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It strikes me that, more than anything, it is the lack of an efficient "Add to Home Screen" flow, that has doomed mobile websites. ...and it's intentional. By

It strikes me that, more than anything, it is the lack of an efficient "Add to Home Screen" flow, that has doomed mobile websites. ...and it's intentional. By having an app store, mobile OS distributors know that they have control over a massive revenue stream.

bostik 7y ago
A good part of it is their absolutely massive 30% cut. The only reason they get away with it is that when Apple's app store first came out, most of the online casual applications were games. Hosted by a few gargantuan aggregators (cough newgrounds cough) who charged 70%+ of the revenue for their ... service. Against a backdrop of above-criminal-rates extortion, 30% must have looked like a bargain. To put these numbers in context, very good agents get 15%.
- tombert 7y ago
  Forgive me a bit, since I haven't been on Newgrounds since before the iPhone came out, but did Newgrounds ever charge to host on their site? Did they allow you to monetize your games?
  - grawprog 7y ago
    https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/creator-resources/monetization https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/creator-resources/monetizati...
- scarface74 7y ago
  Most of the money being made on the App Store is for in app consumables from pay to win games. You’ll have to forgive me for not shedding a tear for them. I hope Apple Arcade takes a huge chunk of their revenue. It’s not indy developers trying to make a living. The other types of apps that use to make Apple a lot of money are streaming services. But most of those are now not allowing you to do in app purchases. I’m looking through all of my apps, and I only have two or three that I actually paid money via in app purchases and those were to turn off ads. All of the rest I had to buy subscriptions on the app makers websites or buy content in the case of Amazon for Kindle books.
  - dessant 7y ago
    Though we should shed some tears for those who just try to sell their apps and make a living, after already being ripped off for expensive equipment and an annual developer account fee. If Apple would care, it would be possible to charge a smaller commission based on the app category, and to vaive annual developer account fees for verified open source developers.
    - rbrtl 7y ago
      Apple gear is no longer as comparatively expensive as it used to be -- they aren't ripping you off, they have put a lot of work into delivering different 'gear' to what's available in the rest of the market. Shed a tear for people who buy HP and need a new laptop every year or two. I'm typing this on a 7-year old MacBook Pro, which works better than the day I bought it. Hosting an app marketplace is not a free endeavour either. They host infrastructure to facilitate all of this, and they review app code in an attempt to prevent malware being distributed by underhanded developers. Maybe they could vary the price based on the use case, but why should they? No one is compelled to publish on the App Store, why complicate their business model to give themselves more work for less money.
      - dessant 7y ago
        > Apple gear is no longer as comparatively expensive as it used to be It still is if one can't afford it. Apple could provide macOS and iOS VirtualBox images for developers to build and test their apps. > why complicate their business model to give themselves more work for less money. Because that's the right thing to do when you shut out indie developers using expensive equipment and annual developer fees. Developers who aren't affluent or don't get into app development solely for profit may stay away from the Apple ecosystem, and that's a loss for everyone. Apple is now also selling access to their user base on macOS. Apps distributed outside the Mac App Store must be notarized to run on macOS, which requires a developer account ($99/yr). Yes, workarounds do exist for now, but all of them are inconvenient enough that they seriously hurt the distribution of open source apps, unless maintainers pay up.
scarface74 7y ago
There has been an add to home screen shortcut on iOS since day 1.
marvindanig 7y ago
Oh, 100%! It is absolutely intentional that iOS Safari on iPhones does not have support for fullscreen api, for example, whereas both WatchOS (somewhat) and iPadOS do. Apple is quite anti-competitive when it comes to letting web apps utilize the full potential of modern web standards. And they often use "industry advocates" driven psy-op tactics to manoeuvre public opinion such as the following: [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49589861/is-there-a-non-hacky-way-to-prevent-pinch-zoom-on-ios-11-3-safari/49926070#49926070 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49589861/is-there-a-non-...
gumby 7y ago
> more than anything, it is the lack of an efficient "Add to Home Screen" flow, that has doomed mobile websites...and it's intentional It’s literally a default option on the safari “share” button: “Add to Home Screen”. I’m not sure how Apple could have made it easier.
- varrock 7y ago
  Because it's not very intuitive that the share button would allow you to add something to your home screen.
  - gumby 7y ago
    TBF that icon is kind of apple's system hamburger as it contains sharing, sending the current "thing" to other apps, searching etc. If you don't know that (and I agree it's terrible, but at least it's consistent) you probably don't know you can add a page to the homepage at all.
siruncledrew 7y ago
The other downside is that even if mobile websites encouraged people to use the “Add to Home Screen” ability to the point it became somewhat popular, Apple and Google could just remove the ability all together in an OS release for “reasons” leaving users SOL.
AlphaSite 7y ago
Apple has an "add to home screen" option. Its in Safari.
gopkarthik 7y ago
That's true along with proper notification support. Firefox for Android has 'Add to Home Screen' and was one of the reasons along with extension support for my switch from chrome.
on_and_off 7y ago
that's factually untrue since there have been ways to add web apps to the home screen for while.
inscionent 7y ago
Add to home screen is two clicks, how more efficient does it need to be?

bostik 7y ago

A good part of it is their absolutely massive 30% cut. The only reason they get away with it is that when Apple's app store first came out, most of the online casual applications were games. Hosted by a few gargantuan aggregators (cough newgrounds cough) who charged 70%+ of the revenue for their ... service. Against a backdrop of above-criminal-rates extortion, 30% must have looked like a bargain. To put these numbers in context, very good agents get 15%.

tombert 7y ago
Forgive me a bit, since I haven't been on Newgrounds since before the iPhone came out, but did Newgrounds ever charge to host on their site? Did they allow you to monetize your games?
- grawprog 7y ago
  https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/creator-resources/monetization https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/creator-resources/monetizati...
scarface74 7y ago
Most of the money being made on the App Store is for in app consumables from pay to win games. You’ll have to forgive me for not shedding a tear for them. I hope Apple Arcade takes a huge chunk of their revenue. It’s not indy developers trying to make a living. The other types of apps that use to make Apple a lot of money are streaming services. But most of those are now not allowing you to do in app purchases. I’m looking through all of my apps, and I only have two or three that I actually paid money via in app purchases and those were to turn off ads. All of the rest I had to buy subscriptions on the app makers websites or buy content in the case of Amazon for Kindle books.
- dessant 7y ago
  Though we should shed some tears for those who just try to sell their apps and make a living, after already being ripped off for expensive equipment and an annual developer account fee. If Apple would care, it would be possible to charge a smaller commission based on the app category, and to vaive annual developer account fees for verified open source developers.
  - rbrtl 7y ago
    Apple gear is no longer as comparatively expensive as it used to be -- they aren't ripping you off, they have put a lot of work into delivering different 'gear' to what's available in the rest of the market. Shed a tear for people who buy HP and need a new laptop every year or two. I'm typing this on a 7-year old MacBook Pro, which works better than the day I bought it. Hosting an app marketplace is not a free endeavour either. They host infrastructure to facilitate all of this, and they review app code in an attempt to prevent malware being distributed by underhanded developers. Maybe they could vary the price based on the use case, but why should they? No one is compelled to publish on the App Store, why complicate their business model to give themselves more work for less money.
    - dessant 7y ago
      > Apple gear is no longer as comparatively expensive as it used to be It still is if one can't afford it. Apple could provide macOS and iOS VirtualBox images for developers to build and test their apps. > why complicate their business model to give themselves more work for less money. Because that's the right thing to do when you shut out indie developers using expensive equipment and annual developer fees. Developers who aren't affluent or don't get into app development solely for profit may stay away from the Apple ecosystem, and that's a loss for everyone. Apple is now also selling access to their user base on macOS. Apps distributed outside the Mac App Store must be notarized to run on macOS, which requires a developer account ($99/yr). Yes, workarounds do exist for now, but all of them are inconvenient enough that they seriously hurt the distribution of open source apps, unless maintainers pay up.

scarface74 7y ago

There has been an add to home screen shortcut on iOS since day 1.

marvindanig 7y ago

Oh, 100%! It is absolutely intentional that iOS Safari on iPhones does not have support for fullscreen api, for example, whereas both WatchOS (somewhat) and iPadOS do. Apple is quite anti-competitive when it comes to letting web apps utilize the full potential of modern web standards. And they often use "industry advocates" driven psy-op tactics to manoeuvre public opinion such as the following: [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49589861/is-there-a-non-hacky-way-to-prevent-pinch-zoom-on-ios-11-3-safari/49926070#49926070 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49589861/is-there-a-non-...

gumby 7y ago

> more than anything, it is the lack of an efficient "Add to Home Screen" flow, that has doomed mobile websites...and it's intentional It’s literally a default option on the safari “share” button: “Add to Home Screen”. I’m not sure how Apple could have made it easier.

varrock 7y ago
Because it's not very intuitive that the share button would allow you to add something to your home screen.
- gumby 7y ago
  TBF that icon is kind of apple's system hamburger as it contains sharing, sending the current "thing" to other apps, searching etc. If you don't know that (and I agree it's terrible, but at least it's consistent) you probably don't know you can add a page to the homepage at all.

siruncledrew 7y ago

The other downside is that even if mobile websites encouraged people to use the “Add to Home Screen” ability to the point it became somewhat popular, Apple and Google could just remove the ability all together in an OS release for “reasons” leaving users SOL.

AlphaSite 7y ago

Apple has an "add to home screen" option. Its in Safari.

gopkarthik 7y ago

That's true along with proper notification support. Firefox for Android has 'Add to Home Screen' and was one of the reasons along with extension support for my switch from chrome.

on_and_off 7y ago

that's factually untrue since there have been ways to add web apps to the home screen for while.

inscionent 7y ago

Add to home screen is two clicks, how more efficient does it need to be?