The web apps that will eat mobile • Hacker News Board

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#101

Post by archagon » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 9:38 PM UTC

All that text and not a word about monetization!

I realize that selling binaries directly or via IAP isn't all that lucrative these days, but plenty of developers still make a living doing it. How, exactly, are you supposed to sell a PWA? I assume they're meant to be a value-add for the main product, which is probably SAAS/subscription/ad-based, but I think a world without a good way to sell software directly—a world exclusively centered around services, not software—would be a sad one indeed.

EDIT: I just remembered that, I guess, Android lets you sell PWAs directly through the Play Store. But if you're not installing them from the web, then what's the point?

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#102

Post by pjmlp » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #100

pjmlp wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So according to you IBM and Unisys mainframes, the Xerox PARC computers, watchOS apps don't run native code.

Do the CPUs of their respective systems directly understand the instructions? In my opinion, if they don't, that's not native code. Of course, for strategic reasons such as portability the manufacturer might not provide any kind of access. At which point that's the closest to "native" you're going to get...

Depends, on the mainframes and watchOS, bytecode (or bitcode) is used as portable binary format and JIT compiled at installation time into native code.

On Xerox PARC systems, the CPUs were micro-coded.

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#103

Post by millstone » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 4:00 AM UTC

judah wrote: post #92

millstone wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not $99 a year to list an app in the store. We don't have to guess: Apple reports these numbers. They earned $11.5 billion in revenue from the app store in 2017. I'm not sure what you're expecting here. Apple clearly views their role as protecting users from the hostile aspects of the web: see content blockers, reader mode, anti-tracking features in iOS 12. Of course Apple is not going to jump on unrestricted JS…

Wow, even larger than my napkin calculations. So my assertion that the app store business is significant is correct. The problem with Apple, or any other big corporation, "protecting" users is that censorship is a two-edged sword. It's great that the iOS App Store doesn't suffer from, say, malware. It's not great that Apple has the final say over published content; Apple (or hostile governments forcing Apple) can blo…

The App Store is a big business for sure.

The "censorship" angle doesn't really fly. Apple doesn't censor any web content: all websites are accessible via iOS. The App Store is a different matter. Yes, Apple blocks the boobs and the baby-shaking games, like Amazon blocked the "Keep Calm and Rape" t-shirts. That's not censorship, that's a storefront owner exercising common sense in the products they choose to stock.

Apple is in good company in limiting what can be installed. Chrome on iOS is hobbled, but Firefox on ChromeOS isn't even a thing, and Google Chromecast is even more locked down.

Ultimately it comes down to this: Apple is not a monopoly but a minority player, and iOS users have made a conscious decision because of the value they've found in Apple's ecosystem. If you want access to that market, you have to make your products appeal to that userbase.

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#104

Post by vbezhenar » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #68

zwieback wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the user, I might be an outlier but my "ingrained behavior" is to not download an app unless I absolutely have to.

So the solution is to automatically download and execute anything and everything? The 90s called and want ActiveX back.

The world already downloads and executes everything. In browser sandbox, that is. And using native app truly means executing anything, but now within bounds of much weaker mobile sandbox.

Re: The web apps that will eat mobile

#105

Post by vbezhenar » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 2:34 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #94

oneshot908 wrote: post #57

How many years have we been hearing this tale? And yet almost every major web site continues to bend over backwards to persuade us to install their battery-killing surveillance system oops I mean mobile app. So the solution now is even more battery-killing HTML + Javascript + Secret Sauce? Hell no... PS Just say no to push like the Hulk says no to Banner. All IMO of course but these days, I use my phone for Yelp, Goo…

We've been hearing this tale for more than a decade and native apps are still better at pretty much everything. :) Web devs are a very optimistic bunch.

They are not better at a single and simple thing: cost of development for multiple platforms. And it means everything, unless you're swimming in money.