5 ms·

Not really. Progressive Web Apps are a much better model for users than the App Store because they get to use the app immediately then decide later whether they

by untog 8y ago

Not really. Progressive Web Apps are a much better model for users than the App Store because they get to use the app immediately then decide later whether they want to keep it on their home screen or not. We've all become very used to the App Store but honestly the experience is pretty crappy.

jacobolus 8y ago
Web apps are inherently mediocre on every platform. There’s enough advantage from being accessible via URL, usable on any device, live updating, etc. to compensate that for many uses. But using web apps daily for any serious work is a huge loss in resource use, usability, polish, ... The one that makes me saddest though is that web apps seem to be getting worse over time. For example most of Google’s suite of web apps were dramatically better a decade ago.
- onion2k 8y ago
  The problem of mediocre apps is not what they're written in. Millions of people happily use apps built on web technologies every day without even realising. Similarly, millions of people use badly made native apps and hate every second. The tech is not the problem.
  - fooker 8y ago
    The tech is part of the problem. Sure, you can get to the same result eventually. But the tools to do so are better and more intuitive for making Android or iOS apps.
    - wlesieutre 8y ago
      I’ve dabbled with iOS development and Xcode doesn’t seem that braggable as a tool. Of course the modern Javascript web stack isn’t pretty either, so I guess what I’m saying is everything sucks a bit. I’ve seen nice results and crappy results regardless of what particular stack it’s made in. IMO the biggest difference shows up in integration with the rest of the system. If you want to hook into the Files app or Siri Shortcuts, native apps certainly have a leg up.
    - onion2k 8y ago
      That depends. I agree that the tooling around hybrid apps is pretty bad (debugging React Native layout issues is painful), but the tooling around web apps is really good these days, and that carries over to PWAs (and Electron, Ionic, etc) to a large extent. Chrome's perf flame chart is ace, and if you use VS Code you can get decent IDE debugging going. It's fragile and it takes effort to start but it's waaaay better than it was 5 years ago.
      - dmitriid 8y ago
        By tools people also mean things like: proper layout, access to native APIs, high-performnace animations, and a lot more.
        onion2k 8y ago
        CSS (or Yoga) is proper layout if you know how to use it. Most native APIs are available to JS even on iOS. Most animation is rendered on the GPU in web tech unless you're doing things very wrong. We even have things like Lottie, AirBNB's SVG-based After Effects animation tool. All this stuff is just done now regardless of what tech you choose. The arguments against web tech are old. The platform has caught up.
        dmitriid 8y ago
        > The platform has caught up. It has not. There are no tools for the web approaching even a Delphi RAD or a Qt Creator ca 2001. CSS layouts are a joke, and trying to create anything as complex as a modern app with CSS is a road of blood and tears (go ahead and use CSS to implement something like Sencha. Hell, start with any constrained layout available for most native frameworks and toolsets out of the box). By "most native APIs" you mean a very small subset deemed more-or-less safe to execute in the browser (you won't ever have full access to, let's say, UIKit, or AVFoundation). And even if animation is rendered on GPU, 1) if you have a lot of them, the browser will struggle, and 2) web animations are extremely limited, primitive, and extremely constrained by layout. Good luck not running into reflow issues for animations which are a breeze on the native platforms. And good luck working around these issues using only animations which won't trigger them. > All this stuff is just done now regardless of what tech you choose. There are people who build OSes using only assembly. It doesn't mean that tools or capabilities of assembly are anywhere near available for other tech.
- expertentipp 8y ago
  On the web the apps are barely usable for the users because the users are acceptable bystanders, not clients. The clients are data hoarders, advertisers, and trackers. In fact a tuned web app focusing on user experience and performance, with the current state of ES, DOM, HTML5, CSS3, and general performance of web browsers would be mindblowing.
  - dmitriid 8y ago
    > with the current state of ES, DOM, HTML5, CSS3, and general performance of web browsers would be mindblowing. Where can I find this mythical mindblowing app?
    - expertentipp 8y ago
      Who is asking and how much are they paying?
      - dmitriid 8y ago
        Everyone would pay for a mindblowing performant app. None have appeared.
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  I broadly agree about complicated apps, but there are plenty of mobile websites which are more useful than apps for me precisely because of their simplicity. The killer benefit is the ability to deep link, for instance I have three or four icons on my homescreen going to the timetables for different bus stops, and two or three for the weather for different places. For my use case I want to go straight to a simple stateless page which tells you what you want to know, not be subject to the UX whims of the app designer. The drawbacks are created by iOS, I would prefer these websites to be able to use a cache which worked and wasn’t broken in small subtle ways, and to be able to set them fullscreen.
baroffoos 8y ago
Its not about whats a better experience for the user its about what gives apple more money and control. Apple gets to pick which apps make it on to the app store and they take a huge cut of all sales on apps.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  I really get annoyed when I see people talking about the "huge cut of all sales on apps" in isolation, as though hosting high-traffic downloads, handling financial transactions (purchases, in-app purchases, subscriptions, credit card handling, fraud investigation, etc.), and occasional spots of marketing and publicity when an app does particularly well or is featured in the Stories cost nothing. It's not like these things are cheap, and plenty of developers wouldn't have a shot of successfully delivering an app without the infrastructure in place to support them. It should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that the vendor wants their cut. If we are having an honest conversation about who gets a cut of what, we have to realise that web apps still have bills to pay and people getting their cut of something — credit card handlers, payments systems, web hosting (and that ain't cheap, especially when demand rises) on top of the cost of hosting an API and databases, and plenty of other costs.
  - ourmandave 8y ago
    tl;dr; Running an app monopoly is expensive.
  - greiskul 8y ago
    You know that in Android, if you as a developer use in app purchases, you have to pay a cut to the play store, right? But the thing is, you can also do payments on your own (although users are much less likely to trust you), in which case there is no cut. This is why I can buy a book in Kindle on my android phone, but no on my dad's ipod. That's what people are asking for. If you want to provide services, sure, charge for them, but also allow developers to not use your services in this case. Apples monopoly enforcement in both this and in html rendering is one of the biggest causes of stagnation in tech right now. When I run a web app, sure, I need to pay lots of different middle men. But I get to choose which ones I use.
derefr 8y ago
Why not just build a web app that works as a regular (mobile) web app, but has additional features when launched in the context of a PhoneGap-style app-store app? Then have the web version offer to install the "native-ish" version. That's progressive enhancement, no?
esrauch 8y ago
The problem is that regular sites that I plan to visit exactly once are just throwing up the banner. I have seen the add to home screen banner dozens of times and clicked it never. It would quite obviously be better for me if the banner didnt exist.
masklinn 8y ago
> Progressive Web Apps are a much better model for users than the App Store because they get to use the app immediately then decide later whether they want to keep it on their home screen or not The banner being a factor… how? iOS has let users add web applications to their home screen for over a decade. > We've all become very used to the App Store but honestly the experience is pretty crappy. As opposed to every fucking site spamming you to install on your home screen being a stellar experience.
- untog 8y ago
  iOS has let users add sites to their home screen, but very very few users know that it's possible, or how to do it.
  - masklinn 8y ago
    Not an issue: as the application author, if / when you see that the user seems invested (not at a random point 30 seconds in or some crap like that) you can add callout or button to suggest installing on their device, and provide the relevant steps then.
    - untog 8y ago
      So just like an add to homescreen banner, then, except with more steps required by the user, and a requirement by you to customise it for every different UI the user might see it in? https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/app-install-banners/ https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/app-install-b...
      - masklinn 8y ago
        All of which is a feature, not a bug: it makes the prompt more expensive to implement and way more intrusive to the user, meaning significantly less likely for drive-by prompter to implement. Further bonus: no unstable proprietary API to reverse-engineer and implement and it teaches the user that there's nothing specific to it, they can pin any site they commonly use to their home page whether that site provides specific PWA support or not, such that they can perform the action at any point they want. The browser is simpler, the method is less scammy and the user is empowered.
Octoth0rpe 8y ago
My biggest objection to PWAs is that a significant part of the value of the app store is the constant scanning for various kinds of malware. I'm not sure that there's a way around that, and that makes the various app stores infinitely better in my book. That's all assuming you trust the efficacy of the app store scanners of course, and my trust in google on that is pretty low.
- pier25 8y ago
  A good solution to that would be if the mobile app stores allowed PWAs. Instead of using Cordova or similar you could just add a URL with the PWA. Microsoft already does this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-web-apps/microsoft-store https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-...

by untog 8y ago

jacobolus 8y ago

Web apps are inherently mediocre on every platform. There’s enough advantage from being accessible via URL, usable on any device, live updating, etc. to compensate that for many uses. But using web apps daily for any serious work is a huge loss in resource use, usability, polish, ... The one that makes me saddest though is that web apps seem to be getting worse over time. For example most of Google’s suite of web apps were dramatically better a decade ago.

onion2k 8y ago
The problem of mediocre apps is not what they're written in. Millions of people happily use apps built on web technologies every day without even realising. Similarly, millions of people use badly made native apps and hate every second. The tech is not the problem.
- fooker 8y ago
  The tech is part of the problem. Sure, you can get to the same result eventually. But the tools to do so are better and more intuitive for making Android or iOS apps.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    I’ve dabbled with iOS development and Xcode doesn’t seem that braggable as a tool. Of course the modern Javascript web stack isn’t pretty either, so I guess what I’m saying is everything sucks a bit. I’ve seen nice results and crappy results regardless of what particular stack it’s made in. IMO the biggest difference shows up in integration with the rest of the system. If you want to hook into the Files app or Siri Shortcuts, native apps certainly have a leg up.
  - onion2k 8y ago
    That depends. I agree that the tooling around hybrid apps is pretty bad (debugging React Native layout issues is painful), but the tooling around web apps is really good these days, and that carries over to PWAs (and Electron, Ionic, etc) to a large extent. Chrome's perf flame chart is ace, and if you use VS Code you can get decent IDE debugging going. It's fragile and it takes effort to start but it's waaaay better than it was 5 years ago.
    - dmitriid 8y ago
      By tools people also mean things like: proper layout, access to native APIs, high-performnace animations, and a lot more.
      - onion2k 8y ago
        CSS (or Yoga) is proper layout if you know how to use it. Most native APIs are available to JS even on iOS. Most animation is rendered on the GPU in web tech unless you're doing things very wrong. We even have things like Lottie, AirBNB's SVG-based After Effects animation tool. All this stuff is just done now regardless of what tech you choose. The arguments against web tech are old. The platform has caught up.
        dmitriid 8y ago
        > The platform has caught up. It has not. There are no tools for the web approaching even a Delphi RAD or a Qt Creator ca 2001. CSS layouts are a joke, and trying to create anything as complex as a modern app with CSS is a road of blood and tears (go ahead and use CSS to implement something like Sencha. Hell, start with any constrained layout available for most native frameworks and toolsets out of the box). By "most native APIs" you mean a very small subset deemed more-or-less safe to execute in the browser (you won't ever have full access to, let's say, UIKit, or AVFoundation). And even if animation is rendered on GPU, 1) if you have a lot of them, the browser will struggle, and 2) web animations are extremely limited, primitive, and extremely constrained by layout. Good luck not running into reflow issues for animations which are a breeze on the native platforms. And good luck working around these issues using only animations which won't trigger them. > All this stuff is just done now regardless of what tech you choose. There are people who build OSes using only assembly. It doesn't mean that tools or capabilities of assembly are anywhere near available for other tech.
expertentipp 8y ago
On the web the apps are barely usable for the users because the users are acceptable bystanders, not clients. The clients are data hoarders, advertisers, and trackers. In fact a tuned web app focusing on user experience and performance, with the current state of ES, DOM, HTML5, CSS3, and general performance of web browsers would be mindblowing.
- dmitriid 8y ago
  > with the current state of ES, DOM, HTML5, CSS3, and general performance of web browsers would be mindblowing. Where can I find this mythical mindblowing app?
  - expertentipp 8y ago
    Who is asking and how much are they paying?
    - dmitriid 8y ago
      Everyone would pay for a mindblowing performant app. None have appeared.
Brakenshire 8y ago
I broadly agree about complicated apps, but there are plenty of mobile websites which are more useful than apps for me precisely because of their simplicity. The killer benefit is the ability to deep link, for instance I have three or four icons on my homescreen going to the timetables for different bus stops, and two or three for the weather for different places. For my use case I want to go straight to a simple stateless page which tells you what you want to know, not be subject to the UX whims of the app designer. The drawbacks are created by iOS, I would prefer these websites to be able to use a cache which worked and wasn’t broken in small subtle ways, and to be able to set them fullscreen.

baroffoos 8y ago

Its not about whats a better experience for the user its about what gives apple more money and control. Apple gets to pick which apps make it on to the app store and they take a huge cut of all sales on apps.

zapzupnz 8y ago
I really get annoyed when I see people talking about the "huge cut of all sales on apps" in isolation, as though hosting high-traffic downloads, handling financial transactions (purchases, in-app purchases, subscriptions, credit card handling, fraud investigation, etc.), and occasional spots of marketing and publicity when an app does particularly well or is featured in the Stories cost nothing. It's not like these things are cheap, and plenty of developers wouldn't have a shot of successfully delivering an app without the infrastructure in place to support them. It should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that the vendor wants their cut. If we are having an honest conversation about who gets a cut of what, we have to realise that web apps still have bills to pay and people getting their cut of something — credit card handlers, payments systems, web hosting (and that ain't cheap, especially when demand rises) on top of the cost of hosting an API and databases, and plenty of other costs.
- ourmandave 8y ago
  tl;dr; Running an app monopoly is expensive.
- greiskul 8y ago
  You know that in Android, if you as a developer use in app purchases, you have to pay a cut to the play store, right? But the thing is, you can also do payments on your own (although users are much less likely to trust you), in which case there is no cut. This is why I can buy a book in Kindle on my android phone, but no on my dad's ipod. That's what people are asking for. If you want to provide services, sure, charge for them, but also allow developers to not use your services in this case. Apples monopoly enforcement in both this and in html rendering is one of the biggest causes of stagnation in tech right now. When I run a web app, sure, I need to pay lots of different middle men. But I get to choose which ones I use.

derefr 8y ago

Why not just build a web app that works as a regular (mobile) web app, but has additional features when launched in the context of a PhoneGap-style app-store app? Then have the web version offer to install the "native-ish" version. That's progressive enhancement, no?

esrauch 8y ago

The problem is that regular sites that I plan to visit exactly once are just throwing up the banner. I have seen the add to home screen banner dozens of times and clicked it never. It would quite obviously be better for me if the banner didnt exist.

masklinn 8y ago

> Progressive Web Apps are a much better model for users than the App Store because they get to use the app immediately then decide later whether they want to keep it on their home screen or not The banner being a factor… how? iOS has let users add web applications to their home screen for over a decade. > We've all become very used to the App Store but honestly the experience is pretty crappy. As opposed to every fucking site spamming you to install on your home screen being a stellar experience.

untog 8y ago
iOS has let users add sites to their home screen, but very very few users know that it's possible, or how to do it.
- masklinn 8y ago
  Not an issue: as the application author, if / when you see that the user seems invested (not at a random point 30 seconds in or some crap like that) you can add callout or button to suggest installing on their device, and provide the relevant steps then.
  - untog 8y ago
    So just like an add to homescreen banner, then, except with more steps required by the user, and a requirement by you to customise it for every different UI the user might see it in? https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/app-install-banners/ https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/app-install-b...
    - masklinn 8y ago
      All of which is a feature, not a bug: it makes the prompt more expensive to implement and way more intrusive to the user, meaning significantly less likely for drive-by prompter to implement. Further bonus: no unstable proprietary API to reverse-engineer and implement and it teaches the user that there's nothing specific to it, they can pin any site they commonly use to their home page whether that site provides specific PWA support or not, such that they can perform the action at any point they want. The browser is simpler, the method is less scammy and the user is empowered.

Octoth0rpe 8y ago

My biggest objection to PWAs is that a significant part of the value of the app store is the constant scanning for various kinds of malware. I'm not sure that there's a way around that, and that makes the various app stores infinitely better in my book. That's all assuming you trust the efficacy of the app store scanners of course, and my trust in google on that is pretty low.

pier25 8y ago
A good solution to that would be if the mobile app stores allowed PWAs. Instead of using Cordova or similar you could just add a URL with the PWA. Microsoft already does this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-web-apps/microsoft-store https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-...