241–250 of 587 posts
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off topic of the thread: do you have a strong opinion of Dark Sky vs Weather Underground?
I have found Dark Sky is great in populated areas (NYC, Denver, Houston), but Wunderground seems to do better outside of the metros (Lower Hudson River Valley, Catskills, Adirondacks -- you can probably tell where I live and work, now).
Got it.
80% of apps are uninstalled in the first 10min (especially if they ask for information or creating an account). Once uninstalled very unlikely they will ever install again. In my dev shop, I always advise clients to look into website MVP over apps unless IT IS CRITICAL to the functionality. Websites can always bring back ppl who were initially uninterested. Faster development/instant updates. Better tracking and UX a…
I personally go by the rule that if your service can work as a website, it should be a website. Not ever a standalone app unless there are important requirements which can't be met in a browser. That can only be good for feature creep, gimmicks, and of course data scraping and other violations. A lot of companies end up purposely hamstringing their website--or push you into a terrible mobile site and ignoring your browser's request for the desktop version, plus cover half the screen with multiple instances of begware. Yes I'm looking at you reddit, you filthy old turd. It's incredibly user-hostile. I'm sure it drives plenty of cheap, chintzy short-term engagement but y'all are going to perish like digg sooner or later.
I wish companies would start really putting forward desktop deployment as a major priority again. Maybe I'm old and behind the times. But it seems like all serious activity in my life is always done on the desktop. As soon as I encounter something where I'm going to be doing a lot of browsing or typing or any effort, I move to the desktop platform where the interface and experience are just plain better in every way. I hate interacting through a terrible, tiny touchscreen by swiping around like a finger-painting toddler or using a minuscule keyboard which autocorrects me into apparent illiteracy. If I'm not out in the field and have no other choice, I will always, always choose the desktop environment for its many enormous advantages over mobile. Mobile is here to stay, but the UX still sucks enormous ass and is only tolerable because it's ubiquitous, plus everybody sucks relatively the same from mobile platform to mobile platform so it kind of seems normal.
Once again, maybe I'm just old and now I'm like my mom who stubbornly sticks to VIM in CLI and resents anything that requires clicking a mouse. On the other hand, I kind of see her point and totally respect her cantankerous old-fashioned style of computer literacy. She may hate modern interfaces, but she still knows how to do plenty of fundamental things that even young people these days are clueless about. I believe that simplistic, overly-intuitive interfaces can cause people to live up to expectations and become worse with actual computer literacy, that the golden age of power users is fading, but that's another story.
I would love to have a phone that runs a desktop version of linux and has a slide-out keyboard like they had in the 2000s or whenever that was. Something that just sticks to a desktop user agent and runs desktop executables. Perhaps even something that runs x86 and has a swappable battery to compensate for its power inefficiency. Basically a desktop computer disguised as a mobile device that fits in your pocket. Not iOS or Android or some rooted variant of Android. I don't even give a damn if it has voice calling or not. I think that would have enormous potential and would command a small yet incredibly dedicated userbase, but so far I haven't found anything quite like it.
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My guess is that it's rare. Hell, I didn't even know I could do it until I was developing a PWA. I've never seen a website that offers it. It would be very nice if phones put that feature front-and-center. My guess is that they sideline it so the web can't compete with their native apps.
It really reeks of the same kind of anticompetitive behavior that got MS in trouble twenty years ago. Apple is way worse in this regard, but Google is still incentivized to keep at least PWAs from being first class citizens on Android because they don't get their app store sales cuts or microtransaction money from them. And at least on Android you can install other browsers. People consider the hegemony of Chrome to…
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While I agree on your point, your comment made me smile as I’m reading HN using a mobile app
I'm curious, did you start using HN with the mobile app or migrate to it after you realized the usefulness of the website?
Especially Apple. Their iOS app development team uses the App Store as a proving ground for ideas that work well, then re-implement the features most users love in a crappy/cartoon-style way and attempt to out-promote the original idea.
Examples:
Todos => Reminders,
Flipboard => News,
EasyMeasure => Measure,
Skype => FaceTimeEarlier quoted context omitted.
How many websites ever get passed the signup stage? I often will leave as soon as I'm tasked with creating an account and I'm not likely to come back.
What is it that makes you actually sign up for a service?
If I'm actively looking for an certain type of application I will usually dedicate half a day to sign up for bunch of different apps all at once. It's pretty time consuming and I'm usually left disappointed. I will then spend the next half a day trying to remove myself from them all.
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I'm curious, did you start using HN with the mobile app or migrate to it after you realized the usefulness of the website?
I migrated to the mobile app after discovering the site. I find the app greatly increases the readability of the site by adding just a few more colors, some icons for particularly popular threads, and a palatable dark mode.
Small typo there, I think you mean $10 a year.
I don't even bother installing apps anymore, I don't have time to research whether or not they are going to abuse my privacy or have some horrendous TOS. I got my core 10 apps and haven't bought a new one in a year.
I'm going out on a limb but I'd wager you're not exactly representative of the general userbase for which apps are developed.