Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

subconscious.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 315 posts

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#191

Post by amw-zero »

If you ask me, the number one reason is that Android and iOS have UI libraries that are specifically meant for mobile devices. Yes, you can design a web app for a mobile phone, but there is nothing that guides you or gives you any help in that direction.

For example, navigation between screens. On iOS, you have a nav bar at the top of the screen, and when you navigate to a new screen it slides over the current one, animating in a back button back to the previous screen. All apps behave this way, and when you have an iPhone you don't even notice this - it is just the way you interact with all apps.

You would have to hand-build that on the web, or use some random library that probably uses CPU animations and looks and feels bad.

Compare that with the corresponding iOS app code:

    self.navigationController?.pushViewController(vc, animated: true)
Then add on top of that other platform-specific things like location detection, push notifications, or camera interaction. The web got those, but years later. The native libraries are simply built for the native use case, and it's a huge competitive advantage.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#193

Post by [deleted] »

amw-zero wrote: post #187
feanaro wrote: post #77

Native phone apps are more invasive and can therefore be used for more extensive tracking and spying, which is good for ad revenue. Remember how all the largest spying products like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, etc aggressively push you to install their phone apps even though they are (or were) perfectly usable through their mobile websites.

People say this a lot, but really, what can a native app track that a web app can't? To track location, you need to give the app permission, just like the web. To receive push notifications, you need to give the app permission, just like the web. I think this claim is unfounded.

[deleted]

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#195

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Because it's the best fit. They're both unique complex systems which leads to different use cases and pros/cons.

Mobile is best taken advantage of via native. It has a rock solid distribution system, which sort of doubles as a marketing platform? It's more portable. There's lots of system features exposed to native apps. Your app can be on always, collecting telemetry and pushing notifications. The net connection is not always great.

Desktop is best taken advantage of via the web. Portability is a pain for native desktop, and there's no unified distribution system. You don't need background apps to be on all the time, people spend more time with their phones anyway. There isn't as much unique hw/sw functionality. But you have the fastest net access.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#196

Post by simonh »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #180
simonh wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really dislike the 'consumption device' label, to me it seems lazily dismissive and missing the point. Smartphones, like phones, are primarily communication devices and communication is an active process. Texting/chat, email, audio calls, Twitter, Slack, Teams, Reddit, facebook, Discord, snapchat, etc, etc are all interactive communications media people use to create content for as well as 'consume'. Yes of course…

Go to any commuter train on a Monday morning and look what every last one of those people seated in the car are doing. They're consuming, not interacting. It is not lazy nor is it dismissive to suggest smartphones are largely devices that inspire consumption. It's just a proper observation.

Of course they get used for that, but I think it's a mistake saying that because they are consumption devices therefore HN crowd would have limited use for them. That's not how that works. In two different people's hands the same device brings completely different value. I got an iPhone in 2008 and since then have used them heavily as communications devices and that's where the main value for me is.

The same goes for the comment about iPhones being 'designed for consumers'. They were designed to be easy to use, but that in no way means they were under powered or less capable because of those design considerations. Again, that's not how that works. Powerful or easy to use is a false dichotomy.

They're incredibly powerful tools and mistaking a major, even the major use case for being defining of the tool (therefore everyone uses it this way, or therefore that's where the main value lies, or therefore these people here wouldn't use them) is fallacious. There are 'influencers' who have built fortunes almost entirely on their phones.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#197

Post by photochemsyn »

lordlic wrote: post #142

I like the overall framework of trying to identify asymmetries that web was able to exploit in each epoch. Unfortunately, the details are a real mixed bag: * Why did the web disrupt desktop? It's not even really worth addressing these, because they're all so weak. None of the actual reasons that web was successful are here. And the ones that are there are nonsense. For example, to suggest that security in the browser…

Unfortunately the author didn't do basic diligence on that intro - anaerobic photosynthesis is indeed a thing and was likely around for about a billion years before the water splitting component evolved (such anaerobes get their electrons for photosynthesis from sources other than water, such as reduced iron in an anaerobic ocean).

All the author had to do to check this was type 'anaerobic photosynthesis' into any search engine. (Add 'banded iron formations' for some really interesting stuff).

So if you get something like that wrong, and it's the analogy at the heart of the argument, well... it does make one question the accuracy of the rest of it.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#198

Post by indymike »

Short version: Browsers evolved as desktops evolved. In 2008 when mobile was new, an iPhone (600mhz 32 bit CPU, 256MB RAM) or TMobile G4 (528Mhz, 192MB RAM), were pretty puny compared to the desktop machines of the time (1Ghz +, 4-16GB RAM). As a result, if you wanted to do something meaningful, you had to compile.

Originally, Apple said that iPhone apps would be Javascript and web view based. Palm bet the farm on Javascript + webviews for WebOs. Apple changed course quickly, and WebOS just didn't get enough traction.

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#199

Post by [deleted] »

mumblemumble wrote: post #151
jeroenhd wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the anger was justified at the time. The rich web experience back in those days was extremely limited (as it still sometimes is, on iOS). There was no way anyone was going to write a music player that could compete with the built-in one using just the "rich web experience". Connection speeds in the original iPhone era were low, as was processing power. Spotify wouldn't have been able to provide you with the s…

As I recall, the "rich web experience" that Jobs was pushing for didn't mean it would be mobile Web for everything. Wasn't his idea that apps could be installed locally, but would be written in JavaScript and use a Web stack for the UI? Given the popularity of tools like Cordova and React Native, and the absolute dominance of Electron on desktop, I'd say he wasn't exactly wrong.

[deleted]

Re: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?

#200

Post by hakutsuru »

Constraints.

More memory requires more power and weight, but portability and features restrict battery size.

Non-native languages use garbage collection, which implies 6x memory or limited performance. It is possible to emulate manual memory management, but this does not seem a common practice.

Hence, if developers write apps the standard way using web technologies, they will perform poorly on mobile devices compared with native apps.

This is primarily about ios though. Android is a different world, since it seems apps primarily use the Java ecosystem.

Post reply on HN