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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)

#181

Post by bee_rider »

inigyou wrote: post #169
bee_rider wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook only made sense in the context of living on a college campus… I think it doesn’t quite fit this pattern because realistically users were rarely in the “good fit” case for only ~4 years. Then, for each user, it becomes this sort of awkward slowly decaying network as people move on. I agree with everything else you said though.

Facebook was once a friend network and they added more and more advertising and slop to it. If you were the frog in the pot as it heated, it feels normal to you that your feed is entirely made of spam. If you're still out of the pot now, it seems foolish to jump in, unlike when it was lukewarm.

Maybe. I joined fairly early, still have an account, but did become pretty disengaged from it after graduation. So maybe I didn’t get the proper gradual boiling experience.

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

#182

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

> Either a 43MB app (ballooning to 124MB when it’s finished downloading extra content) with tracking and advertisements… or a 0.05MB web page (with an optional extra 35MB of images)

That ought to work better for people who don't have fancy phones and data plans. I've heard they exist somewhere.

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

#184

Post by Schiendelman »

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.

Exactly. I've published apps. When GP says their actual app is "pretty much garbage" and that there was red tape and nitpicking - Apple is trying to stop garbage!

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

#185

Post by c0nsumer »

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 like making maps, and I wanted to do a certain bend on a very specific kind of online map, filling a gap I noticed in existing maps.

The idea of an app really appealed to me (at first), but the more I thought about it the more I didn't want to deal with iOS and then Android and then maintaining parallel functionality on the web and all that mess just for a fairly-local hobby project that I make no money off of.

So, I just kept it as a website (which is also a PWA) with extensive testing on every platform I can think of. It's just worked out so well and is so, so, so much less complicated. And if I abandon it, should just keep working for years so long as the website stays up (or until browsers start doing something very different JS-wise.)

(You can see it at https://trailmaps.app if you're interested.)

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

#186

Post by Schiendelman »

benoau wrote: post #115
criddell wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they were actually doing a good job this would make sense. Just weeks ago they published a sanctioned Russian bank's app masquerading as a pomedoro timer lmao.

It's not about a "good job" or a "bad job". It's a continuous game of cat and mouse. They're getting better at it just as some of the best funded bad actors are.

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

#187

Post by _fat_santa »

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

> 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.

No it's not. Hosting a web app is one of the most trivial things you can do these days, far more trivial than attempting to get an app into the app store. Hosting API's and Databases is a little more difficult but you still need those things if you're building an app.

There is no world in which getting your app signed, getting it approved, getting every update approved and paying $X/year to Apple or Google is easier than hosting a webapp, even if you host it in the most difficult way possible (on say AWS + Cloudfront). And even that method isn't that difficult, just moreso relative to other ways of hosting a webapp.

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

#188

Post by wahnfrieden »

Grombobulous wrote: post #155
Telaneo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yes, you’re right that much of this only comes up when you’re trying to charge money for an app. However, if you’re running your own website you can make those decisions on your own without being forced into most of them. Plenty of very large “reputable” companies obfuscate their physical address and phone number, and don’t even offer an email address for contact. I’d also say that this shouldn’t be as necessary when…

> Why do App Store customers have any need to contact the underlying developers in this scenario?

The EU decided so, and Apple didn't require this before EU did

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

#189

Post by stronglikedan »

a_c wrote: post #170
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

There are surprising portion of population expect a dedicated app to perform a particular function

And that's fine, but if your app is just a wrapper for a website, send people to the website and have a link for them to download the app if they prefer.
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