Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps • Hacker News Board

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#111

Post by issaria » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 12:49 PM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #86

ksec wrote: post #69

As a user, I dont really care about it being an App or Mobile Web. It needs two things, 1. An Icon on my Springbroad, so i can easily view it whenever I want to. 2. It should be butter smooth and dont warm my pants after reading. ( i.e lots of CPU cycle. ) Native Apps does better in both department. And whenever users gets a choice most would likely prefer the App version. HTML5 or Web has definitely improve, and it…

I'm not sure about that. 1. You can have an icon for web apps 2. That's only true if the web version is crappy and overloaded with ads and trackers. A decently designed I prefer mobile web for publications, because it's just a link that doesn't impact my phone. The native integration usually only brings annoyances, like unwanted notifications or sucking the battery to fetch articles I may not read. Apps are for appli…

Not to mention that the app is usually behind the web feature wise.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#112

Post by marrs » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 12:54 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #23

idibidiart wrote: post #9

The web is a great publishing medium for magazines and news outlets. Apps are for doing stuff beyond passive browsing.

Choosing the mobile website over the app is one way of keeping the relationship from going any further. A website can't ask you for your contact list like an app can.

eugh, I hate it when sites do that. I'd be really angry if I found out that a friend of mine had been sharing my contact details with strangers without my permission.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#113

Post by marrs » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 12:58 PM UTC

vetinari wrote: post #105

ianlevesque wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are comparing two phones that combined have less than a fraction of one percent of the installed base.

So what? Is it ok to just trow them into garbage then? You can still use them for calls and messages. You can still use one of them for apps, that were developed for this device.

The parent is probably too young to remember a time when you could buy a device expecting to keep it for the rest of your life, or maybe even pass on to your children.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#114

Post by coldtea » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 12:59 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #7

+1 for the article As a web vs. app proponent I love this. I do have a few apps installed on my Note 4 but I prefer getting Twitter, FB, etc. as a web site. Web standards like HTML5 are wonderful so let's use them and make the web awesome. My brother and one friend each have a few hundred apps installed on their phones. I am sometimes surprised that their phones still function with so much cruft installed, never mind…

>My brother and one friend each have a few hundred apps installed on their phones. I am sometimes surprised that their phones still function with so much cruft installed, never mind the privacy considerations.

This is a common misconception (also concerning desktop OS "bloat").

As long as those apps are not running at the same time and competing for CPU resources, they could have 100000 apps installed and no issue at all.

Especially with sandboxing and automated resource management in iOS (probably Android too, but not too familiar with it).

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#115

Post by waylandsmithers » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 1:00 PM UTC

brusch64 wrote: post #85

But isn't this an "App" which shouldn't have been an App in the first place (I think they write something like this in the article). That's really one of my pet peeves. I don't like installing apps just to read an article. A good mobile site is much preferable in my opinion. But I've started a little bit later than most to the smart phone game and I'm a little bit quirky - so that may be just me.

Exactly, and that's why it makes that a publisher would use the web for its original purpose-- the transfer of documents. Especially now with the News app on iOS, I don't see many reasons why a publisher would need to go to the trouble of maintaining its own suite of apps.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#116

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 1:22 PM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #86

ksec wrote: post #69

As a user, I dont really care about it being an App or Mobile Web. It needs two things, 1. An Icon on my Springbroad, so i can easily view it whenever I want to. 2. It should be butter smooth and dont warm my pants after reading. ( i.e lots of CPU cycle. ) Native Apps does better in both department. And whenever users gets a choice most would likely prefer the App version. HTML5 or Web has definitely improve, and it…

I'm not sure about that. 1. You can have an icon for web apps 2. That's only true if the web version is crappy and overloaded with ads and trackers. A decently designed I prefer mobile web for publications, because it's just a link that doesn't impact my phone. The native integration usually only brings annoyances, like unwanted notifications or sucking the battery to fetch articles I may not read. Apps are for appli…

> Apps are for applications. For content, nothing beats the web.

Exactly. I don't want to read your article over your own dedicated app, I already have a perfectly good browser...

...BUT! I also hate applications made as webpages, because no one can perfectly hide the fact it's not native. In webapps, UI pretty much always lags somewhere, breaks down completely under spotty Internet connection, or does something weird because there's no way for webapp to replicate every aspect of expected UI functionality of user's phone.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#117

Post by danny8000 » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 1:24 PM UTC

cmod wrote: post #109

amirmansour wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but I must also add that not every site needs to have an app. Mobile web is plenty appropriate and sufficient for many types of apps. Many news and blog sites are a great example of this. In their case, an installable app would make sense if they are offering a feature or experience that requires the privileges of an app. Lets not unnecessarily crowd up our phones and app stores. The World Wide Web…

Techmeme is a prime example of this — bookmark it on your homescreen and it's as good as an app. Their mobile design is, IMO, easier to parse than the web, too.

Financial Times does not have an iOS app - just a mobile website. They have been very clever in building the site so that it is very app-like, for instance they use local storage to store the days download stories.

But, was initially confusing because I couldn't find their app in the app store, where I was expecting it.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#118

Post by applecore » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 1:40 PM UTC

It's becoming increasingly clear that the future of publishing—for content providers—will be to relinquish control and publish their content directly to third-party distribution and engagement platforms.

See: Snapchat Discover & Facebook Instant Articles.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#119

Post by halosghost » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

First of all, good for atavist. They recognize their market, and are following the path of greatest efficiency and effectiveness. Sounds like great business sense to me.

Now, on the other hand, I have to say, this kind of thing always bums me out. For a news distribution service, it does not matter so much I suspect, but in-general, the trend of putting more and more of the functionality I rely on daily into a web browser is distressing. Web browsers, despite all the innovation and work that has gone on lately, are still an enormous attack surface with the most significant likelihood of security breach (especially given that the rise of javascript has led us all to the point where we are almost allowing arbitrary code execution from untrusted sources on every page visit). Not to mention that web browsers were founded on the notion of conveying content, not functionality; HTML is a markup language (with and JS and HTML frameworks, that's not so concrete anymore), it was not meant to host alternatives to the power of native applications.

I often find myself wishing for the ability to use a text-based web browser and have "The Web" still work, but those days are mostly long-gone[1] till I finally get around to writing my own browser[2] (which seems like it should not be a necessary step just to be able to interact with a simpler Web).

I suppose I am just tilting at windmills at this point (and, as I said, this post is not really aimed at atavist since I think content-delivery is a perfect niche for being web-only). Ah well, a user can dream, I suppose…

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38al1w-h4k

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072796

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#120

Post by endemic » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 2:13 PM UTC

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #101

pc86 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of non-technical users have no idea you can do this, and I've even heard many say that didn't know you could do it with any site - e.g. they thought they could only do it if the site had a popup that said they could do it.

My mother is 70 and did it on her own once her facebook app killed itself in a botched update (bad install or something). And then she complained that she was using the web version and couldn't find how to do some stuff hehe. Edit: btw, she's a school/music/languages teacher, so she has very little technical background. In her own words, she "touch[es] everything until it works".

That is awesome, I hope I still have that exploratory attitude when I'm 70.