[DannyPage]

A big focus is (rightly) on rural areas, but mobile internet packet loss can also a big issue in cities or places where there are a lot of users. It's very frustrating to be technically online, but effectively offline. An example: Using Spotify on a subway works terribly until you go into Airplane mode, and then it suddenly works correctly with your offline music.

[epistasis]

When Apple did their disastrous Apple Music transition, I was in the habit of daily recreation that involved driving in areas without mobile access.

All of a sudden one day, I was cut off from all my music, by the creators of the iPod!

I switched away from Apple Music and will never return. 15 years of extensive usage of iTunes, and now I will never trust Apple with my music needs again. I'm sure they don't care, or consider the move a good tradeoff for their user base, but it's the most user hostile thing I've ever experienced in two decades on Apple platforms.

[w10-1]

Forget internet: just sync.

Add music on macOS, and on your phone. Then sync.

RESULT: one overwrites the other, regardless of any settings.

You no longer have the audio you formerly owned.

[apitman]

> All of a sudden one day, I was cut off from all my music, by the creators of the iPod!

iCloud: $1000 in Apple's pocket

[simonw]

Did the "download" option in Apple Music not work? Or was that not available when they first launched the new app?

[crazygringo]

This a million times. Spotify on the subway is infinitely frustrating until you go into airplane mode.

Ideally, apps shouldn't detect if you have internet and then act differently. They should pull up your cached/offline data immediately and then update/sync as attempted connections return results.

The model where you have offline data but you can't even see your playlists because it wants to update them first because it thinks you have internet is maddening.

[_carbyau_]

Caching for the user experience seems to be not a thing anymore.

Back button in my browser for a static page redownloads it and the accompanying however many MB of framework...

Now I open links in new tabs always.

[epistasis]

I think around 2015, when "mobile-first" became super popular, in the rush to market people just forgot that a network is a network, and you have to actually handle broken connections. Which is ironic because mobile networks are where you really need to plan for all the usual network edge cases, unlike wired networks where the edge cases are far less common.

[bityard]

Very good point. We had several power outages lasting a few hours lately. (One was just last night.) Every time this happens, my phone's mobile data is totally unusable because the whole neighborhood switches over from scrolling facebook (et all) on their wifi to scrolling facebook on mobile.

I can (and do) find things around the house that don't depend on a screen, but it's annoying to know that I don't really have much of a backup way to access the internet if the power is out for an extended period of time. (Short of plunking down for an inverter generator or UPS I suppose.)

[BenjiWiebe]

If your ISP is available during a power outage (as they should be) a UPS that only powers a WiFi router could be quite small/cheap.

Or you could use a Raspberry Pi or similar and a USB WiFi adapter (make sure it supports AP mode) and a battery bank, for an "emergency" battery-operated WiFi router that you'd only use during power outages.

EDIT: Unless your ISP's CPE (modem/whatever) runs on 5 volts, you'd need more than just a USB power bank to keep things going. Maybe a cheap amazon boost converter could get you the extra voltage option.

[deltaburnt]

It's deeply ironic how awfully designed the NYT games app is for offline use given many people use it on the subway. Some puzzles will cache, others won't. They only cache after you manually open them.

[hypeatei]

I'm on fiber at home and my ISP did a backend update which is dropping packets specifically on IPv6 for some reason. Most sites are unusable and other software isn't handling it very well (e.g. android) with frequent "no internet" popups.

[98codes]

The only thing worse than no internet is one bar of signal.

[dghlsakjg]

Spotify deals with degraded connections absolutely horrendously (on iOs anyway).

If I have a podcast already downloaded, but I am on an iffy connection, Spotify will block me from getting to that podcast view while it tries to load the podcast view from the web instead of using downloaded data.

I frequently put my phone in airplane mode to force spotify into offline mode to get content to play.

[usmanity]

100% this, I am almost always on 5G or LTE but in some areas in my city it seems like not even a webpage will load on either. In this case, using any apps is useless and google/kagi search feels like it takes too long to find something basic.

[rendaw]

Also subways, and people with cheap data plans that get throttled after 1GB. Google maps regularly says "no results found" because the connection times out.

[froddd]

I’ve found Google Maps to be one of the worst offenders, often getting in a pickle when my phone is switching between 4G and 5G. What’s frustrating is that the state it gets in is irrecoverable: the only thing that works then is force-quitting, then reopening the app.

[genocidicbunny]

Speaking of Airplanes, I also frequently have issues with apps and websites when using in-flight wifi due to the high latency and packet loss. Incidentally, Spotify is one of said apps, which often means I need to manually set it to offline mode to get it to work.