No, SaaS requires funds. It's the rentier's class native.
This leaves a bimodal distribution in wealth of folks that use their own metal.
The web is not poor man’s native (2015)
41–50 of 123 posts
Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty sure companies force their app for monetization reasons and because they know it’s a better experience and want you to see that. I remember when Reddit started throwing the app in my face everyday until I eventually downloaded it. Now I always open for an app. Even for newspapers. The web experience on mobile blows.
At some point the industry needs to have an honest discussion with itself about the state of the UX of the open web. I feel like we keep telling ourselves the mobile web is fine because we have PWAs and all these other native-like gizmos, but truth be told the UX pales in comparison to native apps.
> but truth be told the UX pales in comparison to native apps.
I mean, Apple has every opportunity to improve their webapp experience. There's a number of PWAs I use on Android that really do "disappear into the background" when using them full-screen, I bet the experience would be just as nice on iOS if Apple was faster at adopting PWA tech and cared about making Safari an enjoyable experience.
Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they're referring to iOS specifically, which doesn't support the latter.
Pretty soon it will support native notifications, which will be far more serious than the home screen icons. Home screen and bookmarks are for pull Notifications are for push What the OS or browser needs to do is manage those far better so it’s working on your behalf (user agent) and safeguarding your attention. Probably notifications should cost something, in fact an auction. Why don’t people earn currency for their…
> Probably notifications should cost something, in fact an auction. Why don’t people earn currency for their attention?
Ah yes, genius! And then just like Brave, Apple/Google can take 30% of the revenue from selling your attention, and then continue to print money like nobodies business!
I kid (even though people will try to defend that business model), the real solution is just having well-engineered notification settings. iOS' notifications are years behind the curve, on Android I can stop an app from sending me notifications simply by long-pressing the notification. iOS makes this process substantially harder, so you're right that it would probably turn into a predatory feature. Again though, we should be encouraging Apple to do the right thing here, not rev up their money printers again.
Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)
#44This article is all over the place. The debate is over. The web won. You can see that by the way popular websites will try and force you to install their apps. That’s because their web experience is perfectly competent to scratch the users itch. They are forced to artificially cripple their mobile web experience to drive app installs. There is a strong niche left to native. I’m thinking of things like creative tools.…
> The web won. I don't think so. Either way the statements are rife with soft terminology, but I'll use raw traffic as my metric for dominance in the functional space. https://www.perficient.com/insights/research-hub/mobile-vs-d... . The majority of traffic is mobile and apps still rule that platform due to both a superior experience and better interfaces. The trend is clear and ongoing, so I'm not sure why people th…
I think it's simpler than that:
An app icon on a user's screen is the equivalent of a desktop bookmark icon shortcut circa 1998, like 'browser toolbar helpers' would 'helpfully install' - things that would more often be seen as malware today.
Notifications pushed to the user the equivalent of constant marketing from subscribed email lists. Constant ~~marketing~~ 'experience'. Pretty close to spam today; such email is depreciated to another tab even in places like GMail.
In-app analytics tracking finger movements, clicks, click times, pretty close to what would have been considered spyware 2 decades ago.
But there are nicer terms now. 'Download the app', 'Notifications/Engagement' and 'Help us improve your experience'. The user is led to believe they're more in control. I feel it's near peak, but I'm not calling it.
Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)
#45This article is all over the place. The debate is over. The web won. You can see that by the way popular websites will try and force you to install their apps. That’s because their web experience is perfectly competent to scratch the users itch. They are forced to artificially cripple their mobile web experience to drive app installs. There is a strong niche left to native. I’m thinking of things like creative tools.…
The web did not win as evidenced by the fact that websites cannot deliver notifications to the most popular phone in the world, because its manufacturer wouldn’t then be able to take a 30% cut of sales as a result of those notifications.
There are tons of things that are extremely popular and completely unavailable without an app companion. The majority of the most popular services cannot be used web-only.
Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)
#46It is in almost all the ways I care about. Title doth protest too much. It smacks of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Hooray, no installs and no files. We’ve been hearing the evangelism for 25 years. Keep patting yourselves on the back for the next hundred - maybe WebAssembly will have achieved something by then. You dropped the ball on the rest of UX, performance, and especially the developer experience. You can’t sweep it under the rug. Just take your little win and shut up.
The web could have been as good as native. There are too many people in the standards bodies and more so the browser vendors for them to ever get their shit together in a timely manner. I use the web for nothing other than this web site and occasionally when I want to watch something on a bigger screen, which is almost never. I easily spend 95% off my computing time in native apps.
The Internet is a miracle. The Web is still a fiasco and always will be, no matter how many trillions are made for a few people by selling ads, selling ads, and lest we forget… selling ads.
Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)
#47It is in almost all the ways I care about. Title doth protest too much. It smacks of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Hooray, no installs and no files. We’ve been hearing the evangelism for 25 years. Keep patting yourselves on the back for the next hundred - maybe WebAssembly will have achieved something by then. You dropped the ball on the rest of UX, performance, and especially the developer experience. Yo…
HN myopic streak never fails
Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)
#48We’ve been hearing about web being the future of mobile apps for at least 15 years now. Yet alas, mobile users still spend the vast majority of their time in native apps. What’s going wrong here? I feel like we’re spinning our tires in the mud.
Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)
#49We’ve been hearing about web being the future of mobile apps for at least 15 years now. Yet alas, mobile users still spend the vast majority of their time in native apps. What’s going wrong here? I feel like we’re spinning our tires in the mud.
Just wait until the year of the Linux desktop, no one will even think of using the web on their phones.
Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)
#50This article is all over the place. The debate is over. The web won. You can see that by the way popular websites will try and force you to install their apps. That’s because their web experience is perfectly competent to scratch the users itch. They are forced to artificially cripple their mobile web experience to drive app installs. There is a strong niche left to native. I’m thinking of things like creative tools.…
Indeed. Discord is guilty of this. You can't make calls on the mobile site because there's an app for that. Hit the "request desktop site" and boom, the button is not disabled for arbitrary reason.