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“It works better in the app”

shkspr.mobi

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Re: “It works better in the app”

#421

Post by Tanoc »

mikestew wrote: post #361
fallinghawks wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last couple months if you go to their site in a mobile browser (e.g. from search results), after a short scroll down they have this popup demanding you install their app and it completely takes over the screen. I take it as a reminder never to install their app.

I thought I'd be clever and use iOS's "Hide Distracting Items" to get rid of elements like that. But reddit kills the scroll, too, so even after the dickover[0] is gone the page is still non-functional. Nothing says, "we don't want your business" like a non-functional web page, which seems like a bad move unless you're selling food or potable water. 'cuz I get along just fine w/o reddit. [0] https://daringfireball.ne…

I've been trying to figure out for years how to keep specific bits of Javascript like that from triggering. But so many modern webpages are procedurally generated messes born from frameworks that I can't reliably track down a way to do it. On Reddit for example there's reddit.com, redd.it, redditstatic.com, and cdn-apple.com that are all subdomains that load on the page, and each pull Javascript from dozens of different sources. If you disable Javascript entirely the page won't load and instead nags you to enable it. I don't want to go digging through the page inspector in my dev console just to track down which .js file is causing that, and then figure out how to only stop it from killing the scrollbar. If you can even do that. Some pages are so labyrinthine that you can't.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#422

Post by efreak »

sebastiennight wrote: post #310
nunez wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% same. So many apps are just a WebView vessel for Crashlytics and Sentry and Dog knows how much more tracking. (My phone is always VPNed into my home network which has DNS-level ad and tracker blocking. This doesn't cover all the bases though.) Some, like Home Depot, have websites that are terrible and battery-draining enough to make the app nominally useful by comparison.

> My phone is always VPNed into my home network which has DNS-level ad and tracker blocking. I've been looking to do this setup. Would you share a few details of which tools you've used?

RethinkDNS does everything for me. You're tied to their DNS server if you want to use the in-app interface to make changes to the blocklists in use, but that's not a hard requirement. As a bonus, it also supports actual VPNs (wireguard, http connect, and socks proxy). If you don't care to micro-manage it, trackercontrol is also pretty good. There's other apps as well, like personalDNSfilter.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#423

Post by locao »

mikestew wrote: post #361
fallinghawks wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last couple months if you go to their site in a mobile browser (e.g. from search results), after a short scroll down they have this popup demanding you install their app and it completely takes over the screen. I take it as a reminder never to install their app.

I thought I'd be clever and use iOS's "Hide Distracting Items" to get rid of elements like that. But reddit kills the scroll, too, so even after the dickover[0] is gone the page is still non-functional. Nothing says, "we don't want your business" like a non-functional web page, which seems like a bad move unless you're selling food or potable water. 'cuz I get along just fine w/o reddit. [0] https://daringfireball.ne…

> 'cuz I get along just fine w/o reddit.

Killing xcancel and nitter was an awesome callout that I was again spending too much time on social media, even if logged out. Back to my cave.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#424

Post by dmayle »

reaperducer wrote: post #192
dmayle wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ton of features work only or better on app: - anything privacy sensitive - anything processing intense (using optimized binaries) - widgets - camera and audio based features *can* work, but are more finicky (or outright broken on ios) - local storage (exists in web app, short lifetimes on web site) - performance/latency sensitive work - (I'm less familiar, but probably local sensors, like gps and acceleration)

anything privacy sensitive You've got that backwards. Web is more private than an app. Every regulated healthcare company has a web site. None require an "app."

Nope... What you're talking about is not privacy sensitivity, but trust.

For you, you don't trust the provider of the software, so you mean being able to put a barrier around your life, and the delivered software... you think that by running in a browser, you're preventing that code from being connected to anything else... However, anything that happens in that code is directly connected to the provider, whom you don't trust.

I'm referring to the opposite... having something connected to your life, but having a barrier disconnecting it from the outside world... It involves trusting the provider of the software (maybe it's open source), but even if you don't, you can install an app, cut the network, use it locally, then delete it before restoring the network, and you have a guarantee that what you did with it was private... It's possible to build that into a web app, but most websites don't work offline, where most apps (though not all), do work offline... even if it requires an initial network session to establish authorization

Re: “It works better in the app”

#425

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

inigyou wrote: post #343
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be my intuition, but can you elaborate what specifically the app (if not given extra permissions) can do? Assuming the user doesn't change settings, web sites (at least if used semi regularly) can store a persistent cookie, so keeping the user identified is possible with both. The only thing I can think of is regular background pings to track the user through IP geolocation.

Unpermissioned access to all sensors like battery, acceleration. Hardware IDs. Background pings (as you said). Push notifications. Seeing which other apps are installed (maybe, I think that one got locked down). All kinds of fingerprinting.

Push notifications are the most likely abuse vector but are gated behind a separate permission. I think they locked down installed apps, and fingerprinting isn't really relevant if they can just set a cookie. Acceleration is also available on the web. Not sure about battery, but most apps (aside from Uber that increases the price if they think you're desperate) can't really do anything bad with that. So I don't see much left tbh.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#426

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

chrisjj wrote: post #386
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #208

"Never let an abuser take you to a secondary location": It's OK to offer an app, but if a site is pushing, pressuring or forcing you to get one, it's almost certainly because they want to do something abusive that they currently can't. Installing an app is a matter of trust; trying to push me to install one against my will is the best way to demonstrate that you should not be trusted. (Interestingly, I've heard a sta…

> It's OK to offer an app, but if a site is pushing, pressuring or forcing you to get one, it's almost certainly because they want to do something abusive that they currently can't. Every UK bank is, IME.

With banks I kind of understand it (for key storage/strong biometric authentication), even though the inability to move it to a new phone is a major pain especially on Android (not sure if some banking apps transfer on iOS, on Android, none do and enrolling an extra fingerprint wipes the keys from most/all existing ones...)

Re: “It works better in the app”

#427

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

acheron wrote: post #342
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #208

"Never let an abuser take you to a secondary location": It's OK to offer an app, but if a site is pushing, pressuring or forcing you to get one, it's almost certainly because they want to do something abusive that they currently can't. Installing an app is a matter of trust; trying to push me to install one against my will is the best way to demonstrate that you should not be trusted. (Interestingly, I've heard a sta…

> Android I mean if you use Google products it can be assumed you don’t care about privacy anyway.

The binary decision into which walled garden you allow yourself to be locked in depends on more than one factor, and you don't really have a choice of "neither" nowadays.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#428

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

earthnail wrote: post #55
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "do something that can be done in a web app" I'll bite. What important features can only be done in an "app" but not a web app nowadays?

Realtime stuff. Audio, video etc, games. Apps with a large user library (like the Photos app) that should work offline.

Right. Of course there is some overhead for using WebGL vs native OpenGL calls, but I think that's only noticeable for AAA games. Web audio's extra latency does make it undesirable only for things that require quick response, like realtime synths and maybe DAWs.

Regarding libraries, I wonder if maybe there could be a cacheable package manager system for distributing wasm libraries to webapps.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#429

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

willtemperley wrote: post #390
reaperducer wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also work in a windowless steel box inside a cave at the top of a mountain, if you really want to move the goalposts.

Why is this moving the goalposts? Native apps can work reasonably well offline and online. Web apps can’t, currently.

"Progressive web apps" can be installed to be used offline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_app

Re: “It works better in the app”

#430

Post by goosejuice »

indidjdjendk wrote: post #408
goosejuice wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://mashable.com/article/apple-reverses-decision-home-sc... Yes one can. They got greedy. https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-int...

Yes and no. “Add to Home Screen” living on the share menu is as insane as “Find on Page” living there. Which both do. And I don’t think there’s a master plan behind “find on page” being tucked away bafflingly on the share button. It’s just bad UX. No conspiracy here.

It's not a conspiracy that they once promoted PWAs as being the future and then reversed course so far as to removing the ability completely.
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