This is one of the best advantages android has over iOS - you don't have all those goddamn app nag screens all over the internet.
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I don't want to download your app
51–60 of 225 posts
Re: I don't want to download your app
#52On Android, my personal pet peeve are apps that don't bother to handle their own links. Fine. You've made a special mobile app for your site and "convinced" (i.e. nagged) me to download it. If your app is so gosh-darn wonderful, why the fsck can't I use it whenever I'm using your site? Third-party app Twitter apps can figure this out. Why not you? Hint: The answer probably is that your app isn't nearly as wonderful as you think it is.
Re: I don't want to download your app
#53Worst part is, most of these apps are essentially browsers. There is no additional content or interesting extra functionality being offered... just same old content, only formatted differently. So, this concept of installing a new browser every time I visit an unfamiliar site, really is ridiculous. This is almost as bad as "here's a mobile version of our site, opened automatically for your convenience". If your site…
They want to have push/local notifications. It's like getting ahold of an email, but moreso. I've turned off Javascript to avoid them asking, now I constantly get "turn on your javascript" black overlays from Wordpress sites. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
They also get unique identifiers for users. Yes the GUID is banned, but developers just use the devices MAC address instead.
Re: I don't want to download your app
#54The Delta iPhone app saved my ass and let me check in right before the cut-off for flight I needed to make, while I was stuck in traffic in a cab outside the airport. However, downloading the app was preceded by ten minutes of trying desperately to check in using the Delta web site on my iPhone. I was stymied by a combination of strangely sized fonts (which forced me to zoom way in on a huge page in order to locate and click on tiny menu titles at the bottom of the page), mysteriously placed menu pop-ups (as in I clicked a button to open a menu, and then had to pan around the page trying to find where the menu had appeared), and other problems that I never figured out.
I downloaded the app out of sheer desperation to check in on time for my flight. In any other circumstance, I would have given up, gone to a competitor, and filed the company and brand name in my brain under "fuck you." (Actually, I did that last part anyway.)
Nagging me to download an app is bad enough. If you took the time to build an iOS or Android app but didn't put any effort into mobile usability for your web site, then you presumed you could make me install your app. You presumed too much.
Re: I don't want to download your app
#55I recently put all my apps into the cloud. I now access them through a single app I call a "browser."
Re: I don't want to download your app
#56This is one of the best advantages android has over iOS - you don't have all those goddamn app nag screens all over the internet.
That's not my experience at all. I get that "Install our app" popup on Android when loading many forum/discussion-type sites. And it's really goddamn annoying.
I usually just switch my user agent on my Android Phone to be a desktop one permanently. Though, that requires a browser that can do it from the Android Market or using a ROM with it like Cyanogen (or modding the AOSP browser and recompiling it with the feature). Many cases, you can just pull the browser from Cyanogen and stick it in /system/app if rooted (though I think the feature was only added with ICS).
I can't stand that popup either though and have a severe dislike for tapatalk. From my experience with administering a forum, they charge quite a bit for their software and then charge quite a bit more on top for small bug fixes they won't fix otherwise :(
One example is tapatalk users not being aware you're part of the forum staff when you're attempting to calm down some users and they go off on you. Though that works two ways I suppose, since they can't see you're part of the staff and go off on you as well and gives you an excuse to give them a couple day vacation :)
Re: I don't want to download your app
#57What about the whole Objective-C > HTML5 thing though?
Re: I don't want to download your app
#58On Android, my personal pet peeve are apps that don't bother to handle their own links. Fine. You've made a special mobile app for your site and "convinced" (i.e. nagged) me to download it. If your app is so gosh-darn wonderful, why the fsck can't I use it whenever I'm using your site? Third-party app Twitter apps can figure this out. Why not you? Hint: The answer probably is that your app isn't nearly as wonderful a…
Bhe, Github handles all the github.com links. Yet, when it's not something supported by their app (like 95% of the links I stumble upon), they simply redirect the handling to a browser.
The result is:
- Click github link.
- Prompt menu : which application do you wish to use? List of browsers and the github app.
- Click on github.
- Github loads, then...
- Prompt menu : which application do you wish to use? List of browsers.
I could use the 'Always' option, but then the github app wouldn't recognize the links it actually handles.
Re: I don't want to download your app
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
The long term push is towards html5 mobile apps period. The only problem is performance (which is improving), immature javascript programming libraries/communities and poor adoption of HTML5 mobile features by the OSes (such as being able to use datepickers and other essential APIs for building apps). That's why native apps are still important. Once the above is figured out, I highly doubt companies will want to pay…
> That's why native apps are still important. Once the above is figured out, I highly doubt companies will want to pay to develop on 2-3 different codebases in different programming languages than their website, to support native apps. But that's the thing: we're talking about forums and news sites here. Mobile browsers are perfectly capable of rendering news, blogs and forums as fast as you'd ever need. Companies ar…
A better explanation is that apps are simply the fashion right now. Everybody and their brother doesn't need a web page any more than they need an app.
Re: I don't want to download your app
#60The idea of using an iPhone app to browse a particular website reminds me of AOL keywords like "www.cbs.com". Every time I see an "Ask HN: what app do you use for HN?" I wonder why people don't just use the browser. What is the allure?
Hacker News is usable on mobile Safari, but it's not as good as it could be. Try using Alien Blue to browse reddit on an iPhone (and especially an iPad). It is a superior experience to using the plain web site (even m.reddit.com). I very much wish there was an equivalent for Hacker News.
Hacker Node works pretty well, but doesn't support voting, commenting or submitting.