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The web apps that will eat mobile

kruschecompany.com

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Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#71

Post by mikece »

hrayr wrote: post #29
mikece wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple didn't have the app store and it's 30% rake of all transactional revenue at the time. Jobs was somewhat notorious about being adamantly opposed to something one day and then announcing to the world that Apple had created a best-in-class product that he previously said they would never make. I seem to recall him saying they would never make a tablet device -- that it wasn't so critical to surf the web on the toi…

Also don't forget his famous comments on no one will watch video on small screens and no need for big phones. I don't think any of his comments were lack of insight, rather it was him playing the market until he was ready.

The Plus-sized phones didn't launch until after Jobs passed away, iirc.

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#72

Post by jeffbax »

I'm down for enhancing what sites I only go to on occasion can do for me as a user, but that PWAs will replace Native is IMO not desirable (particularly every website asking me to allow notifications these days -- turn that right off immediately)

A PWA will never be nicer than Tweetbot, but if it means I no longer get harassed to install an app for EVERYTHING it will have a place alongside native

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#73

Post by jmull »

bsbechtel wrote: post #30

Unpopular opinion here, but I just don't see PWAs living up to the hype. Yes, there are lots of technical advantages, they're catching up to native apps in capabilities, and there is reduced friction by bypassing app stores. However, the ingrained user behavior of downloading apps from the app store, trust of knowing what you're downloading by doing so (yes, even on Android), and browsability on mobile falling behind…

I'm assuming (or at least hoping) this isn't an unpopular opinion so much as a usually silent one.

The actual tech behind the PWA hype is nice/neat, but hardly puts them on par with mobile apps. It's the old "necessary but not sufficient" distinction, which people find so easy to ignore.

If you really support the vision of PWAs, you should be busily tamping down the hype, because promising a lot more than can be delivered will likely kill PWAs before the vision can be realized.

Notice the article linked to this post is a hype piece by someone offering PWA consulting services. It's not hard to see why he's sold.

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#74

Post by oblio »

pjmlp wrote: post #60
oblio wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is such a thing as "good enough". The cheap plastic solution tends to win when that happens. We weren't there in 2011, maybe we're not there in 2018, but the writing's on the wall.

When that happens, the browser would have turned into a general purpose VM running apps via WebAssembly with WebGL/WebGPU for rendering, thus becoming native as well. The writing is on the wall with the ongoing efforts on .NET, Java, Go, Unity, Unreal and who knows, someone might even port Flash to it.

I don't consider an universal bytecode as native.

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#75

Post by Fuddh »

jmull wrote: post #67
judah wrote: post #9

PWAs indeed have a bright future. Apple's iOS Safari remains terribly lagging behind in PWA support. Even the latest iOS 12 beta support for PWAs is utterly broken[0], including full reloads on suspend/resume, local storage gets blown away on reload, no icon, incomplete support for web manifest, and much more[1]. A charitable interpretation of this would be, Apple hasn't felt the need to keep its PWA support up to pa…

"A cynical interpretation is that Apple is deliberately dragging their feet because PWAs undermine their $99/year + 30% app price + 30% in-app purchases business." That interpretation doesn't make sense. The $99/year/active developer is a nominal amount -- sofa change to Apple -- that couldn't sanely affect the Safari development roadmap. The 30% is a much a larger amount (though still small to Apple's scale), but PW…

I agree that the $99/year/developer isn’t that much for Apple. The 30% of all sales is probably significant though - the App Store has a lot of users.

I don’t necessarily agree that PWA developers have no way of monetising their apps though - if I’m not mistaken they could use ads and subscriptions for their services. These would normally grant a cut to Apple if they were done through the App Store, hence the incentive for apple to delay the implementation of PWAs.

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#76

Post by jmull »

yoz-y wrote: post #47
oblio wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, isn't Apple actively delaying PWAs? It seems like it, based on their recent sluggishness in adopting web standards in Safari.

Web "standards" for PWA's are pushed out willy-nilly by Google. Just because it is preferable for Google to push towards everything on the web, it does not mean that all browser vendors should create new APIs that were declared "as standard" in their draft version and pushed out into Chrome. Service Workers, for example, are just a working draft and somehow not having the spec implemented is considered as lagging. PW…

Right. We continue to use the word "standard", but a significant proportion of these things are, in effect, unilateral proposals from Google.

Are they good proposals? How could they be improved? Do they meet the needs of the various interested parties, most especially end-users? Taken together, are they coherent, do they compose and complement each other, do they move toward a robust, comprehensive software framework?

Maybe it's happening, but I don't see these questions being asked a lot, much less addressed. Should we all just trust in Google? And expect Apple, MS, and other browser vendors to do so as well, not to mention implement Google's APIs as quickly as they come out?

No doubt, there is a lot of good work coming out of Google, but overall, I don't think the present system will be sustainable nor result in a good web.

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#77

Post by AndrewKemendo »

judah wrote: post #9

PWAs indeed have a bright future. Apple's iOS Safari remains terribly lagging behind in PWA support. Even the latest iOS 12 beta support for PWAs is utterly broken[0], including full reloads on suspend/resume, local storage gets blown away on reload, no icon, incomplete support for web manifest, and much more[1]. A charitable interpretation of this would be, Apple hasn't felt the need to keep its PWA support up to pa…

It's not cynical, it's their explicit intention to keep PWA off of iOS. Ask any dev rep and they will tell you the purpose is "because the native app experience is better across the board."

It's not purely a money thing, it's keeping developers using swift/obj-c and inside the -OS ecosystem.

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#78

Post by judah »

jmull wrote: post #67
judah wrote: post #9

PWAs indeed have a bright future. Apple's iOS Safari remains terribly lagging behind in PWA support. Even the latest iOS 12 beta support for PWAs is utterly broken[0], including full reloads on suspend/resume, local storage gets blown away on reload, no icon, incomplete support for web manifest, and much more[1]. A charitable interpretation of this would be, Apple hasn't felt the need to keep its PWA support up to pa…

"A cynical interpretation is that Apple is deliberately dragging their feet because PWAs undermine their $99/year + 30% app price + 30% in-app purchases business." That interpretation doesn't make sense. The $99/year/active developer is a nominal amount -- sofa change to Apple -- that couldn't sanely affect the Safari development roadmap. The 30% is a much a larger amount (though still small to Apple's scale), but PW…

>> The $99/year/active developer is a nominal amount

Is it really?

There are 2 million apps in the iOS App Store[0]. At $99/year to be listed in the store, that's $198,000,000/year for Apple.

On top of that, you have 30% price of an app. 12% of those apps are paid[1], that's 240,000 paid apps. Suppose the average price of a paid app is $5, and suppose each app is purchased 2000 times. (I have no idea what the average is, but this sounds reasonable.) 240,000 apps * $5 * 2000 purchases * Apple's 30% cut = $720,000,000 revenue for Apple.

Then we have to add 30% in-app purchases. This is a bigger number than app purchases, both free and paid apps have in-app purchases. This article[2] says in-app purchases make up half of all mobile revenue - that would put in-app purchases reaping Apple $918,000,000/year for their 30% cut.

These are educated guesses based on some napkin math, but I'm betting Apple's iOS App Store business is bringing in figures in the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars every year. Either way, it's not nominal.

[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-av...

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263797/number-of-applica...

[2]: http://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#79

Post by judah »

Fuddh wrote: post #75
jmull wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A cynical interpretation is that Apple is deliberately dragging their feet because PWAs undermine their $99/year + 30% app price + 30% in-app purchases business." That interpretation doesn't make sense. The $99/year/active developer is a nominal amount -- sofa change to Apple -- that couldn't sanely affect the Safari development roadmap. The 30% is a much a larger amount (though still small to Apple's scale), but PW…

I agree that the $99/year/developer isn’t that much for Apple. The 30% of all sales is probably significant though - the App Store has a lot of users. I don’t necessarily agree that PWA developers have no way of monetising their apps though - if I’m not mistaken they could use ads and subscriptions for their services. These would normally grant a cut to Apple if they were done through the App Store, hence the incenti…

$99/year isn't small. There are 2m apps in the iOS App Store today. Each app must pay $99/year. That's $198m/year as a passive income stream for Apple.

Factor in 30% of app purchase price, plus 30% of in-app purchases, and you have a significant revenue stream.

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#80

Post by judah »

millstone wrote: post #25

These apps seem to solve a developers’ problem, not a users’ problem.

It solves some users' problems too.

For example, it makes web apps available offline.

It makes apps instantly updatable without having to install anything, which is a better experience for the user; apps are always up-to-date.

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