Y'all are missing a huge benefit of apps: offline use. The #1 reason I download apps for every booking website I use for example.
Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
361–370 of 571 posts
Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
#362Nobody 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…
> We take tech literacy for granted, because it's like a dozen levels down fundamental to our entire field. But the tech illiterati exist, and they love apps.
They "love apps" because apple and android have spent billions to break their mental models and convince them that "you use apps to do things on your phone". Literally. That's the extent of most people's understanding.
So, sure, they "want" apps in the same sense that early internet users "wanted" AOL because in their minds AOL and the internet were indistinguishable. But actual free choice requires an understanding of the choices.
Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
#363Earlier 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.
I purchase almost exclusively from mobile websites and the Amazon app. I'm likely to abandon a purchase if it doesn't work smoothly on mobile - there's really no excuse in this day and age. Also a mid-80's kid. I hate having to pull out my laptop for anything. Different strokes for different folks as they say.
Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
I invite down voters to make a reply explaining why users would prefer web apps to native apps, given the choice.
At least with web app I have a browser sandbox to protect my system.
Its been this way for a long time, but macOS apps through the app store essentially ship in a sandbox with the ability to configure permissions.
And there are now solutions that are very similar or the same on Linux (flatpak, appimage, snap with their very degrees of isolation). Windows, I will admit, I don't know much about it, but it may be the odd one out on this.
Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
#365Earlier 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,…
That's a cool project. Sort of a more open Trailforks alternative?
Thanks! Sorta kinda... But also different.
The main idea was to solve the gap of how many trail systems have colored loops, or signed/colored loops made up of multiple "trails", and Trailforks (et al) has no concept of that. So the situation a user finds themselves in is being at a trail, with Trailforks up, wanting to follow the "Orange" loop (for example), and Trailforks doesn't show that.
Hopefully the "Orange" loop is documented as a route, but this stuff often gets missed, and is still awkward since the image of the map still doesn't match the signs.
So my goal was to show the map close to what's physically there, use OSM data as much as possible, and filling in gaps for what OSM doesn't capture, rendering it all into a static map that also happens to work offline. For some specific examples, compare these two systems and their print, Trailforks, and trailmaps.app maps:
RAMBA: [1], [2], [3] Shelden Trails: [4], [5], [6]
There is the same kind of gap when compared to RideWithGPS, Strava, Gaia, etc.
And also, I'm a volunteer with our local trails non-profit. I want anyone and everyone to be able to find maps so they can enjoy the trails. A /lot/ of trail clubs are starting to replace maps with a link to Trailforks, which I believe does riders a disservice because it both requires an app and account and (if a user is trying to view a map out of their home area on a phone) payment. It's literally locking the basic info about a trail -- the map -- behind a semi-paywall. By making a system like this for our local trails I've helped completely avoid that mess. And so I made the map generator open as well so other techy folks can do the same or build on this.
This generated-static-map system does have the downside of being single-person-ish manually managed, and the maps do NOT update automatically. But I also see this as a feature, just like the print maps and in-person signage they are designed to complement.
I've prattled on a little more about the what-why-etc over here on my personal blog if you're interested: https://nuxx.net/blog/2026/06/25/trailmaps-app-map-generator...
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[1]https://static.wixstatic.com/media/9d19d2_b85c5684f54a4fdc85...
[2] https://www.trailforks.com/region/ramba-trails/
[3] https://trailmaps.app/ramba/
[4] https://www.metroparks.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2022-S...
[5] https://www.trailforks.com/region/stony-creek-metropark/
Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sounds like what could be a useful built-in OS feature. Along the lines of: "Aim camera at QR code to put "open-link" icon on your home screen" Does something like that not exist?
It could, right? But let me tell you a secret: Apple doesn't want PWAs/web apps and actively limits Safari to force developers to build apps.
Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
#367The question is: Why would anybody prefer a web-app over a native app in any kind of system or on any kind of device? I think the answer is "only when there is no native app for the system I use", ie Linux. So FOSS people want for apps to become much worse for everybody else, so that they can have the apps also through a web browser. Remembering that everybody else is who pays for the apps and all development, while…
I invite down voters to make a reply explaining why users would prefer web apps to native apps, given the choice.
FOSS enjoyer here. I actually prefer native apps. I already got too many tabs and windows opened with my browser(s) and also, I really hate when a web app decided to rearrange the UI and I have no clue until I am in it. With native apps, its seems like people are not as eager to change the UI and I also know the possibility is there when I see the update happen. I can also generally look at the version number and see its a patch release, so generally, my UI should not have changed.
Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
#368Love your username! Great book. It’s a shame he’s been cast into obscurity because of his personal life. You mean someone who writes lots of dark fiction is a deeply dark and troubled soul himself! Gasp!
Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apps took off because Apple did everything they could to make PWAs work badly, with no reliable notifications, no access to some data, etc. Apple did that because they want their sweet 30% from in-app purchases, which they couldn't enforce in PWAs.
The original intent of the iPhone was not to have 3rd party apps at all. Web apps were how developers were supposed to deliver to iPhone users. At the time, web apps weren’t as good as they are today and the market demanded local apps. Jailbreaks happened quickly, delivery systems like Cydia were set up. Apple either had to deliver their own official methods or play a cat and mouse game with hackers while trying to g…
Historically true, but the original intent quickly dissolved once they app store took off and they realized the cash cow they had on their hands.
Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
#370I usually prefer apps to sites if there’s any usability improvement over the webpage - which there usually is.
If the app just shows a webpage then no.