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Ask HN: What's stopping PWAs from being more popular?
PWAs = progressive web apps
Why can't we just get rid of most native apps and app store duopolies? Or at least complement them with good web apps, that work offline, use service workers, small sized and so on?
- bigiain 7y agoFrom my little part of the industry, clients _want_ to be in the two app stores. Even when what they're putting there would be better as a PWA. (Also, it seems from my perspective, that clients with money here care most about being on iPhone, and service workers there are not yet ready for primetime. Its only been available for 7-8 weeks, and it's got some warts - only 50MB of storage, your cache and persistent storage may vanish after only a few weeks, and no push notifications - which is the showstopper where I am...)
- stephenr 7y agoPerformance, efficiency, native UI, privacy, security.. I mean, really you need to make a reasonable case for why you think a web page can replace compiled code running locally on the device, not the other way around.
- julienreszka 7y agoFreedom? Both on the consumer side and the company side? Also web indexing? Easier sharing? privacy concerns?
- stephenr 7y agoFreedom from what? How does web indexing help the end user? Sharing what? How do you imagine that a cached webpage is more private than a locally running compiled app?
- julienreszka 7y agoNot freedom from but freedom to : set your own terms not the terms of the play store or the iPhone store. Indexing helps the user find the app. Sharing a specific page of the app to a friend's thanks to the URL. You can't install an app without accepting all permission, contact info, sms, and so on. Facebook is much more privacy agressive on native than on the web.
- stephenr 7y ago> You can't install an app without accepting all permission, contact info, sms, and so on. Sounds like someone’s view is skewed by how googles store works. I don’t use Facebook at all but on iOS an app can request permission for eg your contacts or photos or whatever - but you can just deny it. This happens at runtime not install time. So if you install say Skype, it’ll ask for camera and microphone and contacts. But you can deny all of those and just text chat with contacts in your Skype contact list perfectly fine. You talk aboht “indexing” as if native apps aren’t searchable both via the web previews and via the native App Store search.
- deca6cda37d0 7y agoA centralised place for discovery of PWA’s. Like an App Store.
- cerberusss 7y agoI can instantly rat out a web app, instead of a native app. They scroll in the wrong places, don't react instantly, have weird or very uncommon widgets, look like a page is loading, etc. If you don't care about high quality of UI, then sure.