this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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An explanation I've heard for why we don't have "everything apps" in the US is because we all have an app store on our phones and that's the niche the everything apps were really solving for.
That and i think we also adopted technology differently. Places like China or india in a way skipped most of the PC/Laptop phase and went straight to smartphones as their main device to access everything. On a PC/Laptop you'll access most things through a browser, so many services already existed this way and also remain accessible through that.
And even to this day many will prefer to do some things on a larger screen rather than a smartphone, even if by now it is the primary device.
How do you get the everything app in the first place if you don't have an app store?
Comes pre-installed on the phone. I think it was possible to download apps from websites too, it was just not as convenient.
So is there like a single app on their Home Screen?
They tap it and it opens an app with a bunch of other apps in it? Or a bunch of tabs, or other widgets you have to scroll around to find the functionality you want?
I get why China would want this, for content control. But I don’t see why india or anywhere else would want this.
There are still like calculator apps and web browsers and such, "everything" is more like instead of Paypal/Venmo, you use WeChat. Instead of ApplePay, WeChat. Instead of Facebook, WeChat. Instead of Uber, WeChat. It's just all that functionality smashed into one app.
I don't think it's designed by the state to be centralized, it's just how things happened in a lot of Asia.
Also, everyone is locked into using credit cards.