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Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

atrium.co

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Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#311

Post by kyle-rb »

spunker540 wrote: post #243
zanny wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can use browsers other than Safari on iOS.

All browsers on iOS are essentially wrappers for Safari. They all have to use the built-in iOS WebView; per Apple's rules you're not allowed to execute JS or anything like that on your own.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#312

Post by xd1936 »

oftenwrong wrote: post #229
naravara wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No PWA competes with a native experience. Not performance wise, not usability wise, and ultimately for the developer not even development wise. How much of a usability advantage does an app for, say, IMDB offer that the regular website doesn't? Or the loyalty card apps that a lot of grocery stores and coffee shops use now? A lot of apps on the market are functionally just wrappers put around a poorly optimized websi…

Companies saddle their mobile web experience with excessive animations, gobs of dynamic elements, screen-hogging navigation bars/sharing buttons/overlays, poorly-implemented infinite scrolling, etc, etc... and then they conclude that mobile web sites are bad and native apps are good. People have forgotten that you can build a website that isn't a user-hostile SPA train-wreck.

Amen. Twitter[1] and Starbucks[2] have both built gorgeous PWAs in the last couple of years that are perfect replacements for 98% of a native app's functionality. It can be done, people!

1. https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-sourc...

2. https://twitter.com/davidbrunelle/status/905931990444244995

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#313

Post by thinkingemote »

geezerjay wrote: post #280
trophycase wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figure most things don't need an app unless they are trying to take more data anyway. Anything telling me to install an app whose mobile experience is fine already is very fishy to me. I'm looking at you, Reddit.

> Anything telling me to install an app whose mobile experience is fine already is very fishy to me. I'm looking at you, Reddit. So much this. To add insult to injury, reddit intentionally degrades the site's experience in mobile devices with tons of dark patterns pushing users to their shady mobile app.

I use a Firefox mobile extension which helps greatly (no Reddit mobile ads)

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#314

Post by tempestn »

This has always been our philosophy with AutoTempest.com. We do pretty regularly get requests to build an app though, although none of the people asking for it have had an answer to the question, "What are you looking for from an app version that the website doesn't currently offer?" So, at least so far I've decided it makes more sense to focus resources on the website. I do occasionally wonder if I'm passing up on a separate avenue for growth though. I also just wonder why people ask for an app, when they don't have a sense of what they want from it. There's obviously a sense that an app version would be better somehow, but it would be nice to understand what sort of betterness people are anticipating. (As someone who will almost always choose to use a mobile website over installing another app, I really don't have an intuitive understanding of the desire for an app.)

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#316

Post by l0b0 »

My simple take on this is "holy shit yes!" Apps are the new desktop client, as far as I'm concerned, with their "innovative" UIs, inscrutable error modes, inevitable lack of support for still usable phones, and stupidly invasive permission requests. No web site ever needed access to my contacts, and every time an app asks for it I look for a "fuck off and ban-kill this app" button.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#318

Post by barberousse »

sobrevivendo wrote: post #306
airstrike wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'm going out on a limb but I'd wager you're not exactly representative of the general userbase for which apps are developed.

HN users represent < 1% of the userbase. But people often ask their opinions on tech products, so it is hard to claim whether they matter or not.

Do they ask their opinion? No one asks my opinion on software/hardware and I'm the only software engineer anyone in my milieu knows at all. But even setting aside how we evaluate the anecdotes that usually warrant that claim, as far as impact goes, HN users generally sport middle class backgrounds or better; the larger population has neither met nor really considers the opinions of a software engineer and typically mobile apps, and ones which don't have their user's best interests in mind, are lowest common denominator for a target since they're interested in reaping as much information as possible. It seems easier for a layman to just install whatever apps on their phone than to consider fielding an educated opinion. HN users may just like the idea of appearing important

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#319

Post by jetako »

NightlyDev wrote: post #150

Most of my mobile users(64 %) has the page added to the home screen, and it's awesome. There is however one problem in all things web: Apple. The amount of bugs in Safari on iOS is incredible and the developers should be ashamed of their work. Safari is literally worse than IE6 was. But sure, users can just switch to Chrome.. Oh, wait, we're talking iOS here, so there is only one engine, and that engine is broken. So…

> Safari is literally worse than IE6 was.

You're joking, right?

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#320

Post by freehunter »

kyle-rb wrote: post #307
mikece wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just add the ability to list a PWA in the app store? At that point the installation is intentional and the overhead on Apple/Google is minimal... and Apple still gets their $99/year to allow making it easy to put your app's icon on a user's home screen.

On one hand I can see rational reasons for them not allowing it; Apple doesn't control when you push updates to your PWA, so they don't want to give their seal of approval by listing it in the app store. But on the other hand, it's pretty depressing to give up the dream of instant app updates, by wrapping your shiny PWA in Cordova and promising to never execute external JavaScript.

I recently picked up app development and I went for React Native + Expo. I was shocked that I could push OTA updates without going through the store. Basically if my app was approved once, I can make huge sweeping fundamental changes to the app without running it past Apple again. Basically the only things you can't change are the permissions. Anything else is fair game. And with Expo it was basically trivial to get an app up and working (don't take this as biased praise in favor of RN or Expo, I still have serious dissatisfaction with both technologies, but this particular part was shockingly seamless).

So I guess moral of the story, wrap your PWA in an Expo app and update as often as you want without having to resubmit.

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