4 ms·

Unpopular opinion here, but I just don't see PWAs living up to the hype. Yes, there are lots of technical advantages, they're catching up to native apps in capa

Unpopular opinion here, but I just don't see PWAs living up to the hype. Yes, there are lots of technical advantages, they're catching up to native apps in capabilities, and there is reduced friction by bypassing app stores. However, the ingrained user behavior of downloading apps from the app store, trust of knowing what you're downloading by doing so (yes, even on Android), and browsability on mobile falling behind searching the app store from a ux standpoint make me think there are still some big barriers to PWAs taking the mobile world by storm. Yes, they'll have their place, but I don't see them living up to the hype often promised by their evangelists.

jaegerpicker 8y ago
I very much agree, we evaluated PWA vs native recently and found PWA(on iOS) to be a really poor decisions. We likely build one for Android as the experience is better there but it's very poor on iOS and unlikely to get better anytime soon(next 1-2 years).
- oblio 8y ago
  At this point, isn't Apple actively delaying PWAs? It seems like it, based on their recent sluggishness in adopting web standards in Safari.
  - yoz-y 8y ago
    Web "standards" for PWA's are pushed out willy-nilly by Google. Just because it is preferable for Google to push towards everything on the web, it does not mean that all browser vendors should create new APIs that were declared "as standard" in their draft version and pushed out into Chrome. Service Workers, for example, are just a working draft and somehow not having the spec implemented is considered as lagging. PWAs are fine for some uses. However I think it would be better for everybody if the vendors were extra cautions when creating and approving these standards as these APIs tend to crystallise and browsers end up supporting a lot of deprecated cruft. I was young when MS was doing the same thing with IE6 but I still remember the pain in the ass making anything remotely compatible was. And back then we were not talking about access to stuff like microphone or background activity.
    - jmull 8y ago
      Right. We continue to use the word "standard", but a significant proportion of these things are, in effect, unilateral proposals from Google. Are they good proposals? How could they be improved? Do they meet the needs of the various interested parties, most especially end-users? Taken together, are they coherent, do they compose and complement each other, do they move toward a robust, comprehensive software framework? Maybe it's happening, but I don't see these questions being asked a lot, much less addressed. Should we all just trust in Google? And expect Apple, MS, and other browser vendors to do so as well, not to mention implement Google's APIs as quickly as they come out? No doubt, there is a lot of good work coming out of Google, but overall, I don't think the present system will be sustainable nor result in a good web.
  - innagadadavida 8y ago
    The nice things about standards are that there are so many to choose from. Looks like Apple is making their own standard just like Google.
- deftturtle 8y ago
  Apple doesn't fully support PWAs. If they embraced it enthusiastically, I think then we'd have a great experience.
pjmlp 8y ago
The service worker concept feels like a kludge to do something that native just gets for free without extra hoops.
zwieback 8y ago
Depends on the user, I might be an outlier but my "ingrained behavior" is to not download an app unless I absolutely have to.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- girvo 8y ago
  Same. We are not normal users. For a native app and PWA for childcare centre management I worked on: the PWA flow just confused parents. I’m really hoping that’ll change in the future
- tjoff 8y ago
  So the solution is to automatically download and execute anything and everything? The 90s called and want ActiveX back.
  - jasonkostempski 8y ago
    As long as I can use a browser with uBlock Origin and API access (location, file system, camera, etc.) remains sane, I would very much prefer a web app. I don't want to: waste time installing; use up limited storage space; allow who knows what kind of access to other stuff on my device (e.g. LinkedIn and Facebook style abuse of native APIs); and have no way to combat ads. Especially for something I'm going to use maybe just once a month or less.
    - zwieback 8y ago
      Add "10 apps need your approval to update" to the list
  - vbezhenar 8y ago
    The world already downloads and executes everything. In browser sandbox, that is. And using native app truly means executing anything, but now within bounds of much weaker mobile sandbox.
- 8y ago
mtgx 8y ago
> there is reduced friction by bypassing app stores It's funny, because Microsoft seems to be actively encouraging/misleading developers to bundle their PWAs as "Microsoft Store apps". Seems like Microsoft is looking at PWAs from the opposite angle - an opportunity to "liberate" users from Android/iOS stores lock users in to its store. Will it work? That depends on all of you developers out there.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  That is certainly their idea, PWAs on Windows Store are able to access UWP APIs.
Brakenshire 8y ago
It will need Apple to introduce in Safari the same kind of prompts that Google has introduced in Chrome, to make saving to the home screen discoverable. At the moment there is no clear distinction on iOS between saving a standard web page to the home screen and saving a PWA, and a non-expert user simply won't make the conceptual leap to thinking of the PWA as an app. All this seems quite carefully calculated by Apple, not to miss the boat on service workers, but also to hamstring PWA's just enough to make them non-competitive. I think the most interesting area is apps which are written with web technologies, and then deployed to different platforms. For example, that could be a React Native codebase which renders to Android's native toolkit, iOS native, and HTML, and through that to a PWA and perhaps a Windows UWP app. There's a lot of flexibility there, to start just on HTML, or just on the native toolkits, and expand organically as appropriate. Under the current circumstances, businesses will certainly want to be on the app stores, but there are a lot of services where just having an app is limiting, for instance I was looking recently at banking services for amalgamating accounts, and every one that I could find available in the UK has a website which is just a marketing page with a link to Google Play and the iOS Appstore. But surely most people also want to be able to look at their bank accounts on their computer, not everyone owns and iPad and a smartphone is a small form factor for that kind of information. A PWA, responsive, installable and offline-capable, is a good way of handling that. I think, PWA will probably end up being a third target, not a replacement for Android or iOS.
Grangar 8y ago
The average user downloads 1.5-3 apps per month[1]. That's not a very high number to build a native app for if you ask me. [1] https://www.tune.com/blog/no-the-average-american-does-not-download-0-apps-each-month/ https://www.tune.com/blog/no-the-average-american-does-not-d...
jmull 8y ago
I'm assuming (or at least hoping) this isn't an unpopular opinion so much as a usually silent one. The actual tech behind the PWA hype is nice/neat, but hardly puts them on par with mobile apps. It's the old "necessary but not sufficient" distinction, which people find so easy to ignore. If you really support the vision of PWAs, you should be busily tamping down the hype, because promising a lot more than can be delivered will likely kill PWAs before the vision can be realized. Notice the article linked to this post is a hype piece by someone offering PWA consulting services. It's not hard to see why he's sold.
epmaybe 8y ago
> trust of knowing what you're downloading by doing so Are you saying that some websites may not offer as much trust as an app-store approved app? Maybe when discovering new web-apps, I agree, but for standard websites that you know the url for, maybe not so much? I can't imagine someone not trusting "pandora.com", for example.

jaegerpicker 8y ago

I very much agree, we evaluated PWA vs native recently and found PWA(on iOS) to be a really poor decisions. We likely build one for Android as the experience is better there but it's very poor on iOS and unlikely to get better anytime soon(next 1-2 years).

oblio 8y ago
At this point, isn't Apple actively delaying PWAs? It seems like it, based on their recent sluggishness in adopting web standards in Safari.
- yoz-y 8y ago
  Web "standards" for PWA's are pushed out willy-nilly by Google. Just because it is preferable for Google to push towards everything on the web, it does not mean that all browser vendors should create new APIs that were declared "as standard" in their draft version and pushed out into Chrome. Service Workers, for example, are just a working draft and somehow not having the spec implemented is considered as lagging. PWAs are fine for some uses. However I think it would be better for everybody if the vendors were extra cautions when creating and approving these standards as these APIs tend to crystallise and browsers end up supporting a lot of deprecated cruft. I was young when MS was doing the same thing with IE6 but I still remember the pain in the ass making anything remotely compatible was. And back then we were not talking about access to stuff like microphone or background activity.
  - jmull 8y ago
    Right. We continue to use the word "standard", but a significant proportion of these things are, in effect, unilateral proposals from Google. Are they good proposals? How could they be improved? Do they meet the needs of the various interested parties, most especially end-users? Taken together, are they coherent, do they compose and complement each other, do they move toward a robust, comprehensive software framework? Maybe it's happening, but I don't see these questions being asked a lot, much less addressed. Should we all just trust in Google? And expect Apple, MS, and other browser vendors to do so as well, not to mention implement Google's APIs as quickly as they come out? No doubt, there is a lot of good work coming out of Google, but overall, I don't think the present system will be sustainable nor result in a good web.
- innagadadavida 8y ago
  The nice things about standards are that there are so many to choose from. Looks like Apple is making their own standard just like Google.
deftturtle 8y ago
Apple doesn't fully support PWAs. If they embraced it enthusiastically, I think then we'd have a great experience.

pjmlp 8y ago

The service worker concept feels like a kludge to do something that native just gets for free without extra hoops.

zwieback 8y ago

Depends on the user, I might be an outlier but my "ingrained behavior" is to not download an app unless I absolutely have to.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
girvo 8y ago
Same. We are not normal users. For a native app and PWA for childcare centre management I worked on: the PWA flow just confused parents. I’m really hoping that’ll change in the future
tjoff 8y ago
So the solution is to automatically download and execute anything and everything? The 90s called and want ActiveX back.
- jasonkostempski 8y ago
  As long as I can use a browser with uBlock Origin and API access (location, file system, camera, etc.) remains sane, I would very much prefer a web app. I don't want to: waste time installing; use up limited storage space; allow who knows what kind of access to other stuff on my device (e.g. LinkedIn and Facebook style abuse of native APIs); and have no way to combat ads. Especially for something I'm going to use maybe just once a month or less.
  - zwieback 8y ago
    Add "10 apps need your approval to update" to the list
- vbezhenar 8y ago
  The world already downloads and executes everything. In browser sandbox, that is. And using native app truly means executing anything, but now within bounds of much weaker mobile sandbox.
8y ago

mtgx 8y ago

> there is reduced friction by bypassing app stores It's funny, because Microsoft seems to be actively encouraging/misleading developers to bundle their PWAs as "Microsoft Store apps". Seems like Microsoft is looking at PWAs from the opposite angle - an opportunity to "liberate" users from Android/iOS stores lock users in to its store. Will it work? That depends on all of you developers out there.

pjmlp 8y ago
That is certainly their idea, PWAs on Windows Store are able to access UWP APIs.

Brakenshire 8y ago

It will need Apple to introduce in Safari the same kind of prompts that Google has introduced in Chrome, to make saving to the home screen discoverable. At the moment there is no clear distinction on iOS between saving a standard web page to the home screen and saving a PWA, and a non-expert user simply won't make the conceptual leap to thinking of the PWA as an app. All this seems quite carefully calculated by Apple, not to miss the boat on service workers, but also to hamstring PWA's just enough to make them non-competitive. I think the most interesting area is apps which are written with web technologies, and then deployed to different platforms. For example, that could be a React Native codebase which renders to Android's native toolkit, iOS native, and HTML, and through that to a PWA and perhaps a Windows UWP app. There's a lot of flexibility there, to start just on HTML, or just on the native toolkits, and expand organically as appropriate. Under the current circumstances, businesses will certainly want to be on the app stores, but there are a lot of services where just having an app is limiting, for instance I was looking recently at banking services for amalgamating accounts, and every one that I could find available in the UK has a website which is just a marketing page with a link to Google Play and the iOS Appstore. But surely most people also want to be able to look at their bank accounts on their computer, not everyone owns and iPad and a smartphone is a small form factor for that kind of information. A PWA, responsive, installable and offline-capable, is a good way of handling that. I think, PWA will probably end up being a third target, not a replacement for Android or iOS.

Grangar 8y ago

The average user downloads 1.5-3 apps per month[1]. That's not a very high number to build a native app for if you ask me. [1] https://www.tune.com/blog/no-the-average-american-does-not-download-0-apps-each-month/ https://www.tune.com/blog/no-the-average-american-does-not-d...

jmull 8y ago

I'm assuming (or at least hoping) this isn't an unpopular opinion so much as a usually silent one. The actual tech behind the PWA hype is nice/neat, but hardly puts them on par with mobile apps. It's the old "necessary but not sufficient" distinction, which people find so easy to ignore. If you really support the vision of PWAs, you should be busily tamping down the hype, because promising a lot more than can be delivered will likely kill PWAs before the vision can be realized. Notice the article linked to this post is a hype piece by someone offering PWA consulting services. It's not hard to see why he's sold.

epmaybe 8y ago

> trust of knowing what you're downloading by doing so Are you saying that some websites may not offer as much trust as an app-store approved app? Maybe when discovering new web-apps, I agree, but for standard websites that you know the url for, maybe not so much? I can't imagine someone not trusting "pandora.com", for example.