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

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

#321

Post by asdff »

kokanee wrote: post #305
pixl97 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you are part of the generation that 'buys things' on an actual computer. Get much older or much younger and they'll use apps instead.

Am I the only person who buys things on mobile websites? I feel like most apps are just websites rendered in webviews with a bunch of background tracking added, and websites create a bit of a firewall between my OS/filesystem and the application.

On this forum? You are probably one of the few. I hate the way mobile browsers handle tabs with no control over forcing a reload and losing state. I prefer the desktop. I prefer my treestyle tabs. I am hardly on the phone as a result.

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

#322

Post by ValentineC »

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.

Except it seems like plenty of apps these days are just vehicles to give web-based services some native abilities, so they're practically useless without a data connection.

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

#323

Post by OkayPhysicist »

nitwit005 wrote: post #315
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #312

Nobody here is talking about the fact that a significant number of users want apps, too. I'm responsible for an internal tool at the company I work for, hosted as a website, that handles a bunch of miscellaneous tasks that other employees need. Think reimbursements, documentation and reporting, gathering and presenting business data. That sort of thing. When I took it over, it was desktop only ( a lot of formatted pa…

That sounds less like wanting apps, than simply having no idea what's going on.

Honestly, they probably would have been perfectly happy with a bookmark on their home screen, but have you ever tried walking someone who doesn't know how to enter a url into their browser through the process of making a home page bookmark on their phone?

Ultimately I ended up making a PWA that does nothing except act as a bookmark. Which was way more of a PITA than it should have been.

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

#324

Post by demosthanos »

Telaneo wrote: post #317
demosthanos wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Dell will not give you a refund for something purchased at a retailer. For general returns and refunds, the retailer is on the hook because they're the ones who actually took your money. What Dell will do is repair or replace a computer that is still under warranty. They won't refund.

> No, Dell will not give you a refund for something purchased at a retailer. They're legally required to.[1] [1] https://lovdata.no/dokument/NLE/lov/2002-06-21-34/KAPITTEL_5... Section 35 Edit: Forgot there's an English version.

Fair enough, I didn't realize Norwegian law had this provision. EU-wide and US law do not, so this is pretty specific to the Nordic countries from what I can tell.

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

#325

Post by c0nsumer »

motoroco wrote: post #244
c0nsumer wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! And yeah... :\ The Android/Chrome/Edge support for it is great, and on iOS it's actually nice, but you have to do all the hoop-jumping of clicking Share, whatever, and getting the icon to actually appear. Also, apparently Apple really doesn't like approving apps that are basically wrapped PWAs (Google will, I guess?) so that is yet another check against bothering with an app.

Yeah, Apple has a rule against simple wrappers. Check out bubblewrap if you haven’t already. It’s made by Google specifically for wrapping PWAs for the Play Store. There’s a tiny bit of work to make a keystore and manifest file, otherwise it just pulls from your PWA config automatically

Thanks for that pointer. I have, but I just really don't want to do it... With my current architecture -- that I like -- it'd be an app per map. Which I guess could make a little pocket money, but they are so hyper-local it wouldn't earn much. So I may as well just keep things going the way they are.

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

#326

Post by c0nsumer »

chrisweekly wrote: post #301
c0nsumer wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

cool project!

Thanks!

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

#327

Post by Telaneo »

demosthanos wrote: post #324
Telaneo wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, Dell will not give you a refund for something purchased at a retailer. They're legally required to.[1] [1] https://lovdata.no/dokument/NLE/lov/2002-06-21-34/KAPITTEL_5... Section 35 Edit: Forgot there's an English version.

Fair enough, I didn't realize Norwegian law had this provision. EU-wide and US law do not, so this is pretty specific to the Nordic countries from what I can tell.

The joys of consumer protection. This one is fairly old (2002), and doesn't have any origin in any EU law, although I would have though that the EU had something roughly equivalent by now, and if they don't, they really should.

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

#328

Post by Schiendelman »

benoau wrote: post #230
Schiendelman wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They only have 500 reviewers for the whole App Store, and in fact, they were chastised by the judge in the Epic case for investing very little in the review process six years ago when they also only had 500 reviewers for the whole App Store. This isn't cat and mouse it's theater while they're shielded by section 230 immunity and pocketing enormous profits.

I'm not sure why it matters that they have 500 reviewers, or had six years ago. Is this a "that number seems small" argument?

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

#329

Post by dudeWithAMood »

I did something similar (though I used a slightly different method to intercept traffic) to make the US version of the Costco app better: www.97cost.co

I'm only surfacing two api requests that Costco's app is using, but even with a server as a middle man between the browser and Costo's backend this is way faster than the app.

Source: https://github.com/DavidZirinsky/costco-deals

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

#330

Post by tempestn »

Zak wrote: post #278

I once read that app users are seven times more profitable than web users. That easily answers the author's question about why a company would bother make an app when a web page is the natural fit for the use case. I don't remember the source or methodology for that number, but I have no trouble believing it. An app gives the developer a foothold on the user's device. It can more easily send notifications, track the…

And in fact, a significant subset of users will pester you to make an app, even if your website can and does do everything an app could do.
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