I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
> 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.
Duolingo isn't really a replacement for classes (which are obviously a magnitude or few more expensive) but self learnings books, tapes and such (IMHO it's mostly inferior to those too but not by a such high degree).
I'm kind of puzzled by your first point. In my experience, parking apps require you to pay in larger chunks of hours than paying with coins used to; many times I have to pay for a minimum of 2 hours of parking with the app when I could pay for just 10 or 15 minutes of parking with coins.
The parking app I use in Berlin, easy park, works in the sense that I pre-select a timeframe I think im going to park which then gives me an estimate for how much it'll cost and reserve that amount using my CC. When I end the parking before that timer ends, the actual time I've parked will be taken and only that amount is charged.
It used to be even better in the sense that you'd only start and then end parking without having to pre select a time. But I think too many people, me included, forgot to end the parking when taking off and paid way more than they actually parked for.
Of course the apps could easily detect that parking has ended. They could note your location when you park. When the phone returns to that location, and then moves at driving speed, parking has ended.
But they don't because they make more money by profiting from people who forget to "clock out" when they are done parking.
> Of course the apps could easily detect that parking has ended. They could note your location when you park. When the phone returns to that location, and then moves at driving speed, parking has ended.
They could at least start with adding proper CarPlay and Android Auto support so you can just end the parking from the infotainment. But I think there can be at most a single engineer working on this app if at all. Up until a couple months ago it didn't even have the option for a persistent notification to remind you that you had an ongoing parking...
> But they don't because they make more money by profiting from people who forget to "clock out" when they are done parking.
fwiw, at least in this case, the app that profited from you not clocking out got shut down and bought out by the app that asks you to pre-set your parking time. Which I guess is still not great, but at least somewhat of a step up.
> But I think there can be at most a single engineer working on this app if at all.
I assume they’re contracted out to the lowest bidder.
In my city the payment schedule on the app significantly lags the meters/official rates. Fine when prices go up, but pretty annoying to app-users when the app charges more than the official parking rates. Maybe if they get their merchant account sanctioned for too many chargebacks someone will take notice.
All of the parking apps I’ve used offer this “drive away detection” optionally.
One of them wanted me to sign up to a parking subscription of some sort to be able to access it which was a bit insane. I just don’t turn on the feature because I don’t really think its worth sending my precise location for the next however many hours to some random small time app developer.
>In my experience, parking apps require you to pay in larger chunks of hours than paying with coins used to;
Here in Nashville, they sold out our public street parking to a private company. Now instead of coins in a meter for the time you want, you have to buy at least an hour for $1.75 (or more), pay by scanning a QR code (which is misprinted on the signs) unless you're in one of the spots where there's a working pay machine, and it now is enforced 24/7 instead of having holidays and weekends off (IIRC it was also free after 6, which was great). Also they had two hour limits where you can't simply move your car, you have to park somewhere they don't check for an indeterminate amount of time. How is any of this an improvement unless you get a cut of the money?
Parking apps requires registration. I arrive, park my car then
(1) via machine: insert my card into the machine, get ticket, leave
(2) via app: spend 10 minutes registering an account, email, password, phone number, wants verification via email or phone number, wants me to register my credit card and the agree to them selling all my data.
IF on the other hand, they just made it use some kind of common e-cash and no registration, no tracking, no account, I'd be 100% for it.
If you pay with a card, then they can track you, so it doesn't really matter if you put that card into a machine or into an app account.
For places where I don't expect to return (or only rarely), sure, having to do an app is annoying. But for places where you expect to use it often enough, it can be a time-saver, after the initial time cost of setup.
Strange, I only have experience with two parking apps, but they both let you pay in 15-minute increments.
I have seen meters that have smaller increments, like sub-10-minutes, but when the increments cost something like 50 cents, it's hard to really care that much.
On public transport I can tap in and tap out with the wallet on phone or any bank card. Car parks could work in exactly the same way, but instead there are 15 apps.
The idea of a parking app is better than the physical process of using a meter generally. But I have not really seen an app flow better than the physical process despite having parked in many cities. In fact, I can come up with a simple physical process better than the apps by far: tap the meter in and tap the meter out with your NFC chip in the card.
Pay for the exact time, or if you forget, pay the full time period you’re legally allowed to park.
Instead, on my city’s app I must select a car (despite having only one), select a zone (despite GPS), and then manually enter my card (despite it being my account default). Every time.
The Pay By Phone app works well for me. It automatically figures out what parking area you are in from the phone GPS, it already knows your license plate, and it has your credit card.
Basically the flow for me is open the app, and hit how long I want to park for. And then the app will let me know when my parking is running out and I can add time on my phone without going back to the car.
The article explains that some local councils in Britain are removing the pay-by-card (NFC etc) parking meters in favour of an app, payment by phone, or at a nearby shop. This is to reduce costs.
> Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.
Why do iOS and Android phones have a "wallet", and why a boarding pass would have anything to do with it?
There's an electronic solution strictly better than the app, for when you have no printer handy: just give the user the goddamned PDF! Works everywhere, works offline, can be printed if needed, and the user can manage, send or back it up however they like.
You can do that if you want. Most airlines issue PDF boarding passes and both iOS and Android can store and show those files.
Apple Wallet (and Apple Pay) are actually one of my favorite smartphone features. The built-in Wallet (speaking for iOS here) has a few advantages over a folder of PDFs:
- The QR code is always fairly big without having to pan and zoom a PDF file
- The display brightness is automatically increased to make reading the QR code easier
- The Wallet syncs with my Apple Watch (where passes use a different, optimized layout) giving me backup if something where to happen to my phone during boarding
- Passes can be updated by the airline (e.g. gate changes)
- Passes automatically expire, I don’t have to cleanup myself. (There’s archive in case I need an old one)
- Passes can be shown on your lock screen during the boarding time for easier access
- Passes can be multilingual, adapting to your phone’s language
> Why do iOS and Android phones have a "wallet", and why a boarding pass would have anything to do with it?
It's not that deep, just a skeuomorphic name for somewhere where you'd keep importants/valuables for quick access, credit/debit cards, boarding passes, concert tickets
Not unlike keeping a folded up copy of a pass in a physical wallet (Which may not be universal, but I would have guessed not that uncommon either)
And if your phone is out of order? I used a PDF version of the boarding pass on my laptop in the past due to a flat phone. Even when my phone is available I still just use the PDF version that was emailed to me. I never use my phone 'wallet' for anything.
Since I use my phone to pay for things, book rides between places and basically existing in general
I also keep a power bank on my person and a spare phone in my house
But if I'm not confident on availability I also keep alternatives, I've not used physical money in months (Other than local bus fares), but I do keep some cash on my person, as well as the physical cards that I use virtually on my phone and copies of boarding passes when necessary, not that I've needed any of them recently, I just like covering my bases, it's not a binary situation, I'd also like to keep spares if my only copy was physical
In the unlikely event my phone dies (hasn’t ever happened in 20 years of having phones) then I’ll go to the desk and ask them to print a boarding pass.
You can do all those things if you want. Download the PDF to your laptop, add the pass to your phone's wallet, even print out a backup copy if you want. And then when you get to the airport, use whichever is most convenient for you.
I generally just get the mobile pass and put it in Google Wallet. If I ever run into a situation where my phone is lost/broken/battery-drained, I'll just go up to the check-in desk or a kiosk and get my boarding pass printed. No big deal.
The wallet allows activation by proximity like RFID. So if the pass is in the wallet you don't need to go digging around for wherever the PDF is stored in the phone. Tap, the pass is requested, the pass responds, go.
Until two years ago, I flew out of ATL - the busiest airport in the US. Am I suppose to look on the board and look for my flight out of the hundreds of flights to see if anything has changed and keep looking every 30 minutes?
If I’m sitting at a restaurant or a bar I should get up every 20 minutes to see if something has changed?
Should I also print out MapQuest directions before I go somewhere and wait for the paper boy to deliver the newspaper to get the news?
And it’s literally a mile from one end of the airport to the other. Is it somehow better to look on a board than just look on a phone?
And then you also get notifications when the flight changes so drastically that I need to completely change my flight plans. Just this past weekend we were suppose to fly MCO - MSP - LAS and flight changes meant we were going to misd our layover.
Luckily we were notified as soon as the change happen and we were able to make a change to MCO - ATL - LAS and get two of the last seats.
The same happen on the way back. It was LAS - MSP - MCO and we were able to change it to LAS - LAX - MCO.
Things always change when you fly a lot. The sooner you know about those changes the better.
> Until two years ago, I flew out of ATL - the busiest airport in the US. Am I suppose to look on the board and look for my flight out of the hundreds of flights to see if anything has changed and keep looking every 30 minutes?
That’s what I usually do. It’s not that much of an effort to look at the screen right at the gate you’re sitting at to confirm that nothing has changed. I‘ve been to ATL twice, it’s not that bad.
What are you going to do when something happens to your phone …
Can you imagine… how did we manage to live before everyone and their dog had a phone in their pocket.
So yeah… yeah? That’s exactly what you supposed to be doing.
> That’s what I usually do. It’s not that much of an effort to look at the screen right at the gate you’re sitting at to confirm that nothing has changed. I‘ve been to ATL twice, it’s not that bad.
And you somehow think that’s more efficient? Do you also think polling is more efficient than web hooks and push notifications? Why would I do that?
And the restaurants are usually not right at the gate you’re sitting at. Well in our case we are usually sitting in the lounge…
> What are you going to do when something happens to your phone
Well, I personally would take out my cellular equipped iPad on the rare occasions that I was flying by myself and I would still get text notifications on my cellular equipped watch or depend on my wife having her phone, cellular equipped iPad or Watch.
If all that failed yes I would have to get a paper ticket - which you can do at the gate.
How often do you actually fly? My wife and I have been flying over a dozen times a year post Covid.
I was in ATL either flying in, out or through ATL over 25x last year alone.
> Can you imagine… how did we manage to live before everyone and their dog had a phone in their pocket.
I personally had my first phone in my pocket in 1995. Never once in 30 years has anything “happened to my phone”.
What is there to be more efficient? You’re sitting there waiting for a flight. This isn’t a shopping mall, even if it appears to look like one.
Re push vs pull… which one do you prefer more? Kafka or MQTT? On a more serious note… pull because I don’t sit snd stare at the phone all the time. Phone stays in the pocket. So the act of taking it out of the pocket is a pull action.
There are no screens and announcements at the lounge? You went to the airport to fly somewhere, not shopping or a dinner for two, no? What’s more important than getting to your destination?
> What is there to be more efficient? You’re sitting there waiting for a flight. This isn’t a shopping mall, even if it appears to look like one.
That’s just it, even if I didn’t have lounge access, I would be hanging out at a restaurant or a bar that isn’t near the gate. I would have to be constantly looking on the board with all of the flights. ATL has 192 gates spread across seven concourses and two terminals.
> pull because I don’t sit snd stare at the phone all the time. Phone stays in the pocket
Of course I have an alarm set for when I need to start heading toward my gate. But gate changes and when it’s time to board are both push notifications to both my phone and my watch.
> There are no screens and announcements at the lounge
2100 flights take off per day from ATL. That’s over 100 flights an hour - I think there are at least 6 hours a day where no flights take off. They explicitly say they don’t make announcements.
This goes back to do you really want to be searching for your flight on a board with that many flights?
> You went to the airport to fly somewhere, not shopping or a dinner for two, no
If you either get to the airport early to avoid rush hour or have a long layover, you probably will end up having a meal or drinks while you wait. We had a four hour layover at LAX last week.
I think it was Kyiv's airport (so I can't check) but their flight times were not all rounded to the nearest 10 minutes.
I liked this, as finding the single 12:34 flight was much quicker than looking at the 4+ flights all with "12:30" at another airport, where on the display each line is rotating between multiple flight numbers, airlines and languages.
Personally, even if I'm using an app I still look at the screens to check. A notification might not have been sent, or my phone might have dropped off the airport wifi leaving me with no connection, or roaming might have stopped working.
I really don't get why you're being so hostile here. If you don't want to rely on modern conveniences, don't. There's no reason to get up in arms that some of us think that other ways can be easier.
I want to offer a counter point to all these Luddites:
I'm mentally handicapped (my mind is apparently somewhere on a spectrum) and technology allows me to limit human interaction- which causes me physical discomfort.
I realise normal people love to talk to the lady at McDonald's, they probably live for that shit.
> What are you going to do when something happens to your phone
Uh... look at the big departures board, duh. I don't see why it's weird to want to use an indisputably more convenient method (auto-updating pass on my phone) for the common case, but still be able to fall back to a less-convenient method (departures board) if the uncommon case comes up.
And no big deal if I need a paper boarding pass. I can just walk over to the gate, show them my ID, and ask them to print me one.
1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue.
3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
I recently got bitten in the rear by Delta not updating boarding passes stored in Apple Wallet, even though it had / has all permissions to do so.
Only when I checked the time and wondered why we weren't boarding yet, and opened the app did I notice that the gate changed.
Even afterwards the one stored in Apple Wallet did not update. I even tried to do the pull-to-refresh. Eventually I pulled to refresh, and that worked.
No, but when you have a device in your hands, with an app provided by the company you're dealing with, and they specifically request permissions to send you notifications, you start to rely on it.
An unreliable boarding pass in Apple Wallet is worse than a paper boarding pass.
With the paper one I know I need to check the screens etc. With the Apple the app implies that you no longer have to do this.
And you get used to it. You stop doing the things you did before. That muscle memory disappears. Not dissimilar to driving with GPS, or programming with AI.
Actually, it is updated more currently usually. Apple wallet will not update for me with the current gate. By the time I show up to the airport 2 hours before the flight and get a paper pass on the other hand usually the gate is already set. But apple wallet still won't always reflect that update to the gate. Whereas my printed pass does. As well as the good old fashioned boards of flights, which are pretty easy to gleam considering they are alphabetized.
This is my experience most flights to be honest. LAX doesn't assign gates until the last minute so apple wallet is usually wrong. Google search for the flight number always works of course.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
Maybe it's better these days, but back when I used to use online apps/sites to pay for parking in private lots, 4/5 times I still got a "ticket." I never had to pay the fine with money, only with time.
I think it really was the 4th time I decided to stop using those apps entirely.
Sometimes I wonder if the devs behind these apps and processes feel embarrassed by the results. I would be, even if the failures weren't my fault.
Don’t people just print their boarding passes at home before they leave for the airport? Or worst case, use the kiosks at the airports which print passes? Very few of the passengers in line ahead of me are using their phones.
I don't trust apps, I don't mind using them for stuff that doesn't matter much, like parking og supermarket loyalty programs. For travel information, absolutly fucking not. I print everything. At the airport I mostly see people using their phones as boarding passes, I absolutely refuse to do that, I have zero trust that that will work as well as the paper boarding passes.
I really hate that the basic cost for participation has gone up, a smartphone and quality internet (in the USA) can be a significant cost.
But I've never had a problem with a screen capture of a boarding pass, and I've found the Apple wallet to work as well. The airport kiosks are good for printing out the pass when you check in, or even for just printing if you checked in on-line 24 hours prior.
I usually print a boarding pass at the airport kiosk — I always have luggage to check anyway, and there's then no concern if my battery dies etc.
But at the automatic gates to security, and at the boarding gate, I think the majority of people having trouble scanning their boarding pass are using a phone. For those elderly people who can't scan a paper boarding pass, the staff can immediately help — but they're much less able to help scan a barcode on a phone, which might be set too dim, be turning to landscape mode, etc.
I mean, they do demonstrably work. And if for some reason yours doesn't, no big deal, just walk two feet over to the gate desk and ask them to print you one.
I prefer to use mobile boarding passes so I don't have to waste paper, and don't have to keep track of yet one more thing while traveling. (I'm already bringing my phone, so I have to keep track of that regardless.)
Printing a boarding pass at home works for the flight out. But what about the returning flight?
Just last week I flew back home from SFO. I needed to change the flight at the last minute. The app failed to update with the new flight. The airline had removed all the boarding pass kiosks from that airport and only seemed to have luggage drop service. I asked an airport employee how I could get a boarding pass printed, and he pointed to a poorly-marked lane with a sign about "special accommodations" or something, like I was blind. I waited in that line for about 20 minutes along with people who were trying to check their bags. Eventually I got to someone who seemed really put out that I hadn't checked in yet and that they'd need to push a few more buttons on their computer to do that for me.
Weird, I've flew out of SFO two weeks ago on United, and their online check-in never works for me so I just do it at the airport and get a paper boarding pass. I didn't run into any issues. Line was short (mid morning on a Thursday). They have a bunch of self-service kiosks to check-in and print passes.
It's never crossed my mind that an airline app exists and I would never consider installing one. If they don't want to provide self-service kiosks or a working website, I guess they'll have to have more demand for agents. Same with banks: there's no check deposits through their website, so I go in person when I need to do that. Installing an app is just not even on my radar to consider.
I'd also never rely on a gate number from my phone anyway knowing that it could be out of date. I'd have to verify with a departure board or sign at the gate anyway, so I'm just going to start there.
That's what I do, because phones are too fiddly and I don't want to have to deal with unlocking it and finding wherever the barcode went off to when it's my turn to check in, but my wife does something with an app instead and seems to like it.
Perhaps that's the thing with an app my wife is doing. I don't have a wallet app, myself; I mistrust phones (and the corporations which own them) too much for that.
Depends where you are and which flights. Around me, maybe 60% of people use mobile. From the other 40%, some probably got their paper tickets when they checked in their baggage and going with that now.
> boarding passes at home before they leave for the airport
It’s been years I’ve heard or seen anyone doing it. Even my parents in their 70s get theirs at the airport.
> I don't think most people worry about that at all. Why wouldn't it be available? If you're heading to the airport from home, your battery is charged.
You're assuming the phone works and the internet connection works and the app works and the service behind it responsive. That's a lot of trust in thousands of moving parts.
Meanwhile I have a printed boarding pass which depends on nothing other than me having it in my pocket, so it basically 100% fail-proof.
While I always use the paper boarding pass, I do also check the boarding pass on the app out of curiosity. Easily like half the time on the American Airlines app, when I'm at the gate about to board and click on show boarding pass, the app hangs for many minutes and never responds. I'm always glad I have the paper boarding pass in my pocket instead.
> You're assuming the phone works and the internet connection works and the app works and the service behind it responsive
At check-in (24 hours before my flight), I add the boarding pass to Google Wallet. From that point, displaying it doesn't require an internet connection, or having to rely on the airline's often-shitty app.
Yes, the phone has to not be broken, but that's a pretty low bar: in my 15 years of owning smartphones, my phone has been broken and unusable for perhaps a grand total of a few days of time (so under 0.01% of the time). Yes, Google Wallet has to be functioning, but that particular app being broken would be an unusual, surprising occurrence.
And if by 0.01% chance, I can't get the boarding pass off my phone for some reason, I can always go to the check-in desk or kiosk or gate and ask them to print me one.
> Meanwhile I have a printed boarding pass which depends on nothing other than me having it in my pocket, so it basically 100% fail-proof.
I've never lost a phone before, but I have lost paper boarding passes on more than one occasion.
The point is that the mobile boarding pass is a nice convenience (especially with the auto-updating gate number on it), but the ability to get a paper boarding pass printed is never far away if the mobile one fails. So why not just use the mobile one, and save some paper, and the need to keep track of one more item?
Maybe I'm weird, but when I go on a trip, I generally pack my smartphone, if I bring it at all. It would be a royal pain to go find it again when I get into line to board.
Same, I do recognize that walking around without a smartphone starting to become "weird" to others though. I don't mind being weird.
I live in a major US city and get hit up for cash by the homeless sometimes. When I explain I do not have a cellphone to them when they ask for money through some cash app. They look bewildered. Just 20 years ago I was the only one carrying around such a device for IT reasons. Now I am putting limits on my digital life, and it makes me socially "weird".
OTOH
Currently, the only thing I don't pay regularly by using a smart device, are bus fares, which are a solved problem, my city just hasn't implemented that yet
Everything else, I can either use a digital wallet for, or an instant bank transfer (Which I've been given to understand are a bit more of a hassle in the US)
I'd basically never expect to be without a device for an extended period of time, specially not in an airport
I am aware of the single point of failure though, so I do take particular care of not running out of battery, keeping an accesible spare, and some cash around for emergencies I just never use it
Almost nobody carries around small cash or change anymore.
And social services provide the homeless and those in poverty with free smartphones, since they're far more effective at ensuring communications with social services.
So how is the world weird? It all seems quite rational and reasonable to me.
I won't call it "weird", because generally I like the idea that some people aren't actually glued to their phone at all times, and don't even have it handy.
But I will call it unusual, because the vast majority of people will have their phone in their pocket or purse while at the airport.
Ryanair (3rd largest airline in the world) insists on people printing their boarding pass like this, or using their app. They save money by needing fewer terminals at the airport.
> It's often €50 now to print boarding pass at the counter in Europe.
I was about to respond, "No way this is true. I don't believe you." But then I found an article claiming that yes, indeed you can be fleeced like this for simply showing up and asking for your boarding pass. Unreal.
Depends on where you are. My experience in American airports is almost all apps, but Spain's Iberia, for example, is basically all paper, typically printed by the airline and not even someone at home. So for them, minimal changes over how flying worked in the 1990s.
Just US domestic flights. Most people just have the paper passes. They are guaranteed to work. And I guess I just assumed everyone with a computer had some sort of printer. If not, how do they, you know, print things out? I use my printer constantly for things like forms I have to mail, printing out documentation to read later, hobby stuff…
You act as if the same QR codes scanned on your phone don’t work. Even if your phone dies or something happens, the gate agent can still print out your ticket at the gate.
What are you printing off and mailing so often?
Any documents you I don’t want to read on my phone, I read on my iPad.
> If not, how do they, you know, print things out?
I didn't have a printer until a few years ago (my now-wife really wanted one, so we got one). I do appreciate having it when I need it (easier than going to FedEx office), but I still very rarely have to print something out. I do really like that the printer has a built-in scanner; I've used that much more often than to print something.
> Most people just have the paper passes. They are guaranteed to work.
I've definitely had paper boarding passes that just wouldn't scan (probably from a faling airport kiosk printer), or a pass that had torn and even holding it together just right, it still wouldn't work.
I don't think I've ever had a mobile boarding pass that wouldn't scan, though of course there are other things that can go wrong, like the phone itself not working, which isn't a failure mode of paper passes.
But whatever, if my more-convenient, non-paper-wasting mobile pass doesn't work for some reason, I'll just go to the gate agent and ask them to print me one.
At a certain point, low-cost airlines become high-cost, at least in time and annoyance. I have a cousin who insists that Sprit saves him money, and every family holiday his plane is delayed or cancelled, and he had to fly to a different city and drive to where we are.
> Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.
You can just print at the airport at the check-in machines.
I never even bother checking-in in advance of arriving at the airport. I theorize that they assign bad seats to early checkins to incentivize people to pay to choose a different seats. I have at various times been assigned to upgraded seats (not upgraded class, but e.g. emergency row, bulkhead, etc.) when checking in at the airport.
> Oof, I would never fly an airline or buy a fare class that didn't let me choose a seat immediately, at time of booking.
I mean, that just seems like an expensive way to pay for seat selection.
e.g. Checking a route I fly frequently for an arbitrary date, it’s $232 (with seat selection in the $20 range) as the base fare rate, or $386 for the cheapest fare that includes seat selection. (With some other bonuses that don’t have any value to me, e.g. checked bags and a better cancellation policy.)
United's self service kiosks at some airports (e.g. AUS) no longer print boarding passes - they say that they're switching to only mobile boarding passes.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late
But they are worse than mid-2000s tech. I used to have a tag with an lcd timer that I loaded up with cash periodically. When I parked in a metered space in the city, I just turn the thing on and hang it on my driver window. It was synced with the parking schedule, so the timer wouldn’t run until metered parking started and stopped at the end of metered parking. Parking enforcement simply had to look at the tag to make sure it was on and had a positive value. When I came back, I just shut the thing off—I paid for exactly what I used, always. Great UX: turn on thing, hang in window, remove, turn off thing, plug into computer to add money every few months.
Compare to now where there’s An App that requires multiple taps to tell it which street your on, which car, oh look it forgot your credit card and they don’t take Apple Pay, time to enter all that data in again… oh yeah, also you have to overbuy parking and they charge transaction fees every time if you try to buy exact and add time later.
Also, now parking enforcement has to key in everyone’s license plates to figure out if they’re legal or not (no automated plate readers—they’re illegal in this state). Apart from being annoying, now that data is conveniently harvested.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
Pay-on-exit car parks are the answer to this. Combined with contactless card payment and that's peak parking experience.
> Pay-on-exit car parks are the answer to this. Combined with contactless card payment and that's peak parking experience.
US here (you are presumably elsewhere given that you said "car park"), but I can't remember ever seeing a parking garage that had a parking app. All of them are like you describe, with pay-on-exit.
I mainly see parking apps for street parking (where pay-on-exit can't work), and sometimes more basic parking lots where there isn't room for the entry/exit gate and hardware, or lots where it's bare-bones enough that the owner certainly isn't going to spring for the expense of installing something like that.
In Austin, I've parked in a handful of parking garages that require using an app. They have license plate recognition on entry and exit, and they mail you a nastygram if you enter/exit without linking a credit card to your plate online.
Except having the actual barrier is expensive. The license plate reader is cheaper, so they'll do that instead, and if it malfunctions, hope you don't mind paying for a full day of parking!
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
In my experiece, apps have increased costs around 50% and some even try to add monthly subscription.
For me it is less about being concerned about my device running out of batteries. It's more about some weird incompatibility between my device and the scanner.
It's one less thing to worry about when I just want to get on the plane. My paper ticket isn't going to lock before I get to the gate, or not be bright enough. I won't have to "play" with my ticket to keep it active and proper for the scanner.
> It's more about some weird incompatibility between my device and the scanner.
I think I held up an entire flight for nearly an hour because the QR code on my Graphene OS Android phone scanned fine at the TSA checkpoint but didn't scan at all at the gate. They ended up letting me on the flight without properly registering that I boarded in their system. That triggered some crazy security hold that prevented the crew from obtaining permission to pull back from the gate.
When that happens (and note it happens to paper boarding passes as well) I've always seen gate agents simply type in the details off the boarding pass. E.g. name, sequence number, etc and do a manual entry that way. I've had this happen to me at least once, and the agent very quickly just typed in something in their terminal and it was all done with no fuss. Really surprised no one thought of doing this in your situation.
> and god forbid if your drop your smartphone and get it cracked
Then you print a boarding pass at the kiosk? But I've cracked a phone once in ten years, it's not really something I'm worried about.
And paper isn't reliable. For most people, you're much more likely to lose a random sheet of paper than for your phone to suddenly permanently stop working.
Those kiosks are gone from many airports. You're going to have to wait in line to get anything printed. And if you fly Ryanair it will cost you over 50 euro.
I didn't know that. Based on what do they print a boarding pass, or perhaps rather: why don't they check {whatever the answer to the previous question is} at boarding instead of you having to hold onto a pass that apparently is a proxy for something else?
I've had a boarding pass reissued at the gate based on my passport.
Some airlines in Europe check both the boarding pass and the passport/identity card at the boarding gate, to ensure people haven't swapped boarding passes within the airport. I think I see this on flights outside the EU, but I'm not sure.
Hmm but what lookup does a human need to do? Identity documents have had chips for quite some years now so you just need to touch it to the reader and beep through, or for even older ones, they've had a machine-readable section since as long as I'm alive. A standardized government-issued passport is probably faster to read than a potentially dark and reflective phone screen or crinkled piece of paper, and equally fast in the case where the person presents a well-readable document. The gate doesn't even need to do any database lookup: it can locally store the list of the 200-odd names of passengers during boarding
I'm just speculating but if they can simply do a name+DOB-based lookup at a counter, it seems to me like the boarding pass thing might just be for historic reasons where people would feel weird if they are suddenly tracked based on personal details instead of a ticket
> That's not a thing. They're literally just cameras looking for a QR code.
And yet for me one time earlier this year said QR code on my Graphene OS phone scanned fine at the TSA checkpoint but refused to scan at the gate, leading to mayhem as the crew couldn't figure out for nearly an hour why the number of people sitting on the plane wasn't equal to the number of people who they registered as boarding.
I've had airline machines fail to scan the barcode on my poorly printed paper boarding passes (e.g. faded ink or unfortunate located gaps etc in the barcode area). The solution is simple, just type in the details off the BP into the terminal to look up my PNR and type the command to confirm I've boarded. I've seen this done for both paper and mobile boarding pass issues. Not a mobile issue but obviously poor staff training and problem solving which occurs with or without mobiles.
I’m gonna say something stupid — the chances of my phone running out of battery and me not being able to charge it is lower than me losing the paper ticket.
It's not that hard to maintain a random piece of paper, you do it with your ID, which presumably you do not keep on your phone. It is much harder to ensure an iPhone won't randomly be miscalibrated and shut off at 30%.
My ID is not a random piece of paper. A boarding pass is.
I have never ever in my life lost my ID or my phone. I have lost paper boarding passes on several occasions.
The failure modes of a phone don't really matter; if the phone fails for some reason (still has never happened to me), I can always ask a gate agent to print me a boarding pass.
I do it with my ID because I've conditioned myself to check for it everytime I'm going to move places, or rather, check for my wallet, which usually has my ID inside it, but has burned me on a couple of ocassions
Also, some people do keep their ID on their phones, either directly on the back of the case (I've seen it more on young women, maybe because lack of pockets) or with something like a magnetic wallet
Louisiana has digital ID, I don't use it but my wife does and it seems to work OK. I think you can have your phone locked with the ID up, which is the only way I'd consider using it, anyhow.
Its been a while since I've heard any issues with it. I prefer the physical card still.
Not it's not hard, but it is significantly harder, and why introduce unnecessary additional complexity into my life?
My ID is in my wallet. A sheet of paper doesn't fit in my wallet. So I have to put the folded paper in a pocket, where it might fall out when I take out my gloves, or I forget if I put it in my backpack, and in which pocket, etc.
A sheet of paper is extra. My phone isn't. And I sure as heck don't bring a phone with low charge to the airport... when I know I'm probably going to be using it for hours... and I've got my charger with me anyways in case I somehow did.
It's not hard, certainly. But I have lost paper boarding passes a few times. I've never lost my phone, though.
I just like not having to keep track of an extra thing. Travel is already often stressful; having one fewer thing to keep on me and avoid losing is nice.
You could lose your phone, or even have it stolen.
I think of it as multitasking. A paper ticket means I can focus on reading etc on device, while the ticket can serve its purpose. I keep all pertinent materials in a pouch in front of me however so not hard to find.
At the airport? That’s fine. I’ll just talk to the agent and get a ticket if needed. I think these are just extreme cases that applies to extremely tiny percentage of people.
Well I don't recall people picking their partners from a line-up being that popular. You might not be "hot" but still do fine in an environment with limited choice.
If we trust those historical charts statistically over 70-80% of all people used to meet their partners though friends, work, school or family before the 2000s (work slowly replacing family since the 50s). Going out with random people you just met and had no other connection with was relatively rare.
> > 1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
The last time I tried parking in downtown Salt Lake City the city's app wouldn't even install on my phone, complaining about being built for an older Android version. Fortunately the web site still worked. Sort of. I had to try a couple of different browsers before I found one that functioned with the site.
When riding Caltrain I get charged for the maximum amount I could possibly pay (all stops) when I board. Then when I get off at my stop I tap again and get refunded for all the stops I ended up not getting to. It works fine. Seems a meter could be a "tap in/tap out" thing. If it's 5 hours until it's free to park, put a hold for 5 hours of time. If you get back in 2 hours, release the hold and only charge for 2 hours when you tap out.
It's even possible to do this with cash. Imagine a machine that calculates your change and spits out bills and/or coins. Oh wait, yeah, we've had that technology since around 1959. It would just need to print out a ticket with a bar code or something to authenticate that you're the one who paid in the first place. Did you lose your ticket? Sorry, looks like you're paying for the rest of the day. But that's still a lot cheaper than a citation.
I suspect it's not "pay max/get refund" because municipalities can't stop milking those sweet sweet citations from people who fail to correctly guess how much time they'll need up front.
> > 1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters.
> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
Yeah... nothing more I love than having to scan a QR code to get an app from someone I don't know, then go through the signup process, then input a buncha personal information into an app... instead of just dropping 10 quarters into a metal stick and walking away for the next two hours.
> > 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
> Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.
Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer. They're not gold bars. They're not expensive.
> Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer.
The desk at my AirBnB doesn't seem to have one.
> They're not gold bars. They're not expensive.
If someone has an alternate solution to owning a printer that works for them, whats it to you? Owning a printer so you can print half of the boarding passes you need every time you fly seems excessive to me
I can't remember the last time I had any quarters on me, let alone 10. Coins are annoying to carry around, and I don't drive enough or park in paid lots/areas enough to expect that I'll remember to ensure that I always have change in my car.
> Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer.
While I do have a printer now (at my wife's request), I went a good 20 years without one, and was fine with that.
> They're not expensive.
That's a weird take. Even if the printer itself isn't that expensive, keeping it fed with ink/toner can be. Not to mention they're just annoying pieces of hardware, with usually-shitty software, that take up precious desk real-estate.
> Yeah... nothing more I love than having to scan a QR code to get an app from someone I don't know, then go through the signup process, then input a buncha personal information into an app... instead of just dropping 10 quarters into a metal stick and walking away for the next two hours.
Quality of execution obviously matters. I find EasyPark (Swedish company, used all over the place) a lot better than the usual parking meters. Plus I can use it in several cities with different currencies (in my case Euros and Czech Koruna), saving me from carrying more change.
The point is all these things should be options, not single points of failure. We should be able to pay by coin/tap, or app when at a place we frequent. Apps should use a single system per region, props for being an open standard.
I don't think anyone is arguing that. While I wouldn't be surprised if app-only parking situations exist, I have never encountered one. Every place I've needed to park that had an app also offered the ability to pay with card (and often cash) at a meter or machine.
I saw it once and was so disgusted I haven’t been back to the location, for years. Have heard they went back to the old system but my habits have changed permanently it seems.
> Yeah... nothing more I love than having to scan a QR code to get an app from someone
True. I does suck when travelling. Locally I find it much more convenient though.
> dropping 10 quarters
You're always carrying a bag full of coins wherever you go? And even if I did I'd end up overpaying/underpaying half of the time.
> Looking to the left or right of your desk is how you should be finding your printer.
So I should waste space with a huge device that I use <10 times per year?
I mean I could bring it over from the other room or the attic or wherever it's lying around but why would I waste time and mental energy each time I'm travelling having to keep track of some piece of paper that I mustn't lose? Seems rather pointless...
Cheap Android phones aren't expensive either and can provide a lot more than a printer for most people these days.
I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early).
> 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass.
Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer.
Duolingo isn't really a replacement for classes (which are obviously a magnitude or few more expensive) but self learnings books, tapes and such (IMHO it's mostly inferior to those too but not by a such high degree).
Can't disagree about Tinder/etc. though.