481–490 of 587 posts
"An API Kapwing depended on broke unexpectedly, and we shipped changes the same day to get our service back online. Since we could deploy immediately, the unexpected outage was only a small hiccup. If Kapwing was an app, it would have taken a week for the new version to get approved, go live, and rollout to users through app updates—that would have been a huge loss."
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We've been hearing the same pitch for literally years. Heck, I've made some of them myself: "This is it, people! Native apps have been rendered unnecessary!" No PWA competes with a native experience. Not performance wise, not usability wise, and ultimately for the developer not even development wise. It may still make a lot of sense, and there are a lot of arguments for web apps, but the enthusiasm in this discussion…
> ultimately for the developer not even development wise Ehhh I'm not sold on that one, as someone who has done a lot of web dev and then transferred to doing some iOS and Android work. The languages you can work in (Swift, Kotlin) are fantastic, and the APIs and frameworks are great. But XCode and Android Studio are a hot mess and have been for years. Plus, compilation delays every time you want to do so much as run…
Not sure where this is coming from but Xcode has been working pretty well for most of us.
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When you can't avoid Javascript (which is extremely likely now), Typescript is a huge boon. Not everyone has the luxury of working solely on the backend. Which "warts" does Typescript keep from Javascript?
Lack of a decent stdlib is a huge one. I would rather opt for Clojurescript or Elm.
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Yes. I don't give them permission to run code on my device arbitrarily and perpetually. Think of it like this: If Hacker News required a fat client to function on your desktop, would you actually be here at all?
Given that all websites are running code on your device, that seems like a distinction with a very small difference. The question is what has the better sandbox to protect yourself. The web is definitely better but somehow I still get tracked across sites and shown "relevant" ads. Mobile apps are also fairly well sandboxed and yet some apps that need your permission to do something useful also use that permission to…
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> 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.
The question is not whether or not HN users' decision processes aare representative, but whether or not the end results are. App adoption and use, overall, is low. Consumers Spend 85% Of Time On Smartphones In Apps, But Only 5 Apps See Heavy Use https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/22/consumers-spend-85-of-time... App Download and Usage Statistics (2018) The total number of mobile app downloads in 2017 – 197 billion (a for…
197 billion app downloads? You don't have to be a researcher to know that the number is a "little" far-fetched. And maybe I'm delusional to the fact that might be possible. After all, I have only ever used Android and only with the default apps it comes packaged with. Other than the exception for WhatsApp and Messenger.
But honestly, in the markets that I work with, I see such blown up statistics that it makes me throw up on the inside. E.g. In 2018, 20% of all web searches are done using voice (assistant, Siri, smart speakers, etc.), and by 2020 that number is "going to be 50%".
Holy macaroni... I can already picture the dystopian reality where people walk around airports all talking to their phones just to look something up.
All that aside, mobile apps suck! I prefer a well-designed mobile website over an app at any time of the day.
Given the fact that most people are already maxed out on apps on their device with just things like facebook and youtube, you're going to be hard pressed to get people to install your app just to try it out. With a progressive web app if they like your app they can add it to their device home screen without installing via the app store and without using up space on their device. Also don't need to pay Apple $100 a ye…
We've been hearing the same pitch for literally years. Heck, I've made some of them myself: "This is it, people! Native apps have been rendered unnecessary!" No PWA competes with a native experience. Not performance wise, not usability wise, and ultimately for the developer not even development wise. It may still make a lot of sense, and there are a lot of arguments for web apps, but the enthusiasm in this discussion…
This would be correct, in theory, if companies only made apps where the extra power that the app has is necessary, and would stick to websites otherwise.
In practice, this isn't true, and anyone who has ever opened any major app store knows that many popular apps in it are, in reality, just wrappers around a webview, and the only reason why they are apps at all is because the management demanded that there is an app, like all the cool kids have these days. Most apps really would be better off as just websites precisely because they don't need anything that an app gives, but often suffer from what it takes (e.g. ad-hoc navigation versus standard browser controls).
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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…
I wonder if there is anything like a PWA store?
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa
I find it all oddly ironic. Remember back in late 90s - early 00s, Microsoft was generally hostile towards open web and the (then only just appearing) web apps, because that undermined its desktop app monopoly? Here we are 20 years later, and now it's Apple and Google protecting their turf on mobile, while Microsoft is promoting PWAs to entice the mobile devs into supporting Win10.
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…
What about the market caps of the top three tech companies combined makes you think web is the future? Just curious.