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I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

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Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#321

Post by variaga »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #197
Zak wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phones are perfectly capable of accessing websites. I think a lot of the shift here has to do with companies aggressively pushing apps because apps are more profitable, which in turn trains users to expect apps.

Sorry, there are by faaaar not as much useable mobile websites than crappy mobile websites - most mobile websites are not really optimized, more like "just let us deploy some custome mobile CSS and people will use it" style

Companies with poor quality mobile websites also usually have poor quality apps.

The website can be objectively bad, but still better than the app experience.

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#322

Post by halJordan »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #170
nkrisc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But today, the very first touchpoint with "the internet" for younger folks is a smartphone display. The even do homework on this small screens! I saw a tweet recently that perfectly encapsulates this: for most people over 30, certain things are "big screen tasks". I use my phone for a lot, but for some things I put the phone down and use my computer instead. I am most comfortable using a large screen and a keyboard…

> I personally find the idea of doing homework on my phone horrifying but I suppose kids today are either used to it and comfortable with it, or they've simply never used a computer and don't know what they're missing. Though I'd wager they probably aren't comfortable typing on a keyboard. For college aged kids, most people are definitely not doing their homework on their phone. Many are still using paper and pencil.…

Kinda stretching the definition of kid there, a little past the breaking point imo.

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#323

Post by doubled112 »

SunshineTheCat wrote: post #251
sumtechguy wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question do you really use all of those tabs? As a small handful of tabs user I use the bookmark feature to hold things I want to keep for later. ctrl-d and it is in the list. Even then 99% of the time I open it again and go 'why did I keep this'. I get it that it is your workflow. Just sort of curious why you would consider that a 'power user' thing? Would not saving them to the bookmark list be more of 'powe…

I don't know why, but equating how many tabs a person has open to how much of a power user they are sounds like something right out of a south park episode.

Apparently bookmarks and self-hosting a read it later web app on my home server but only having 5 tabs open at a time makes me a filthy casual.

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#324

Post by palata »

8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote: post #13

Web browser is a sandbox by default. Worst a sketchy site does is eat a tab, less if you run an adblocker. Native app? Background processes, hardware ID shenanigans, your contacts, location. The whole buffet.

> Web browser is a sandbox by default.

So I take this is a security concern. How do you feel about the fact that when you open a webapp in your browser, you re-download that app code every time? That the server can send you a backdoor every single time, made just for you, and nobody else will ever know? And that you can't check the "hash" of the webapp, like you can with an app?

On the other hand, an app is sandboxed, too (on mobile OSes like Android and iOS). When you download it, you can check a hash that you can (if you want to) compare with a friend to see if they got the same app. With an app, there is intermediary (the "app store") that would need to collude with the developers to send a backdoor just for you, and even then you would still have the app binary as proof.

That's always a question I have with "secure" web services: if you use ProtonMail, you trust that Proton doesn't send you a web page that leaks your key. But if you trust Proton for that, what's the point of the end-to-end encryption? When you use the Signal app, the whole idea is that you don't have to trust Signal for the end-to-end encryption, at all.

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#325

Post by HumblyTossed »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #49

What most people dont get: Most of folks on HN here are much older than todays "first customers" of 16y/17/18 For them: The "Smartphone is the internet", while for most of us the "Smartphone is an extension of the internet from our desktops" that we were used to (remember the years before dot com bubble, saying: "I will be down in the basement at the computer to surf on the net little bit" ? :-) But today, the very f…

I'm old. I use my phone for as much as I can, but if something isn't optimized for that screen, i will definitely use a large screen instead of suffering through the crap. As I said, I'm old - too old to be frustrated by shit software. Also, I prefer web apps to downloading native, with few exceptions. I don't want or need a lot of native apps.

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#326

Post by FabHK »

quaintdev wrote: post #103
mghackerlady wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say for certain this is true. People my age look at me like I have 3 heads if I ask them to do anything more complex than open a web browser

I'm in India, people give me same looks when I ask them to open browser. Internet to my parents and other old folks is YouTube and WhatsApp

Famously, there were surveys where people said they used Facebook, but didn't use the internet...

https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id...

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#327

Post by grumbel »

quesera wrote: post #219
duped wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost never is it useful for an app to have my contacts or location. That said only on some platforms is it possible to stop a native app from getting them.

Android and iOS both require user permission for apps to access contacts or location. Are there other platforms that can't even manage this basic level of user protection?

As long as the application is made aware of the permissions and can prevent functioning when they get denied, that doesn't really help much. It's the choice between getting mugged or never leaving the house.

The ability to deny permissions without the app noticing or filling it with fake data doesn't exist on either system.

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#328

Post by palata »

Those are valid arguments but I like apps better, for other reasons. Mostly security.

When I use, say, the Signal app:

- I can audit it, download it or even compile it myself from sources

- Once I have installed it, Signal doesn't get to change it "in my back"

- As a result, I don't need to trust Signal for the end-to-end encryption, which is the whole point of end-to-end encryption.

When I use a webapp, say ProtonMail:

- Every time I load the webapp, it is downloaded from the Proton servers. Even if I once stop to audit it, next time I load it, it may totally be a different codebase (that e.g. adds a backdoor, potentially just for me, and just this one time).

- I need to trust that Proton doesn't inject a backdoor to extract my key, then end-to-end encryption is useless. I could also trust Proton to not read my emails, right?

- If a webapp is served by a CDN, I have to trust that the CDN doesn't tamper with it. Actually Meta has an extension made for verifying that for WhatsApp Web. The extension is a bulky way to make sure that you loaded what Meta wanted you to load (i.e. that Cloudflare did not tamper with it), but it DOES NOT ensure that Meta did not inject a backdoor just for you, just this time.

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#329

Post by jandrewrogers »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #185
neutronicus wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My parents save files on the Whatsapp chat That's becoming dangerously true of my wife and I as well, to be honest. The friction is just so much lower than Google Drive or whatever. As long as I handle it right away. It's just finding something from more than an hour ago that's intolerable.

I met a business partner who is doing some work for SME retail investors last week for lunch: He showed me his WhatsApp: People are sending _ALL_ type of critical documents by WhatsApp to him. Everything. (and bank statements are among the class of "less critical" documents in his case) My theory here is: "If you have any function in your product, people will use it for anything appropriate to them in a given minute"

Some European governments are effectively run via WhatsApp.

Re: I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

#330

Post by FabHK »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #185
neutronicus wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My parents save files on the Whatsapp chat That's becoming dangerously true of my wife and I as well, to be honest. The friction is just so much lower than Google Drive or whatever. As long as I handle it right away. It's just finding something from more than an hour ago that's intolerable.

I met a business partner who is doing some work for SME retail investors last week for lunch: He showed me his WhatsApp: People are sending _ALL_ type of critical documents by WhatsApp to him. Everything. (and bank statements are among the class of "less critical" documents in his case) My theory here is: "If you have any function in your product, people will use it for anything appropriate to them in a given minute"

To be fair, what other simple way is there to send a document to a contact through an e2ee channel? Mail + PGP/GPG? Wormhole?? openssl???

Sending it via WhatsApp (which also has desktop clients, btw) strikes me as a perfectly reasonable solution. (Which is somewhat of an indictment of the current state of cryptographic software, but that's a different topic.)

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