[cam_l]

I honestly have only come across one company that is app only. That was because I was with them when they changed over, otherwise I would never have signed up.

This was my local gym which sacked their front desk staff and moved to app access only, and with an app infested with trackers at that. Needless to say I don't go to that gym anymore.

[gruez]

It's popular with fintechs, especially new ones. Robinhood for instance was app-only for a few years before they got their web version. Revolut theoretically has a web version but it has far less features than the mobile app. Restaurant "apps" (for ordering and offers) are often app-only as well.

[chromehearts]

Honest question: What does TPM have to do with this? I mean, Revolut developers don't need to check for TPM or similar to serve other functionalities just because you're on browser or mobile app. Am I getting something wrong?

[rixed]

Want another exemple as fresh as yesterday?

I'm on a move, had to pay some transport company to move some stuff for me, pick-up date tomorrow. Paid online, website asked for a confirmation from my bank's app (N26), fair enough. Opened the app, just to be greated with "Please Update. The latest app version includes new features, enhancements and stability improvements" with the only choice: "Update now".

Being confronted with an app designed to refuse to work was irritating enough (for context, I'm from a generation were we used to own our devices), but I clicked on "Update" anyway, just to be told by apple store that there was no update for my iPhone 7.

Ok, the writting was on the wall. You know, I own one iphone and 2 android phones already, all of them several years old but in pristine condition. That's how I am, I care for things. I'm not going to buy yet another one, if only because I hate waste and fear mismanagement of natural resources. That's how I am, I care for things.

Now you are mandating me to add more e-waste? There is no way I'm going to do that, so I decided to connect to N26's wensite, but guess what? You need the app to login. Well, if you insist you can also login with a short message, which I did, just to check that there was no way to confirm a paiement on the website.

But you can contact "support", so I tried that. To their credit, the robot bouncer was quick to admit incompetence and to connect me with a friendly fellow human, who was unfortunately only allowed to lecture me about why those "new features and enhancements" were essential to my account's security, while being unable to tell me exaclty what they were or what was the problem with the current version, and suggested I login from someone else's phone instead.

Security? Whose security?

To anyone working in tech, let me remind you what an actual threat model is.

My actual threat model in the actual world is that your company might stole my money, or prevent me from access it which amount to the same thing. Data points: Despite all the stories on the news about mischievous hackerz from russia and china, I've been stolen money only twice in my life, not a lot of but at the time I needed it, and twice by banks.

My threat model is that the electronic gadget that I bought and carry with me all the time stops obeying me and starts obeying some adversarial company. And that, in perfect novlang mastery, you want me to call this a "trusted device".

My threat model is that our civilization might drown in e-waste.

Want another exemple of app only service? Wait for a days or two, as I'm confident I will face the same issue soon.

[encom]

Yes, your bank is shit, but this is also Apple's fault to a large degree.

There is absolutely no reason to release a new major version of your OS every year, and there is no reason to arbitrarily drop support for older devices (except extremely contrived ones, that I'm sure will be posted below). I made the mistake of acquiring an Ipad once. Its only job was playing YouTube videos in bed (yes I know), until Apple and Google in unison decided that it should be thrown into a landfill, because its OS was unsupported and the YouTube app, for no reason at all, would no longer work. Was the device suddenly unable to decode H.264 video or playing audio? Nope. But please just throw it in the trash and buy a new one - what are you, poor?!

[cam_l]

Beautifully said!

I must just have a sixth sense to avoid those kinds of services. And I also have a zero tolerance policy. For example, if a restaurant says I have to order on my phone, I stand up and go to leave. I am old enough now they probably just assume I am technologically illiterate.

[Woodi]

Counter example, from the future :)

Year 2034, you have a nice vintage, lightly used electric car. Battery still charges and whole box drives. Do you need to buy new car or gov need to prohibit you using it or enforce to scrap it ? Most likely yes - battery is about to explode, possibly on crowded crossroad...

Real problems sometimes demands 0 or 1 action.

Just "phone app from everyone" etc is monopolies inflicted harm on society.

[kragen]

Your story is appalling, and I agree that this is a major problem.

However, drowning in e-waste from smartphones is many orders of magnitude from being an issue, as trivial calculations easily show. Mentioning it makes your argument rhetorically much weaker. The iPhone 16 is 147.6mm × 71.6mm × 7.8mm (8.2 × 10⁻⁵ m³) and weighs 170g, according to https://www.dimensions.com/element/apple-iphone-16-18th-gen. The population of France is 68.6 million people. One iPhone per person each year for the next century would be 6.86 billion iPhones in France, assuming the population remained constant. This would weigh 1.2 million tonnes and fit in a sphere 51 meters in diameter. If stacked 6 meters deep it would cover 9.4 hectares, a circle 340 meters in diameter. France contains 63 million hectares. The hypothetical pile of iPhones would cover about a third of the area of the Gravelines Nuclear Power Station near Calais.

Far from drowning in e-waste from smartphones, if you dump it in a landfill, it will be extremely hard even to find the e-waste without a map.

Even if you didn't have a countryside to bury e-waste in, this should be obvious even on the household scale. Suppose you and your four children each get a new iPhone every year, and instead of throwing them away, you put them in a box in the attic. How big is the box? It's a 35 cm cube after 100 years. It would weigh 85 kg, though, so you'd want to use several smaller boxes. But there is no risk of drowning.