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I like web apps so much better than native apps. I like seeing the https in the address bar and I feel like I don't even trust that communications are encrypte

by nissimk 11y ago

I like web apps so much better than native apps. I like seeing the https in the address bar and I feel like I don't even trust that communications are encrypted in a native mobile app. Developers are always trying to migrate me into the app rather than the mobile site and it drives me crazy. I don't want to leave the web browser. I love my back button and my tabs. Why do the following applications benefit from native apps? Reviews (Yelp, TripAdvisor) Ticket purchasing (Seatgeek, ticketMaster, etc.) Very few of the answers have anything to do with the users. They all revolve around app store exposure and annoying features like notification spam. But on the topic of this article, I think the author is too critical of apple as they seem to be moving in the direction of being more favorable towards mobile web app developers. Features like WKWebView show this. I'm sure in the end this is just a trend and mobile web apps will swing back into favor at some point. Remember, in the early days of iOS native app development was not allowed, and that was one of the first features integrated to iOS frm the jailbreak community. Jobs' original app vision was mobile web apps.

Cookingboy 11y ago
Saying Apple is more favorable towards mobile web development is quite a bit of a stretch. WKWebView simply gave developer access to the webview underneath Safari, and replaces the outdated UIWebView. Apple recently introduced Swift, an entire language framework that's aimed at native app development. User experiences is the where the biggest gap between web apps and natives are (average users don't care about seeing that https at the top). Web apps also cannot adopt the latest hardware features as quickly as native frameworks can (TouchID, 3D Touch, etc). So for a platform like iOS (and Android to a large extent) where it's all about vertical integration and optimization, we'll see cutting edge native apps for a long time. I'm not saying mobile web doesn't have its place, and there are plenty of terrible apps out there that should just be a mobile website instead, but native apps do have certain advantages that won't be matched anytime soon.

by nissimk 11y ago

Cookingboy 11y ago

Saying Apple is more favorable towards mobile web development is quite a bit of a stretch. WKWebView simply gave developer access to the webview underneath Safari, and replaces the outdated UIWebView. Apple recently introduced Swift, an entire language framework that's aimed at native app development. User experiences is the where the biggest gap between web apps and natives are (average users don't care about seeing that https at the top). Web apps also cannot adopt the latest hardware features as quickly as native frameworks can (TouchID, 3D Touch, etc). So for a platform like iOS (and Android to a large extent) where it's all about vertical integration and optimization, we'll see cutting edge native apps for a long time. I'm not saying mobile web doesn't have its place, and there are plenty of terrible apps out there that should just be a mobile website instead, but native apps do have certain advantages that won't be matched anytime soon.