The Appless Generation

Living without apps is increasingly difficult:

For companies, the benefit of locking you in is obvious. “The main reason companies push consumers away from web pages and into apps is control,” security and privacy specialist Bruce Schneier tells me by email. “I have lots of control over how a webpage appears. I can, for example, employ an ad blocker. Sites like the New York Times hate that. If I read the Times in their app, I can’t block ads.” You can’t, in fact, block anything. Airlines and hotels want to constantly remind you of their loyalty program, and only their loyalty program. And if you’re studying your tickets in an app, a lot of screen real estate can be used to sell you on your next vacation or concert. But what if your phone dies? What if it’s out of date and an upgrade isn’t in your budget? What if this crap flat-out doesn’t work? Those aren’t hypothetical concerns. There are plenty of examples of people who can no longer control their thermostat because their phone is too old to run the app or who keep getting locked out of their apartment because their key app never works and their landlord won’t offer an alternative. And here are the good people of r/laundry griping that the CSC GO Laundry app that’s mandatory in their apartments keeps breaking or stealing their money. The death of analog options is also an accessibility nightmare. As ubiquitous as the smartphone has become, 1 in 10 Americans still doesn’t own one. Among people over 65, that number grows to 24 percent. And not everyone who does own a smartphone will have the technical acumen or physical capability to juggle all these apps and their perpetually shifting interfaces. New York’s Viscardi Center, which works with people with disabilities, notes that deteriorating vision and motor skills can make app use difficult.

Apps still aren't for everyone...