Because they think the desktop version doesn’t have enough return on investment?
Exactly. Some of the restrictions are purely to make people get on their app, not because they have to be. Reddit on a mobile browser will refuse to work after a few posts down and insist that you download the Reddit app. No reason why you HAVE to – the first posts worked just fine on the mobile browser – but they artificially lock you out to try to force you to get and use their app. I just keep my Reddit reading to PC only because I don’t need another trash app on my devices for no actual reason.
OfferUp refuses to allow you to post via PC despite a PC with a keyboard being unambiguously a better choice for writing out product descriptions. But, no, you can browse the site and look at your account, etc from their website but you have to use their app to actually post. I use Bluestacks for that, which is crashprone but I still prefer over trying to do that shit on my phone screen.
I think they may encourage the use of mobile apps because they get other data, like location information, from users.
This is mainly it. Desktop app development requires a very different skill set from web development which requires very different skill set from phone app development (and that’s not counting the iPhone/Android split). Dev teams are expensive, and companies need to prioritize on what gives the most bang for the buck.
This is a strategy with some merit, but IME most web apps don’t convert well to phone apps without a great deal of restructuring, to the point where you’re basically running another development effort.
Apps ask for all sorts of permissions that they don’t, or at least shouldn’t, need. A lot ask for location; others ask for access to contacts or to read/write files - while they may have the capability to use some of that data, it’s not part of the core & therefore, quite unnecessary. The whole purpose of Zoom is to do remote teleconferences, almost by definition users are going to be in separate locations; yet they ask for location access? Denied! Garmin requires both access to location & location turned on just to pair a new device, & at least access to location permission (even if location is turned off) to upload any data, including for the lower end models that are just step counters & don’t have any GPS capabilities.
I don’t recall being locked out after a few pages (probably happened, I just don’t remember), but I hate having to have a dozen apps for things that could all be done in the browser. That is, you can search for one thing and get a search result that will want to launch the Reddit app, another that wants you to install tapatalk, yet another that begs you to install twitter and of course, any facebook results won’t open at all outside of the facebook app…and for some reason if a facebook friend sends you a facebook message on facebook, facebook (mobile) can’t open that, you’ll need another app. Every single one of these things can be done on virtually any internet browser, at the same time even. But on a phone, nope, not having it.
Might not happen on phone (or maybe it does, I haven’t tried) but it happens to me on my tablet browsers. Which is doubly annoying since the tablet has desktop mode for browsing so there’s no excuse. What happens is that if it’s a relatively lengthy thread, scrolling down past a certain point will cause the replies to stop showing and instead it says to download the app to keep reading. It’s a hard sort of lock, too, not a banner that can get clicked off. If it’s a post with just three replies, no problem. If it’s a post with a number of replies, I get blocked while scrolling down.
Try old.reddit.com
I don’t tend to read long threads on reddit (or anywhere) on my phone. My phone is typically just used to look something up, so often times if that something is on reddit, reading the first few posts will get me the answer I’m looking for. I do have to push past the nag screen asking me to download the app everytime, but I don’t recall if it tries to force me if I continue.
While we’re at it, I really wish my browser would automatically remove the ‘m’ from the beginning of wiki links that someone on a phone cut and pasted. It’s hardly the end of the world, but it’s much harder to read on a desktop when it’s in mobile mode. Is there some reason wiki doesn’t adapt to the user’s device without resorting to a different web address?
I’m afraid to post in this thread because I agree with the OP so strongly I might become testy. But this one caught my eye. I have an Anova, and love it. It never occurred to me to want to control it from either my phone or my desktop PC – it has a perfectly good control wheel right on the thing. Why would you need or want to use an app (or a desktop, for that matter) for an Anova? Are you letting it run while you’re away, and adjusting the temp before you get home? (If so, that actually makes sense to me. But I’m just curious.)
I agree, the scroll wheel is much easier to use than the app. The model I have has a major user interface flaw on the cooker itself, though. To switch the scroll wheel from temperature to time requires pressing and holding a button. Pressing the button also switches from Fahrenheit to Centigrade, so setting cook time from the unit goes like this:
- Scroll to desired temperature
- Press button causing temperature units to switch
- Continue holding button until time appears
- Set cook time
- Tap button to switch back to desired temperature units
Using the app avoids that problem. However, the app is bluetooth, so the phone has to be in the same room as the cooker, so remote starting isn’t possible with my old model.
Just as complained about by @Spiderman and others, the Anova app asks for lots of permissions. Location and nearby devices are necessary for using bluetooth, but I’m not sure why it asks for camera and files. Those are denied and it seems to work fine. There might be good reasons (scanning QR codes to pair or something), but nothing I’ve ever needed.
Don’t discount “because those account permission bits are set in the android manifest and the dev team hasn’t noticed that they’re not needed yet” as an explanation.
Bluetooth is a connection protocol; it shouldn’t need location to connect to something via BT.
Hehe, this all sounds like the earlier suggestion that it’s easier or more obvious to the programmers to build phone apps than desktop apps, because that’s just how they roll, and presume their customers roll. In this case, the idea has been extended to the hardware itself. It’s too difficult, apparently, to make well functioning switches on a physical object; just offsource that whole difficult business into the phone and call it done! 
I just realized, too, I’m blessed with a rather antique Anova that has beautiful physical controls. After the first use, it remembered the temperature units forever, and there is no cook time function (that’s called “go turn it off.”)
Shouldn’t…but does. Newer Android versions require apps to get location permission in order to use bluetooth.
However, I’m not entirely sure if the apps are actually getting GPS/location info. I recall reading somewhere that granting an app bluetooth access actually provides it with enough info to find your location. Because of that, Google/Android are basically just warning you that when you’re [possibly] giving up your location by allowing an app to have BT access.
True or not, I don’t know. In any case, the majority of my apps that need bluetooth I use the ‘this time only’ button so it’s revoked as soon as I’m done.
Wifi and bluetooth access got rolled into location permissions, because simply knowing the hardware address of the remote wifi or bluetooth connection may be enough to give an app an idea of your location. There exist databases that will say something like wifi with SSID “StraightDope” and MAC address DE:AD:BE:AF is in downtown Chicago. So if an app can read that information, it knows where you are.
Wifi and bluetooth access is different than using the network or playing music to bluetooth earbuds. To do those things the application doesn’t need to know any information about the remote access points or devices; it just passes stuff to the operating system’s network stack.
Anyway, it does make sense, the main question is “does the Anova app do anything with location other than look for a bluetooth cooker?”
Back to the point of the thread, in some cases when communicating with devices, I prefer an app that keeps everything local, rather than an app/website that is doing things through the cloud.
Anova really can’t make a website to control my cooker, because my cooker has no way to talk to communicate with the web backend. Even if Anova disappears, the app can still talk to my cooker over bluetooth.
My Neato vacuum uses wifi to talk to the cloud, and then the app talks to the cloud, and together they coordinate me not having to bend down to press the “Go” button, but using my phone to start vacuuming from the toilet. If Neato’s servers go away, then I have to wait until I’m done in the bathroom to start vacuuming. The advantage is, there is no technical block for Neato to create a website to control my vacuum.
I have one also and installed the app and tried to use it. It was more cumbersome than it was worth, particularly when I found the control on the device worked perfectly fine. No more app.
While I agree that a big screen and proper keyboard is better for some tasks, it does come with with the rather heavy caveat that your PC is only the perfect tool for those tasks if you’re in the same place as it.
[quote=“TwoCarrotSnowman, post:38, topic:960609”]
While I agree that a big screen and proper keyboard is better for some tasks, it does come with with the rather heavy caveat that your PC is only the perfect tool for those tasks if you’re in the same place as it.
[/quote
Someday they will invent a mobile PC and we can have the best of both worlds! 
It’s a shame that approaches like Windows Continuum and Samsung Dex didn’t take off. The basic idea was that at home (or work) you’d plug your phone into a docking station which was connected to a big screen and a keyboard and mouse. The phone would detect this and output a proper desktop, with icons etc. when you needed to go somewhere, unplug from the docking station and it’s back to being a phone. Great idea in theory but it never caught on.