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What incentive do parking and venue apps have to implement this? The audience is captive. They push the app because either they do not want to spend the enginee

What incentive do parking and venue apps have to implement this? The audience is captive. They push the app because either they do not want to spend the engineering effort to make a usable website or they want to siphon data from their clients. In either case, they will not have an incentive to spend more engineering time to get less data from customers.

thanatosmin 6y ago
It seems within Apple's style that they will eventually require this to be implemented for certain types of apps.
- dave5104 6y ago
  Can they, though? It seems like a lot of the use cases for App Clips depend on physical infrastructure being added in the real world, like the NFC sensors that project the existence of an App Clip. Apple likes to control, but I don't think they can really compel physical infrastructure.
  - snuxoll 6y ago
    You don't need any physical infrastructure for using App Clips. Ultimately they are launched via URL - that can be by physical NFC tags or QR codes, or just via Safari, a SMS/iMessage, etc.
WA 6y ago
Why is this downvoted? This comment is spot on. The junk apps are junk because the businesses make them like that on purpose. You can also turn this around: what stops businesses right now from making extremely lightweight apps that don’t bother the user? The same forces that make companies slap tons of trackers and JS on their websites.
- RandallBrown 6y ago
  > The junk apps are junk because the businesses make them like that on purpose. While this is sometimes true, I think it's more often the case the businesses make junk apps because they pay the lowest bidder to make them a bare minimum app.
  - Terretta 6y ago
    And the lowest bidder is often an app factory. See real estate apps or corporate travel apps for instance. A majority seem to be the same few practically unusable apps re-skinned.
    - pfranz 6y ago
      I believe as part of the App Clip announcement they were showing Yelp creating/managing apps for restaurants. So they're specifically trying to improve this type of app.
- acdha 6y ago
  I wouldn’t assume that’s the only reason for how these apps exist. Most businesses pay considerably more for an app than it would cost to have a website. In some cases that’s due to something like robust offline support or tracking not allowed by the web security model but there are plenty of more common reasons: the owner wanted to be able to tell their friends that they’re in the App Store, they perceived it as more modern/cooler, they got a sales pitch about how this would boost revenue or customer loyalty, etc. One way to guess about what’s happening is to look at the app quality and update history: if it looks like it launched in the original App Store round or has a hideous UX which is never improved, it’s probably not actually doing enough to be worth spending more money on.
OkGoDoIt 6y ago
Exactly. I’m not a huge fan of Yelp but I used to use the mobile website occasionally. But they have been slowly crippling the mobile website over the years to force you to download the app instead. So now I don’t use Yelp anymore. I don’t see why a company like Yelp would embrace this, although given Apple has featured them extensively in the announcement I assume they are embracing it after all. Maybe because there’s such a simple path from app clip to installing the full app, companies might see this as a potential avenue for new installs? Also supposedly App Clips can access nearly all of the native app APIs, so even if they can’t get much location data and have limited notification access, they might be able to get some available data off the user’s device?
- notatoad 6y ago
  >companies might see this as a potential avenue for new installs it seems like the opposite of that to me. right now, if there's some task you want to accomplish (order a meal, rent a scooter...) you have to install the app to do that. With app clips, you get the option of completing the task without installing the app. as a user i love this, but it's definitely not going to drive app installs.
  - OkGoDoIt 6y ago
    I agree, I was mostly trying to play devils advocate and try and figure out any potentially positive reason. As an extreme counterexample, I refuse to install GrubHub or Uber Eats or apps like that, instead just calling the restaurants directly to order food. It’s possible I might try out an app clip, and maybe the process would be smooth enough that I’d be willing to upgrade to the full app. But I know I’m definitely outside the norm and realistically this wouldn’t move the needle in a positive direction for businesses. I’m mostly just concerned that this will likely detract even further from web-based alternatives. GrubHub might decide that since they have App Clips, they can pull a Yelp and disable their mobile website completely.
eitland 6y ago
> What incentive do parking and venue apps have to implement this? Because Apple is known to kick apps out if they don't like them?
azinman2 6y ago
Go visit mainland China and see how QR code’s exist everywhere that lead to mini-apps inside of WeChat. There’s plenty of precedent.
dmitrygr 6y ago
Maybe apple might stop approving junk apps that do not implement clips, like they ban apps that have "sign in with XYZ" but not "sign in with apple" (this post represents my opinion only, and does not speak for my employer, my cat, or the flying spaghetti monster)
martimarkov 6y ago
I think maybe Apple can force them to do it somehow. And for all the other cases like ordering food, renting scooters, bikes, entering the gym for a one off session I think it’s just going to be competition. If lime has an app clip and bird doesn’t I’ll walk the extra 15 minutes. I did ask quite a few ppl since the announcement and most friends said they just dislike the new service signup soooo much they would be willing to do a physical sacrifice. Edit: definitely not claiming this will be a mass thing but it’s my gut feeling it would be. + it’s a less friction conversation of very difficult segment of customers. That might count for something for some companies.
Shank 6y ago
> What incentive do parking and venue apps have to implement this? As a good example, a parking meter app is simply there to collect money at the meter. An App Clip is small, which will be way faster to download than the full app, and enable a user to pay much faster than before. In a situation where you want people to get an app but know that they're time constrained and that app is how you get paid, you'll implement it because it'll make sense to implement. I've personally given up on bike and scooter rental apps because the time to download and setup was frustrating. For those cases, this would be awesome.
- baddox 6y ago
  But as mentioned, the audience is captive. If there was another parking option around the corner they would have used that. I don't think parking lots care how long it takes you to download their app and pay.
  - Slippery_John 6y ago
    Not really, there are often other options. Different lots nearby using different systems, for instance. Or the option of simply not paying and risking getting towed / a ticket. A parking lot clip could use the time-based notification to warn you that your meter is almost up and give you the option to re-up. Without having to walk back to the lot to do it. I imagine this would be especially useful in a tourist-heavy area since somebody who isn't sticking around won't want to download a whole app for the purpose.
    - neurostimulant 6y ago
      I kinda doubt that parking lot management companies would be willing to pay Apple's 30% transaction fee though.
      - majormajor 6y ago
        Apple's fees are on digital goods, not physical ones. Amazon doesn't pay a fee for me to place a physical order in the Amazon app, nor does the laundry app in my old apartment building.
saagarjha 6y ago
So that I use their service instead of passing on it?
heavyset_go 6y ago
Agreed. Google did something similar with Android a few years ago and I haven't come across an app that takes advantage of it yet. Businesses want to offer apps so that they can collect more information on their customers, not because an app is the best solution to the problem at hand.
acdha 6y ago
Unless they refuse all other forms of payment, this keeps all of the many app problems from pushing into manual paths requiring human time to correct. Each stage of the process has people dropping off and calling for support or talking to an attendant.
atonse 6y ago
I actually LOVE this idea. And we develop an app for people to get personalized information from their local government (https://polkadotskysoftware.com https://polkadotskysoftware.com). What I love is that we actually get access to a whole swath of people that want quick information but don't want to install a whole app for it. In fact, we want to make our stuff available on any platform, because our goal is to get as many people to use our system as possible. When it comes to parking vendors, they get their money no matter what (either from a government contract or as a slice of parking fees, not from number of app installs), so it's in their best interest to INCREASE engagement. Our main problem is that our mobile app is written in React Native, so I'm not sure how this would fit in near-term. We are loathe to add too many native features because the whole workflow in React Native is already a bit brittle.
- _bxg1 6y ago
  OT, but your company looks really interesting. It's similar to a project idea I had recently but hadn't explored yet. A few questions: are you a nonprofit? And if not, who do you sell to? Do you sell to local governments to help them quickly bootstrap citizen involvement services? Do you develop solutions on an area-by-area basis or do you have a single product that tries to cover all of them?
  - atonse 6y ago
    We're a for-profit that sells a SaaS product to (so far) state and local governments. Our stack is Elixir and Ember JS, running on AWS. We're currently involved in a lot of COVID related efforts in the eastern US (SMS delivery of test results, etc – we haven't had a chance to update our page, been too busy). Still a product but each customer has custom needs to integrate with their systems, which we do via APIs and custom data ingestion code. We do guide local governments in bootstrapping all the data on our platform but it's a multi-tenant system and everyone's on the same platform.
- monocularvision 6y ago
  Yeah, good luck making it under the 10mb limit with React Native.

thanatosmin 6y ago

It seems within Apple's style that they will eventually require this to be implemented for certain types of apps.

dave5104 6y ago
Can they, though? It seems like a lot of the use cases for App Clips depend on physical infrastructure being added in the real world, like the NFC sensors that project the existence of an App Clip. Apple likes to control, but I don't think they can really compel physical infrastructure.
- snuxoll 6y ago
  You don't need any physical infrastructure for using App Clips. Ultimately they are launched via URL - that can be by physical NFC tags or QR codes, or just via Safari, a SMS/iMessage, etc.

WA 6y ago

Why is this downvoted? This comment is spot on. The junk apps are junk because the businesses make them like that on purpose. You can also turn this around: what stops businesses right now from making extremely lightweight apps that don’t bother the user? The same forces that make companies slap tons of trackers and JS on their websites.

RandallBrown 6y ago
> The junk apps are junk because the businesses make them like that on purpose. While this is sometimes true, I think it's more often the case the businesses make junk apps because they pay the lowest bidder to make them a bare minimum app.
- Terretta 6y ago
  And the lowest bidder is often an app factory. See real estate apps or corporate travel apps for instance. A majority seem to be the same few practically unusable apps re-skinned.
  - pfranz 6y ago
    I believe as part of the App Clip announcement they were showing Yelp creating/managing apps for restaurants. So they're specifically trying to improve this type of app.
acdha 6y ago
I wouldn’t assume that’s the only reason for how these apps exist. Most businesses pay considerably more for an app than it would cost to have a website. In some cases that’s due to something like robust offline support or tracking not allowed by the web security model but there are plenty of more common reasons: the owner wanted to be able to tell their friends that they’re in the App Store, they perceived it as more modern/cooler, they got a sales pitch about how this would boost revenue or customer loyalty, etc. One way to guess about what’s happening is to look at the app quality and update history: if it looks like it launched in the original App Store round or has a hideous UX which is never improved, it’s probably not actually doing enough to be worth spending more money on.

OkGoDoIt 6y ago

Exactly. I’m not a huge fan of Yelp but I used to use the mobile website occasionally. But they have been slowly crippling the mobile website over the years to force you to download the app instead. So now I don’t use Yelp anymore. I don’t see why a company like Yelp would embrace this, although given Apple has featured them extensively in the announcement I assume they are embracing it after all. Maybe because there’s such a simple path from app clip to installing the full app, companies might see this as a potential avenue for new installs? Also supposedly App Clips can access nearly all of the native app APIs, so even if they can’t get much location data and have limited notification access, they might be able to get some available data off the user’s device?

notatoad 6y ago
>companies might see this as a potential avenue for new installs it seems like the opposite of that to me. right now, if there's some task you want to accomplish (order a meal, rent a scooter...) you have to install the app to do that. With app clips, you get the option of completing the task without installing the app. as a user i love this, but it's definitely not going to drive app installs.
- OkGoDoIt 6y ago
  I agree, I was mostly trying to play devils advocate and try and figure out any potentially positive reason. As an extreme counterexample, I refuse to install GrubHub or Uber Eats or apps like that, instead just calling the restaurants directly to order food. It’s possible I might try out an app clip, and maybe the process would be smooth enough that I’d be willing to upgrade to the full app. But I know I’m definitely outside the norm and realistically this wouldn’t move the needle in a positive direction for businesses. I’m mostly just concerned that this will likely detract even further from web-based alternatives. GrubHub might decide that since they have App Clips, they can pull a Yelp and disable their mobile website completely.

eitland 6y ago

> What incentive do parking and venue apps have to implement this? Because Apple is known to kick apps out if they don't like them?

azinman2 6y ago

Go visit mainland China and see how QR code’s exist everywhere that lead to mini-apps inside of WeChat. There’s plenty of precedent.

dmitrygr 6y ago

Maybe apple might stop approving junk apps that do not implement clips, like they ban apps that have "sign in with XYZ" but not "sign in with apple" (this post represents my opinion only, and does not speak for my employer, my cat, or the flying spaghetti monster)

martimarkov 6y ago

I think maybe Apple can force them to do it somehow. And for all the other cases like ordering food, renting scooters, bikes, entering the gym for a one off session I think it’s just going to be competition. If lime has an app clip and bird doesn’t I’ll walk the extra 15 minutes. I did ask quite a few ppl since the announcement and most friends said they just dislike the new service signup soooo much they would be willing to do a physical sacrifice. Edit: definitely not claiming this will be a mass thing but it’s my gut feeling it would be. + it’s a less friction conversation of very difficult segment of customers. That might count for something for some companies.

Shank 6y ago

> What incentive do parking and venue apps have to implement this? As a good example, a parking meter app is simply there to collect money at the meter. An App Clip is small, which will be way faster to download than the full app, and enable a user to pay much faster than before. In a situation where you want people to get an app but know that they're time constrained and that app is how you get paid, you'll implement it because it'll make sense to implement. I've personally given up on bike and scooter rental apps because the time to download and setup was frustrating. For those cases, this would be awesome.

baddox 6y ago
But as mentioned, the audience is captive. If there was another parking option around the corner they would have used that. I don't think parking lots care how long it takes you to download their app and pay.
- Slippery_John 6y ago
  Not really, there are often other options. Different lots nearby using different systems, for instance. Or the option of simply not paying and risking getting towed / a ticket. A parking lot clip could use the time-based notification to warn you that your meter is almost up and give you the option to re-up. Without having to walk back to the lot to do it. I imagine this would be especially useful in a tourist-heavy area since somebody who isn't sticking around won't want to download a whole app for the purpose.
  - neurostimulant 6y ago
    I kinda doubt that parking lot management companies would be willing to pay Apple's 30% transaction fee though.
    - majormajor 6y ago
      Apple's fees are on digital goods, not physical ones. Amazon doesn't pay a fee for me to place a physical order in the Amazon app, nor does the laundry app in my old apartment building.

saagarjha 6y ago

So that I use their service instead of passing on it?

heavyset_go 6y ago

Agreed. Google did something similar with Android a few years ago and I haven't come across an app that takes advantage of it yet. Businesses want to offer apps so that they can collect more information on their customers, not because an app is the best solution to the problem at hand.

acdha 6y ago

Unless they refuse all other forms of payment, this keeps all of the many app problems from pushing into manual paths requiring human time to correct. Each stage of the process has people dropping off and calling for support or talking to an attendant.

atonse 6y ago

I actually LOVE this idea. And we develop an app for people to get personalized information from their local government (https://polkadotskysoftware.com https://polkadotskysoftware.com). What I love is that we actually get access to a whole swath of people that want quick information but don't want to install a whole app for it. In fact, we want to make our stuff available on any platform, because our goal is to get as many people to use our system as possible. When it comes to parking vendors, they get their money no matter what (either from a government contract or as a slice of parking fees, not from number of app installs), so it's in their best interest to INCREASE engagement. Our main problem is that our mobile app is written in React Native, so I'm not sure how this would fit in near-term. We are loathe to add too many native features because the whole workflow in React Native is already a bit brittle.

_bxg1 6y ago
OT, but your company looks really interesting. It's similar to a project idea I had recently but hadn't explored yet. A few questions: are you a nonprofit? And if not, who do you sell to? Do you sell to local governments to help them quickly bootstrap citizen involvement services? Do you develop solutions on an area-by-area basis or do you have a single product that tries to cover all of them?
- atonse 6y ago
  We're a for-profit that sells a SaaS product to (so far) state and local governments. Our stack is Elixir and Ember JS, running on AWS. We're currently involved in a lot of COVID related efforts in the eastern US (SMS delivery of test results, etc – we haven't had a chance to update our page, been too busy). Still a product but each customer has custom needs to integrate with their systems, which we do via APIs and custom data ingestion code. We do guide local governments in bootstrapping all the data on our platform but it's a multi-tenant system and everyone's on the same platform.
monocularvision 6y ago
Yeah, good luck making it under the 10mb limit with React Native.