You can get all of these benefits by using the Tim Hortons mobile website with an account.

But that's like not native and so unhip. I'm convinced the whole push to get away from mobile web to native app is solely for the personal data hovering for the vast majority of apps.

For example, a friend just downloaded the Wayfair app. Why is that necessary? She saved a couple of items, and now the app relentlessly notifies her about things even with notfications off. Doesn't happen with a mobile website.

Yes, this is the entire corporate rational behind everything "mobile" and "cloud."

One of my deepest worries about the field of software engineering is what happens when people in general stop responding to ads or irritating demands to engage. Suddenly, the demand for software becomes much smaller than it is today.

I'm never happy about people no longer having jobs, but there's an entire swath of the industry specializing in building crap apps/sites specifically to 'all your data now belong to us' that could just go away and make the planet a better place. That's one of the rare occassions that I actually agree with that lame SV phrase.

You can't win either way. Push for web apps and the necessary capabilities in the browser to make rich web apps and you get hit with "but browser fingerprinting!" malarkey from the privacy fetishists.

That's a simple thing to just not do and is a lame excuse.

If you're doing browser fingerprinting and get called out for it, you're the one full of malarkey. Building a web app does not require being shady, just as building a native app does not require one to do nefarious things. The devs* in either scenario choose to do it.

*Devs meaning whoever is behind it whether it is corpOverloards or shaddy devs, a dev somewhere obliged the overloards wishes.

No, what I mean is, see comments like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31592332

That features like Webgl exist at all is a rage-inducing issue for some people.

> nag you that you're near one of their location

The Tim Hortons app doesn't do this. I don't think it sends any notifications at all, at least I've never gotten one and I haven't disabled notifications.

That was meant as a general statement about many of this class of apps; sorry if that wasn't clear. So the TH app doesn't nag you, it just takes wildly inappropriate amounts of data that it has no legitimate business collecting. Awesome...they have that going for them.