“It works better in the app” • Hacker News Board

Re: “It works better in the app”

#151

Post by armadyl » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 3:12 PM UTC

_fat_santa wrote: post #105

This is a constant argument i have with by business partner. He's always asking me "when are we making an app for our " and I always reply back: "We already have an app! It's just a PWA" PWA's are freaking awesome for both users and developers. Users don't have to install a massive app and me as a developer can focus on making one platform better rather than 3. And they are pretty freaking powerful in what you can do…

Though you’re limiting your growth potential here by letting your ideology get in the way. Mobile platform users when surveyed almost always overwhelmingly prefer native apps and it’s not even close.

I anticipate if you start getting public feature requests a native app will be at the top of the list.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#152

Post by adzm » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

The simplest barrier to using an app for me is that most do not implement tabs. Tabs are extremely useful! Even when the app interface may be better than the web interface, I will usually find myself opting for web specifically for this reason.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#153

Post by IvanK_net » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

I just tried to make an Instagram post at www.instagram.com. It was possible a year ago, but they removed this option recently :(

Re: “It works better in the app”

#154

Post by bambax » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

brk wrote: post #9

At this point the barrier for me to install an app is pretty high. If you're going to needlessly gate certain functions behind an app that work on a desktop browser (or could work in-browser), then I just won't use those functions. If by extension that degrades the value I get from your site, then I just won't use the site, and I won't be contributing to ADU stats you promote to advertisers. Every single company has…

When an app asks you to login again almost every day, it's infuriating; an app should remember you indefinitely!

I try to never use apps anyway, because adblocking on them is hard or impossible (which is the reason they exist in the first place).

Re: “It works better in the app”

#155

Post by VCFundedGenYer » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

On an iPad, the web version is almost always objectively better.

Since about 2018 or so, most apps have failed to properly support rotating the device. When you load the same service in a web browser, you gain that feature back. Facebook is a big example.

Other apps actually have MORE functionality in the browser than their app version. This is why PWAs are now much more preferable than before.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#156

Post by swed420 » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

brk wrote: post #9

At this point the barrier for me to install an app is pretty high. If you're going to needlessly gate certain functions behind an app that work on a desktop browser (or could work in-browser), then I just won't use those functions. If by extension that degrades the value I get from your site, then I just won't use the site, and I won't be contributing to ADU stats you promote to advertisers. Every single company has…

Then prepare to pay 150% for that enshitified Big Mac!

Re: “It works better in the app”

#157

Post by altern8 » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

Cabbache wrote: post #147

altern8 wrote: post #140

Ryan Air just introduced the super-annoying requirements of needing the app to download your boarding pass (which of course they could just provide from the website). I think they do it to be able to send you notifications and sell you more flights, but I don't understand why they need to be so anti-user. I try to NOT fly Ryan Air unless there is no other airline available. I'd rather pay twice as much than support t…

That's why I made https://github.com/Cabbache/ryanair-cli

Very nice

Re: “It works better in the app”

#158

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

virtyaluk wrote: post #106

I noticed a long time ago that Google apps are designed by people who never actually use them. Here's one example. I'm a big fan of reading, and it happened that I stack dozens and dozens of books on my GDrive, so naturally I use mobile Google Drive to download and send those books to the reader app on my iDevices. Finished books are renamed to have an exclamation mark at the beginning of the file name - that puts th…

[deleted]

Re: “It works better in the app”

#159

Post by thegrim33 » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

In reality I see the anti-app sentiment as mostly a scheme to get more data into the cloud, more traffic that can be collected and spied on, less power and control for the user, and demonizing local computing and users having control over their data. A scheme to give companies and government more complete control over everything you do. Basically further enshitification of computing infrastructure.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#160

Post by gandreani » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

MarkusWandel wrote: post #74

I don't like paying $1K for a phone. My current one was CAD$140 at Costco three years ago. It has 32GB of built-in storage which is always 90% full regardless how diligent I am at moving stuff to the SD card, and it has 3GB RAM which was fine three years ago, but is now insufficient to run certain apps at all. Without anything else (that you have control over!) running, start the app, immediately killed due to out of…

I have moved out of the U.S. into South America and one of the nice side-effects of this is that apps from local companies are well optimized here. It's not that there's an extreme level of competency or an optimizing culture. It's simpler.

People have cheaper phones here, so devs are naturally more exposed to low end hardware.

It's been awesome for me! I have a fairphone 4 which isn't top of the line at all anymore but the apps work MUCH better here on average than when I was in the US. Websites also load quicker too for similar reasons.