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Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

atrium.co

521–530 of 587 posts

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#521
post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand HN users influence is much greater than their numbers because many of them are doing tech support for family and tech advice for friends.

You could also say their influence is greater because they are the ones writing the apps in the first place.

A tiny fraction of the people writing apps.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#522
post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying that out of the 3B smart phone users in the world 600M will never install a app ever because they fear the abuse of their privacy or some horrendous TOS? Yeah, no! I think your intuitive judgement failed you here

A non trivial number of people don’t realize you can install apps. I know several non tech 65+ iPhone users the vast majority don’t use any app not installed on the phone. Young kids seem to install apps all the time, but parents quickly learn not to let them spend any money on in app purchasing.

>A non trivial number of people don’t realize you can install apps. I know several non tech 65+ iPhone users the vast majority don’t use any app not installed on the phone.

Those don't matter much for the concerns of TFA, as they're unlikely to use some new fangled web app either...

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crikey. I'm 48, a developer and I still install random apps.

Yes, I see and it's not binary like there's people who download random apps or not and there's people who are young or not, it's just that the numbers are clearly going in specific directions really fast.

[deleted]

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just bought a new iPad and one of the first things I looked for was apps that utilize the AR frameworks etc. if you are just gonna stick to the web it’s hard to take advantage the full power of your new device.

Yes because it's new and awesome and I'll probably do the same when I get an AR compatible device but it's not the reason we get the device. We get the device to install the apps we already like because we have stuff to do that we already started. Mostly. But especially for older audiences.

Older audiences tend to get replaced by younger ones.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The more time I spend working with studies and research data, the more I'm starting to realize that a lot of it [numbers] is complete and utter nonsense. 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 wit…

>197 billion app downloads? You don't have to be a researcher to know that the number is a "little" far-fetched.

Is it? I'm a highly technical user, CS degree and all, 20 years experience, and I still downloaded around 20-25 apps last year. Of those, I kept like 4-5 on the phone, but the downloads are still there.

~3 billion * 20 = 60 billion app downloads already. And younger people are not as mission driven ("need to find an app for a specific task") and picky as me. Add to that casual apps and games, where people can download a new one every week (I rarely play games).

>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%".

Yeah, that sounds like just BS PR from from SEO article pushing for some voice related product or service. Absolutely there are those too.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't go to new websites anymore either. Just like I have a handful of core apps, I have about he same number of websites I visit. I think the only webapps I use are Workflowy (love it) and Slack (hate it).

Workflowy has updated their app for Android and it's really good! I'm a pretty heavy user of it, and it was a godsend to have a nice official Android client that works well. Make use of the web lots on the desktop but it's probably 50/50 desktop/mobile. Love them both . The only two things workflowy is missing is (1) being able to embed pictures and (2) being able to hyperlink to other nodes to make it act like a gra…

I only use it on the desktop and there I use it in the browser. They have a desktop app but it isn't very good.

Embedding pictures sounds like a nice idea, but I can't imagine how they could do it and have it look good. If I were them, I probably wouldn't add images.

I kind of hope they resist the urge to keep adding features to Workflowy. It feels done to me and I like simple, focused tools.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After years of experience: 0) Native means you get notifications: APNS, GCM. 1) If you don't go native, you go SEO. SEO is hard.

Web has had notifications for years too.

"Web has had notifications for years too."

Yeah. But people don't use desktops anymore.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#528
post #482
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> But XCode and Android Studio are a hot mess and have been for years Not sure where this is coming from but Xcode has been working pretty well for most of us.

I hear iOS devs say that, but code editing in XCode for me is very uncomfortable compared to Webstorm, Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio. There are no tabs for open files to speak of (XCode opens a new XCode for their "tabs"), the UI is very cluttered and things are quite hard to find if you don't know where they are - and it doesn't help that the UI keeps shifting around in updates, making Googling stuff harder because a lot of images of things became deprecated.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The more time I spend working with studies and research data, the more I'm starting to realize that a lot of it [numbers] is complete and utter nonsense. 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 wit…

Well, I have over 40 non-Google apps, and I had to download them all again when I got a new phone last year (which I rarely do, but many switch every couple of years). And I probably downloaded and uninstalled 8 or 10 more - when I want do do something new, I often try a bunch of apps before settling on one. Also, some apps follow the model of using a "virtual app" as a key to unlock paid features, so that's two downloads for a single app.

Re: Start with a Website, Not a Mobile App

#530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wouldn’t have to change much about Instagram to make it into Twitter.

If you take away those features then you cease to have instagram. Instagram users only use instagram because it provides access to those functionalities.

What functionality are you referring to? The only one I can think of is photo editing. It’s not that difficult to make a photo editor in the browser. The only problem is performance. It would’ve been harder when Instagram was originally launched.
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