The End Is Near for Mobile Apps? • Hacker News Board

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#141

Post by thrower123 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

I'm convinced that mobile devices are useless for anything but the most trivial usages. Just last night I sat and watched my mother-in-law flail for the better part of two hours trying to look up and then purchase some replacement filters for her vacuum cleaner. What should have been relatively simple on a real computer was torturous on a smartphone. Between the tiny display, awful on-screen keyboard that is flaky and obscures most of what you are looking at, clunky apps and busted mobile websites, it's just a rage-inducing disaster.

Not to mention that if you are not on absolutely perfect WiFi, everything is so slow and janky to load. It's just not acceptable that the bar is so low for usability; I'm convinced that we've gone backwards to a significant degree, and I'd much rather go back to the web that we had in 2008 than the one we have in 2018.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#142

Post by smoser » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

Functionally yes, most apps could be mobile websites except for one thing: Mobile users don’t use bookmarks. Mobile users use icons on the home screen. It is easier for users to add an app to their home screen than a website.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#143

Post by eropple » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

kyriakos wrote: post #131

jaegerpicker wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

OTOH, on my Android devices I find "add to homescreen" web apps to feel janky and non-native.

I like React Native and apps written in it are just fine by me but the browser and the web doesn't compare in L&F or responsiveness. Maybe someday down the line, but not now.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#144

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

kyriakos wrote: post #133

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> for web apps you use the same way to give permissions to use your device sensors you would use for a native app

Which would mean any malicious site a user got tricked into visiting can access the native API. (Downloading an app is more deliberate than visiting a site and instinctively clicking to make the pop-up go away.)

All I'm saying is there are non-financial reasons why an OS designer might sandbox websites from the native API.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#145

Post by KaiserPro » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

olau wrote: post #121

KaiserPro wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant number of the subscribers. There were at the time something like 800k of them. Its important to say that it was a choice, there was no full page banner or bouncer that forced people to install the webapp, it was entirely optional. If, however you are saying that people only click on it because there is an icon on their phone, then you are making possibly the biggest argument for keeping apps (although i…

Did your old company adjust for selection bias? It seems to me the category of people who have gone to the length to install an app is perhaps going to spend more time with the content compared to the full set of people interacting with the content.

Yes.

Engagement is measured across the entire subscriber cohort. consumer "councils" are made up of a selection of subscribers, so we can adequately get data from all sections.

We had a webapp, the users were very engaged. We replaced the webapp with a native app, we got way more people who very engaged, we also got loads more people who were mildly engaged. The overall effect was more engagement from a wider base of subscribers.

Lowering the bar to entry, proper offline caching of content, faster loading, just a better more seamless experience.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#146

Post by ativzzz » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

thrower123 wrote: post #141

I'm convinced that mobile devices are useless for anything but the most trivial usages. Just last night I sat and watched my mother-in-law flail for the better part of two hours trying to look up and then purchase some replacement filters for her vacuum cleaner. What should have been relatively simple on a real computer was torturous on a smartphone. Between the tiny display, awful on-screen keyboard that is flaky an…

These kinds of apps is exactly what the linked article is arguing against. However, if a mobile app has worse usability than desktop then the company failed to redesign their product experience for mobile. That or, their product is simply not meant to be used on small screens at all.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#147

Post by cft » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:01 PM UTC

fabrice_d wrote: post #128

jaegerpicker wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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...

That will be irrelevant in 7 years (time horizon in the article) since Apples's device share will continue to dwindle relative to Android. It will be the same as the historical OSX/Windows ratio. They already signaled that by focusing on pushing up the price per phone versus the number of phones as their stock price driver.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#148

Post by KaiserPro » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

elvirs wrote: post #123

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…

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…

The end user really doesn't care, they care about the following things:

o can I find what I want o can I find it easily o can I find it fast o can I view what I've found properly o nothing gets in the way of getting what they want.

slow load time, dodgy networking, waiting for app to load from notification, losing your place, inconsistent or foreign UI, all make the user scream in annoyance.

"TRY OUR APP" fits stops you from viewing what you want.

Linked in on mobile is shite, you have to use the app. The emails don't redirect to the app, which is fucking stupid

Twitter's desktop site is rubbish, the mobile version is slighty less annoying, you have to use the app.

Facebook's webapp is really slow.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#149

Post by asdff » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

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”.

The overlay link for reddit takes up 1/3 the screen, and the link to hide it is in 9pt font at the edge while clicking anywhere else opens the App store.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#150

Post by asdff » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

iainmerrick wrote: post #71

buboard wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in every way. imagine having to switch between apps to read every article in HN

That would be okay if there were a Hacker News app that could display all the stories. I mean, I agree with you that simple web pages are best for simple news and articles. But I don’t think you can immediately generalize that to “apps don’t scale”.

There is a HN app that displays all the stories (safari popup for links)