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

rogueengine.io

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

#151

Meetings should be emails Youtube content should be a blog React websites should be static with sprinkles of vanilla JS etc These are all ideas that in many cases are true, though sometimes they aren't, but if you ask the right questions, usually those holding the line have a financial incentive.

I look at these things as essentially aesthetic preferences. There's certainly cases where a certain medium is the objectively right one for a task, but there's many others where it really just a matter of taste.

I actually think of them as more than just an aesthetic preference. It is fundamentally about proof of work. Something that will become more and more important as we move into a post AI world.

Every single piece of art, music, game or any other creative piece, has three things to it. One, the actual artifact itself of the music, the art and the game. Second is who is making it. And the third is how much have they put into it.

This last point I think matters a lot. As producing things gets easier and easier, just because almost all of creative art is a popularity contest, things will move towards who has put in most of their hearts / effort into it.

And that is why still I think we will always remember a desktop game such as Stardew Valley but never a web game, no matter how good it is. I mean Roblox has been around for a while and maybe I can tell you one or two games in their entire history, which I even remember.

The same with movies from Netflix which are becoming this data oriented, aesthetically pleasing, easy to watch things, but none of them are worth remembering. Will Netflix and these platforms keep growing and having more and more users? Sure.

But therein lies the conundrum. We will have a lot of everything. We will own none of it and our lives will grow more and more shallow and meaningless.

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

#152
post #83

I'd give anything to move our apps to the web. We're in the medical field (our apps connect to medical devices over Bluetooth), so publishing on Google Play is like a Kafkaesque fever dream. Two days ago they tell us our app fits into categories like: Activity and Fitness Nutrition and Weight Management Sleep Management Medical Device Apps So we gotta update our policies, but today they said something like: "Actually…

The web is just a beautiful publishing platform. - no permission needed (mostly) - built-in discoverability - you get to figure out whatever payment processing you want - works on every device - update code in seconds - no copy protection needed

True except the part about "works on every device" is dependent on what part of the device you're trying to use, as the parent says about Bluetooth.

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

#153
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…

Your first quote is very misleading because it followed this: > apps had unique features like notifications and offline access. Browsers can do those things. If you're going to offer "Browsers can't access all the APIs in iOS" then, at the very list, provide one or two examples of what you're referring to.

One major one for anything with a text input it the inability to know when the keyboard is open and closed and how large it is.

It’s very common for something like a comment box to keep the text pinned above the virtual keyboard. This is impossible on the web. If you have ever seen an implementation of this on the web (for iOS) please point me in that direction as I would love to copy the implementation.

Notifications just came recently, but weren’t available for a decade after availability to native apps.

The final hurdle is discovery. It’s not possible for a site or app to act as a one click installer of a PWA (add to homescreen) and sites can’t prompt to be added.

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

#155
Referring to everything as "web" when they mean JavaScript has been such a feat of marketing.

I'd rather not have stuff I pay for be websites, thanks. I have games from 2005 I can still play today. The flash games from back then on the other hand are gone forever.

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

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web is just a beautiful publishing platform. - no permission needed (mostly) - built-in discoverability - you get to figure out whatever payment processing you want - works on every device - update code in seconds - no copy protection needed

True except the part about "works on every device" is dependent on what part of the device you're trying to use, as the parent says about Bluetooth.

I'm a bit curious about what's wrong with Bluetooth on the web. Is it just because Safari and Firefox don't support it yet?

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web is just a beautiful publishing platform. - no permission needed (mostly) - built-in discoverability - you get to figure out whatever payment processing you want - works on every device - update code in seconds - no copy protection needed

True except the part about "works on every device" is dependent on what part of the device you're trying to use, as the parent says about Bluetooth.

Their devices should probably just include a different interface, such as one based on a secure internet connection. Or use bridging hardware.

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

#158
post #83

I'd give anything to move our apps to the web. We're in the medical field (our apps connect to medical devices over Bluetooth), so publishing on Google Play is like a Kafkaesque fever dream. Two days ago they tell us our app fits into categories like: Activity and Fitness Nutrition and Weight Management Sleep Management Medical Device Apps So we gotta update our policies, but today they said something like: "Actually…

The web is just a beautiful publishing platform. - no permission needed (mostly) - built-in discoverability - you get to figure out whatever payment processing you want - works on every device - update code in seconds - no copy protection needed

  > works on every device
Assuming that the device has an up-to-date browser available for it. And today, that usually requires having a multi-MHz multi-core processor and GiBs of memory. No matter how lean your actual application/website is.

I have a stack of E-Ink readers, all in terrific condition. My favorite is the B&N Nook Glowlight 3. When it was new just about five years ago, I could install a web browser on it via ADB and it would work reasonably well. Today, all the browsers are bloated beyond installable and usable.

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

#159
I man don't get me wrong, I love the idea of PWAs but this dude is out to lunch. It's so painful making anything complex work cross browser/cross platform. On iOS iirc they don't even support adding PWAs to the homescreen? You definitely can't Bluetooth outside of Chrome (probably only on Android and Windows too because nothing fun is ever allowed on Macs).

Multiplayer games you kind of need UDP. You cannot UDP in the browser (WebRTC data channels technically use UDP but that stack is an abomination wrapped in SCTP and DTLS)

This is by no means an exhaustive list, just issues I've dealt with recently. It's better than it was with WebGPU and WASM, some of the gap between a native app and a website is surmountable, but unless you're doing something extremely boring surmounting the gap is hard fucking work.

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web is just a beautiful publishing platform. - no permission needed (mostly) - built-in discoverability - you get to figure out whatever payment processing you want - works on every device - update code in seconds - no copy protection needed

> works on every device Assuming that the device has an up-to-date browser available for it. And today, that usually requires having a multi-MHz multi-core processor and GiBs of memory. No matter how lean your actual application/website is. I have a stack of E-Ink readers, all in terrific condition. My favorite is the B&N Nook Glowlight 3. When it was new just about five years ago, I could install a web browser on it…

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