Yes, there's just some places you can't park. There are places everywhere you can't park if you don't belong to specific groups or meet certain requirements. You can't park in the perfectly good loading zone or fire lane, you can't park in front of a fire hydrant, you can't park in the City Vehicles Only spot, you can't park in the Employees Only spot, you can't park in the Patrons of X Business Only spot. You can't park in the places where a permit is required if you don't have the permit. And you can't park in the places where a temporary pass needs to be purchased if you're not able to purchase the pass.

I constantly go back and forth mentally between "you should be able to handle everything in public without a phone or computer" vs "people should not need to design systems to cater to every single edge case." For what it's worth, I also hate the parking apps and I'm grateful that all the parking in my area is tap to pay without involving my phone.