A smartphone loaded with books and magazine articles and podcasts seems pretty essential by this point for nearly everyone.
Not to mention loved ones who want to reach you by text or phone...
But I will call it unusual, because the vast majority of people will have their phone in their pocket or purse while at the airport.
You're assuming the phone works and the internet connection works and the app works and the service behind it responsive. That's a lot of trust in thousands of moving parts.
Meanwhile I have a printed boarding pass which depends on nothing other than me having it in my pocket, so it basically 100% fail-proof.
While I always use the paper boarding pass, I do also check the boarding pass on the app out of curiosity. Easily like half the time on the American Airlines app, when I'm at the gate about to board and click on show boarding pass, the app hangs for many minutes and never responds. I'm always glad I have the paper boarding pass in my pocket instead.
At check-in (24 hours before my flight), I add the boarding pass to Google Wallet. From that point, displaying it doesn't require an internet connection, or having to rely on the airline's often-shitty app.
Yes, the phone has to not be broken, but that's a pretty low bar: in my 15 years of owning smartphones, my phone has been broken and unusable for perhaps a grand total of a few days of time (so under 0.01% of the time). Yes, Google Wallet has to be functioning, but that particular app being broken would be an unusual, surprising occurrence.
And if by 0.01% chance, I can't get the boarding pass off my phone for some reason, I can always go to the check-in desk or kiosk or gate and ask them to print me one.
> Meanwhile I have a printed boarding pass which depends on nothing other than me having it in my pocket, so it basically 100% fail-proof.
I've never lost a phone before, but I have lost paper boarding passes on more than one occasion.
The point is that the mobile boarding pass is a nice convenience (especially with the auto-updating gate number on it), but the ability to get a paper boarding pass printed is never far away if the mobile one fails. So why not just use the mobile one, and save some paper, and the need to keep track of one more item?
I was about to respond, "No way this is true. I don't believe you." But then I found an article claiming that yes, indeed you can be fleeced like this for simply showing up and asking for your boarding pass. Unreal.
https://www.the-independent.com/travel/news-and-advice/check...
Low-cost airlines charge a fee for printing boarding passes at the airport.
Do you also print out directions from Mapquest before you leave home?
But I've never had a problem with a screen capture of a boarding pass, and I've found the Apple wallet to work as well. The airport kiosks are good for printing out the pass when you check in, or even for just printing if you checked in on-line 24 hours prior.
But at the automatic gates to security, and at the boarding gate, I think the majority of people having trouble scanning their boarding pass are using a phone. For those elderly people who can't scan a paper boarding pass, the staff can immediately help — but they're much less able to help scan a barcode on a phone, which might be set too dim, be turning to landscape mode, etc.
I prefer to use mobile boarding passes so I don't have to waste paper, and don't have to keep track of yet one more thing while traveling. (I'm already bringing my phone, so I have to keep track of that regardless.)
And who has printers at home anymore?
My wife and I fly quite often and mostly Delta - over a dozen times a year. Very few people still use paper tickets.
What are you printing off and mailing so often?
Any documents you I don’t want to read on my phone, I read on my iPad.
I didn't have a printer until a few years ago (my now-wife really wanted one, so we got one). I do appreciate having it when I need it (easier than going to FedEx office), but I still very rarely have to print something out. I do really like that the printer has a built-in scanner; I've used that much more often than to print something.
> Most people just have the paper passes. They are guaranteed to work.
I've definitely had paper boarding passes that just wouldn't scan (probably from a faling airport kiosk printer), or a pass that had torn and even holding it together just right, it still wouldn't work.
I don't think I've ever had a mobile boarding pass that wouldn't scan, though of course there are other things that can go wrong, like the phone itself not working, which isn't a failure mode of paper passes.
But whatever, if my more-convenient, non-paper-wasting mobile pass doesn't work for some reason, I'll just go to the gate agent and ask them to print me one.
Just last week I flew back home from SFO. I needed to change the flight at the last minute. The app failed to update with the new flight. The airline had removed all the boarding pass kiosks from that airport and only seemed to have luggage drop service. I asked an airport employee how I could get a boarding pass printed, and he pointed to a poorly-marked lane with a sign about "special accommodations" or something, like I was blind. I waited in that line for about 20 minutes along with people who were trying to check their bags. Eventually I got to someone who seemed really put out that I hadn't checked in yet and that they'd need to push a few more buttons on their computer to do that for me.
It's never crossed my mind that an airline app exists and I would never consider installing one. If they don't want to provide self-service kiosks or a working website, I guess they'll have to have more demand for agents. Same with banks: there's no check deposits through their website, so I go in person when I need to do that. Installing an app is just not even on my radar to consider.
I'd also never rely on a gate number from my phone anyway knowing that it could be out of date. I'd have to verify with a departure board or sign at the gate anyway, so I'm just going to start there.
Most people I know also don't even have a printer at home. (I didn't either, until a few years ago.)
Why do iOS and Android phones have a "wallet", and why a boarding pass would have anything to do with it?
There's an electronic solution strictly better than the app, for when you have no printer handy: just give the user the goddamned PDF! Works everywhere, works offline, can be printed if needed, and the user can manage, send or back it up however they like.
It's a simple solution that works.
1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue.
3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
Apple Wallet (and Apple Pay) are actually one of my favorite smartphone features. The built-in Wallet (speaking for iOS here) has a few advantages over a folder of PDFs:
- The QR code is always fairly big without having to pan and zoom a PDF file
- The display brightness is automatically increased to make reading the QR code easier
- The Wallet syncs with my Apple Watch (where passes use a different, optimized layout) giving me backup if something where to happen to my phone during boarding
- Passes can be updated by the airline (e.g. gate changes)
- Passes automatically expire, I don’t have to cleanup myself. (There’s archive in case I need an old one)
- Passes can be shown on your lock screen during the boarding time for easier access
- Passes can be multilingual, adapting to your phone’s language
If I’m sitting at a restaurant or a bar I should get up every 20 minutes to see if something has changed?
Should I also print out MapQuest directions before I go somewhere and wait for the paper boy to deliver the newspaper to get the news?
And it’s literally a mile from one end of the airport to the other. Is it somehow better to look on a board than just look on a phone?
And then you also get notifications when the flight changes so drastically that I need to completely change my flight plans. Just this past weekend we were suppose to fly MCO - MSP - LAS and flight changes meant we were going to misd our layover.
Luckily we were notified as soon as the change happen and we were able to make a change to MCO - ATL - LAS and get two of the last seats.
The same happen on the way back. It was LAS - MSP - MCO and we were able to change it to LAS - LAX - MCO.
Things always change when you fly a lot. The sooner you know about those changes the better.
That’s what I usually do. It’s not that much of an effort to look at the screen right at the gate you’re sitting at to confirm that nothing has changed. I‘ve been to ATL twice, it’s not that bad.
What are you going to do when something happens to your phone …
Can you imagine… how did we manage to live before everyone and their dog had a phone in their pocket.
So yeah… yeah? That’s exactly what you supposed to be doing.
And you somehow think that’s more efficient? Do you also think polling is more efficient than web hooks and push notifications? Why would I do that?
And the restaurants are usually not right at the gate you’re sitting at. Well in our case we are usually sitting in the lounge…
> What are you going to do when something happens to your phone
Well, I personally would take out my cellular equipped iPad on the rare occasions that I was flying by myself and I would still get text notifications on my cellular equipped watch or depend on my wife having her phone, cellular equipped iPad or Watch.
If all that failed yes I would have to get a paper ticket - which you can do at the gate.
How often do you actually fly? My wife and I have been flying over a dozen times a year post Covid.
I was in ATL either flying in, out or through ATL over 25x last year alone.
> Can you imagine… how did we manage to live before everyone and their dog had a phone in their pocket.
I personally had my first phone in my pocket in 1995. Never once in 30 years has anything “happened to my phone”.
Re push vs pull… which one do you prefer more? Kafka or MQTT? On a more serious note… pull because I don’t sit snd stare at the phone all the time. Phone stays in the pocket. So the act of taking it out of the pocket is a pull action.
There are no screens and announcements at the lounge? You went to the airport to fly somewhere, not shopping or a dinner for two, no? What’s more important than getting to your destination?
That’s just it, even if I didn’t have lounge access, I would be hanging out at a restaurant or a bar that isn’t near the gate. I would have to be constantly looking on the board with all of the flights. ATL has 192 gates spread across seven concourses and two terminals.
> pull because I don’t sit snd stare at the phone all the time. Phone stays in the pocket
Of course I have an alarm set for when I need to start heading toward my gate. But gate changes and when it’s time to board are both push notifications to both my phone and my watch.
> There are no screens and announcements at the lounge
2100 flights take off per day from ATL. That’s over 100 flights an hour - I think there are at least 6 hours a day where no flights take off. They explicitly say they don’t make announcements.
This goes back to do you really want to be searching for your flight on a board with that many flights?
> You went to the airport to fly somewhere, not shopping or a dinner for two, no
If you either get to the airport early to avoid rush hour or have a long layover, you probably will end up having a meal or drinks while you wait. We had a four hour layover at LAX last week.
I liked this, as finding the single 12:34 flight was much quicker than looking at the 4+ flights all with "12:30" at another airport, where on the display each line is rotating between multiple flight numbers, airlines and languages.
Personally, even if I'm using an app I still look at the screens to check. A notification might not have been sent, or my phone might have dropped off the airport wifi leaving me with no connection, or roaming might have stopped working.
I'm mentally handicapped (my mind is apparently somewhere on a spectrum) and technology allows me to limit human interaction- which causes me physical discomfort. I realise normal people love to talk to the lady at McDonald's, they probably live for that shit.
Uh... look at the big departures board, duh. I don't see why it's weird to want to use an indisputably more convenient method (auto-updating pass on my phone) for the common case, but still be able to fall back to a less-convenient method (departures board) if the uncommon case comes up.
And no big deal if I need a paper boarding pass. I can just walk over to the gate, show them my ID, and ask them to print me one.
It's not that deep, just a skeuomorphic name for somewhere where you'd keep importants/valuables for quick access, credit/debit cards, boarding passes, concert tickets
Not unlike keeping a folded up copy of a pass in a physical wallet (Which may not be universal, but I would have guessed not that uncommon either)
Since I use my phone to pay for things, book rides between places and basically existing in general I also keep a power bank on my person and a spare phone in my house
But if I'm not confident on availability I also keep alternatives, I've not used physical money in months (Other than local bus fares), but I do keep some cash on my person, as well as the physical cards that I use virtually on my phone and copies of boarding passes when necessary, not that I've needed any of them recently, I just like covering my bases, it's not a binary situation, I'd also like to keep spares if my only copy was physical
I generally just get the mobile pass and put it in Google Wallet. If I ever run into a situation where my phone is lost/broken/battery-drained, I'll just go up to the check-in desk or a kiosk and get my boarding pass printed. No big deal.
Maybe it's better these days, but back when I used to use online apps/sites to pay for parking in private lots, 4/5 times I still got a "ticket." I never had to pay the fine with money, only with time.
I think it really was the 4th time I decided to stop using those apps entirely.
Sometimes I wonder if the devs behind these apps and processes feel embarrassed by the results. I would be, even if the failures weren't my fault.
And once the gate or departure time changes, your printed boarding pass will start lying to you.
Only when I checked the time and wondered why we weren't boarding yet, and opened the app did I notice that the gate changed.
Even afterwards the one stored in Apple Wallet did not update. I even tried to do the pull-to-refresh. Eventually I pulled to refresh, and that worked.
An unreliable boarding pass in Apple Wallet is worse than a paper boarding pass.
With the paper one I know I need to check the screens etc. With the Apple the app implies that you no longer have to do this.
And you get used to it. You stop doing the things you did before. That muscle memory disappears. Not dissimilar to driving with GPS, or programming with AI.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
Yeah... nothing more I love than having to scan a QR code to get an app from someone I don't know, then go through the signup process, then input a buncha personal information into an app... instead of just dropping 10 quarters into a metal stick and walking away for the next two hours.
> > 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
> Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.
Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer. They're not gold bars. They're not expensive.
Quality of execution obviously matters. I find EasyPark (Swedish company, used all over the place) a lot better than the usual parking meters. Plus I can use it in several cities with different currencies (in my case Euros and Czech Koruna), saving me from carrying more change.
We have the technology.
True. I does suck when travelling. Locally I find it much more convenient though.
> dropping 10 quarters
You're always carrying a bag full of coins wherever you go? And even if I did I'd end up overpaying/underpaying half of the time.
> Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer.
So I should waste space with a huge device that I use <10 times per year?
I mean I could bring it over from the other room or the attic or wherever it's lying around but why would I waste time and mental energy each time I'm travelling having to keep track of some piece of paper that I mustn't lose? Seems rather pointless...
Cheap Android phones aren't expensive either and can provide a lot more than a printer for most people these days.
The desk at my AirBnB doesn't seem to have one.
> They're not gold bars. They're not expensive.
If someone has an alternate solution to owning a printer that works for them, whats it to you? Owning a printer so you can print half of the boarding passes you need every time you fly seems excessive to me
I can't remember the last time I had any quarters on me, let alone 10. Coins are annoying to carry around, and I don't drive enough or park in paid lots/areas enough to expect that I'll remember to ensure that I always have change in my car.
> Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer.
While I do have a printer now (at my wife's request), I went a good 20 years without one, and was fine with that.
> They're not expensive.
That's a weird take. Even if the printer itself isn't that expensive, keeping it fed with ink/toner can be. Not to mention they're just annoying pieces of hardware, with usually-shitty software, that take up precious desk real-estate.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
Pay-on-exit car parks are the answer to this. Combined with contactless card payment and that's peak parking experience.
Except having the actual barrier is expensive. The license plate reader is cheaper, so they'll do that instead, and if it malfunctions, hope you don't mind paying for a full day of parking!
US here (you are presumably elsewhere given that you said "car park"), but I can't remember ever seeing a parking garage that had a parking app. All of them are like you describe, with pay-on-exit.
I mainly see parking apps for street parking (where pay-on-exit can't work), and sometimes more basic parking lots where there isn't room for the entry/exit gate and hardware, or lots where it's bare-bones enough that the owner certainly isn't going to spring for the expense of installing something like that.
Pay for the exact time, or if you forget, pay the full time period you’re legally allowed to park.
Instead, on my city’s app I must select a car (despite having only one), select a zone (despite GPS), and then manually enter my card (despite it being my account default). Every time.
Basically the flow for me is open the app, and hit how long I want to park for. And then the app will let me know when my parking is running out and I can add time on my phone without going back to the car.
In my experiece, apps have increased costs around 50% and some even try to add monthly subscription.
...or show the document they sent you rather than printing it?
As someone who never installed these wallets (maybe I'm missing out), what's the problem they solve?
You can just print at the airport at the check-in machines.
I never even bother checking-in in advance of arriving at the airport. I theorize that they assign bad seats to early checkins to incentivize people to pay to choose a different seats. I have at various times been assigned to upgraded seats (not upgraded class, but e.g. emergency row, bulkhead, etc.) when checking in at the airport.
I have been to airports a non-trivial amount of times where there were lines even at the self-service kiosks.
> I theorize that they assign bad seats to early checkins
Oof, I would never fly an airline or buy a fare class that didn't let me choose a seat immediately, at time of booking.
Anyway, this theory of yours needs some evidence... doesn't really pass the smell test for me.
I mean, that just seems like an expensive way to pay for seat selection.
e.g. Checking a route I fly frequently for an arbitrary date, it’s $232 (with seat selection in the $20 range) as the base fare rate, or $386 for the cheapest fare that includes seat selection. (With some other bonuses that don’t have any value to me, e.g. checked bags and a better cancellation policy.)
But they are worse than mid-2000s tech. I used to have a tag with an lcd timer that I loaded up with cash periodically. When I parked in a metered space in the city, I just turn the thing on and hang it on my driver window. It was synced with the parking schedule, so the timer wouldn’t run until metered parking started and stopped at the end of metered parking. Parking enforcement simply had to look at the tag to make sure it was on and had a positive value. When I came back, I just shut the thing off—I paid for exactly what I used, always. Great UX: turn on thing, hang in window, remove, turn off thing, plug into computer to add money every few months.
Compare to now where there’s An App that requires multiple taps to tell it which street your on, which car, oh look it forgot your credit card and they don’t take Apple Pay, time to enter all that data in again… oh yeah, also you have to overbuy parking and they charge transaction fees every time if you try to buy exact and add time later.
Also, now parking enforcement has to key in everyone’s license plates to figure out if they’re legal or not (no automated plate readers—they’re illegal in this state). Apart from being annoying, now that data is conveniently harvested.
And what wrong with Tinder? It is great if you are hot or a woman. And if you are not - well, nobody never cared anyway.
If we trust those historical charts statistically over 70-80% of all people used to meet their partners though friends, work, school or family before the 2000s (work slowly replacing family since the 50s). Going out with random people you just met and had no other connection with was relatively rare.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
The last time I tried parking in downtown Salt Lake City the city's app wouldn't even install on my phone, complaining about being built for an older Android version. Fortunately the web site still worked. Sort of. I had to try a couple of different browsers before I found one that functioned with the site.
When riding Caltrain I get charged for the maximum amount I could possibly pay (all stops) when I board. Then when I get off at my stop I tap again and get refunded for all the stops I ended up not getting to. It works fine. Seems a meter could be a "tap in/tap out" thing. If it's 5 hours until it's free to park, put a hold for 5 hours of time. If you get back in 2 hours, release the hold and only charge for 2 hours when you tap out.
It's even possible to do this with cash. Imagine a machine that calculates your change and spits out bills and/or coins. Oh wait, yeah, we've had that technology since around 1959. It would just need to print out a ticket with a bar code or something to authenticate that you're the one who paid in the first place. Did you lose your ticket? Sorry, looks like you're paying for the rest of the day. But that's still a lot cheaper than a citation.
I suspect it's not "pay max/get refund" because municipalities can't stop milking those sweet sweet citations from people who fail to correctly guess how much time they'll need up front.
Not the appS for parking in your location. ( I say apps because I would have to register to two apps and those don't cover 100% of districts)
But where I live, the parking apps are buggy and resource hungry (could be just another bug)
We can still buy 15 min / 30 min ,60 min tickets. The problem is each district has its own tickets :/
I still prefer the tickets. At least I know with certainty if I can park or not (depending on my having of tickets or not)
But usually there is a private parking lot around the corner. Which is another argument agaisnt installing yet another app.
So everyone wins here, except us: the app company gets to make a killing on compulsory payment processing, and City of Long Beach gets to continue to pull in parking revenue without worrying about whether their payment machines still work—a broken machine is not an excuse because you can still pay with the app because everyone has a smartphone with an up-to-date OS and functioning cell service with appropriate bandwidth, right? I’m sure I could have complained to the city and gotten my +/-dollar back, but I didn’t have time just to do so for the principle of the thing.
It should be illegal to have that sort of setup... if the lowest-common-denominator form of payment is broken, then it should be free.
Now I don’t trust it. Googling the flight number brings in the updated gate. Not the apple wallet boarding pass though.
I’m not, not anymore.
> Why do you need your phone to tell you what's posted on numerous displays that you walk past?
Convenience.
Other folks here were talking about how their devices did not update in a timely fashion. They had to force refresh several times to get a response. Meanwhile the gate screens have a single job and update within seconds.
I had a frustrating experience with this. We were staying in a small town and the casino had a ferry to cross the river, which would save 20 minutes driving and be kind of neat. I'm guessing they had issues with the staff collecting payments, so they had switched to a parking app to pay for it. You pay for the ferry as a "parking lot" and it should all work fine.
Signs at the road to it say to pay before proceeding, so I do. After driving all the way up, it turns out the ferry wasn't running (they neglected to close the gate at the start of the road). The parking app was tied into a pair of license plate readers on the boat, but since I couldn't drive past the "exit", they never considered my "parking" to end and it racked up a charge over two days. Of course, the "parking" starts without my car being detected going on to the boat.
Fortunately, I got a refund, but it required jumping through a bunch of hoops. If we paid the way it used to be done this wouldn't be possible at all!
>Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
Delta's app is pretty good. I really like the peace of mind from being able to see where my bags are, including when they get put on the conveyor.
So if the parking thing is broken and I don't have my phone with me I can't go to the doctor today?
Cool. If a meter was broken I could just go to another spot with a working meter.
In Laguna beach they had $1 coin machines to get around the "ten quarters" thing, and this was 20 years ago!
Case in point - Toronto Parking Authority (Green P)'s app forces you to keep a balance and refill in multiples of $20 CAD, whereas street parking meters can charge your credit card in any increment as necessary (e.g. $1.25).
Also, the app forces you to disclose your phone number as an account identifier; you have no option to sign up by email or username. https://mobilepay.greenp.com/faq/i-have-a-new-phone-number-w...
The culture of designing user-hostile apps is wild.
The only annoying part is when the app gets battery killed with terrible reception in the airport and then takes 2 minutes to show you the boarding pass it already downloaded.
Here in NL, parking apps show predictions of available parking spaces and some even allow reservation: you book a timeslot and enter your license plate, and on arrival the gates open automatically when it recognizes your license plate. No more fiddling with tickets, no queueing at the payment console.
For on-street parking, the apps usually allow two ways of parking registration: either you enter the location where you're parked (via manual lookup or phone GPS location), or you scan a QR code displayed on road signs. I'd call this one a solid win.
4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
The train service here has this reminder in various locations: "If you use your phone to store/buy your ticket, you are responsible for keeping it charged. If your phone drains empty, you don't have a valid ticket and will be fined." I wouldn't want to be in the situation where I need to transfer after a long-haul flight and find my phone empty. For me, paper always beats battery for longevity of important documents.
Generally, yes, (it may have improved since I left but the Chicago one was a nightmare a few years back) however the best experience I've ever had was in Nashville (don't recall the company name).
I signed up via the web (no app) and then the parking lot has cameras/sensors that detect my plate. Any parking lot owned by that company is now accessible to me in the city. I can just pull in, it detects me (notifying me my "session" has started), and then charges my card on file when I pull out (either in an hour, or even the next day).
As with a lot of things, there are often examples of well-executed solutions at the fringes, they're just not deployed at a large enough scale to cancel out the other negative examples. Software can improve a lot, but it's down to the team/individuals involved to care enough to do it right (and not be distracted by other incentives).
I generally agree, but I’ve had a great experience with one of those. I just wish they all did the same streamlined thing this one particular app I used did.
The QR code I had to scan actually ran an App Clip instead of taking me to a website. Everything was done in one screen: enter plate, parking stall number, hours. My physical interaction with it was just scrolling a little and hitting a button. Done. Wonderful.
Most parking solitions are a shitshow though. Multiple screens (seriously, why?!), having to create an account, not handling payment via Apple Pay so I have to enter my credit card manually. Having to enter the parking location manually (how come it’s not a parameter in the QR code URL?). I’d really like to know what happens at the companies that develop those. It’s borderline criminal how bad they are.
Whenever I fly business class for an international trip, I always check in at the counter. It's just as fast, but getting that boarding pass printing on cardstock and tucked into the photo page of my passport feels so quaint and charming.
Having waited in several check-in counter lines because the airline's app insists that a human needs to check my travel documents before giving me a boarding pass, no, it is so not just as fast. Even for business class. Even if there is no line, I can tap through a mobile app check-in flow (in the comfort of my own home!) faster than a check-in agent will usually verify my identity and print a boarding pass. Regardless, I'd rather not add that kind of variability into the airport process, and have to pad my arrival time even more.
> getting that boarding pass printing on cardstock and tucked into the photo page of my passport feels so quaint and charming.
This made me smile :)
I don't know about Tinder specifically, but from what I've heard apps seem to be where most people meet nowadays - you'll find normal people mixed in with the weirdos. Meanwhile real-life speed dating is where the really desperate people go and is mostly weirdos.
I had come to this conclusion long ago i.e. computers/software are now majorly being oriented towards purely money-making (for certain vested interests) rather than doing any good for people/society or the world in general. The original idealism is long gone.
women, and a small pool of men, use Tinder to efficiently find hookups. IRL speed dating is actually a much bigger pain in the ass for that purpose. it's "uber for nookie"
No improvement - displacement vector towards the positive half space of life quality - is implied, except for those selling it.
The customers for these apps are the parking lot operators and they love the apps.
> 2. Tinder is worse than IRL speed dating.
It is now, it definitely wasn't when it first came out. Prime example of enshittification, but not an example of what you're conveying.
> 3. Duolingo is worse than language classes.
This one I feel has the most merit, but still not a lot. What % of Duolingo users would've actually taken classes were it not for these apps? Also, some people don't learn well from classes (I'm one of them). Not that that makes Duolingo any better, but despite its pretenses it's squarely aimed at extremely shallow, casual, surface-level learning that might be useful on a holiday. And people don't take classes for that.
> 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
In what way? Admittedly I've only used the apps of 2 airlines, but they worked fine.
It was a lot less convenient let me tell you.
Ehhhhh. In the case where it's a one-off, yes, because I'm not going to install an app and give it my payment details if I only expect to rarely park in a particular place.
But, for example, in downtown Truckee, California, I always use the parking app, especially in the winter, so I don't have to futz with a machine out in the cold while my fingers are freezing. I pay from inside the warmth of my car, or inside the building I'm going to. Even in the summer, it's nice to be able to pay while I'm walking to my destination, rather than stand there staring at a machine, waiting for it to charge my credit card.
It's also great to be able to "feed the meter" from my table at the restaurant if end up there longer than I expected, and the time has run out.
> Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
To each their own, I guess. In general I prefer not to waste paper for one-time use things, and when I'm traveling I already have my phone, and not having to keep track of more things is a plus. I do worry about situations where I could lose or break my phone (though I could lose a printed boarding pass too) or its battery runs out, but if that happens I can still go to the check-in counter or a kiosk and get a boarding pass printed, so I'm really no worse off than if I didn't have the mobile app in the first place.
1. Parking Kitty is much much easier than fussing with grafitti-ed, vandalized, unserviced parking machines.
2. Speak for yourself, Tinder is a great rebound app; vastly more productive than the limited pools at speed dating (which was big in like, 1998?)
3. True. But I don't have time for language classes. Anecdote but Duolingo brought my French language skills back to life, but probably because I already had them.
4. Do you travel much? Apps are far, far superior to any mechanism. Let's say your flight is cancelled due to weather. You can (a) call the 800 number and wait in a phone queue, (b) go to the desk and wait in a physical queue, which is challenging if you are in a country that is not your native language, or (c) log into the app to make changes instead of waiting for a person. Have you ever wanted to change your seat, or upgrade? You have the same three choices. Yeah, apps are hands-down light-years ahead of alternatives when you travel frequently.