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The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

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Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#131

Post by kyriakos »

jaegerpicker wrote: post #94
barrystaes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to say but from my perspective you seem to live in a bubble as well, to use your words. What apps do is add eas of install (app store), and usability (cache, use device sensors, do some offline tasks) For a webapp the installation is "Add to homescreen" on a webpage. It then behaves like a native app, no address bar. Usability is tackled by modern browsers that allow webapps started like this to: - cache the en…

Almost nothing you said here is true. Add to homescreen is a horrid broken mess on iOS, caching is broken/bugging as hell on chrome and safari, webworkers are really horrid battery drains and again don’t work on iOS. Wrapping a native HTML5 mixed with native code results in a buggy, spaghetti code mess of an app. Also literally NONE of the biggest most popular apps are HTML5/native. FB, Twitter, Uber, etc... are all…

So the problem appears to be ios in this case. I personally have 3 web apps on my android phones home screen and they offer a decent experience same as a native app. They are not processor or graphics intensive apps but the same applies for a lot of store apps

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#132

Post by HillaryBriss »

sodafountan wrote: post #122

What the author doesn't mention is that apps have become increasingly easier to write as time has gone on. Not only do we have better native languages that you can write apps with (Swift and Kotlin) but we have incredible cross-platform tools as well in the forms of Xamarin and React-Native. I've personally been working with React-Native over the past year and it's just as easy as writing React code for the web (if y…

They're easier to write now, but still not easy enough: the vast majority of apps earn too little revenue to justify their dev cost.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#133

Post by kyriakos »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #130
fabrice_d wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Apple is good at keeping their web stack good enough for "regular" web browsing but not feature full enough to compete with their native toolkits. And of course, doesn't allow alternative implementations of the web stack on their platform...

Isn’t there a security argument for limiting native APIs to apps from the App Store?

True but for web apps you use the same way to give permissions to use your device sensors you would use for a native app. The only difference is that it doesn't pass through the app store review process and apple gets no cut for it.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#134

Post by rchaud »

Author seems to have missed a big reason for why apps will continue to persist: they obscure data access permissions far better than browsers do. If you install FB messenger, Instagram, LinkedIn or whatever, you will be asked one time which permissions (location, microphone, contacts) you want to grant it, and most people won't even review the list before hitting Install.

On the web, the browser dialog will ask you each time the app wants to access any of these things, whereas on the app, it'll quietly continue the use the permissions you granted it, and eventually you'll forget you signed off on them in the first place.

Not to mention some particularly shameless actors will gimp their mobile web functionality to ensure you use their app at all times (FB, Airbnb, others).

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#135

Post by kyriakos »

coldcode wrote: post #82
barrystaes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to say but from my perspective you seem to live in a bubble as well, to use your words. What apps do is add eas of install (app store), and usability (cache, use device sensors, do some offline tasks) For a webapp the installation is "Add to homescreen" on a webpage. It then behaves like a native app, no address bar. Usability is tackled by modern browsers that allow webapps started like this to: - cache the en…

FB was at one time a web app, today it is a monstrous objective-c nightmare (someone a couple year ago measured 18,000 classes in the codebase). They never could get the web app to work. Building iOS apps is what I do for a living, its really not that hard.

Of course they would, in fact they already do, it's the Facebook website itself.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#136

Post by kyriakos »

passwd wrote: post #81
dreamcompiler wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of apps just deliver information and work just fine (or better) on the web, at least for me. Nobody needs a reddit app or a Medium app, even though those companies try to convince you otherwise. Yeah, I'll download an app for Uber or Southwest airlines or Airbnb because their two-way information requirements work better as apps. But I won't clutter up my phone with things that work just fine in a browser, which i…

>Nobody needs a reddit app Here it's true if you talk about official app, which you seem to be doing, but there's a couple of other options - apps made by community, which can be way better than official anything. I guess that Reddit doesn't want to fall behind and that's it.

Relay is awesome on android. Way better than the official.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#137

Post by rchaud »

zepto wrote: post #126
elvirs wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people actually prefer using decent mobile web apps over native apps and app vendors are actually actively fighting it by putting annoying 'get the app' link overlaying content on mobile web. they are trying to push people as much as as they can to force them to download the damn native app. you don't see any app publisher putting a link to mobile web app over the content inside the native app prompting peopl…

Or, the mobile app experience is better, and the overlay link is a convenience, rather than “actively fighting”.

> Or, the mobile app experience is better, and the overlay link is a convenience

For whom is it better? Me, the customer, or you, the vendor? I buy furniture from Wayfair's website, and browse on the site quite often. On the mobile site, I'm able to view products, add/remove them from a wishlist, and make a purchase. All from a browser with ad and tracking blockers enabled.

Wayfair still puts a "Download the app!" popup on the site, even though it can see from my repeated visits and purchases that I primarily use the mobile site. I imagine it's because on an app, notifications are opt-out and tracking is continuous.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#138

Post by casper345 »

Working with IoT (i.e. Beacon technology) HTML5 and even React Native, nothing beats native code responsiveness. The need for "White label" apps may start going away, but emerging technologies that rely on efficiency and speed should be utilizing mobile app native environment.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#139

Post by vivab0rg »

kyriakos wrote: post #136
passwd wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nobody needs a reddit app Here it's true if you talk about official app, which you seem to be doing, but there's a couple of other options - apps made by community, which can be way better than official anything. I guess that Reddit doesn't want to fall behind and that's it.

Relay is awesome on android. Way better than the official.

Sync Pro Master Race.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#140

Post by toast0 »

ngrilly wrote: post #108
KaiserPro wrote: post #17

This is written by someone who lives in the "web eats everything" bubble. It also neglects the apple store. The fact is, webapps are suboptimal, and unless something drastically changes, will remain so. Unless you have decent caching, they are slow, difficult to use, and generally annoying. Why? firstly HTML/JS is a very slow presentation layer compared to native, which means less battery. You still can't multithread…

The FastMail mobile app is an example of an "hybrid" app working correctly: it's a native app wrapping the web app using a WebView. The native part takes care of things like notifications. The web part part takes care of the rest and is shared by all platforms. Anyone here using it?

I use it, and it works fine when I have good connectivity. But I'd really prefer something that was better. Things like tapping a notification about new mail and having to wait to load it are amazingly frustrating (maybe I should turn off notifications). It also only works with good connectivity, I wish there was an option to download message bodies (but not attachments) automatically when available.
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