Having to use an app to use a washing machine does not count as "innovation" to me.

It's using technology to go a step backward in usability.

Agreed. I lived somewhere that switched from a credit card reader on the machines, to an app.

The credit card reader was instant. You could just put in your laundry, swipe your card, and that was it. Instantly started.

They switched to an app by the same service company, and now there were a bunch more steps involved. Put in your laundry, find the app, open it, scroll through their “what’s new in laundry!” news that nobody cares about, click a bunch of buttons until you find the machine number that matches yours, go through the menus to pick washer settings, then pay there, and still need to push the start button on the machine itself.

So much worse, and also more error prone — I would regularly get errors when a machine disconnected from the internet.

Why people think it’s better, I have no idea. The only thing I can think is that credit card fees are cheaper on a $20 transaction compared to 20 $1 transactions

I guess the value to the user is a notification when the wash completes?

Credit card fees are exactly the reason why the switch happened. Do you really think the washing machine companies would bother building an app when they could continue charging without any investment whatsoever?

If I use a CC to pay in app, there’s still a fee. Is an IAP considered lower risk, so lower fee than a physical card at a terminal?

The cost for a vendor processing CCs is something like (iirc) 3% of purchase price + $0.10. The benefit to vendor of selling you credits (aside from the fact that you might not use them all), is that they only have to pay the $0.10 portion of the fee once for every, say, $20 worth of washes instead of paying the flat part of the fee every single wash.

intermediation. they get a chance to have their own laundry bucks currency. they get better tracking. they get to show you ads, and have marketing touch points with you every time you need to do laundry.

I’d certainly prefer to use an app rather than having to hunt for quarters. If the app didn’t exist, I’d probably have to go to a bank to get quarters or an ATM to withdraw cash and beg the closest convenience store to give me change.

Granted, there are probably better solutions that require neither quarters nor a mobile app, but between those two, the mobile app wins for me.

The problem is that it's not an either-or.

Adding app operation alongside coin operation would have been an improvement in useability. Replacing coins with apps is just making it suck in a different way.

But then you have two problems: keeping the app going AND dealing with cash

It is an either or for some businesses. Coins in the USA are in a massive shortage the last few years. Change machines aren’t cheap and repairs can be costly. It makes financial sense to switch to these apps or people wouldn’t do it.

From the consumer perspective, probably. But from a laundromat's perspective, even if only a fraction of users use coins, they still need to deal with coins.

Once you're below some use threshold, a lot of places would prefer to ditch cash entirely.

It reminds me of the cycle of enshittification: once you have a captive audience, you start bumping the profits at the cost of the user experience.

It looks like something similar is in effect here: instead of meeting the different customers where the customers alrady are, it's the company's preferred way or the highway.

There is an in between. Our buildings laundry has a payment machine that takes credit cards and either gives you a credit card sized laundry card or recharges it. You tap the card to start that machine. You can also use the smart phone app, but I don’t think it’s used by many.

It works pretty well.

Parking meters are another thing that seems to be going the app route. I use one locally but when I travel it’s usually not the same network so its figure out how to do it.. (website, payment kiosk, another app…)

>when I travel it’s usually not the same network

Apps tend to be a pretty good solution for regular local users. They're less good when you're dealing with different apps/kiosks/etc., with different interfaces, and different ways of storing value in different cities.

'Parking meters are another thing that seems to be going the app route.'

Gone that way already in the UK, ironically in lots of places where there is very patchy or no mobile signal at all.

Yeah, getting quarters is a real problem, especially when all of the banks in your area are only open during business hours and not on weekends. That said, I'd personally prefer quarters over an app, since quarters are much more fail-safe. The system that I'd prefer overall though would be some kind of prepaid account and an NFC card. UCLA had this system when I was a grad student there and it was really easy to use. You just tap your card on the reader by the door and select what machine to use. Everything ran smoothly.

Sidestep I’d say as we’ve never seen that before. Sidestep into hell, but still a side.

Using the app is not the only problem. But the lack of freedom and privacy in obtaining the app.

I'm not sure this is laggard behaviour. Laggards are defined as having no thought leadership qualities, they are literally late to the party.

There's an argument that this is quite the reverse: it's innovative behaviour since it demonstrates comparative rarity, leadership (pointing the way), novelty (we should do things differently), etc.

Frankly, I think this thread points to some of the weaknesses in the Diffusion of Innovations theory (which on the whole I quite like). It doesn't neatly model 'luddites', those who are exposed to 'innovations' and understand them, yet reject them for whatever reason.

Yeah. If you look at a list of technical innovations I expect that there is a whole list of often perfectly rational reasons why some inventions took longer to hit high penetrations levels than others. It's not just "I hate change."

I certainly don't think I'm a luddite in general but there are a lot of things that I'm just "Meh. Don't need it."

I'm the "meh don't need it type" but whatever the feelings I have, I can't rent a car or buy a plane ticket without a credit card.

Some shops don't even accept cash anymore. Don't get me started about the worst recent innovation : a Friggin 21" monitor for the "infotainment" in a car.

But I know that if I have to change my current car, it would be almost impossible to have a car without a television on the console. Unless I buy an old car which pollutes too much.

I think that "meh don't need it" is the first step to "I'm gettin too old for this shit"

You can buy a Honda Civic and rip out the head unit. But yeah, infotainment screen is nice for the first week but is good as useless.

Gotta disagree that it's rare on HN. There's a strong privacy contingent, but there's also the natural conservatism about technology you develop as an experienced engineer ("how is this gonna break and bite me in the ass?")

It's definitely way more common to be anti-technology here than in the real world, because of the number of weirdos here that are hyper paranoid about security, and because of the number of "If I could set screen modes manually in X86config then it's good enough for you!" stuck-in-the-muds.