Anyone else fed up of number of apps?

[BradfordGirl]

I think I am going to have to upgrade my phone as it is struggling with memory. The main issue is that everyone expects you to use apps. I have three different parking apps on my phone alone as car parks where I live all use different providers.
I am totally fed up of the sheer number of apps.

Yes agree, the phone only has a certain memory in which to store apps.

Seriously? Many people who could use these things struggle as they get older.

YANBU OP. I need my phone for calls. This doesn't seem to be factored in anymore.

Of course I will, because I have absolutely no plans of proudly declaring myself a Luddite and a technophobe, refusing to learn how to use new tech and then whinging and sulking and blaming society when I am older and have no bloody clue what’s going on.

YANBU I'm probably going to have to upgrade my perfectly good phone with amazing camera soon (two main uses) because they've stopped sending software updates to it. That means inevitably apps will stop working.

I can accept needing a banking app and find it as convenient to use but I vehemently disagree with every company I wish to purchase something from insisting on using their app. I don't have the storage, patience or desire to be another data farm for them.

As to older people choosing to not adapt, my gran is 90 and still can't use the TV with a remote properly - that's has been around for 30 odd years in one iteration or another. She also doesn't get on with the cordless landline. Mobile phones of the dumb kind were a complete no go even though she genuinely tried her best. Her schooling ended at the age of 13 so she could go to work - this is not a generation that were expected to master the bright new things, they were expected to graft and most of them did.

MIL in her early 70s is the same, tries her best with her smart phone but still doesn't even understand how to put it on silent let along do anything more complex than answer a call. It's not a choice to have the world leave you behind with innovations that you can't keep up with. Forcing app usage in exchange for services is going to isolate a lot of people.

Right, so you have no recognition of the fact that people who happily used tech in their 60s, develop problems as they age...which then make it too hard for them to use the tech?

Lol, my “kid” is nearly forty, with a huge social circle, good job, two kids and enjoys fantastic mental health, but thanks for your concern.

I find the elderly parent stuff really irritating

but people who can't understand why an elderly person would struggle with tech - that shows so much lack of understanding, it's quite alarming.

I'm not quite that much of a dinosaur. I do think if you decide to live without a smartphone you do have to accept that you will miss out on a lot of things and in this day and age it does seem a bit puritanical.

That said, I share your annoyance of the fact that companies push consumers to use apps as the main point of contact/process. It's part and parcel of a broader trend whereby they push us away from any point of human contact with them at all. I have the same frustration when I try to get hold of anyone at all on a company helpdesk and the automated line says: "Have you tried our website?" It's just insulting to the intelligence.

Some apps are brilliant and life-enhancing and I have no problem with them whatsoever. But I find the expectation that you have to download the app for any company for which you are ever a customer very frustrating.

YANBU, I hate it too. Cashier in Pets at Home today kept trying the hard sale talk with their VIP card and associated app. I have been in a car park with someone and the parking meter was insisting on an app. She tried to install it but got stuck in some loop, so ended up leaving a note on the dashboard.

My smartphone is ancient and doesn't run much anyway. It calls, texts and takes ok photos. That is all I care about really. I leave it at home most of the time. It always amazes me how much personal and private information people carry about in one small gadget that can be lost or stolen in a heartbeat.

@ClubhouseGift waits with popcorn for you to realise you can no longer figure this stuff out! It's not a CHOICE!!

Two and a half years old. How much money am I supposed to spend just so I can use ordinary services?

YANBU. I feel like I need a dozen just to do my job - there’s one to get into the building, one for work email, one for our organisation app, one to verify so I can get onto the computers, one for logging my time…