Enough with the APPS!

Apps that provide discounts in stores are excluding people from society as are apps for parking. Not everyone has a smartphone for all sorts of reasons. I have one but I also have an old style phone.

When a store tells me (at checkout or customer services) I need the app on my phone I produce my old phone and ask them to show me. I want more awareness of the people we are excluding. However, this is isn't my only reason for minimising the 'download our app game'.

Nobody ever reads the terms & conditions for apps. The amount of access these apps have to your personal data is intrusive and more than they need to function. Our data is used for marketing, targeting and data sales to other places. Many people believe that large caches of data mean there's no threat to them and that's not the case. There are varying degrees of risk from receiving annoying sales calls to having your identity stolen. Most people have optimism bias, i.e. 'it won't happen to me'.

I've had my data involved in three huge breaches that I know of which means it's out there for use by criminals. These were not apps. For example, one was my workplace and it included my NI number.

I use apps that are useful for me and do not require so much access they have my shoe size and blood group! I look at every detail before I download one. I have bluetooth & the internet turned off when I'm out and about.

If a car park is app only (and there appears to almost be a different app for every car park) we won't park there. It isn't convenient but we will find somewhere else.

I don't believe it is progress if something excludes those with disabilities, those with little or no disposable income or those who are of an age at which they choose not to embrace an aspect of new technology.

I too am fed up with apps. I was so cross recently when I saw that the only way I could get a very good special offer at John Lewis , for which I do have a membership card was by app. My phone would not cooperate. I bought the item from Boots in the end with the same offer.

MissInterpreted

The bus one is definitely handy here. My pet hate is having to download an app or scan a q code in restaurants to see the menu. I like to have a 'proper' menu to read and choose what I want.

I haven’t had that for ages, shortly after the first lockdown, but when I did I told them I needed a proper menu - phone screen is too small for me to be able to read it easily.
They didn’t argue.

I’m probably wrong, as certain ‘ things ‘ on my iPad will be apps. Having said that, I don’t accept apps when thy are offered - so far.

Ps however they have offered help downloading the NHS app and using the new system. It’s all about triage decisions to relieve the receptionists from medical decisions. You can still phone but decision is done in the same way.
The banking app has been a god send to us.

NHS app is now required to access A crx
to request an appointment

I don’t have any, as far as I know.

My Samsung phone allows me to keep the apps I use most on my front page and I move the others around to where suits me best.

gulligranny

Petra, I can't get any apps on my Kindle - please advise how this is done?

Do you have a Papperwhite? If that’s, yes, you won’t be able too.
Different system.

NotAGran55

Casdon on my phone there is a search field on the app page. The first couple of letters finds the app.

I’ve never noticed that NotaGran55, but I’ll definitely have a look because I’m fed up of trying to find apps on multiple pages. Thanks.

Every time we use an App yet another small piece of our soul is sucked into a mysterious AI black hole, to be reassembled on the other side like a jigsaw by the Martians......

Casdon on my phone there is a search field on the app page. The first couple of letters finds the app.

Apparently the QR codes on restaurant tables can be tampered with by scammers. So I don’t use them at all.

Apps are ok, not gone. 🙄

Apps are gone, if they work ok. The ones that drive me nuts are the ones that don’t work ok…😖😖

petra

Winterwhite
Would it help if you had a small kindle to carry around. You can transfer apps from your phone to a kindle. That way you would have a larger screen to view.

I intend to buy a tablet for just that purpose, transferring to the tablet all the things I struggle with on a phone because of my neural probems and lack of feeling in my fingertips.

Ruddy parking apps are a nuisance.
I can’t download them on my phone and there isn’t an option to pay cash either, so ended up not paying .
Thankfully haven’t got a fine through the post yet.!

Agree. Wouldn’t entertain a cafe or restaurant that required one to order via an app.

Whatever next?!,

gulligranny

Petra, I can't get any apps on my Kindle - please advise how this is done?

I think it only works with the Kindle Fire, and an Android based phone. If you have any other type of Kindle (and there are lots) or an Apple phone then you can’t do it.

I don’t mind apps, but what does irritate me is finding them on the phone screen when I need them, when you have to scroll through pages to find the one you need it’s frustrating if you can’t immediately see it.

Ferry23: That's because I glance up and look at my wall calendar while everyone else is furiously stabbing away at their phones to access their calendar.

Me too!

Also, when people faff on their phones to make a payment. There was a man next to me the other day repeatedly saying "Apple pay" into the phone to bring up the !@¿¤! app. It's much quicker to simply swipe your card.

I struggle with technology - came to it too late in life. And definitely un-appy with apps.

I have to download some authentication app now to go online to access the GP surgery as I don't want more apps and I have no idea which one I should download then I telephone the surgery instead when needed. Seems completely unnecessary to me as under the old system I'd log on and then receive a code sent to my phone which I would have to input, I thought that was the secondary authentication?

Deedaa

I will just say that my daughter has a science PhD and grade 1 in English language A Level and she is rarely able to make her parking app work. I frequently end up paying with cash.

It's lucky you can pay with cash these days! I hate it when, on a day out, you have to download an app on order to pay to stay in the car park. And more and more it seems that a fake QR code has been stuck over the operator's one and not only are you providing scammers with you bank details you still get fined by the car park operator. "Progress is rarely improvement" as they say

Absolutely. Our GP surgery is controlled by Appointment App. I tried the other day and it kept telling me that I needed to go to A & E. I tried various ways to word the issue but got the same message. In the end, I phoned the surgery and explained that I didn't need to go to A & E as the issue has been ongoing for almost 6 years now, so it is not an emergency. The earliest appointment is on 25th September!

I agree! I am blooming fed up with this APP generation!!! We have to go along with it but it is not my scene!!!!!