Are we relying too heavily on apps?

While apps have become more popular and many people rely on them heavily for their day-to-day activities, they are not the only way to reach digital consumers. Web-based experiences, content marketing, and even physical experiences, such as retail stores, can all be important channels to reach new customers.

Such a heavy question! I agree and that's why I use apps only when it's necessary. I love those weekends when I throw my mobile in a corner and just enjoy life's simplicity.

To me this whole ... zeitgeist feels like the general enthusiasm one gets when discovering or inventing something new. That how's it looks to me, this new-found obsession with convenience and productivity apps and services that started popping up in the last decade or so. My guess is that when people started developing apps and tech to reduce some of friction of day-to-day life, the question of "what else can we streamline or optimize through apps?" started popping up more and more often. I imagine it will grow as much as it can, until the whole enthusiasm dies off naturally or some sort of push back begins to form. For example, this year I started seeing video essays by creators on Youtube asking themselves "Are we burning out by trying to be too productive?". I think my opinion on this topic echoes this feeling, too much of anything can't be good in the long run.

We live in an age where we are bombarded with data and we need to make sense of it. Because of that, we need to augment ourselves with apps to help us go trough a "normal" day 😅 We need a weather app to know what clothes to use, and app to notify us if there any road restrictions to adjust our route to work/school, a scheduling app to let us know what bills we have to pay and the examples can go on... We live a complicated life and without apps to make it just a little bit easier for us, we would just get overwhelmed.

I use very few carefully selected apps. Besides social media, ofc :))

I feel there are three main issues: 🧰 An overstocked toolbox: The last few years have seen an explosion in productivity tools - making work more complicated. Zoom calls now frequently involve users just switching screens from Notion to PowerPoint to Figma to some form of a spreadsheet. And this has accelerated during the pandemic. 😫 Apps that don’t play well together: Yes, you can embed a Miro board in Notion but the experience is subpar. It seems like an afterthought and not a core experience. 💸 Piling costs: An Okta report found that the average customer in 2018 had 80 installed work apps, an increase from ~50 apps in 2015. Of Okta’s Office 365 customers, 76% had one or more apps that are duplicative of a Microsoft app. While the Google/Microsoft suite is priced at $10-15/user/month, a stack comprised of Notion, Airtable, Figma (including Figjam), Slack can cost $40+/user/month on top. The unbundling of work, which led to an explosion of disparate apps, created the need for products to find a way to ‘rebundle’. The focus is on convenience, organization, and focus. This means all-in-one workspaces like Notion and Clover, window-into-your-work apps like Chronicle, and universal (smart) search tools like Raycast are emerging. Here's a quote from Marc Andreessen to conclude this: My old boss, Jim Barksdale, used to say there’s only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle. …and so, ironically, even the people who take down an incumbent through unbundling then come back and try to do the rebundle.

I struggle with this as well. It seems like there is always a new app coming onto the market that fills some gap or solves a problem that I wasn't even fully aware of to begin with. I try to make a deliberate effort to make sure the marginal lift in productivity from a new app is worth effort (and cost) of adding a new one to the repertoire!

I think it's true that we rely heavily on apps, but I think it's a natural consequence of growing up in a technological age. People are "hyper optimzing" every part of their day.

Such complicated question with too much dimensions But i would say an yes to that.

Totally agree with your opinions! We seem to stick with tech devices all day and night. Sometimes, I wonder how much time in a day we truly enjoy real life. That's why I always try to spend at least 1-2 hours running around nearby park.

The more app we create, the more we rely on it. We are getting busier and busier.

100%. We want everything at our finger tips. And all our problems to be solved through apps

I totally agree with you. I'm seeing a time where it will all become a burden. Like TAX. Maybe we all need a clean up drive.

I think we'll probably have one app do most of these. This could be bad in a different way (monopoly). However, I think that if a major app goes down, there will always be more to take its place. The open source community has always existed in many software spaces, so I think even if we rely heavily on apps, nothing short of a solar storm or nuclear apocalypse would cause too many issues. And if those happen, we'd surely have more issues than not being able to use our apps!

I'm an AI enthusiast, and my career is heavily linked to the tech world. Also, I grew up reading the great Isaac Asimov and fell in love with his "Robot series" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro... ). I firmly believe that apps, robots, or AI can improve human life. All we have to do is to make sure that we avoid, at all costs, the singularity. Do you believe the singularity is inevitable?

sounds true, today's generation uses this more. But using as only necessary or considering other things can reduce the use of apps.

yes...it's true that we rely heavily on apps...and It has many adverse effects on our daily life... destroying our skills and memories.....

Yes sure ,Our generation seems to rely heavily on apps for, well, just about everything.

There're dozens of apps in my smartphone. Interestingly, some of them prove to be useful during the day while others (social media ofc :) ) cause the biggest distraction.