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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

#361

Post by beams_of_light »

beloch wrote: post #269
SunshineTheCat wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hit the nail on the head. I find much of the HN community insightful and interesting, but in terms of consumer feedback (especially in a B2C environment) I wouldn't touch feedback here with a 10-foot pole. I don't mean that to be an insult, quite the opposite. Most people here are power users. But that is a galaxy away from how the average user interacts with the internet.

"Why do I need to download a 100+ MB app, give it permission to track my location, and let it run background processes just to browse through a restaurant menu, buy a ticket, or scroll through a list of posts?" ------------------- Hardware/software companies have, historically, targeted power users because regular users listen to them. The companies producing these apps do so because they can benefit from exploiting…

This cuts to the heart of it for me. I will not install Meta or LinkedIn apps on my phone because they have been found to be very intrusive.

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

#362

Post by tracker1 »

I've more than once had a company reply to a bug report about their website, "did you try using the app instead." To which I usually reply, "why would I trust your site with direct access to my phone when you can't make a website that works correctly?"

That's just my thinking... I try not to install apps most of the time, I don't want them to have access or even the greater chance at breaking security/isolation. On a similar vein, I still can't believe that LinkedIn didn't get permanently banned from Apple and Google stores when they broke security to spy on emails.

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

#363

Post by pwr1 »

Yep. If your product needs me to install an app for a one-off thing, you've probably already lost me.

The crazy part is how many teams still treat the web as the demo and the app as the “real” product. For a lot of stuff it's the opposite now.

I know there are edge cases, but most of the time “download our app” just means “please care way more about our product than you currently do.”

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

#364

Post by truetraveller »

leros wrote: post #355

I have an app that is literally just a wrapper around the website. The mobile website and the mobile app are the exact same experience. Before I built the app, people were constantly asking me to build a mobile app. Yes, I had a PWA but people still wanted an app. I thought it was kind of silly but I eventually built that wrapper app. It immediately got thousands of downloads, users upgrading to paid plans increased…

SaasS or one-time? Did people pay via native App Store integration? Or pay via the desktop website? App price? Answers would be super helpful. Thanks!

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

#365

Post by tuckerman »

cush wrote: post #120
tuckerman wrote: post #70

The site that irks me the most here is New York Times. Opening an article in the mobile browser often has a toast over the bottom third of the article to open it in their app for "a better experience". I struggle to think how nytimes isn't a perfect fit for a site over an app. The only frustrating experience I have with the web version that would be better in the app is not seeing that that pop-up.

NYT occasionally uses fancy interactive articles. They have games, and other things that are better on the app. The NYT app is actually very good

For games I agree that an app makes sense (though I think at least the games I used to play were in a separate nyt games app). For interactive articles, I've not seen anything I couldn't use fine in my browser, but in theory I wouldn't mind covering up the interactive part with a "Open in the app for a better experience" button (similar to what YouTube does on the video portion of the page). Where I encounter this though is in standard, text-heavy articles that maybe include a photo or two.

I assume the reason they are pushing me to the app is that it benefits them not me (longer dwell times, maybe easier tracking for behavior/ads), and that is precisely why I want to stay in the browser. Covering up a good portion of the article and preventing me from scrolling until I click the tiny link to decline is hostile and is the only thing degrading the experience on the website for most articles I read.

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

#366

Post by kstrauser »

nkrisc wrote: post #131
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…

> 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…

This resonates. There are certain tasks, like dealing with any government or healthcare-related web page, that I won't even bother attempting on my phone. In my case, it's because I just know in my heart of hearts that the crummy mobile website won't be feature-complete enough for me to complete my goal.

My wife is the opposite. It doesn't occur to her that the problem may be with the janky website, not with her. She'll ask me for help with a thing out of frustration and my first troubleshooting step is to reach for my laptop. This is almost inevitably followed by "hey, wait, how come you're able to press the Submit button but I wasn't able to?" "Because the dev never tested this on a phone and it's broken." "So it's not just me being incompetent to use this website?" "Nope, never was."

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

#367

Post by abustamam »

leros wrote: post #355

I have an app that is literally just a wrapper around the website. The mobile website and the mobile app are the exact same experience. Before I built the app, people were constantly asking me to build a mobile app. Yes, I had a PWA but people still wanted an app. I thought it was kind of silly but I eventually built that wrapper app. It immediately got thousands of downloads, users upgrading to paid plans increased…

It is silly but you have to meet customers where they are.

I think the problem is also that PWAs don't have any discoverability, and no standardization. I did some consulting work for a company that had a PWA. They had a 200-line long react component that was intended to determine what modal to show the user depending on what web browser and OS they were using to instruct them how to install PWA depending on the combination of OS and browser.

This is a lot of friction for the dev, and it's not clear to an average user what a PWA is. But they are familiar with, and for better or worse, trust, the App store. If I didn't know what a PWA and a site said "open menu and click on 'install!'" I'd be very wary of following those instructions!

I think Android and iOS should provide some sort of hook between the app store and PWAs before they really start to catch on.

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

#368

Post by wtallis »

jsharpe wrote: post #338
thesuitonym wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy thinks he's a power user because he doesn't know how to close tabs.

Measuring tech skill by how many tabs you have open is like measuring carpentry skill by how disorganized your workshop is.

It's a bit insulting to assume that having more than a dozen tabs open must be "disorganized", especially in a context where it is likely that the power user in question is using browser extensions. Something like TreeStyleTab makes it easy to keep hundreds of tabs organized with clear, easily-manipulated structure, and lower friction than manually creating and curating bookmarks.

It looks like you're either showing off your own ignorance of tools that enable workflows you can't imagine, or you're assuming that everyone's organization methods must resemble your own habits.

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

#369

Post by fho »

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.…

Can't confirm. We had students at university (18-20-ish) that had not used a mouse prior to our courses. That was at least 3-4 years ago now and not a single case.

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

#370

Post by leptons »

palata wrote: post #324
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…

>That the server can send you a backdoor every single time, made just for you, and nobody else will ever know?

There is no "backdoor" when the browser is sandboxed. "backdoor" is a specific thing, I think you need to read up on it before you keep using it incorrectly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor_(computing)

>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.

That isn't what "sandboxed" means, it has nothing to do with checking hashes. And no, mobile apps are not really sandboxed, they have full access to your mobile device once you install it and give it access - and let's be real, most people are just going to blindly click "allow" for anything the app requests after installing an 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.

You keep referring to "backdoor", and I don't think you really know what that means.

>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.

That isn't how any of this works. The main value proposition of Signal is that we do trust its end-to-end encryption. Protonmail sending a "web page" that "leaks your key"? WTF?

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