Most apps are just copy cats, the gold race is long gone.
Are apps even that relevant anymore?
31–40 of 47 posts
Re: Are apps even that relevant anymore?
#32This was what Jobs initially claimed to want, and Apple several times acted to enforce. For a while they were really negative on apps that were simply wrappers around websites. But the market spoke, and now Apple seems to be very much on the other side of things along with nearly every company out there. Some possible reasons: Bookmarks to websites get buried in long ever-growing lists of bookmarks, while installed a…
Almost all of those have been solved by Android's PWA implementation. I can go to an enabled site and add it to my apps list. After that, it looks and acts like any other app on the device [except that it doesn't take up any space on my phone :)]
It might take if distributed as TWA, given that then it gets FFI access to Android APIs. :)
However PWAs still fail short of stuff like 3D capabilities, given how limited they are versus the actual APIs, e.g. WebGL 2.0 vs OpenGL ES 3.2.
Re: Are apps even that relevant anymore?
#33> Even now with my own projects, a well optimised mobile website beats an app most times. I seriously doubt that, if my 8 core macbookpro has issues with half of the web (event my own react projects of sizable complexity start to have issues), doubt mobile devices don't. And I honestly can't speak for Android, but being both and iOS and React developer, iOS performance in pretty much anything compared to React is ama…
> I (and most people I know) personally prefer a app over a mobile experience 99% of the time.
I do as well, and that is what I do for side projects, however 100% of my professional work regarding mobile devices can be done in 100% mobile Web.
They are just plain CRUD apps for accessing services, easily done by sequences of forms.
We just don't do React and friends, rather SSR with minimal JavaScript for dynamic stuff.
Re: Are apps even that relevant anymore?
#34I think that there are still certain classes of app that benefit strongly from being native rather than just a web app. To give an example, Christian Selig's Apollo iOS client for Reddit is lightyears ahead of both the Reddit mobile website and the official Reddit iOS app. By using the native iOS APIs and matching what people expect from gestures on an iOS app, he's able to create an amazing experience for users.
That doesn't seem like the best example, since you just said his native app is better than a native app. Perhaps he's just a better designer.
Fair point. What I was mostly trying to get across is that native mobile apps can leverage UX/UI features not available to mobile web apps (hence the comparison to the Reddit mobile web client).
Being/having a good designer definitely helps, but it seems to me that there are serious benefits to not being constrained by whatever web browser the platform you’re working on provides.
Re: Are apps even that relevant anymore?
#35No and apple needs to be broken up to permit innovation 3.0
Re: Are apps even that relevant anymore?
#36I think that there are still certain classes of app that benefit strongly from being native rather than just a web app. To give an example, Christian Selig's Apollo iOS client for Reddit is lightyears ahead of both the Reddit mobile website and the official Reddit iOS app. By using the native iOS APIs and matching what people expect from gestures on an iOS app, he's able to create an amazing experience for users.
One of the 5-6 apps I use too. The website version of Reddit is a hot mess
Re: Are apps even that relevant anymore?
#37I guess If I were to develop an app (free but with ads) for the browser then I would be worried about ads blockers, that doesn't work if my app is a native app.
Re: Are apps even that relevant anymore?
#38Applications have never been more relevant.
In my opinion, we should return to native-only programs and have only semantic HTML in our browsers.
Re: Are apps even that relevant anymore?
#39The argument was, the web and its tech is too slow for phones, we need apps. This is no longer true and apps are a pain in the rear when it comes to all the integrations you have for mobile aware sites. How can app content be crawled, don't ask it's a major pain. How do you track usage like site clicks, ouch! How about integrations like commenting or site support chat, good luck, there might be one for your app. Not…
None of these points make any sense, so lets go through them one by one.
1. First of I don't even understand what you mean here. Crawling the content of your own application? Or you mean that all content should be crawlable by others and if so, why should that be a given?
2. Mobile analytical software has come a long way since the early days (I know, I was there and am here now). There are suites available now that do automatic click capturing out of the box, or you could simply roll your own small viewhierarchy interaction listener and feed events from there. It is honestly real easy to do when you know what you are doing.
3. Like point 2, there is a ton of suites that cater to this aspect with mobile first SDKs ready for use. There is also nothing wrong with rolling your own (it is only real time messaging between two parties after all) or simply send the user to your external web page's support chat when needed (not every feature under the sun needs to be in the mobile app).
4. Not all mobile apps run on subscriptions or fees that would be paid through the Apple App Store. As an example I point to the whole field of financial applications. And on Android you are free to do payments through other means than the Google Play services, and thus not pay 30%. Yes it is a inconvenience to the user, but it is possible (just like payments on a website will usually take the user through a flow previously not used by him before, instead of all webpage payments going through PayPal)
To conclude, I think there is plenty of room and velocity in the mobile application space. And I think the same can be said about the web space. The two can coexist, as each has aspects to it that superceed the others.
We just need to stop making slow, ad clogged, non mobile friendly web pages as well as lowest bar, slow and insecure mobile applications.
[edit: minor spelling edits]
Re: Are apps even that relevant anymore?
#40I have almost no apps on my iPhone, and rarely use it other than calls, text, News, photos and maps. When I use it for web surfing, which is how I access News, I use Firefox, not Safari. As for myself, I decided from the start not to develop "apps" for iOS or Android and instead keep building "web apps" instead. My apps are all business tools so I really don't need any special access or permissions to make them usabl…
While I completely understand your thinking, it makes me sad — web tech stack is the worst solution for UI apps one can imagine, and yet we have no choice but use it to reach more users and decrease distribution of our apps.
I recently started to use Flutter for web projects as well, with a nice bonus of having iOS/Android/desktop native apps automagically. But the proper solution would be to rethink the stack browsers provide for developers.