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Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

danq.me

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Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#521

Post by high_priest »

herval wrote: post #516
jonahx wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We take tech literacy for granted, because it's like a dozen levels down fundamental to our entire field. But the tech illiterati exist, and they love apps. They "love apps" because apple and android have spent billions to break their mental models and convince them that "you use apps to do things on your phone". Literally. That's the extent of most people's understanding. So, sure, they "want" apps in the same sen…

webapps are inefficient, clunky, slow substitutes to actual native apps. I think decades of marketing and billions spent by Google trying to convince people that webapps are better is what makes many tech people think they are. Literally. People "want" webapps to be what users "wanted" bc it pays their salary...

They both have their uses. At the extreme, try to imagine Pubg as a web app. There are good modern games that work purely in a browser. But still, there are "applications" that function better as full fledge clients seeping small amounts of data and there are "applications" that function just aswell as dynamically loaded full server-side solutions.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#522

Post by herval »

high_priest wrote: post #521
herval wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

webapps are inefficient, clunky, slow substitutes to actual native apps. I think decades of marketing and billions spent by Google trying to convince people that webapps are better is what makes many tech people think they are. Literally. People "want" webapps to be what users "wanted" bc it pays their salary...

They both have their uses. At the extreme, try to imagine Pubg as a web app. There are good modern games that work purely in a browser. But still, there are "applications" that function better as full fledge clients seeping small amounts of data and there are "applications" that function just aswell as dynamically loaded full server-side solutions.

I know, I agree both have their uses :-) I was just jesting about the kind of extreme OP went for.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#523

Post by dminik »

Akronymus wrote: post #518
dminik wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of get this, but quite a lot of the websites/webapps I use are better off on the web. Imagine that from tomorrow, hackernews is an app. You can't do stuff like open 10 different tabs of it, put it in a tab group, expect it to restore where you left off after shutting down your device. It's interaction with other pages is also wrong. It would have to either open a webview or a separate browser app, both of whic…

> This is why I don't like Reddit pushing an app and breaking/limiting the mobile website. It's just not how I want to use it at all. As with many reddit problems, old.reddit.com is a pretty universal fix.

I do use old reddit on my PC, but unless I'm programming or gaming, most of my browsing is done on mobile.

There are extensions to make old reddit mobile friendly, but by default it is a terrible experience. Another example for "you can't use extensions on apps".

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#524

Post by a_imho »

Zak wrote: post #278

I once read that app users are seven times more profitable than web users. That easily answers the author's question about why a company would bother make an app when a web page is the natural fit for the use case. I don't remember the source or methodology for that number, but I have no trouble believing it. An app gives the developer a foothold on the user's device. It can more easily send notifications, track the…

I have seen this or similar metrics cited as a reason for forcing customers into apps, but imo it is misguided in a measure-becomes-the target way.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#525

Post by Akronymus »

dminik wrote: post #523
Akronymus wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why I don't like Reddit pushing an app and breaking/limiting the mobile website. It's just not how I want to use it at all. As with many reddit problems, old.reddit.com is a pretty universal fix.

I do use old reddit on my PC, but unless I'm programming or gaming, most of my browsing is done on mobile. There are extensions to make old reddit mobile friendly, but by default it is a terrible experience. Another example for "you can't use extensions on apps".

I personally find old reddit on mobile more usable than both new and the app version.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#526

Post by alt227 »

palata wrote: post #509
alt227 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original reason apps were popular was because they provided access to device apis such as accelerometer and gps which websites didnt. Think the beer drinking app etc. Since web apis have caught up and allowed the same functionality, the common perception hasnt shifted back as App Stores have perpetually tried to keep attention so that they keep getting their cut of sales. If everyone knew you could do everything…

> Most 'native' apps are just electron wrappers Desktop apps tend to be ElectronJS, because somehow Desktop failed. But because ElectronJS sucks doesn't mean that it's impossible to have good desktop apps. I have high hopes that Kotlin multiplatform and Compose multiplatform will make desktop apps cool again. Then mobile apps are a completely different story: a good mobile app is a lot better than a webapp. At one en…

Everything you have said here is pretty much incorrect. Are you a coder and do you know how native and webapps work? If not I would do some research rather than assuming, because things you are saying about how webapps work are just not true.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#527

Post by pjmlp »

JimDabell wrote: post #515
pjmlp wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML 5 canvas exists because of the iPhone, originally it was going to use Web apps.

Apple created , but it wasn’t for the iPhone, it was for Mac OS X dashboard widgets. This was a few years before the iPhone existed.

While I stand corrected, it was nonetheless pushed by Apple.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#528

Post by curt15 »

memsom wrote: post #504
adamwk wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t really make sense. Apps were pretty popular immediately after decades of web usage. There are many reasons to prefer an app. Even on desktop; if I’m using a service enough throughout the day, I want a native app, not a website.

I want native apps because I don't want to rely on the internet existing and I don't think hosting an offline web page in a captured browser is "good enough"

A lot of "native" apps rely on the Internet for essential functionality. Your Starbucks app would be deadweight if it couldn't pull your account info and store catalogs from starbucks.com.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#529

Post by zenith605 »

This resonates with me. I recently built a community site (user submissions, votes, comments, Google login) as a plain static page on free hosting, with a hosted Postgres behind it. No app, no server of my own. People assume you need an app or at least a backend for anything interactive, but the modern web platform covers far more than most product teams give it credit for. The whole thing costs me $11/year for the domain.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#530

Post by tcfhgj »

stackghost wrote: post #472
tcfhgj wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One important which is not included: web apps are resource hogs

Electron and React apps, perhaps. It's completely feasible to build a webapp that is lightweight. I have done it several times.

put the same optimization effort into a native app
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