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

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#151

Post by dreamcompiler » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #89

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…

If only the web made it easier to completely revamp someone else's pages... Reddit is a great example - on mobile, I still use the "reddit is fun" application, which is a solid piece of work. It's lighter than the old Reddit, not to mention the shitshow the new Reddit is. It has much better UX than the webpage. I'd use it on my PC if I could. All this is possible, because right now, APIs change slower than webpages,…

Good point. I miss Twitter's API.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#152

Post by asdff » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

salvar wrote: post #49

zeroname wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking of this too much in terms of technology. Even when what you say is true, it's rather irrelevant for most apps. > The data I have seen from the old company was this: people who installed our news reader app were 4-8 times more engaged than the people who used our uber mobile friendly and fast news site. Apps can be faster, handle offline/near offline far better. I think you're mixing up causalities her…

> The core issue is that people aren't willing to install any more apps. Is there any source for this? Are app installations declining?

Anecdotally, plenty of my friends have 16gb phones still, and often are deleting and reinstalling apps like instagram/snapchat/anything you can dispense for a few days to free up storage to actually use the device. Want to record a 2 minute video? Better delete an app or else recording will abruptly cease. While I still had a 16gb phone, it got to the point where I wasn't reliably getting emails pushed to the device because it was always full, yet I had only a small handful of apps.

This isn't 2010 where everyone wants the top 25 apps, and could actually install them since they weren't hitting 100mb each. Inflation of app sizes and continued premiums on useful storage amounts from Apple has been forcing people to cut the fat and keep only the most essential apps installed. Even if you had a large iCloud account for your photos or texts to reside off your device, you still need local storage for apps.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#153

Post by dreamcompiler » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

grigjd3 wrote: post #110

eddieroger wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I won't clutter up my phone with things that work just fine in a browser That's the window for apps to compete. If "just fine" works for you, cool, but it's possible for apps to make the experience better in meaningful ways. A web page can't notify of you a new message, but an app can, for example. Look at all the Twitter apps that came up, and they've had to start to systematically kill over time because the e…

I see notifications as a downside as a user, not an upside.

Yet another problem with apps. Every time I download a new one I start getting pointless notifications and I have to go to the Apps Manager (which on Android is O[n] slow) to turn them off.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#154

Post by usertrjx » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

EZ-E wrote: post #36

gitgud wrote: post #5

So the author proposes that most apps will be consolidated onto platforms such as wechat, messenger or aliexpress. With each new app, comes new requirements of the platform to produce better and more functional API's for the sub-apps. Eventually these platforms will bloat and bloat until they basically become their own operating system.... then tada we're back at the beginning...

> So the author proposes that most apps will be consolidated onto platforms such as wechat, messenger or aliexpress. With each new app, comes new requirements of the platform to produce better and more functional API's for the sub-apps. This is actually happening in China to some extent. I'm blown away that Apple and Google actually approves apps that run a mini-OS inside them like WeChat/Alipay. I initially thought…

At least for android, I'm pretty sure google doesn't control the app store(s) in China. It seems there are many app stores which explains why.

    Tencent MyApp (15.12%)
    360 Mobile Assistant (10.60%)
    Oppo Software Store (9.24%)
    Baidu Mobile Assistant (8.55%)
    Huawei App Market (8.28%)
    MIUI App Store (6.28%)
    Vivo App Store (4.81%)
    PP Assistant (1.98%)
    HiMarket (0.72%)
    Anzhi Market (0.50%)

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#155

Post by olliej » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

Here’s the thing: a webpage will never be able to do a number of privileged operations, for a very simple reason - visiting an arbitrary web page is not controlled by a user, as any webpage can cause an automatic navigation to another.

Installing an app acts as a user intent driven security boundary. Dialogs coming up on random webpages is a buck-passing technique, as users cannot discern a “safe” request from an unsafe one. This applies to technical users as well - dialog fatigue, incorrect script inclusion, ads, etc. eventually you can end up accidentally saying yes to the wrong dialogue and a random website gets to download your contact list, etc.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#156

Post by CaptSpify » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

eddieroger wrote: post #88

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…

> But I won't clutter up my phone with things that work just fine in a browser That's the window for apps to compete. If "just fine" works for you, cool, but it's possible for apps to make the experience better in meaningful ways. A web page can't notify of you a new message, but an app can, for example. Look at all the Twitter apps that came up, and they've had to start to systematically kill over time because the e…

> it's possible for apps to make the experience better in meaningful ways.

Now if we could just get app designers to realize that!

IME, apps are usually just poor front-ends for the website, where companies think it's OK to shove stupid things like unblockable ads, notifications, data-harvesting, etc.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#157

Post by butz » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

smoser wrote: post #142

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.

But you can add a website to your home screen too, and it will act like app.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#158

Post by pier25 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

The end? No.

But PWA websites will most likely kill many native apps. I use the Twitter PWA and it works perfectly fine on Android.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#159

Post by zepto » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

projectileboy wrote: post #92

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…

Your points are all valid, but they were also all valid in 1998 when people told me that desktop apps weren’t going to be replaced by web apps.

And they haven’t, so that argument seems to have held up pretty well.

Re: The End Is Near for Mobile Apps?

#160

Post by zepto » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #137

zepto wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!" po…

For me the customer. The sites I use most often have better apps than websites.

As for your imagination about tracking, it’s both false and paranoid. Mobile notifications are opt-in, and tracking is limited to behavior within the app, unlike the web where you are tracked across sites wherever you go.