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Do not download the app, use the website

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Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#261

Post by dumbfounder »

Let’s look at a few use cases:

Bank app: they use apps for increased security.

Map apps: of course they need your location. And wow it works way better than web based.

TikTok: in yeah they need access to audio to record audio. And wow the UI is smoother.

Games: don’t ask for anything. Except more money through in app payments.

Weather, uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart: needs location.

Streaming apps: actually sometimes need location to prevent you from streaming outside the jurisdiction. And it’s a better experience.

Lots of other apps: don’t ask for anything.

Does anyone let an app have access to their contacts? (Ok maybe just us nerds don’t)

So, no. It’s not usually about data. Sure, some of it is. But this is the wrong thread to pull on. It isn’t why they all force us to use apps.

The reason is that Apple has hampered the web experience to push everyone to apps. All of these problems are solvable with a web browsers, if it worked better. We have the technology. But Apple does not have an incentive to make the web work as well as apps. It destroys their revenue streams. They lose control. The problem is Apple, not all these apps that are trying to find their way in the walled Apple garden.

Of course this isn’t true for everything. But it is true enough. Why would they kill the golden goose?

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#262

Post by mh- »

socalgal2 wrote: post #251
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500MB average seems like a gross exaggeration. I agree apps are oversize but I have maybe 2 native apps on mobile that are so large.

Average, yes, probably an exaggeration. Some apps iOS: wechat: 740meg gmail: 672 google chat: 585 uber: 582 tiktok: 572 headspace: 498 instagram: 467 doulingo: 462 bank of america: 456 capital one: 435 expedia: 412 linkedin: 402 doordash: 392 google: 379 facebook: 365 unitied airlines:355 chase: 352 google photos: 348 line: 346 amex: 339 google maps: 336 youtube: 329 booking.com: 320 citi: 319 amazon music: 317 snapc…

I thought these couldn't possibly be right and you must be including their storage and cache usage, but I'm seeing similar reported on my iPhone. Rounded to the nearest megabyte.

   Gmail: 612mb
   Facebook: 359mb
   YouTube: 303mb
   Amex: 365mb
I'm still skeptical (or just hopeful?) that there's some storage accounting bug here, and it's including caches. I'm not in a place to plug it into Xcode right now, maybe someone else can check the actual IPAs?

edit: also, I do see Apple's own apps in mine. Music reports 39mb; Photos 791kB (lol?)

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#263

Post by radicality »

hackingonempty wrote: post #149
i80and wrote: post #4

I 100% agree with this, but a significant way that mobile websites often decay the experience compared to the app is with very short-lived login sessions. Even when the experience is otherwise basically identical, I've found that login sessions in a browser are sometimes measured in days, where in the app sessions never expire. Which feels like app install metric juicing to me.

Do you have an iPhone? Safari for iOS deletes all cookies older than a week unless you add the site to your home screen.

Whoa, is that right, I somehow never knew this. Why does it do that, does it still make sense if 3rd party cookies are disabled? And is there a way to disable it apart from the add to home screen?

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#264

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

montroser wrote: post #44
markbao wrote: post #7

Don’t agree, but to each their own. The native app experience for every app noted in the article is better and smoother than the mobile web version, in my opinion. Lots of people hate Electron apps, which suggests to me that my preference for native apps isn’t unique. Web apps can ask for your location or microphone the same way native apps can. Just reject it, there’s nothing that says you have to accept on either p…

The author is not contesting that the app experience is better. Yeah, the web experience is worse -- because the product people are treating the entire web presence as a _marketing surface_ for the app. So, the web version is basically an ad for the app. This is true of Reddit, Yelp, and others. How could it not be worse? It's too bad because it's not like the web is incapable of providing a beautiful ux for those pr…

> It's too bad because it's not like the web is incapable of providing a beautiful ux for those products.

I’ve never seen a web app I was happy with being a web app. I understand that a lot of people prefer web-based tools but a lot of us cannot stand them and try to get our work out of the browser as much as possible because we dislike the UX of the browser platform.

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#265

Post by card_zero »

jombib wrote: post #257
card_zero wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too switched from Reddit to HN during the API protests of '23. But I always browsed through old.reddit anyway, I never used the third party apps. I'm aware of names like RIF and that everyone said they were great, but what was great about them?

Better features, less ads, smoother experience and in the case of Apollo—the one I used—it just looked much better.

So apart from the ad blocker, that's ... features, smoother, better. What?

Edit: I'm not trying to be rude (it comes naturally). But you just explained "great" as "better, with more". I guess smooth might mean faster, which might be because it isn't doing ads and tracking. It seems to come back to third-party being the crucial difference, and "app" not mattering.

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#266

Post by nightsd01 »

Thanks to the EU for ruining the web by forcing everyone to show the ridiculous "Accept Cookies!" agreement. No wonder people prefer native apps. They’re better - for a lot of reasons, both because they can interface more cleanly with OS specific features and also for performance.

And 'privacy' is a horrible argument to prefer websites over apps. For the average person (not a privacy obsessed techie) - the web is just as bad if not worse from a privacy perspective than native apps.

I do agree that not everything needs an app - websites have their place. But when I go to browse HN on my phone, I don't do it through the web, I do it through Octal (which is open source).

Frankly I am tired of privacy-obsessed techies ruining tech for everyone else. Let's face it - 99% of the things you're worried about are simply going to let companies....show you ads that are more relevant to your life. The horror!

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#267

Post by sergiotapia »

dumbfounder wrote: post #261

Let’s look at a few use cases: Bank app: they use apps for increased security. Map apps: of course they need your location. And wow it works way better than web based. TikTok: in yeah they need access to audio to record audio. And wow the UI is smoother. Games: don’t ask for anything. Except more money through in app payments. Weather, uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart: needs location. Streaming apps: actually sometime…

All of those shortcomings were deliberately orchestrated by Google and Apple to keep taxing developers.

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#270

Post by Mehuleo »

I think for companies, the main advantage of an app is the opportunity for uncontrolled data ab/use.

Let me explain. Say you order food online — you’d want a notification to update you, instead of having to manually refresh a webpage. So you prefer using the app. But what’s the guarantee the company won’t also send you marketing notifications? You give contact permission to access just one contact, but what’s stopping the app from uploading your whole contact list to their servers? You allow location for one check-in, but they start logging your GPS every minute? Every permission asked & given for right purpose end up as consent-full data siphons.

And honestly, if the app world hadn’t taken off, the web would have invented its own version of permission systems. So yeah, I dis/agree with the article’s title — web can do everything apps can; including the shady data siphoning.

Some people might argue that they need excessive data to serve right ads, make money and keep the app free — the only way. But I don't think so, even if you pay for the app, they will need excessive data to ensure you keep renewing.

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