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>No PWA competes with a native experience. Not performance wise, not usability wise, and ultimately for the developer not even development wise. How much of a

>No PWA competes with a native experience. Not performance wise, not usability wise, and ultimately for the developer not even development wise. How much of a usability advantage does an app for, say, IMDB offer that the regular website doesn't? Or the loyalty card apps that a lot of grocery stores and coffee shops use now? A lot of apps on the market are functionally just wrappers put around a poorly optimized website. They'd be better off putting their efforts towards making a great experience on the mobile web instead of trend-chasing. In the iOS environment Apple could actually help here through a simple awareness campaign. You can save website bookmarks as icons on your home screen as it is, but this functionality is little known and not easily discoverable.

datavirtue 8y ago
Website = deliver infornation App = application Apps suck at delivering information, I'm looking at you WSJ. I cancelled my sub their app was so bad. Websites suck at apping.
oftenwrong 8y ago
Companies saddle their mobile web experience with excessive animations, gobs of dynamic elements, screen-hogging navigation bars/sharing buttons/overlays, poorly-implemented infinite scrolling, etc, etc... and then they conclude that mobile web sites are bad and native apps are good. People have forgotten that you can build a website that isn't a user-hostile SPA train-wreck.
- xd1936 8y ago
  Amen. Twitter[1] and Starbucks[2] have both built gorgeous PWAs in the last couple of years that are perfect replacements for 98% of a native app's functionality. It can be done, people! 1. https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-source/2017/how-we-built-twitter-lite.html https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-sourc... 2. https://twitter.com/davidbrunelle/status/905931990444244995 https://twitter.com/davidbrunelle/status/905931990444244995
  - lowercased 8y ago
    Done in-house, I'd bet, and that's another disconnect to overcome. Outsourcing website and/or mobile dev to external company, the focus is often more going to be on whizbangflashy, vs sleek/slim/fast/simple, to justify whatever budget they're getting. I do find that I end up using the mobile web client for twitter as often as i do the native client. It's not much in either case, but the mobile web client is generally 'good enough' such that if that's where I land, I don't feel a need to jump to the native client.
  - charleslmunger 8y ago
    Twitter's mobile web site is the most unreliable site I encounter with any frequency. Fully 80% of the links I get to Twitter fail to load, telling me to try again, which only works when I fully refresh the page. I don't know how it compares to their native app.
mmmbob 8y ago
You're missing the point. A mobile app isn't for the benefit of the user, it's for the benefit of the analytics and marketing teams. They want to be able to know who's engaging with it, and spam them with notifications.

datavirtue 8y ago

Website = deliver infornation App = application Apps suck at delivering information, I'm looking at you WSJ. I cancelled my sub their app was so bad. Websites suck at apping.

oftenwrong 8y ago

Companies saddle their mobile web experience with excessive animations, gobs of dynamic elements, screen-hogging navigation bars/sharing buttons/overlays, poorly-implemented infinite scrolling, etc, etc... and then they conclude that mobile web sites are bad and native apps are good. People have forgotten that you can build a website that isn't a user-hostile SPA train-wreck.

xd1936 8y ago
Amen. Twitter[1] and Starbucks[2] have both built gorgeous PWAs in the last couple of years that are perfect replacements for 98% of a native app's functionality. It can be done, people! 1. https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-source/2017/how-we-built-twitter-lite.html https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-sourc... 2. https://twitter.com/davidbrunelle/status/905931990444244995 https://twitter.com/davidbrunelle/status/905931990444244995
- lowercased 8y ago
  Done in-house, I'd bet, and that's another disconnect to overcome. Outsourcing website and/or mobile dev to external company, the focus is often more going to be on whizbangflashy, vs sleek/slim/fast/simple, to justify whatever budget they're getting. I do find that I end up using the mobile web client for twitter as often as i do the native client. It's not much in either case, but the mobile web client is generally 'good enough' such that if that's where I land, I don't feel a need to jump to the native client.
- charleslmunger 8y ago
  Twitter's mobile web site is the most unreliable site I encounter with any frequency. Fully 80% of the links I get to Twitter fail to load, telling me to try again, which only works when I fully refresh the page. I don't know how it compares to their native app.

mmmbob 8y ago

You're missing the point. A mobile app isn't for the benefit of the user, it's for the benefit of the analytics and marketing teams. They want to be able to know who's engaging with it, and spam them with notifications.