> But today, the very first touchpoint with "the internet" for younger folks is a smartphone display. The even do homework on this small screens!

I saw a tweet recently that perfectly encapsulates this: for most people over 30, certain things are "big screen tasks". I use my phone for a lot, but for some things I put the phone down and use my computer instead. I am most comfortable using a large screen and a keyboard for anything that requires writing more than a few words or using any interface for more than a few clicks.

For example, I read your comment on my phone and went to my computer to type this reply.

I personally find the idea of doing homework on my phone horrifying but I suppose kids today are either used to it and comfortable with it, or they've simply never used a computer and don't know what they're missing. Though I'd wager they probably aren't comfortable typing on a keyboard.

Honestly I think Apple perfectly captured it with their "what's a computer?" ad for the iPad. I seem to remember them getting some flak online for it but I think they were right on the money with regards to the younger generations.

This hit the nail on the head.

I find much of the HN community insightful and interesting, but in terms of consumer feedback (especially in a B2C environment) I wouldn't touch feedback here with a 10-foot pole.

I don't mean that to be an insult, quite the opposite. Most people here are power users. But that is a galaxy away from how the average user interacts with the internet.

This. I posted this on my other comment, but there's a meme that "Gen Z Kids Don't Understand How File Systems Work" [0].

There seems to be a disconnect between some developers and the younger folks.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526

Wrong. While I agree about younger people’s impression and experience with apps and the internet, that is not what companies are responding to - in fact it’s backward.

Companies have for ages pushed apps due to more control and data. That’s why younger folk grew up with apps.

The push to apps was absolutely not due to companies responding to consumer sentiment. Yes now it has been ingrained so now there are expectations, but those are due to companies pushing people to apps for years and years

> Companies are seeing this switch, so they adapt.

You’re confusing cause and effect here.

Companies are pushing apps very hard because it gives them a lot more ability to wield their various revenue enhancing dark patterns.

That kids see apps as the primary option is a corporate success metric, not an organic choice.

Anyway, the premise that “phone screen ==> native app not web app” is rather faulty, is it not?

> What most people dont get ...

The OP Blog post is comparing web versions vs applications. Both on the phone. And arguing that browser representation is often better than app functionality. Using desktop vs small screen phone is a different matter.

I don't see any evidence that is a user-driven change.

For years now, often multiple times with the save vendor, I've been installing some vendors software, using it to complete a purchase that I had started in a web interface, then uninstalling the software, all so I could take advantage of ann unrealistically good promotion. I'm not talking about the type of savings that might be in an exceptionally good holiday promotion, that eats into most of, if not all of, the margin in the transaction. I'm talking about the type of promotion that would be used to promote a credit card, banking account, or gambling platform-- the kind of promotion that costs months worth of income from a customer but is worthwhile because the customer will be milked for years to come.

This appears to be more related to modern security features that lock the vendor out of your computer, but lock you out of your phone, shifting which interface gives the vendor the advantage in future transactions.

Phones are perfectly capable of accessing websites. I think a lot of the shift here has to do with companies aggressively pushing apps because apps are more profitable, which in turn trains users to expect apps.

My company corporate card requires an app because it has an Authenticator to access the website. I tried the ole “but I only have a flip phone” and they said there was no other option. The bastards forced my hand.

I'm old. I use my phone for as much as I can, but if something isn't optimized for that screen, i will definitely use a large screen instead of suffering through the crap. As I said, I'm old - too old to be frustrated by shit software. Also, I prefer web apps to downloading native, with few exceptions. I don't want or need a lot of native apps.

Young people are the ones who claim they are most likely to abandon a purchase if they have to install an app: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/02/15/91-of-u...

I’d be happy to use the app if they didn’t suck. The websites have more info and the browser is more capable by default. Like by default I can select any text I see, an address to copy into a calendar, a phone number to send to someone else, a name I want to paste into a search engine. an app is the opposite, by default nothing is selectable and I’m at the mercy of the nearly universally bad UX designer’s whims

Even on mobile I find the requirement for app installation to be an irritating requirement. Many of these mobile apps are much larger than they need to be, and clutter the user experience. Throw in excessive push notifications, and in many cases I would like to just go to a website for services I use infrequently.

One thing that is useful to remember is that if you ask AI for help on using some app, it will likely refer to the mobile UI instead of the web UI. I find it annoying that sometimes there are features that are only available in the mobile UI.

It's worth mentioning that in many cases there is also the incentive to get away from Google's stranglehold on incoming traffic. Every app install is a path to your product that does not go through Google's SEO or SEM funnel.

I still remember when everyone was saying the only way to access a service would be through its AOL keyword.

There is still no better interface than the command line.

I'm not sure about that. Kids around here seem to be learning to use a word processor (MS or Google), slide builder (MS, Google or Canva), search engine, as well as many educative apps on laptops at school starting from about age 8. Computers are not alien to them.

I am spoiled by big screen and tmux, I objectively cannot work with small screens any more.

I can tolerate chatting with a gateway agent, but that only last for maybe a single hour before I seriously need to vet all of the work that it and the underlying horde of agents has done.

> Most of folks on HN here are much older than todays "first customers" of 16y/17/18

17yo here, I know that I might be a bit of an exception here but atleast within my privacy conscious friend circle, I feel like they prefer websites more than apps and I feel like that plays an impact, (Obviously this might make a difference as well that for some of my generation, they only use phone so phone applications feel more intuitive to them)

I used to say to my elder brother that I wish to make websites not apps if I do because websites are more portable etc., but he said that websites are hard to monetize etc. rather than apps which are easier to monetize. I think that one of the reasons is also that app are easily monetized and this has become a norm to many people outside of HN/privacy-conscious sphere in general.

I really wanted to make f-droid applications sometime ago but I don't know Java and I really love how easy it is to make an applicaation in golang/python/any lang in desktops usually but I tried making an tauri android rust application from my desktop Linux and it was really frustrating, I feel like there are some very low hanging fruits privacy win where open source tools can be converted into just bare minimum-ly good UI/UX android/ios apps (which works) and be published to something like f-droid.

this where i think any claims that an iphone is not a full computing experience as justification for disallowing freedom on it to build and run your own software as you see fit as a bit ridiculous.

Agree. Also depends on nature of experience you want to consume/deliver. There are somethings i've slowly to come to prefer an app for, but it's been overtime.

The generation conflict doesn't justify to permanently bug me with "install our app, it's awesome". It ends up with terrible UX.

I saw a television advert the other day that specifically called out Millennials and how, yes, you can book a vacation from your phone and you're going to be okay, dad.

I think, "I'm not downloading your app" is of course a perfectly fine perspective. I rarely do. And blogging about it is playing one's role in the techno-cultural tug-of-war. But I'm consciously aware that I'm in the dying minority and the world is changing regardless of how much I choose to yell at the clouds.

I think what most people don't get is that an app is a gateway to get way more personal data of the user than the browser. I'm distrustful of any "app only" service for this reason. I think the article goes into more detail about other good reasons. What you're suggesting isn't a talking point because it's not pertinent.

This isn't about a user's age, or mobiles. You can use Firefox on your smartphone. It's about digital literacy in terms of security and privacy. No matter how old you are, you do have to be taught that you're the product of these services, not just the customer. You have to be taught why that matters and how to combat it.

That's an interesting mindset, since those 30+ tech savvy millennials are the ones that actually still have some money to spend left on apps and similar crap.

You're right... but I think you have incorrectly conflated "web" with "desktop". Websites work perfectly fine on smartphones when they are designed to do so. I'm using HN on my phone's web browser right now to type this comment. I don't need an app for HN.

I don't have many apps on my phone because I've found I simply don't need them. There are basically only two cases where I use apps:

1. When I want push notifications

2. When I want to use local files

PWAs were a cute experiment and they never took off, and even the vibe coders chose to vibe code native apps over half-baked PWAs.

There you go.

"The grandmas are too stupid to learn" but now it's the young people who are too dumb to figure out computers. So, I guess my generation is the only one that will ever figure out the Internet? Seems dumb.

This is true and goes further: There is no understanding of "the Web." For folks who "went online" and "surfed on the Internet" in the 90ies the whole thing with Internet addresses and the way a browser works are normal. For people gaining their experience on a phone the app icon on the home screen is the starting point to the individual offering.

Companies however exploit that and instead of just putting the icon on the home screen provide an app which allows more tracking, preventing ad blockers, avoiding the user from browsing elsewhere.

For me apps are limiting (tabbed browsing, ad blocker, ... are essential for anything serious), but others don't have that experience.

How about an 81-year-old Dodgers fan who has held season tickets for 50 years, and doesn't even own a smartphone, who can no longer order the traditional book of season tickets: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/dodgers-fan-printed...

Linkedin is the worst offender of them all. My feeds don't get updated for days when I use the web mobile version and I start seeing new posts only when I switch to desktop mode (switching to mobile shows the same old feed). They also don't even let you reply to comment replies or see reactions. They even scroll you all the way to the top if you dismiss their annoying "linkedin is better on app" pop-up just to punish you for not using their app. I'll never install apps of these companies that are actively hostile towards those that don't want to be constantly spied on by them.

> SeatGeek won't let you attend events without their app (no mailed tickets, will call, print at home, or mobile web)

Wow. I guess it's been a few years since I've used SeatGeek but this is news to me. Stuff like this and MSG's facial scanning regime (I'm sure the venues are all doing it to differing extents) make me not even want to bother with big concerts. Club shows are almost always a better time, anyways.

Instagram has had both significant mobile only features, and desktop only features.

old.reddit.com

It could be that your app is amazingly well done. But most PWAs and web apps turned into an "app" are not meeting my quality standards. It's usually a clunky experience (well, like a browser).

I think once you've seen the actual possibilities of what e.g. an iOS app can do, when done correctly, everything changes for you.

It is silly but you have to meet customers where they are.

I think the problem is also that PWAs don't have any discoverability, and no standardization. I did some consulting work for a company that had a PWA. They had a 200-line long react component that was intended to determine what modal to show the user depending on what web browser and OS they were using to instruct them how to install PWA depending on the combination of OS and browser.

This is a lot of friction for the dev, and it's not clear to an average user what a PWA is. But they are familiar with, and for better or worse, trust, the App store. If I didn't know what a PWA and a site said "open menu and click on 'install!'" I'd be very wary of following those instructions!

I think Android and iOS should provide some sort of hook between the app store and PWAs before they really start to catch on.

Besides users being more familiar with apps in the past, PWAs are still kneecapped in some subtle ways to make them want apps.

SaasS or one-time? Did people pay via native App Store integration? Or pay via the desktop website? App price? Answers would be super helpful. Thanks!

> the website is completely broken or the devs force me to download the app by blocking features on the website

for me, this is signal that i wasn't supposed to be visiting that resource in the first place

> Unless the website is completely broken or the devs force me to download the app by blocking features

That's already the norm.

As a developer, I resent having to go beg for permission for getting my app published. It just rubs me the wrong way to have to play approval roulette with some bored jerk working for Apple or Google. I've had both reject things that were previously alright, then weren't, and then were again.

I default to building web applications. Actually getting people to install your special app is in any case a race to the bottom. Some will, most won't. It's onboarding friction. If you can shave a few steps of your onboarding process, the chance that somebody comes out the other end is simply higher.

As a user, I rarely install apps to begin with and frankly the appeal of "native" is limited to well guarded APIs into jealously magical device capabilities that phones have that most applications don't actually need. I know how the sausage is made and there just isn't that much there.

> Unless the website is completely broken or the devs force me to download the app by blocking features on the website I prefer the web.

Facebook seems to be in this game. Constant notifications to install the app, and as well increasingly degraded experience in the web version (both desktop and mobile).

often the blocked features are specifically blocked on the mobile web (i.e. on your desktop they won't make you get your phone out to use the app instead), so forcing the webpage to desktop mode helps.

Yea, webapps (even PWAs) still can't compete with native apps when it comes to responsiveness, but I still don't know why. I've yet to see even a demo PWA that passes the "native turing test" where I can't tell whether it's a native app or not.

Even native apps that were built with cross-platform frameworks feel a bit "off" sometimes.

Whether or not the UX is better, from a security standpoint I choose the web version because of browser sandboxing unless I'm forced to use the app. If I'm forced to use the app, I probably choose not to use the service.

> when an app is available on both web and native mobile, the native mobile version is significantly better

Did you read the article? One of the author's main points is this is a deliberate result by vendors.

I've found that the apps often just entirely miss out features that are available in the web versions. That's why I don't have the GitHub app.

Having signed up for the New York Times recently, they're surprisingly hostile towards new customers:

- Autoplaying videos on the front page with no pause button. I expect video from CNN, but not a newspaper. That's not what I'm there for.

- The send you many "introductory" emails with no way to unsubscribe.

I mostly gave up on the front page, but it's marginally useful for reading the occasional article linked to from elsewhere.

I recently signed up for a membership (you can now supposedly cancel without making a phone call; WaPo has officially died in darkness) and this has been driving me mad, too.

If I'm paying for your service, you should not be degrading my experience using UX anti-patterns in any way, for any reason.

Also they only have dark mode in the app, even though the app is (or was) clearly not native anyway.

NYT occasionally uses fancy interactive articles. They have games, and other things that are better on the app. The NYT app is actually very good

> Web browser is a sandbox by default.

So I take this is a security concern. How do you feel about the fact that when you open a webapp in your browser, you re-download that app code every time? That the server can send you a backdoor every single time, made just for you, and nobody else will ever know? And that you can't check the "hash" of the webapp, like you can with an app?

On the other hand, an app is sandboxed, too (on mobile OSes like Android and iOS). When you download it, you can check a hash that you can (if you want to) compare with a friend to see if they got the same app. With an app, there is intermediary (the "app store") that would need to collude with the developers to send a backdoor just for you, and even then you would still have the app binary as proof.

That's always a question I have with "secure" web services: if you use ProtonMail, you trust that Proton doesn't send you a web page that leaks your key. But if you trust Proton for that, what's the point of the end-to-end encryption? When you use the Signal app, the whole idea is that you don't have to trust Signal for the end-to-end encryption, at all.

bias disclosure: i used to do Android dev and kinda hate the browser personally.

i don’t get this take. “Web browser is sandbox by default”. sure, it has to do the rail grind with a rake to access system calls, but in a modern system apps are also sandboxed, especially on a smartphone or when downloaded with a managed app service. the OS gives you the ability to specify permissions, although to what degree depends on your provider. your browser _obviously_ also has the permissions you’re talking about. and now we have introduced yet more vectors in the form of cookies where web _applications_ can track activity _between applications_ with that just kinda being part of the spec, and it totally neuters the protections that the OS gives you because once you configure Firefox to get your location for Open Maps, now you’ve totally given control to your location permissions for _all web apps_ to yet another corporate driven point of failure.

don’t even get me started on the UI mess.

my tinfoil hat theory is that the browser is pushed by mostly bad actors trying to get data, while anyone providing a real user experience has a nice native app.

press F for my reputation.

Location can also be extracted by JS on a website with these geo functions, IIRC?

> your contacts, location. The whole buffet.

It's not like an app is getting those without your knowledge, and many times it's useful for an app to have your contacts or location...

Apps have to request your permission for contacts and location. iOS is really good about not giving bad permissions to apps without user being asked for consent.

Web browsers all support those facilities, with less obvious transparency and control than iOS and Android apps

Using flatpaks or mobile apps, you can view the sandbox permissions and adjust them if you have to.

I think it's more than that. It's a walled garden. If you want to leave go somewhere else, it's further away than just a tab. That increases stickiness.

For example, let's say I'm an airline. I don't want you in the browser, where you're going to have my competitors in the adjacent tabs. I want you in my app, where all you see is my version of the world. (I mean, yes, you can have multiple apps open, too, and switch between them. It's still a bit more friction than moving between tabs. Or maybe that's just my mental model, and young people see apps as just another kind of tab?)

Browsers most definitely do allow for notifications if you don't have the site open. I use that feature all the time and it works perfectly.

Google Chrome does seem to catch spam sites that abuse notification permissions to send ads, though, so for a certain category of crapware websites aren't an option.

There's a reason the "small web" is having a revival among these kids, because they increasingly haven't experienced a real web to begin with. Circa ~2010, the web effectively died in the mainstream since Google decided it wasn't worth showing. Platforms become a thing, and despite being web-based, are practically their own intranets that use the web as a cross platform zero install delivery platform

When you say "meme", it sounds like it might not be true. But, a few years ago I handed my stepson a USB flash drive with some files on it, he plugged it into his laptop and the very first thing he did was launch Google Chrome and then not have any clue what to do to access the files (it was a Windows laptop).

I decided to operate on a older budget phone for a while when my phone died outside of my planned budget and timeline for replacing it. By far the greatest problem was managing storage space. Except for core productivity apps, if a website option wasn't offered I was never going to be one of their users.

> I will cast my vote for mobile websites over apps on phones. For personal choice reasons I have always had a "budget" phone with less memory and storage (and less cost) than a flagship phone. I also kept them running for years.

Then, unfortunately, apps are a better choice for such phones (unless the app itself is just a thin webview wrapper). These days too many websites would fry a budget phone.

Obligatory: The Performance Inequality Gap https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-...

> The sad reality is people _want_ apps

I went to a gas station and they had someone offering to pay customers if they'd install their app. Discount gas for X months. No one seemed interested.

People do want apps for things they do quite often, but that's mostly social media or video games. The hassle of install and account setup simply exceeds the benefit of rarely used apps.

Why is it sad to want an app?

If the app can be replaced by a website the app is useless. The web is not as powerful as an app and you will miss out on emerging tech. Facebook doesn't actually need an app, but I can not unlock my door, tap to pay, or connect to a specific selection of speakers in my home on a website.

I am with you here.. there is actually name for why companies do this. They are not pushing app because it is better, but because browser tab cannot lock you in.

Mapped it out here if curious - https://vectree.io/c/enshittification-how-digital-platforms-...

iOS apps have to request permission from user to send push and for basically every other problematic permission.

Strava is an example where to enjoy all the features of the platform you have to use the app for some and the browser for others. Neither has all of them.

> having an app installed was the only way to send a notification

that used to be true, especially on ios. but web push has existed there for a while now for home screen web apps.

so that explains some of the history... doesn't really excuse today's habit of shipping the web as a second-class client.

Nah: https://www.magicbell.com/blog/using-push-notifications-in-p...

Reg. Notifications:

Isnt there are similar feature in iOS browser as in Firefox these "desktop notifications" that some webpages request?

Apple still doesnt give you the right dimensions for a page that switches between portrait and landscape.

That's one of the main reasons to not install an app. Extremely few apps are able to limit their notifications to actually transactional events. As soon as they have the capability they start spamming away.

> some web UIs nowadays are so bad and the app so good that I'm not sure this always holds true.

This is by design to force you install the app. Most of these days, I just treat it as a signal to neither use the app nor the website.

Alternatively, they could just make the web UI good.

TurboTax, for all its faults is one of those where the desktop app is better than the webapp they keep pushing.

Unless it’s required (Starlink) or something I check often (not much this day), I don’t use the app version. I prefer grabbing my laptop and use the web version. But best is when there’s an API available so I can write my own tools.

Similar situation here.

My take on it is that frequent users perceive apps as desktop launchers/shortcuts.

They don't care about the difference between app and web, per se, but the bookmarking situation in mobile browsers is awful (desktop too, honestly), and an app presents a convenient launcher for the service/site/data they want.

Adding a springboard launcher for a PWA is easy but still apparently more frictional than installing an app.

building and maintaining a simple webview app might be easier than you think.

if you ever end up making one im very very curious about how much market share that would gain

You could add features to make it a PWA and explain to users how to save it t their desktop. I used ProtonMail for years that way (I do not have a smartphone anymore, so no longer do so).

> The restaurant QR menu situation is peak 'we installed an app for the app' energy. I scanned a code expecting a menu and instead got a Play Store redirect. Just let me see the food.

Now you've triggered me lol. At that point I'll ask for a physical menu, and leave if they don't have one. And no, I'm not going to look at my friend's phone. It's ridiculous!

For some reason, app sizes seem to have exploded, but especially on iPhones. Maybe it's the fact cheap Androids are still being used but I was surprised to find out how many 50MB Android apps were in 200MB iPhone apps.

When it took ages to download the same app to my work iPhone as I was downloading to my normal Android I thought there was something wrong with the iPhone at first, but it was literally spending five times the data to download what seemed to be an identical app.

There's something to be said for downloading a 50MiB app to save yourself from downloading 1MiB every time you pull out the website, but with modern app sizes, things are getting ridiculous.

I feel the same. Take the Telegram app as an example: it's so slick, responsive. Even a simple button click doesn't work well on the web due to the long response time between clicking and seeing a response.

Additionally, apps allow for good offline functionality (for times when you're not near a cell tower), which I feel is important even with ubiquitous internet access in the 1st world.

The solution I feel is to have better sandboxing functionality in mobile Operating Systems.

> durability (dust, water)

Not just dust and water but folding screens are plastic with a mohs hardness of 2-3, as opposed to normal phones with glass screens which are a 6-7 hardness. I like having phones that can't be permanently damaged by pressing my fingernail a little hard into it.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hgg4YEdPak&t=140s

Another example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uS90jakOuw&t=107s

I also can trivially replace the screen on my regular phone at home, whereas I'd have to get a folding phone professionally repaired for many hundreds of dollars.

Still runs the kneecapped mobile os

I do the same with discord. Idk why the app is so huge

I find it so annoying that certain apps update every single time I open them. Why can’t they build something more stable?

Ouch! Netscape 4.7 reloaded...

As an app developer it comes down to the full access to phone APIs and the smoothest app experience. The more biased opinion is rooted in preference for the native language over web languages. And I recognize this is an opinion that is self-preservation in nature but it is what it is.

But I'll also say some apps don't really need to be apps (like ordering food from one specific store) but I won't complain about having those apps if it is a convenience.

The vast majority of apps come from companies where the app developer has little to no say in how things work. Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Uber, Ebay, Shein, etc are certainly not paying Apple 30% for purchases made inside the app. They also operate at a scale where they get bulk rates from MC/Visa on processing fees.

For years, Apple has muffled PWAs under a pillow. No one knows that you can add them to your homescreen or how that unlocks the possibility of getting push notifications. You also lose any stored data when you go from Safari to an homescreen web app.

I recently switched for m the developer mindset of build websites for everything to make apps if I can. My logic is that an app never needs to go back and forth with me, it's something the user can have without me managing hosting and constantly having a relationship with the user.

Don't you need a certain level of convincing for the average person to use a PWA?

Lock-in - and not even some evil thing; just if you're used to using the eBay app you're less likely to go somewhere else.

I think it's somewhat misguided, but companies gonna company.

I do mention cases where the browser model doesn't work, like accessing Lidar sensors. Just didn't want to bloat the post with too many examples. But I totally agree with you on this front: not everything can be done as a PWA.

Explanation and summarization without visual interactables is so much harder to do. A person can talk to an interface but I don't know how many people would like natural language back.

Maybe. You’ll need to overcome DoorDash not wanting to give up the UI as a chance to upsell services.

I take back my comment on Twitter being better on mobile apps. I just tried it on my mobile browser and it doesn't have that stupid bug (feature?) where you leave the detail page of a tweet and the app automatically takes you to the top and you miss where you were initially.

> a really well-crafted ios Native App with extensive attention to detail Which seems to becoming a rare thing

I think the blame is on Apple here, you can't support older devices even if you wanted to. (And it's the same on Android)

How expensive can it be?

I just randomly looked at Railway and for $20 a month you get a whole lot. I've hosted many a web project (successful personal projects and enterprise projects alike) and I don't see a large barrier to entry on "hosting a website" here.

Blocking AI scrapers and crawlers is not a huge ordeal. Planning for a unicorn before just putting a product up isn't the way to go.

https://railway.com/pricing

Before AI I regularly consumed a larger international news aggregator ran by a single person.

Then with ChatGPT he had to enshittify his website with all these cloudflare capture stuff, making the site leeesssssssss fun to use; when complaining he mailed me that AI scrapers are slashing his servers

So that's how she feels about me?

I take this to be mainly about cloud services that can/could just as well be used in the browser instead, and where installing the app doesn't really allow you to meaningfully use it offline anyway. It's largely orthogonal to the question of local apps vs cloud services.

Tougher adblocking is the best argument I’ve heard.

Why though?

If only 1% of your user base is accessing your maps through the website, you aren’t going to keep supporting it.

No, in that case I won't do business with you.

Turns out if you use brave on iOS it auto-blocks all the ads too.

PWAs make little sense at this point as most apps are useless without an active internet connection. You can't cache Uber ride searches, Amazon product listings or food delivery options.

It's already been beaten into acceptance that I have to use the Ticketmaster app (shockingly awful) or Dice app (not quite as bad but still sucks) to get into a lot of music venues in Boston.

But at one club they wanted me to install another app just to check my coat. I elected to hide it under a some furniture instead lol

sounds like somebody who's never had to park in multiple cities