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> Notorious for tracking abilities A native app has every opportunity a webapp has to track you and much more. > data storage tied to the browser So? Browser

> Notorious for tracking abilities A native app has every opportunity a webapp has to track you and much more. > data storage tied to the browser So? Browsers make it as easy to clear the storage of a webapp as it is to clear the storage of a native app. If you are talking about PC apps it is even easier to clear webapps' storage than native apps. If you mean it is bad because the stored data can disappear from the users device, that is what the localstorage API is for. Browsers will only delete that data if the user tells them to. This isn't any different from native apps having to deal with users deleting their files. > Performance lower While I have to admit that for raw computation webapps are slower than native, most apps don't need that much raw computational power and WASM should bridge the gap to native performance for apps that do need it. If your webapp is slow it is by far more likely you did a poor job programming it, not that you are limited by web performance. > capabilities limited to browser api Browser APIs are expanding all the time (except on iOS Safari but Apple has a vested interest in crippling webapps). And again, most apps don't need deep access to a system and the few that do shouldn't be webapps anyway. > data consumption unpredictable This has absolutely nothing to do with if an app is a webapp or native. Native apps can suck down data like crazy while webapps can use almost none and vice versa. > identification tied to web technologies Not really? Name one form of widely used identification that webapps don't support. You can use emails, usernames, 2FA, security fobs. edit: remove snark at the end, it didn't add anything.

mrtksn 6y ago
> A native app has every opportunity a webapp has to track you and much more. Nope, an iOS app can’t leave a cookie that other apps can use to identify me. Clearing storage is not the issue, making sure that the storage is not accidentally cleaned is. The data consumption of an app is predictable because the download size would be listed in the appstore. On a website, it could be anything and the only way to find out is to load it. You can check out the data usage after install in iOS but there’s no easy way to do it for websites.
- CDSlice 6y ago
  > Nope, an iOS app can’t leave a cookie that other apps can use to identify me. Maybe not directly, but by using something like the Facebook SDK the same effect can be achieved by shipping your advertising identifier off to Facebook who then does the tracking server side using events generated by the Facebook SDK. This is in tons of apps and you have no way of knowing it as an end user without reading the privacy policy or reverse engineering the app. > Clearing storage is not the issue, making sure that the storage is not accidentally cleaned is. This is just as much of an issue on native apps as it is with webapps, browsers wont clear local storage for a website unless the user requests it just like how a native apps storage won't be cleared unless a user requests it. > The data consumption of an app is predictable because the download size would be listed in the appstore. On a website, it could be anything and the only way to find out is to load it. You can check out the data usage after install in iOS but there’s no easy way to do it for websites. Just because the App Store download size is predictable doesn't mean the final download size is, lots of apps download a bunch of extra assets on first launch or even regularly as you are using them. I also couldn't find a way to check data usage of apps or websites on WiFi on my iPad so that isn't really a point either way.
  - dylz 6y ago
    A number of apps like the Chick-fil-A one explicitly advertise these as features: > - Advanced Persistent Device Identification: Identifies individual mobile devices for both iOS and Android platforms, even if they have been reset or if the application has been reinstalled. > - verifies the integrity of the application in which it is embedded to ensure it has not been modified or infected. It also analyzes all other apps installed on the device, and reports their reputation and the presence of any malicious code.
    - mcintyre1994 6y ago
      > It also analyzes all other apps installed on the device, and reports their reputation and the presence of any malicious code. There is no iOS API that allows them to do this. Apple removed it years ago: https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/06/24/apple-expanding-user-privacy-will-prevent-ios-apps-from-seeing-other-installed-apps https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/06/24/apple-expanding-u...

mrtksn 6y ago

> A native app has every opportunity a webapp has to track you and much more. Nope, an iOS app can’t leave a cookie that other apps can use to identify me. Clearing storage is not the issue, making sure that the storage is not accidentally cleaned is. The data consumption of an app is predictable because the download size would be listed in the appstore. On a website, it could be anything and the only way to find out is to load it. You can check out the data usage after install in iOS but there’s no easy way to do it for websites.

CDSlice 6y ago
> Nope, an iOS app can’t leave a cookie that other apps can use to identify me. Maybe not directly, but by using something like the Facebook SDK the same effect can be achieved by shipping your advertising identifier off to Facebook who then does the tracking server side using events generated by the Facebook SDK. This is in tons of apps and you have no way of knowing it as an end user without reading the privacy policy or reverse engineering the app. > Clearing storage is not the issue, making sure that the storage is not accidentally cleaned is. This is just as much of an issue on native apps as it is with webapps, browsers wont clear local storage for a website unless the user requests it just like how a native apps storage won't be cleared unless a user requests it. > The data consumption of an app is predictable because the download size would be listed in the appstore. On a website, it could be anything and the only way to find out is to load it. You can check out the data usage after install in iOS but there’s no easy way to do it for websites. Just because the App Store download size is predictable doesn't mean the final download size is, lots of apps download a bunch of extra assets on first launch or even regularly as you are using them. I also couldn't find a way to check data usage of apps or websites on WiFi on my iPad so that isn't really a point either way.
- dylz 6y ago
  A number of apps like the Chick-fil-A one explicitly advertise these as features: > - Advanced Persistent Device Identification: Identifies individual mobile devices for both iOS and Android platforms, even if they have been reset or if the application has been reinstalled. > - verifies the integrity of the application in which it is embedded to ensure it has not been modified or infected. It also analyzes all other apps installed on the device, and reports their reputation and the presence of any malicious code.
  - mcintyre1994 6y ago
    > It also analyzes all other apps installed on the device, and reports their reputation and the presence of any malicious code. There is no iOS API that allows them to do this. Apple removed it years ago: https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/06/24/apple-expanding-user-privacy-will-prevent-ios-apps-from-seeing-other-installed-apps https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/06/24/apple-expanding-u...