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The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

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Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#81

Post by winternett »

ryaniscool wrote: post #20

This 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 problem I have with the app economy is that it constantly feels like trying to function in a highly dysfunctional place... Each app requires you to click through multiple things now instead of minimized actions to benefit their action-based tracking and to serve more ad pages... I constantly feel like I'm walking into rooms, but then walking back out just to see if anything has updated.

It seems like most of these app making companies hire more human psychologists than developers now, as there is a constant stream of subtle suggestive marketing in everything apps do now. App updates are done far too often in the background for lord knows what reason as well, usually not for security reasons of course...

I'm tired of trying new apps, I only install what I need, the flood of apps in app stores that are even deceptively titled prove to me that the major device and OS makers have none of my interests in mind. These apps needlessly have access to tracking and other features of my device they don't need, and device and OS makers do nothing to limit their reach or help my awareness of how much my privacy is being tapped. Even well known app makers are selling out to the creepy consumer voyeurism craze that is rampant in the app making industry now... It's literally stalking users in apps that people often trust, on devices that they pay for, it represents one of the most egregious security derelictions of duty by Congress and Device makers ever to let this fraud continue.

Why would a calculator app need weekly updates, or to know your physical location, and have access to all device cameras and files every time it's used? Why would TikTok need permissions to access the same things in order to even function? The app stores and device makers are complicit is giving apps too much access to your data as well. This is also why Microsoft over-complicates, and now hides Task Manager further in Windows 11 by not making it accessible in the taskbar, and by not distinguishing official software and services from unofficial ones. The amount of background bandwidth used for tracking information isn't considered for devices that also get throttled when data caps are reached as well. God knows how much bandwidth is used by these apps to send our data back to HQ... Data lines which we also pay for are used to share our private information with these creepy corporate voyeurs as well.

I rebel against all this overreach nonsense with black electrical tape over my front camera, by turning all notifications off, and by putting my phone in a Faraday sleeve when I'm not using it. Something's got to give, this is not what anyone is paying for when they buy a "smartphone". Maybe we should call them "SpyPhones" moving forward?

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#82

Post by dredmorbius »

ryaniscool wrote: post #20

This 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.…

I'd argue that the Web has a natural advantage over apps in general, but that the obvious objective of firms is to push apps and to turn the thumbscrews on native Web users (mobile most especially), which means that "win" may well yet turn to defeat.

I'm coming to detest both apps and Web increasingly (though apps are far worse). The negative incentives and dark patterns are not only ubiquitous but cause for major societal and national security concern.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#83

Post by dredmorbius »

Supermancho wrote: post #30
ryaniscool wrote: post #20

This 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…

How much app traffic by data volume is video and audio?

There are some natural divisions I'd make generally to Web activity:

- Document-oriented content: mostly-static text and images. This is the domain of the web browser.

- Multimedia: audio and visual. Here I vastly prefer an application which can natively manage, organise, queue, and filter content. I do make heavy use of a podcasting app, and occasionally listen to Internet radio. I hear some people may use music or video streaming tools.

- Commerce. Shopping really should be divorced from the browser for far too many reasons.

- Applications. Truly interactive tools. Where the line between "Web" and "App" lies specifically I'm not entirely sure, but I can see much of what's presently provided through JS being made browser-native (wins for consistency and familiarity, probably a loss at feature development, though this may not be a bad thing), and classing "App" as "requires programming and persistent data store".

How well that holds up / sells I can't really say, though I've been advocating this for very nearly a decade:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_...

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#84

Post by smoldesu »

EGreg wrote: post #55
smoldesu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 se…

Well, I personally am against closed centralized platforms (app stores, Big Tech platforms) and centralized monetization (patreon, deplatforming). I think Web3,4,5 has a lot of promise to disrupt the gatekeepers, who currently can control our transactiosn and even influence our democracies. This will become even more significant as the next generation will be immersed for hours a day in VR, XR, metaverse with glasses…

> Well, I personally am against closed centralized platforms (app stores, Big Tech platforms) and centralized monetization (patreon, deplatforming).

I agree. Many people on HN are against this as well, even if the entrepreneurs and VCs of the world might not see eye-to-eye.

> I think Web3,4,5 has a lot of promise to disrupt the gatekeepers, who currently can control our transactiosn and even influence our democracies.

No, I don't really think so. Cryptocurrency's impact on the economic landscape has already been made, the people who would benefit from it's model (criminals, scammers) have been using it to great success thus far. Without a centralized governance model, every single truly "decentralized" blockchain is forced to accommodate bad actors alongside legitimate ones, with no path of recourse in the event of fraud/failure/mistakes/redactions/etc. It sure sounds like a great concept to libertarians or jaded tech enthusiasts, but the average person has no reason to use cryptocurrency. There's no transaction they make in their daily life that would benefit from being on the blockchain. That's just a fact of life, and it's why you can advocate for it until the sun sets but ultimately, nobody will care. I love append-only ledgers and the original implementation of a blockchain is really visionary with relation to distributed computing and heterogeneous data structures. As it stands today though, Web3 and whatever the hell Web4 and Web5 are, is populated with scammers. Solana is a scam. Opensea is a scam. Tether, Terra and Luna were all also scams.

> But somehow, so many people on HN believe (much like Bitcoin maxis but with Web2) that no new decentralized technology can be good enough to actually adopt or get involved with

Hah, how soon developers forget the sins of the father. Remember Soulseek? Remember Torrents? There was a period of time when everyone thought P2P filesharing was the future, and that our world of server-hosting and F2P CDNs were all going down. Viva la revolución!

Oh, but what do people think when they hear the word "torrent" now? Certainly, most people don't immediately think "P2P filesharing protocol", but rather "there's a 99% chance this magnet file contains pirated content". NFTs, Web3 and the Blockchain are already headed down that path, with 3x the negative press coverage of Bittorrent/The Pirate Bay. The finance revolution is over, the preeminent powers of banking proved to the world that cryptocurrency is a fraud, and they didn't even need to lift a finger to do it. How quaint.

> Even stuff like FileCoin and MaidSAFE are derided.

I want my files stored on Amazon's datacenters, thank you. With AWS storage, I can comply with modern security regulations and know where my data is at all times. If I upload content with FileCoin or similar mumbo-jumbo, my legitimate business data could end up being stored on the same server where criminals store stolen credit cards. No thanks.

> Watch, here is totally free open source code that took us half a million dollars to produce and people can fork and build on, but if I post the link what will happen

Are you... mad that people don't care about cryptocurrency? I mean, hey, if you really think crypto is going to explode, then feel free to bet everything on it. But look around you, get a feel for the real-world scale of finance that's going on right now. Cryptocurrency, NFTs and Web3 are at the bottom of the feeding chain, and they're doing absolutely nothing to change that.

You keep asking people to build on other people's projects and "feel free" to contribute, but I think it's time to admit defeat. Nobody is going to do these people's work for them. No developer is going to build on an API that's actively scamming them unless it's named Google or Apple. If you feel frustrated that both the public and developers don't care about cryptocurrency, then why are you willing to bet the farm on it?

> And here is a detailed write-up of what it would be like to own your OWN server and charge people for your attention in your OWN currency: https://qbix.com/ecosystem … feel free to build upon it.

I don't want to. I disagree with the way Qbix is designed, and I reckon any developer who reads the words "centralized node" will also nope the fuck out of there.

> I just coined a word for people who knee-jerk downvote anything on HN that gets away from centralized gatekeepers or uses blockchain: Web2 maximalists

I like it, it really sounds like a label I could be proud of. If you're a visitor on my Web2 maximalist website, you can be assured that your current browser will Just Work to find my site. As a Web2 maximalist, I also won't be offering any places for you to spend your hard-earned money. That's for you to keep. I won't be promoting any get-rich-quick schemes, I won't create complicated ownership diagrams, I'll simply deliver my HTML and CSS to you via your ISP. There's no opportunity for me to scam you, because I'm not hiding anything. My Web2 ideology is transparent, the only data that I get from you is what you willingly offer. Your visit to my website doesn't show up on any ledger. Sound like utopia? There's still plenty of time left to enjoy Web2, folks.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#85

Post by alexalx666 »

I predict that Apple will reinvent personal computing with their XR product ( XROS replacing macOS, faster and better pro and consumer user experience via virtual screens and controls), google/samsung will imitate. I can see Apple allowing WASM apps to be sold. Ultimately the best user experience wins and in general it was iPhone/iPad so far

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#86

Post by depressedpanda »

pixel_tracing wrote: post #70
depressedpanda wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet alas, mobile users still spend the vast majority of their time in native apps. What’s going wrong here? Easy: - Apple only allows one browser -- their own -- on iOS - Apple uses this control to cripple PWAs on iOS - Apple's iPhone market share is significant enough that if Safari/iOS doesn't support something, businesses won't spend time on using it E.g.: chat/communication apps cannot be written as PWAs, since…

Apple does not only allow one browser you can download Chrome or Firebox from the App Store

No.

What you're downloading is a different skin for Safari. Apple does not allow any other browser engine than WebKit.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#87

Post by theK »

finiteseries wrote: post #72
theK wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I’m reading this correctly this survey only focuses on web usage. They even go to the point where their no. 1 takeaway at the end is „design your mobile web site first“. So I guess the web really did win, even on mobile.

~90% of the average site’s mobile traffic, as a rule, comes from in-app browsers. Mobile users, as a rule, rarely open an internet browser, they are redirected there. It’s become a glorified zen-mode type feature for articles or indie web stores at this point for a substantial part of the population, especially young people, at least on iOS. This is a huge reason why “Open this in our app!1!” is a thing as well. The…

So mobile OSes allow App authors to force a worse and more insecure browser model upon their users, sure. Those still are browsers using the web. The fact that they are wrapped in something doesn't invalidate the fact that the web is being used as intended.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#88

Post by spideymans »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #74
spideymans wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there's a hard ceiling in terms of PWA UX quality that can't be shattered until browsers start bundling better UI building blocks. There's just too much that's too easy to screw up with the "bring your own everything" approach.

I agree completely.

Native iOS and Android apps are fantastic in that, as long as you're willing to follow Apple's/Google's guidelines, it's pretty easy to create great user experiences and highly maintainable software. Until the web can match that relative ease, it'll always be second-fiddle to native on mobile.

The problem with the web right now is that the tooling is a complete mess compared to native development. It feels like you end up spending 80 to 120 percent of the effort you'd put in to build two native apps, and even then the web apps would never feel as good as native.

My company strongly considered building web apps, as we move away from MVP to a more mature product, but the web tooling just isn't at the level it needs to be. The only value proposition for web was that it's easier to hire web devs.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#89

Post by sneak »

aparticulate wrote: post #54
sneak wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why are more notifications inherently desirable? My lock screen is a disaster and I honestly don't have that many apps. I can recall in 2007 when even having third party apps was a debatable topic. Call me fogeyish but it's inarguable that this was not really the intention of iOS, rather, we have mitigated and papered over the problem due to insane app store popularity. Macs didn't have native notifications for decad…

Almost 100% of users want their phone to buzz when their significant other or friends try to communicate with them in realtime, or interact with them on social media.

A majority subset of users want their phone to buzz when their packages ship or are delivered, when their delivery food is about to arrive, and when their paycheck hits their checking account.

Notifications as a concept are here to stay. Allowing every app limitless access to the same type of notifications is not.

Re: The web is not poor man’s native (2015)

#90

Post by spideymans »

finiteseries wrote: post #72
theK wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I’m reading this correctly this survey only focuses on web usage. They even go to the point where their no. 1 takeaway at the end is „design your mobile web site first“. So I guess the web really did win, even on mobile.

~90% of the average site’s mobile traffic, as a rule, comes from in-app browsers. Mobile users, as a rule, rarely open an internet browser, they are redirected there. It’s become a glorified zen-mode type feature for articles or indie web stores at this point for a substantial part of the population, especially young people, at least on iOS. This is a huge reason why “Open this in our app!1!” is a thing as well. The…

>This is a huge reason why “Open this in our app!1!” is a thing as well. The alternative isn’t browsing a mobile site through Safari, it’s using whatever social media app led you there in the first place.

Yes. The popularity of Instagram and Pinterest for shopping is a direct reflection of how relatively hostile the web is from a UX perspective. I often find myself using Pinterest, rather than the web, to browse retailers, because it's typically a better experience. This is rather precarious situation for retailers to be in, imo, as it means that Pinterest/Instagram effectively become gatekeepers to their stores.

From this perspective, it's no wonder why these stores keep begging users to install their apps. I'm sure Ikea would much rather me use the Ikea app than Pinterest.

However, I don't think every store needs or should have an app. I wonder if it's possible to deploy boilerplate native app experiences, that don't require these retailers to have a whole native development team.

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