I think it’s worth amending this to just “apps can kill”. I volunteer with search and rescue sometimes and have seen several people get into bad trouble due to reliance on phones for maps. Sometimes it’s dead batteries or just breakage without a backup plan, but no doubt other times it’s changing behavior in the app itself, OS decided to wipe cache, app has bad info, whatever.
You can say that people should know better but sometimes dead tree maps are not available, and anyway there’s no doubt that they are on the way out. The “safe/reliable” way might even seem to be up for debate, since phones can be more waterproof than paper, less likely to blow away when you’re on top of a mountain, serve as a backup flashlight/emergency comms, etc. But all it takes is a company that decides to force auto update and a PM that decides feature churn increases engagement and creates job security, and who knows what will break?
It is kind of like packaging that’s a choking or asphyxiation hazard.. if you’re doing anything that affects millions of people, it’s almost ALWAYS a safety issue even if you don’t usually think of it that way. No big audience or big user base without big responsibilities. Sure you’ll probably not be held liable in law suits, but on the other hand you should probably feel bad if you’re killing people due to indifference /negligence when thinking through edge cases.
You can say that people should know better but sometimes dead tree maps are not available, and anyway there’s no doubt that they are on the way out. The “safe/reliable” way might even seem to be up for debate, since phones can be more waterproof than paper, less likely to blow away when you’re on top of a mountain, serve as a backup flashlight/emergency comms, etc. But all it takes is a company that decides to force auto update and a PM that decides feature churn increases engagement and creates job security, and who knows what will break?
It is kind of like packaging that’s a choking or asphyxiation hazard.. if you’re doing anything that affects millions of people, it’s almost ALWAYS a safety issue even if you don’t usually think of it that way. No big audience or big user base without big responsibilities. Sure you’ll probably not be held liable in law suits, but on the other hand you should probably feel bad if you’re killing people due to indifference /negligence when thinking through edge cases.