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

App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

rogueengine.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 384 posts

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#31

Post by threeseed »

mertbio wrote: post #16

> But fast-forward to today, and browsers can do all that. Browsers can't access all the APIs in iOS. > Developers pay hefty app store fees You pay 99$ per year and 15% for each sale. Apple handles VAT, refunds, distribution and so on. > They’re faster, more flexible, and work seamlessly across devices. Native apps? Not so much. Enabling iCloud sync for your app is just a single click on Xcode. > Why Web Apps Are the…

> Browsers can't access all the APIs in iOS

And nor should they.

Every single API that gets added to a browser increases the likelihood that you will be accurately fingerprinted and tracked across the web. This data is then packaged and sold to third parties whom you will never know about.

Every time I hear the PWA argument it's always what is in the best interest of developers not users.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#32

Post by spiderfarmer »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #13
spiderfarmer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never call a PWA an app, people will get confused.

But the "A" stands for "app"! Is there anything you could call it that would be less confusing (because "PWA" or "Progressive Web App" sure ain't it)?

Until some massive marketing campaign explains to all users of the internet what PWA's are (which is never going to happen), there's nothing wrong with calling your PWA a website if it prevents a lot of confusion.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#33

Post by sltkr »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #9
gazchop wrote: post #2

I disagree. The problem is more nuanced. A well implemented (native) app is always better than a well implemented web site. The problem is poorly implemented apps which are just UI wrappers hitting dumb APIs or embedding entire web stacks which hit dumb APIs. A well implemented web app isn't much better than that. They don't work offline, they use way more resources than anything native and they leak data like a siev…

> A well implemented (native) app is always better than a well implemented web site. Dunno, native app doesn't have URLs nor deep links. I can't link you to a page in my native app that you can click on. In my iOS HN app I'd have to click "Copy website link" to share a submission. If there were no website, I couldn't share it at all. Same with Reddit. For most apps, that's a lot to give up when you app is basically j…

Android apps absolutely support deep links: https://developer.android.com/training/app-links (surely iOS supports this too?)

It's also widely implemented in practice. For example, Instagram allows copying links to posts, and if you can view an Instragram link in the browser, it opens in the app.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#34

Post by manmal »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #14
hombre_fatal wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A well implemented (native) app is always better than a well implemented web site. Dunno, native app doesn't have URLs nor deep links. I can't link you to a page in my native app that you can click on. In my iOS HN app I'd have to click "Copy website link" to share a submission. If there were no website, I couldn't share it at all. Same with Reddit. For most apps, that's a lot to give up when you app is basically j…

Same native apps don't even relayout when you change window size, let you change the font size, or let you copy text.

Native apps made with SwiftUI or Jetpack Compose adjust their font size according to user preference in system settings out of the box. They also relayout automatically. Copying text on press is a one-liner in both frameworks, just need to think of it.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#35

Post by tetrisgm »

One aspect I find fascinating and under estimated is how Apple makes the browser kind of secondary to apps. The browser is basically a navigator, a renderer of websites.

People don’t think of the web as a platform for apps. For them, it’s like a bunch of pages you get to via Google. They have very poor notions of how to navigate or make workflows with it. How many people do you know who just have a million tabs open? Who have no notion of what web apps to use and mainly use Gmail / Slack / Google?

This is why Apple pushes apps so much. A dedicated little place for a use case.

PWAs are a good in between for sure. But for a lot of humans, having a logo of a brand they recognize is going to be the main thing.

“I want a button that says Music, it’s Apple Music, I pay it 10 bucks, I get all the music.“

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#36

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

rubymamis wrote: post #27
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A web app that cannot handle a text file bigger than X bytes doesn't become useless, in the same way that a native app isn't useless even though it, too, has a limit on the maximum file size it can handle.

Any text editor that struggles to load a large text file on a modern computer is, simply put, inefficient. If 20 years ago they managed to write programs that could handle such cases and today many (web) apps fail at this task means we're going backward. My point is that it's much harder to write efficient code in the web ecosystem because you're bound to specific abstractions from the browser. Once deviating from sa…

> Any text editor that struggles to load a large text file...

Define "large". If it's bigger than the biggest text file I'll ever open, then I don't care.

My point is that "efficient" code isn't absolutely necessary in many, many cases.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#37

Post by manmal »

nforgerit wrote: post #11

Whilst I agree with most of the points, author is making here I cannot help but make a small snarky remark that we, as a dev community, have been talking and dreaming about those talking points since the advent of html5 which is roughly 15ys. Marketing and availability, i.e. is it within reach when a customer thinks about it, are core problems needing to be solved.

Maybe 2025 will be the year of PWAs? /s

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#38

Post by taminka »

while i understand the sentiment and having an app for everything is annoying, there’s a reason ppl prefer app: most web developers are either incompetent as hell or don’t care and write horrible websites, and forcing ppl to make a native app at least ensures some basic level of saneness and performance

i think there’s maybe two or three popular websites that work well on my phone, everything else is unuseable, while apps still work okay

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#39

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #32
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the "A" stands for "app"! Is there anything you could call it that would be less confusing (because "PWA" or "Progressive Web App" sure ain't it)?

Until some massive marketing campaign explains to all users of the internet what PWA's are (which is never going to happen), there's nothing wrong with calling your PWA a website if it prevents a lot of confusion.

Sure, but I also think there's nothing wrong with calling it an "app" if that's the buzzword that will tip some people from dismissing it towards trying it out.

Re: App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)

#40

Post by spiderfarmer »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #39
spiderfarmer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until some massive marketing campaign explains to all users of the internet what PWA's are (which is never going to happen), there's nothing wrong with calling your PWA a website if it prevents a lot of confusion.

Sure, but I also think there's nothing wrong with calling it an "app" if that's the buzzword that will tip some people from dismissing it towards trying it out.

If it's clear that people expect 'apps' to be in the app store, how can you think "there's nothing wrong" with calling PWA's 'apps'?
Post reply on HN