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 platform, so to say that’s a negative for native apps is odd.
The biggest downside of native apps is you can’t customize them with extensions or user styles like you can with websites.
Apps break often. They need a lot of support. Everything must be constantly updated. You never know when Samsung or Apple will push an update that breaks things because of some esoteric policy shift or setting change.
But the web? If you do it right, maintenence is much easier. If things do break: users can try different browsers or devices to get around instead of being bricked.
I can't be the only one who _never _ updates software on my phone until I absolutely have to. Everything is so brittle. I'm sick of being gaslit that apps make that better. Despite it's own horrible implementations, the web is far more stable.
The main reason is just a single company - Apple. They have been hell bent on nerfing Safari so that they can continue their rent seeking behavior on App Store.
If Spotify has a functional mobile website, they cant take 30% cut from their app. The way Apple does is 2 fold. 1) deliberating not investing $$ into Safari 2) claiming that you'll get malware from internet.
Both are hypocritical.
right there with you brother
It's too bad because it's not like the web is incapable of providing a beautiful ux for those products. But then so why do you think these companies employ massive teams of devs, for Android, and then again for iOS, reimplementing their functionality on every platform? All that to provide you with that sweet extra smooth native "feel", 2% nicer than the web could do? No, it's not for you...
"The native app experience for every app noted in the article" doesn't make any sense, the article lists none.
"Lots of people hate Electron apps, which suggests to me that my preference for native apps isn’t unique."
again......what does this have to do with the article at all? Aren't you merely reinforcing the articles point?
" Just reject it, there’s nothing that says you have to accept on either platform, so to say that’s a negative for native apps is odd."
Except that most app's would stop working if anyone confined them to the minimum amount of data required, case in point any scooter app that won't let you rent unless you have google location services turned on vs just regular GPS.
OPs point is that app are a walled garden of functionality that lock users in because of expedience for living life.
This is key. Companies pushing apps is not for your benefit. It's so they can further monetize you right under your nose and with your full permission by accepting their EULA. This is just a furtherance of the if you don't pay for the product you are the product.
I want native programs on my PC, and fewer apps on my phone.
I get all my apps from F-Droid. If I need to use Steam chat or view the menu at Taco Bell, mobile website it is. I am not gonna put their proprietary software on my phone. This also brings up another interesting difference. There is no desktop program for Taco Bell, that would be super weird. I think other comments already addressed that, but a lot of mobile apps are basically just the website.
A game like Luanti or some sort of Tetris is something I'd want native in both places (desktop and mobile). Games in browsers are a mess.
Eh, I'll argue this isn't as true as you think. Browsers are constantly updated these days and have their own fun things that break or mess with experiences.
But that's not the biggest issue with browsers, at least on the PC, it's that the average user seems completely incapable of keeping mal/adware off their device. For those users the app world is an escape from the hell they were in.
For me as a power user apps suck. But they became popular quickly for a reason.
Tabs are a big win for mobile web, I agree. I just don't think it outweighs the annoyance of navigating the app in more traditional ways.
More simply, I don't need an app for every website I visit. a bookmark is much more lightweight than downloading yet another app to clutter my drawer.
This is indeed a short term strategy, but tech companies right now are thinking very short term.
That link was posted two days ago, but it's not unusual news. Phone apps are not an escape from mal/adware.
Web app projects on the other hand always feel some degree of held together by bubblegum and duct tape. Do so much as breathe wrong and they fall apart (which is part of why the industry has become docker-centric). None of the old web projects I have laying around are trivial to get into good enough shape to develop on again, whereas I can pick up and old iOS app that hasn’t been touched in a decade and getting it running in an afternoon.
I will say however that there’s a class of poorly built cross platform mobile app that I’ve come to abhor, because as you say they’re brittle and break easily on top of generally being unpleasant to use.
App processes are sorted in order of most recent use, keeping the most relevant ones at hand, and those that aren’t used for a while just silently go away without much fuss.
In comparison browser tabs aren’t organized unless the user does that themselves, and so with each web app tab management overhead increases. Some browsers have an idle tab auto-close feature, but that closes the wrong tab (usually a page with info pertinent to something I’m working on) quite often. “Installing” PWAs can be an ok-ish workaround, but the problem there is that a lot of sites don’t have the little bit of manifest magic that makes saving to home screen “install” a PWA instead of just opening a browser tab.
I've found it to be the opposite. Perhaps if you're heavily involved on Reddit, LinkedIn, etc., then it's more convenient. But I only go to those sites via a search link. Why would I want to spend time and effort installing the app, just to see the same content I just landed on?
It's a huge red flag when websites push their app so intrusively. It means the app has little value and will be just as bad or worse when you use it.
At the risk of nitpicking, the second paragraph mentions Reddit, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
And Spotify hasn’t had in app purchasing of subscriptions on iOS for over a decade. Apple has never once said you would get malware by using Safari.
Basically, you rely on goodwill from yester-year and slowly ad in intrusive stuff that users adjust to. Thars enshittification in its raw essence. Admittedly, this mostly works because the general user is not "active" and will not take the time to migrate unless something absolutely scandalous happens. For them, it's easier putting up with ads than trying to log into an ad free substitute.
Who do you think is stopping from that happening?
No one would advertise with Facebook if there was no value from purchasing ad space. The billions of dollars people spend is evidence there is value there for advertisers.
>will not take the time to migrate
Sure, people don't actively seek to maximize the value they receive, but that doesn't mean what they are currently getting value from doesn't have value.
Apple makes no money from the Spotify app being on the iPhone and hadn’t for over a decade.
You described the majority of those as being about the perception of value rather than value.
>No one would advertise with Facebook if there was no value from purchasing ad space. The billions of dollars people spend is evidence there is value there for advertisers
No one is disputing that the advertisers are getting value. The pursuit of advertiser value at the expense of users is the complaint.
It's also worth noting that I have nothing against apps. I use them to read RSS feeds, download podcasts, etc.. Yet those are independent of any particular service and there is enough choice between apps that I can use one that respects my privacy. I am not being limited in any way. If anything, it is more empowering since the developers of a dedicated RSS feed reader is more likely to design an app that is directed towards the needs of its users. In contrast, the Reddit app is directed towards the needs of Reddit.
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.
It's not a defensive argument about "but he did it too"!
That's not how you get to a better solution to the problem at hand.
On iOS there is no effective way to install sideloaded apps, therefore this rent seeking behavior is even more hostile to the user.
Music was played by the iTunes process on mobile until 2016, and only a single audio stream at a time. How dare you wanted a fade in/out with less than 3 seconds latency!
And even then Apple was reluctant to implement a correct Promise based Audio API in WebKit, which in turn was incompatible with all other Web Browsers (up until today, btw) and also had very different audio formats supported that were only compatible with iOS due to proprietary patents.
Saying WebKit played music in 2007 is literally a worse experience than a Flash web player doing that.
On the other hand, for mobile apps, there is still a device-specific mentality.
Imagine web apps being built with a different flavor for all the major browsers...
I hope that the same level of standardization comes to mobile apps too with the option to use more device-specific features on top of the generic UI.
network effects is the momentum that keeps everyone from stopping the use of the service/product. it takes too much energy to stop, so people just keep using. it also helps there's nothing to replace. any fledgling service that might offer an alternative just gets bought up by the service.
Which is why they weren't useful to bring up.
When you target a higher level abstraction, be it web, or flutter or whatever, you are explicitly choosing not to follow the platform native UX.
It’s more convenient to developers not to have to worry about that.
That’s it.
Web is easy. It’s free.
That doesn’t mean it’s better, or that it’s even possible for it to be as good as a native experience.
You can make a web app that is good; but it is the unavoidable and undeniable reality that web applications have a glass ceiling.
It is. Not. Possible. to write a web app that is as good as the equivalent native application can be. Certainly not a cross browser one.
There are reasons, you can blame Apple and safari or whatever you want, but that’s where it’s at, today.
> The reason I believe the web experience is inferior is because companies put more resources into apps at the expense of the web.
It’s not a falsifiable argument.
“That is not as good because I believe less effort was put into it”.
Ok.
I believe that for the equivalent effort you could create a better web app than a native app. I think you could measure that, and it would be pretty clear.
However, I believe many large native applications could not be implemented using the web platform. I think react native and the disaster that is is a reasonably solid proof that this is true.
They’re worse because web is worse, not because they didn’t bother to put effort in; because it wasn’t possible to do it using the web platform.
Native is always better if you out the effort in. It has capabilities that web doesn’t.
It is impossible for it not to be better.
I can say with certainty Apple has been hostile to PWAs.
Unlike Google Play and Microsoft Store, iOS App Store doesn't allow publishing PWAs. (You instead have to build a native web view app to load your PWA.) And many of the PWA features just don't work on mobile Safari.
The question was why did Spotify have to use an app instead of using the web.
But then again, are you really saying that Android users don’t use the app?
The scope of the problem is much larger. If there is no "let's not use the app" movement and if there was it wouldn't be big enough to pick up on the radar.
We have bigger things to worry about as the shit is oozing out of everything.
Is this necessary for most commercial projects? Of course not. But many of the programs I consider the nicest to work with today are that way precisely because someone fought back against the call of the network.
But … I don’t?
I download and install Spotify.app on my computer (at least my gf does on hers, I use Apple Music). Maybe I am the weird one? No I am not, I skimmed the Spotify subreddit and most use the app on PC/Mac: It has keyboard shortcuts, people find it nicer being its own program instead some browser tab, it is more lightweight, it provides offline play and crossfading and has (freemium and paid) higher bitrate than web. It is you who are missing out.
for another, devs are definitely making the web experience subpar which has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread. most websites are just adverts for their apps if they function at all any more. loading a website on mobile is even worse than desktop as they pester you with "it's better in the app" pop ups.
people find browsing an app store much easier than browsing the web. in fact, do people browse the web at all any more. search is shit now, so discovery by search is not what it used to be. click through from search is also plummeting as "search assistant" type responses means no reason to click through to sites.
how many more reasons do you need?
I prefer the Apple Weather app on desktop and mobile to weather websites, though; and, I prefer the Google Map mobile app to mobile website.
One. Because I don't believe one exists. The reasons you gave of it looking nice and accomplishing something the user wants to do provide value to the user.
A more interesting thought experiment is where that threshold is before the lack of value invigorates the energy needed to migrate. That's part of why I put the boiling frog metaphor there. Rate of change definitely has impact on perceived value.
>We have bigger things to worry about as the shit is oozing out of everything.
Yes, but "Tech bad/greedy" is about as far as we can push on HN before it becomes "too political" and and people/bots try to hide the story. At least I have other sources to discuss those matters.
I haven't put any effort in writing long well-researched comments since that time. I wouldn't dare put more than 2 references in a comment here. 4 would be pushing it.
As if nothing interesting was written before about anything?