The bigger the purchase, the bigger the screen. Plane tickets are fine on a laptop, but if you’re buying a car, you need a desktop PC. A house requires a Jumbotron.
Nah, buying a house just needs three monitors.
I need to use my current screen to buy a bigger screen so I can make a really big purchase
Are people buying houses off a website?
You can sign the paperwork on a computer, yes. Sometimes.
I prefer to imagine that people are putting a house in a shopping cart and trying to apply a discount voucher.
“Today’s sponsor, Houze! Use code “JIMMYJOE” when you buy your first house to get a free mousepad!”
*housepad, shaped like a little home
I used DocuSign for the closing paperwork for my house. I absolutely did it from my phone.
Username checkout
Usually I understand why people would say this. I’m very drunk and somewhat Texan. However, I’m baffled by this one.
Do only drunks sign closing paperwork using DocuSign? Is that a Texas thing I don’t know about? Is it just the yee haw attitude of the whole thing?
You use to be able to buy one thought a sears catalog.
Nah a jumbotron is too low res, what you should be doing is adding more monitors.
It’s as if shopping on a laptop is more user friendly or some crazy shit like that
Desktops and laptops make browing a large number of tabs easier and websites dont pare down the options and menus into a useless mess
Theres some websites where I have to look at in desktop bersion on Firefox mobile because theyre useless otherwise. Digikey for example.
Exactly. Why do sites decide “you’re on mobile, so you just don’t need to ever see such and such piece nformation”? I get that there’s limited screen real estate, but at least put that info somewhere, inside a menu or something.
For big purchases you’ve got to have the desktop version of the websites, you need a mouse for precision pointing and a keyboard for alt+tab-ing between windows, plus you need a spreadsheet open where you can compile all your research.
Or worse, “You’re on mobile, you need to download our app to view this content.”
Meanwhile you switch to desktop view and see everything normally.
I think large purchases should be done on a monitor because not cross comparing prices/terms/sellers/etc makes one a fool.
Tiny screens are a marketer’s dream. The downsides are another 2 menus deep and the shitty terms are 2 screens ago, just look at that pretty bold number at the top and the pretty bold BUY NOW button at the bottom. Whee!
If something costs more than $500, I’m doing it with 4 browser windows on 2 screens with competing offers, seller reviews, product/experience reviews, etc, confirming I’m getting screwed the least possible for what I want or need before I make the purchase, and often confirming whether or not the large purchase is warranted at all.
Gen Zs “I do large purchases on my phone,” and to be clear I like Gen Z more than my own millennial generation on most issues, is just a minor derivation on a very, very, very old flex, perhaps the oldest flex of all: I don’t care what it costs, I’ll just buy it.
My gen X rule is the same, but workstation.
I can’t believe they called a laptop screen big…
Anything under 32" is inadequate.
Giggity
Thank you. I almost added, “That’s what she said.” But Giggity is on the mark.
You guys are making me realize I don’t have as nice of things as I thought I did.
Multiple monitors for multiple productivity.
Right? Laptops can be torture to work on in comparison, let alone a mobile phone. Without at least two monitors and a mechanical keyboard I feel handicapped.
Same here
I do important stuff on my home computer
Mobile sites suck for comparing options and getting a “big picture” of what’s happening. The limited display size forces you to hold more in your head about what you’re doing. That sucks.
I was going on a trip, so I finally broke down and was going to setup a Uber account. Turns out that you can not setup an Uber account on the desktop. Only though the App and even if I have shopping apps on my phone, I don’t enter CC info through it/
You also can’t schedule a ride at an appointed time the day before, so when I arrived at my destination airport at 2am, I couldn’t be sure I would have a ride from Uber. Yeah, maybe that’s old fashioned, but those are none starters for me.
Uber sucks balls, I don’t understand the popularity. My local taxi firms had a better app before Uber even arrived in my home town and I find that they’re more reliable.
In Czechia they made a competitior app, very easy concept, all taxi driver can sign up, you request a trip from point a to b, you receive a bunch of bids from the drivers, you select one, pay through the app. So simple, and its not some vc funded asshollery sidestepping taxi regulations
Lol ride scheduling is a scam though. Last I saw they don’t make any promises that you’ll actually get a ride, they just automatically request it for you shortly before your scheduled time and you have to hope a driver is available.
Sure its one less thing to think about, but it’s also no different from doing it manually. Same risks.
Regardless, I feel more conformable arranging a ride with hotel.
Absolutely. I should have clarified Uber’s/Lyft’s scheduling is the scam. At least a hotel would be willing to call a second taxi company if the first one flakes. Uber would never.
What’s worse is it’s also usually more expensive than just doing it at the moment
I have never used Uber or any ride sharing app, and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. When we travel we either rent a vehicle, use local public transit, or have friends .
It’s a good backup of other services fail, or if you need a backup ride when busses are too spaced out or too indirect.
I try to avoid them except that my city’s taxis charged me $120 for half of what would have been a $50 Uber ride (I left the cab early) so I don’t trust them anymore.
It’s like turning off your radio so you can read the map better.
Gotta go big screen for big purchases.
That suggests it’s just a matter of focus. I can open multiple screens on my pc without issue, and switch between windows and tabs easily. I also don’t have to worry about auto-correct messing something up, and websites by-and-large have awful mobile sites compared to the default on desktop. The mobile experience is just worse in nearly every way, barring portability.
People who entered the Internet for the first time on a smartphone have already outnumbered those who began surfin’ the web on computers. Otherwise opinions like this would be obvious to everyone, as almost any computer screen is massively better and mouse / keyboard control is far more precise.
Eh, it’s only been 14 years or so since smartphones reached what I would consider ubiquitous. That definitely leaves a lot of people probably most familiar with smartphones, but I doubt it’s the majority. Probably getting close at this point, though.
I hate doing anything on a phone. The UX is just bad most of the time. Most of the crucial information tends to be hidden away in sub menus. Dark patterns everywhere so you get psychologically manipulated into spending more.
Plus there is never an urgent time to buy something quickly enough that id take out my phone and clumsily navigate through some garbage outsourced app to do it.
Yeah, when I hear people complain that their banking app breaks when they use a non-standard Android ROM all I can think it “You bank on your phone? What’s the emergency that can’t wait until you get home to your real computer?”
I can only speak for the credit union I work with, but their app is largely better than any web based banking site I have used. From what I can find it is considered very well built, and secure, not just smooth to work with, simple UI, and have never given me single issues using it as designed.
I find myself on their site only for reading things. Like loan policies, investment stuff, etc. cause those types of documents just work better for me on a desktop.
Big LAPTOP screen? I forgo both my Laptops and Phone. Big purchases are made on the Desktop or the living room computer (which is hooked up to the living room TV) so all may see the confirmation.
This is the way. Unless you absolutely need 240Hz, TVs are as good as monitors now, especially if you get one designed for gaming like an LG OLED. Input lag is a thing of the past. Gaming on a giant 65" screen is working wonders for my back too, since I no longer have to lean forward to see.
I feel this in my bones. Right to the core. Anything important ain’t happening on a mobile for some reason.
It shouldn’t really be just millennials who do this, and there’s a simple reason for it. Just about every web developer uses a desktop for development work, so most of their testing is done in a desktop browser. So mobile-only bugs do slip through the cracks more often, I find. imo that is the reason that to this day, a lot of bugs get overlooked on mobile.
I feel like food ordering services are always the worst culprits for some reason. Many times I have tried to order food on my phone only to get stuck in a login loop or some other bug that makes it impossible. Open the same service up on my desktop and it works perfectly first try
Notably modern browsers can simulate phones, tablets, TVs, really all kinds of screens. I personally use that mode a lot to test the mobile variant, but nearly all bugs are purely CSS-related (at least in my experience) when it comes to a mobile-desktop discrepancy. Either way, for food delivery and stuff like that I’d really expect the devs to develop primarily for mobile, so that’s surprising to hear.
Yeah I refuse to debug other people’s sites lol so I don’t know what’s going on precisely but I’ve noticed this a few times.
We build things as mobile first in my shop but it’s really hard to test everything on a real device on every build. I suspect these kinds of bugs are usually a “this small change should work the same everywhere” but doesn’t for various reasons.
Oh yeah, that stuff is a pain and automated tests can only go so far. Also I know for me personally I do tend to neglect mobile a little just because I much prefer designing and developing for larger screens, and I doubt I’m the only one, so on mobile more will slip through the cracks when it comes to these tiny changes.
And my Xennial brain says “this is looks like a job for the desktop”
I can’t comprehend people who does spreadsheets on a phone
I have done this before when I needed to make one adjustment to a preexisting spreadsheet. If I don’t have my laptop and someone tells me about a change to a project, sometimes I’ll just make a note in my phone, but if it’s a quick fix, sometimes I’ll pull up the spreadsheet and fix it right away to avoid forgetting.
But that’s far and away the exception
Same here I suppose, I use my phone for really small changes but usually I avoid it because it’s really finicky and there’s less features compared to doing it on the desktop
just small ones, those are ok
The way i see it, most people have 1 expensive/powerful device for thier work, and a secondary cheaper one of the rest. I have a custom desktop PC for my important work, and a relativly cheap phone for less important/mobile stuff. While my sister is all in on her phone for her day to day things, and a budget laptop on the side.
I have my home PC that is my REAL computer, I have a laptop as an away mission computer, and I have my phone as my portable mental unwellness device.
Same. Booking flights or doing anything otherwise intricate on a laptop with its touchpad and tiny monitor is crazy.
