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Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

danq.me

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Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#141

Post by benoau »

datakan wrote: post #4

We were supposed to be in the age of PWAs. That was the initial plan for iOS before the app store and 30% cuts on subscription apps. Most web apps suck too though so I guess pick your poison. My strong belief is they want apps because they can spam you with notifications to get your attention.

> My strong belief is they want apps because they can spam you with notifications to get your attention.

My strong belief is they realized people were prone to spending absurd amounts of money in Facebook games, so they hijacked "social gaming" and spent 20 years deteriorating in defense of it.

Consider this timeline:

- Apple launches iPhone in 2007 with web apps central

- Zynga launches "Zynga Poker" on FB in 2007

- Apple launches App Store in 2008 with single-purchase apps

- Zynga hits 40 million monthly users in 2009

- Apple implements IAP and defensive policies in 2009

- Hundreds of millions of people playing Facebook games in 2010

... Apple goes to war with, bans and eventually kills Flash, the core technology to these games, and all of it moves to mobile and IAP

... web apps deprioritized, arms race with other browsers prevented

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#142

Post by gadders »

Grombobulous wrote: post #53

I recently decided to publish an app on the App Store just so I could say I accomplished that, and maybe even make a little bit of beer money on the side. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my actual app is pretty much garbage. I don’t expect it to be popular. It’s basically a worse version of stuff that is already available. I expected this to be a learning exercise about the process of getting stuff published. Lo…

The android store is the same. Jump through loads of hoops, fill in tax information for a bunch of countries, dox yourself, etc etc.

I'm finding it hard to reconcile a) how difficult the process and b) the load of absolute garbage apps that are out there.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#143

Post by PaulHoule »

criddell wrote: post #87
Grombobulous wrote: post #53

I recently decided to publish an app on the App Store just so I could say I accomplished that, and maybe even make a little bit of beer money on the side. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my actual app is pretty much garbage. I don’t expect it to be popular. It’s basically a worse version of stuff that is already available. I expected this to be a learning exercise about the process of getting stuff published. Lo…

As someone who uses apps, the hoops you have to jump through are one of the reasons I prefer apps. I'm glad Apple knows who you are and have scrutinized (to some degree) your app. I have no interest in installing a web app that could look innocuous today and be entirely different every time I hit F5.

My assumption is that 99% of what is on the app store is trash. I never go surfing the app store to find "an app" because I know it will be a waste of time. I'm outright offended that they hide the search in a corner and center a bunch of ads for apps that I know I want nothing to do with. I had to subscribe to Apple Arcade and cancel right away to make the (1) badge go away on a feature that insults me as a "gamer."

All the time I hear that "PhotoSync" is good or I install an app for a business that I deal with like my bank or the local gas station.

On the other hand I feel like it is safe and usually worthwhile to browse the web -- even the sketchy parts, like the web sites that lead me into rabbit holes right out of Videodrome.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#145

Post by llm_nerd »

abanana wrote: post #140
llm_nerd wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "marketing" do you mean "experience"? Because absolutely no one is marketing apps as being superior, but instead this is just the experience of users. There's a weird conspiratorial thing that people do about this whole topic that is so easily debunked. For instance "Apple wanted apps more than PWAs!". Android powers about 73% of the world's smartphones, yet PWAs are irrelevant on the platform. Web apps can be inc…

Yes, "marketing". Ability to market your business, not marketing the concept of an app. Businesses have an app developed because they feel the market demands it. Their marketing departments feel they have to be able to tell prospective customers "we have an app!" and if they can't, they feel they'll be seen as inferior, not with the times, thereby losing customers. I totally agree with the article that apps shouldn't…

Isn't this a chicken-egg thing?

Businesses started advertising that they had an app because user's preferred apps, having had so many poor experiences with websites and web "apps" that the entire field was tainted.

This is 100% a "made your own bed" kind of thing. Again, the general standards among web apps for years were terrible, and users became accustomed that using a website on a mobile device was a brutal experience. Things have gotten a lot better, and honestly AI tooling should massively improve the space, but people really need to be honest about root causes.

I mean...a local grocery store advertises their "app" and it's just their website wrapped into a webview, and it is just total dogshit. Because they brough the extremely poor standards they have in their web domain into the app domain, and it simply doesn't transfer.

https://dennisforbes.ca/blog/microblog/2026/05/terrible_mobi...

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#146

Post by PaulHoule »

xtracto wrote: post #105
billyp-rva wrote: post #18

> I can’t understand how we got to this place with “app culture”! The short version: ad blockers work on browsers but not apps[0]. [0] https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle

> I can’t understand how we got to this place with “app culture" Thie assertion is extremely funny to me. Historically we come from an "app culture". Back in the day, around 2000 or so, if you wanted some functionality, you ran an application. You ran software in your computer. Then on the early 2000s people started migrating their software web" , inventing "SaaS" (software as a service" . I remember my young self be…

I was having that argument with everybody in the late 1990s and was vindicated.

In corporate IT, for instance, you have to roll out new versions of software all the time. There are better solutions for managing desktop fleets than there were back then, but with a web app you just update the server and... you're done!

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#147

Post by bobro »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #92

If that's the case, then I agree. Lots of crapplets should be Web pages (for example, almost every corporate app). However, there's a lot of stuff that does, indeed, require a native app. That's the stuff I like to do. Doesn't really scale to Web pages.

examples?

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#148

Post by buffalobuffalo »

smcg wrote: post #74

The fundamental problem with the internet is that hosting sucks and no one wants to do it. It's thankless and it's expensive to maintain, both time and money. Apps are a way to not worry about that. By the way, the link doesn't load for me, so I used the archive to read it. https://archive.ph/ByFBN

No, the fundamental problem is ios. There are a bunch of features that ios locks down so that you are essentially forced to use apps. Want to send push notifications? You need an app. Want to be able to wake your app up in the background to do stuff intermittently? You need an app. Want to get your app on the home screen? Once again, you need an app. And before anyone says you can do this with PWAs, yes, that's true. But the steps required from your users in order to get a PWA running on ios are so cumbersome (by design) that nobody even bothers. And since ios has something like 60% of market share in the US, we're stuck with apps.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#149

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

bobro wrote: post #147
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #92

If that's the case, then I agree. Lots of crapplets should be Web pages (for example, almost every corporate app). However, there's a lot of stuff that does, indeed, require a native app. That's the stuff I like to do. Doesn't really scale to Web pages.

examples?

Nah, you can look at my GH profile, where I link to some open stuff, but I’m working on apps for a specialized demographic, right now, that don’t benefit from being HN hugged.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#150

Post by zacwest »

Telaneo wrote: post #139
Grombobulous wrote: post #53

I recently decided to publish an app on the App Store just so I could say I accomplished that, and maybe even make a little bit of beer money on the side. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my actual app is pretty much garbage. I don’t expect it to be popular. It’s basically a worse version of stuff that is already available. I expected this to be a learning exercise about the process of getting stuff published. Lo…

> I might be misremembering or misinterpreting, but it seems like you really need an LLC with a mail forwarding service and a cheap second phone line just to avoid the App Store sending the whole internet to your personal phone and address. For something free I can get why this would seem unreasonable (modulo scams, for which this is a hoop I would rather have than not), but if money's involved, a consumer should be…

Developers cannot issue refunds from the Apple App Store. Contacting the developer by physical mail doesn’t have any effect.
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