Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile? • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by Aerroon » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 2:40 AM UTC

profmonocle wrote: post #98

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.

Reddit is a really weird one to me. Their mobile site is very nice - so nice that I don't feel any desire to install the app - aside from the fact that they desperately want me to stop using it and push the app at every opportunity. (Recently they even decided to block NSFW-flagged content from the mobile site unless you're logged in - you get a box telling you to install the app to see it.) What I don't get is why t…

I actually use the old desktop version of Reddit on my phone, because I find all other versions of the site worse. All of the other ones have a bloated UI with giant elements while hiding useful elements.

My only gripe is the upvote, downvote, and " comments" buttons are a little too small compared to the other elements. Oh, and that new slide or multi picture UI sucks.

It loads quickly too. Quicker than the mobile versions, which is ironic.

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

#302

Post by j45 » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

Palm’s webos was likely 10 years ahead of its time.

It was one of the few devices where web based technologies were first class citizens.

Applications and the entire UI were built in JavaScript and HTML.

iOS and Android were, and are not as able to express via web interactions. It was difficult to even compile web apps as mobile apps for the iOS web store.

The desktop didn’t belong to anyone and was reasonably open from an app perspective. So was the web.

Maybe webos or something like it will emerge in the future and let us see what tightly managed mobile environments we live with.

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

#303

Post by j45 » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 3:36 AM UTC

ativzzz wrote: post #283

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They're consuming, not interacting. It is not lazy nor is it dismissive to suggest smartphones are largely devices that inspire consumption. This is also probably one of the reasons TikTok took off; it allows high quality content creation via smartphone that anyone can do.

Crashing before consuming is also why personal tech in the 80s and 90s had a very different kind of following.

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

#304

Post by Razengan » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:22 AM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #262

Razengan wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "open" as in anyone can make a website Anyone can make an app too. > if it's has one good article, it will show up in some google query's result. Maybe buried deep in the 100th page, but not the front.

> Anyone can make an app too. On iOS, this is only true if they're in good standing with Apple and have their approval, while also paying the yearly $100 Apple tax.

All hosting providers or app platforms also have a ""tAX""

Wait till you find out about paying for bandwidth.

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

#305

Post by cyberpsybin » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 6:26 AM UTC

Ads and privacy and horrendous in native apps. User has zero control over what they can do to enhance their experience. Of course the web will never take over in mobile.

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

#306

Post by p0nce » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 8:41 AM UTC

Apple contributed hugely to kill Flash and Java on the Desktop (let alone things like Silverlight). ALso non-native code is still 2x slower all things considered.

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

#307

Post by nsonha » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 11:23 AM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #304

heavyset_go wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone can make an app too. On iOS, this is only true if they're in good standing with Apple and have their approval, while also paying the yearly $100 Apple tax.

All hosting providers or app platforms also have a ""tAX"" Wait till you find out about paying for bandwidth.

This is hacker news, none of us has heard of nor care about the highly technical details you speak of

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

#308

Post by kews » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #295

kews wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting to me because I've been seeing some people impatient for the PinePhone external keyboard, but I've felt strong doubts I'd use one much.

You might be right. Having also spent time with the Cosmo Communicator, I can vouch that a phone with a keyboard isn't the same thing as a phone-sized laptop. Apart from the hostile platform (which hopefully wouldn't be an issue on the PinePhone), two aspects that make the phone less practical for desktop software are the extremely high aspect ratio, and the lack of any sort of mouse input beyond poking at the screen…

Thanks for spelling out some issues.

Yeah, the inherent fatness of fingers problem. And the lack of buttons on those fingers other-problem.

Looking at the resolutions, 1280x720 vs 1440x720, I would have just expected the phone experience not to feel terribly different. Of course it remains to be seen how much the PinePhone software adapts to landscape in wake of the keyboards coming.

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

#309

Post by Abishek_Muthian » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

bhawks wrote: post #59

When iPhone and Android hit the scene the 'rich' web experience was primarily flash, silverlight, and some java applets (taking their last breathe). Input APIs for touch, multitouch and gesture were a mess for many years in the browser. Media queries didn't become a w3c recommendation until 2012 so building a ux that looked pleasant really wasn't possible. The memory, cpu, GPU, storage and battery constraints were un…

> the vast amounts of money/influence Google was willing to put in to keep it's search ads property relevant

Mobile search ad clicks have been surpassing desktop search for a while now, If it was done solely through Google app and if iOS wasn't a thing then Google would have happily killed the web by this time.

I think instant apps is(was?) an attempt at it.

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

#310

Post by pedrogpimenta » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

repsilat wrote: post #154

pedrogpimenta wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be using a different reddit website, the one I know is horrible. It's slow, it's buggy, videos don't always work without a refresh after waiting 10 seconds to be able to click play. The UI is all wrong: for example, you open the comments of a post, it opens a faux-modal with a X button. You tap it, it closes the post but opens the subreddit. It doesn't go back to where you were. Another example is how to col…

Maybe they mean old.reddit.com. I use it on mobile and it's fine. Fast, not too many pushes to change to the app, r/friends/comments works. Twitter on mobile has become almost unusable (unable to see most content without making an account), though I've found a workaround: it's not totally broken in incognito windows, so I guess that's how I read it now.

Same with Medium, can only see posts on Incognito mode...