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Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

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Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#91

Post by joshstrange »

goosejuice wrote: post #88
joshstrange wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put PWAs in all the app stores today with a thin wrapper, I know, I do it for all my apps.

What is your preferred method of wrapping? No resistance from Apple? I've read of many instances of wrapped PWAs not getting approved for the app store. I guess mileage may vary

I use Capacitor (via Quasar, though you will only want to use this if you use Vue and like Quasar, else maybe look into Ionic if you sue React or Angular). If you don't use a framework or don't want to use Quasar/Ionic then you can use Capacitor "raw" but I've not done that before.

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#92

Post by moralestapia »

palsecam wrote: post #43
nefarious_ends wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey great app! I really like the “undo until unstuck” feature, I haven’t seen that before. Is there an algorithm for that or did you come up with something yourself?

Thanks! The algorithm is described here: https://FreeSolitaire.win/strategy I came up with it by myself. “The strategy presented here is the basis of the computer algorithm of FreeSolitaire.win, which is used to select finishable deals, offer hints, and detect dead-ends. You also see it surface when you are told that The computer could do it in N moves at the end of a game. This strategy/algorithm is quite simple. It…

>I came up with it by myself.

That is truly great, @palsecam. I love HN because of this!

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#94

Post by danmur »

jb1991 wrote: post #52
palsecam wrote: post #24

https://FreeSolitaire.win is a successful PWA of mine. It’s a Klondike Solitaire game. It used to bring ~$500/mo of advertising revenue, but that’s significantly down these days: I refuse to have a cookie/consent banner, so I refuse customized ads (in the UE, in some US states now, &c.) Players do add it to homescreen. There is a non-intrusive button prompting them to do so, at the end of a game. People like to be ab…

I just discovered something interesting while playing your game: I’ve been playing solitaire incorrectly for my entire life, several decades! I thought maybe you had changed the rules but then I just looked up the rules and I see it’s I who have apparently been playing it incorrectly. When I was taught solitaire by my grandparents, instead of turning over one card when you are out of moves, you always turn over three…

That's how I learned it too.

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#95

Post by scarface_74 »

goosejuice wrote: post #84
scarface_74 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a SaaS app, there is nothing stopping you from charging more in app to make up the difference and charging less outside the store

Good point, but I think app store presence would be more important in d2c rather than b2b SaaS. In that situation I don't think charging more would go over well with consumers. Have you seen this done?

Spotify did it for awhile before they completely stopped accepting in app purchases. Paramount+ also use to do it.

Netflix offers in app purchases for streaming subscriptions if you pay through their games. But only the ad tier.

You can subscribe to YouTube or Hulu via in app subscriptions. But you can’t subscribe to YouTube TV or Hulu Live TV via the app.

I guess these days I would offer a higher month to month subscription through in app purchases and a lower yearly subscription from the web.

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#96

Post by mardifoufs »

throwaway9143 wrote: post #81
joshstrange wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read my full comment: > I love the web, in fact all my “apps” are built with web tech and I offer them all as websites/PWAs I'm well aware you can build binaries and ship a PWA, I literally do that. I don't hate PWAs, I dislike people that refuse to ship anything but PWAs and I especially dislike being told I don't care about the "open web". If you want to be a martyr and _only_ ship PWAs be my guest but prete…

>I dislike people that refuse to ship anything but PWAs What a weird thing to get all bent out of shape over. People do things a different way than you, get over it. If someone wants to only ship PWAs, why does that bother you so much? Because they're hurting users, and you're trying to protect them?

Yes, if so he's right. PWAs are a bad experience for the user or at least a worse one than even just a webapp wrapped in a native app, regardless of the reasons. I've never had a pwa not feel like a hanky browser tab, and this is on android.

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#97

Post by Turing_Machine »

iudqnolq wrote: post #62
throwaway9143 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"customer don't care what language/framework you are using" is a strange way to support a claim they do care about having a native app over a PWA. The first statement highlights that the user just wants something that works as advertised, and doesn't care about the framework. But the second statement highlights that, despite their disinterest in the technology, they care deeply about the app's delivery tech (PWAs vs…

The user doesn't care about the delivery tech. They care about the installation and usage experience. They want to go search the app store, click the button, and get an icon on their homescreen.

How is requiring the user to open a completely different application a better "user experience" than installing it from the web page they're already on?

Yes, I know that installing a PWA is confusing (especially on Apple's systems), but there no reason it has to be that way.

PWA (if it were implemented properly): "Click here to install app". Click. Confirmation dialog. App is installed. App opens in the same window.

App store: "Click here to install app". Click. An entirely different application opens. Confirmation dialog. App is installed. You open it, but now you're in a different context.

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#98

Post by Turing_Machine »

1oooqooq wrote: post #5
twooclock wrote: post #4

For my users having a PWA is completely irrelevant. Once they add it to home screen it's an app for them (I don't even bother to explain anymore). It might be a discoverability issue since they can't find you in app stores though.

why would you not put a wrapped pwa in the app store? isn't it a small racketeering/marketing price for the promissed discoverability?

Discoverability was a good argument at one time, but much less so with the shitshow the iOS app store has become.

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#99

Post by Turing_Machine »

carlonicora wrote: post #10
1oooqooq wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would you not put a wrapped pwa in the app store? isn't it a small racketeering/marketing price for the promissed discoverability?

If you publish the app in the App Store you will have to give Apple a chunk of you revenue as well, not just the yearly fee

True enough. However, you also need to consider that customers are much more likely to hand their card number over to Apple than to some random website they've never heard of before. In fact, Apple probably already has it.

70% of something is more than 100% of nothing (especially when the product is software or something else that has a marginal cost of production of essentially zero).

Re: Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

#100

Post by bob1029 »

throwaway9143 wrote: post #3

I'll give you a hard-earned tip: expect to fight Apple every step of the way. They will randomly erase all local data (cookies, localstorage, push subscription tokens, etc) in your PWA without warning. They say they don't do this, but I have the receipts. They want PWAs to suffer, and you will go insane trying to make workarounds on iPhone.

My most recent workaround for this is to put a session identifier in the URL somewhere and keep literally everything else on the server.

You essentially have to build your app from zero with these limitations in mind if you want any chance at getting around them.

This is a large part of why I am not a fan of frameworks and other popular design patterns. Having total control over how state is managed and communicated is really important if you don't want to get trapped in various tar pits.

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