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It makes zero business sense for small-medium companies to make separate android and IOS apps. That's man hours that will be spent on a specific platform and it

It makes zero business sense for small-medium companies to make separate android and IOS apps. That's man hours that will be spent on a specific platform and its app store, instead of on improving the core product. PWAs are here to stay.

tarsinge 5y ago
It absolutely make sense to make a state of the art app on a platform if it's key to the business. Also resources is not the problem, even big companies (like banks) make low cost web apps instead of native ones if they can. I don't see why Apple should facilitate compromised user experiences instead of setting the bar higher.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  Also a PWA can’t compete in quality with a proper native app, should a competitor ever build one you’re toast. The question just revolves around how integral an app is to the business. Online banking probably requires an app. A restaurant that offers online ordering probably does not. A video game requires an app. An online encyclopedia does not.
  - candiddevmike 5y ago
    I think this is wild conjecture. Users don't care as much as you think about "native performance", they care about features and price. PWAs can be iterated faster than native apps, and they circumvent the app store tax. They also let the business control the onboarding and sales funnel vs text only app storefronts filled with garbage.
    - tinus_hn 5y ago
      Native performance is a feature in itself and is not about speed but about UI standards and features. If your statement was true, there wouldn’t have to be any complaints about Apples ‘walled garden’ because there is no ‘walled garden’ for PWAs.
      - candiddevmike 5y ago
        Apple effectively doesn't allow PWAs on iOS, so I don't follow your last point.
        tinus_hn 5y ago
        How does it not allow progressive web apps? Or do you mean apps that are nothing more than shells around a website?
        whynaut 5y ago
        I don’t follow this at all. How are PWAs “not allowed”?
    - agloeregrets 5y ago
      Users care about 'Native experience' when they actually want to use the app. There's good reason why companies like Starbucks or IG or your Email app are not PWAs. The word users tend to have for non-native apps isn't about performance or such, it's about UX. That word is 'shit'. Nearly every single PWA developer thinks about how brilliant it is that they can write for two platforms at once but forgets that it means that you ALSO have to do every single last bit of legwork that Apple and Google did for you to give a good, correct-feeling UX on mobile and that the more you do the more you pay that performance cost and build yourself a tech debt prison. And don't get me started on the nightmare that is Ionic and Angular. PWAs absolutely have their place: Apps that you might want to use...sometimes.. with notifications. That's it. Nothing more makes any sense.
      - Jcowell 5y ago
        Note IG does have a PWA but it’s ass since the native app is better and support more features than the web client.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    This is so wrong it hurts. I know businesses that had to decide between making a mobile PWA style website or a native app for their customers to use... and the customers all wanted the website. No sitting around waiting to download and install updates. No corporate phone-wiping security policies. All the features that mattered, even if Safari didn't look quite as nice and missed one or two. PWA vs native app doesn't matter at all to the competition, they are gonna be there regardless (esp. B2B scenarios). Whether a website or app works better for B2C is really highly market dependent.
    - tinus_hn 5y ago
      I’d be interested to see how the customers made an informed choice between a non existent native app and a PWA app. Probably they made the choice after listening to an opinionated story about ‘sitting around waiting for updates’. Which nobody does, of course, because if you mind that you just turn on automatic background updates. At least in this story Safari is good enough to have the features that matter. The world is safe.
      - zdragnar 5y ago
        As for an informed choice, the company (and their clients) that I am thinking of is in a crowded market. Not having to make employees download a new app ended up being a surprisingly (to us) compelling selling point. As for safari, we supported IE11, chrome, Firefox, mobile / android chrome, desktop and mobile safari. Safari easily added about 10% to our development budget, and safari users got a downgraded experience in certain cases. Not ideal, but close enough for me to not feel bad calling it the "new IE" (and yeah, I remember developing sites for IE 5.5 and 6). Edit: speaking of auto updates, I have it turned on myself, and just yesterday had to wait around to update my mobile bank app to virtually deposit a check- log in, get kicked out to update, wait to download and install, then log in again before I could proceed. Not sure why, but auto update isn't a cure-all.
        tinus_hn 5y ago
        Here’s the magic part: if you are the developer, you get to decide if the backend works with only the newest version or also some earlier ones. And if you just do nothing, the user will be just as logged in in the new version. So, unless they are really unlucky, they’ll never have to wait for an update.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  But from your own example, why on earth would you need a "state of the art app" for something like banking? You're displaying transactions, maybe getting push notifications about transactions, etc. Even the feature that you may argue requires a native app, mobile deposit where you take a picture of a check, can definitely be done with a browser. Stripe's new identity service where you take a picture of an ID does on-device, real-time image analysis and it works beautifully and simply, no app needed.
  - Jcowell 5y ago
    I would hate it if I had to unlock safari every-time with my face instead of having a single bank app that’s locked via Face ID. I also want the Bank app to only know of it’s self in it’s little sandbox instead of knowing what I’m browsing through cookies and other web fingerprinting methods. Bank apps should absolutely be apps and not web apps.
- etripe 5y ago
  It's also worth mentioning that Apple is a hardware company and that you need a Mac to even compile native apps for their platform.
agloeregrets 5y ago
Except 0% of customers understand how PWAs work on mobile devices, 10% of webdevs understand how to make actually performant Apps, and 100% of execs think that using a PWA means their desktop site should be their mobile app (without realizing that, often times, your mobile UX likely has a vastly different context.)
- naravara 5y ago
  > using a PWA means their desktop site should be their mobile app There's tons of mobile apps that never needed to be anything other than desktop sites honestly. Facebook, actually, is a perfect example.
  - agloeregrets 5y ago
    I would argue that FB is actually a mobile app with a desktop site available as a checkbox that was reduced to being just a copy of the app in React. It didn't really explode until after the iPhone and like 85% of their users are on mobile Apps. That said, an app for learning as an example should actually have a very different mobile experience as a user wont want hour-long study sessions on the subway (or in line at a subway restaurant.)
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  0% of people know how to visit a website? :) I should have specified B2B in my original comment though, B2C I have no experience in.
pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
It makes zero sense for most small-to-medium companies to make any kind of end user-facing app, period (whether native or a webapp). Most small businesses' needs don't call for a content pipeline substantially more complicated than a word processor, with some of them needing to be able to handle a simple form every now and then. Even in the case of online sales, does every business in the world really need a bespoke storefront? How about people publish their catalog, and then, like, 3 or 4 interoperable "shopper" apps (with preferably at least one developed in the open) can emerge to do the heavy lifting? The way it works now, where Amazon and O'Reilly and AutoZone all have to hire for developers mirrors the ridiculousness of the streaming media platforms, where just because Amazon or Disney+ or whoever has the content and Netflix doesn't, people act as if it makes complete sense that we should have to enter their dumb app and use that provider's shitty title browser and video player, instead of the user picking the app that works the way they want and using it to play from whichever catalog has the content they need.

tarsinge 5y ago

It absolutely make sense to make a state of the art app on a platform if it's key to the business. Also resources is not the problem, even big companies (like banks) make low cost web apps instead of native ones if they can. I don't see why Apple should facilitate compromised user experiences instead of setting the bar higher.

tinus_hn 5y ago
Also a PWA can’t compete in quality with a proper native app, should a competitor ever build one you’re toast. The question just revolves around how integral an app is to the business. Online banking probably requires an app. A restaurant that offers online ordering probably does not. A video game requires an app. An online encyclopedia does not.
- candiddevmike 5y ago
  I think this is wild conjecture. Users don't care as much as you think about "native performance", they care about features and price. PWAs can be iterated faster than native apps, and they circumvent the app store tax. They also let the business control the onboarding and sales funnel vs text only app storefronts filled with garbage.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    Native performance is a feature in itself and is not about speed but about UI standards and features. If your statement was true, there wouldn’t have to be any complaints about Apples ‘walled garden’ because there is no ‘walled garden’ for PWAs.
    - candiddevmike 5y ago
      Apple effectively doesn't allow PWAs on iOS, so I don't follow your last point.
      - tinus_hn 5y ago
        How does it not allow progressive web apps? Or do you mean apps that are nothing more than shells around a website?
      - whynaut 5y ago
        I don’t follow this at all. How are PWAs “not allowed”?
  - agloeregrets 5y ago
    Users care about 'Native experience' when they actually want to use the app. There's good reason why companies like Starbucks or IG or your Email app are not PWAs. The word users tend to have for non-native apps isn't about performance or such, it's about UX. That word is 'shit'. Nearly every single PWA developer thinks about how brilliant it is that they can write for two platforms at once but forgets that it means that you ALSO have to do every single last bit of legwork that Apple and Google did for you to give a good, correct-feeling UX on mobile and that the more you do the more you pay that performance cost and build yourself a tech debt prison. And don't get me started on the nightmare that is Ionic and Angular. PWAs absolutely have their place: Apps that you might want to use...sometimes.. with notifications. That's it. Nothing more makes any sense.
    - Jcowell 5y ago
      Note IG does have a PWA but it’s ass since the native app is better and support more features than the web client.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  This is so wrong it hurts. I know businesses that had to decide between making a mobile PWA style website or a native app for their customers to use... and the customers all wanted the website. No sitting around waiting to download and install updates. No corporate phone-wiping security policies. All the features that mattered, even if Safari didn't look quite as nice and missed one or two. PWA vs native app doesn't matter at all to the competition, they are gonna be there regardless (esp. B2B scenarios). Whether a website or app works better for B2C is really highly market dependent.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    I’d be interested to see how the customers made an informed choice between a non existent native app and a PWA app. Probably they made the choice after listening to an opinionated story about ‘sitting around waiting for updates’. Which nobody does, of course, because if you mind that you just turn on automatic background updates. At least in this story Safari is good enough to have the features that matter. The world is safe.
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      As for an informed choice, the company (and their clients) that I am thinking of is in a crowded market. Not having to make employees download a new app ended up being a surprisingly (to us) compelling selling point. As for safari, we supported IE11, chrome, Firefox, mobile / android chrome, desktop and mobile safari. Safari easily added about 10% to our development budget, and safari users got a downgraded experience in certain cases. Not ideal, but close enough for me to not feel bad calling it the "new IE" (and yeah, I remember developing sites for IE 5.5 and 6). Edit: speaking of auto updates, I have it turned on myself, and just yesterday had to wait around to update my mobile bank app to virtually deposit a check- log in, get kicked out to update, wait to download and install, then log in again before I could proceed. Not sure why, but auto update isn't a cure-all.
      - tinus_hn 5y ago
        Here’s the magic part: if you are the developer, you get to decide if the backend works with only the newest version or also some earlier ones. And if you just do nothing, the user will be just as logged in in the new version. So, unless they are really unlucky, they’ll never have to wait for an update.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
But from your own example, why on earth would you need a "state of the art app" for something like banking? You're displaying transactions, maybe getting push notifications about transactions, etc. Even the feature that you may argue requires a native app, mobile deposit where you take a picture of a check, can definitely be done with a browser. Stripe's new identity service where you take a picture of an ID does on-device, real-time image analysis and it works beautifully and simply, no app needed.
- Jcowell 5y ago
  I would hate it if I had to unlock safari every-time with my face instead of having a single bank app that’s locked via Face ID. I also want the Bank app to only know of it’s self in it’s little sandbox instead of knowing what I’m browsing through cookies and other web fingerprinting methods. Bank apps should absolutely be apps and not web apps.
etripe 5y ago
It's also worth mentioning that Apple is a hardware company and that you need a Mac to even compile native apps for their platform.

agloeregrets 5y ago

Except 0% of customers understand how PWAs work on mobile devices, 10% of webdevs understand how to make actually performant Apps, and 100% of execs think that using a PWA means their desktop site should be their mobile app (without realizing that, often times, your mobile UX likely has a vastly different context.)

naravara 5y ago
> using a PWA means their desktop site should be their mobile app There's tons of mobile apps that never needed to be anything other than desktop sites honestly. Facebook, actually, is a perfect example.
- agloeregrets 5y ago
  I would argue that FB is actually a mobile app with a desktop site available as a checkbox that was reduced to being just a copy of the app in React. It didn't really explode until after the iPhone and like 85% of their users are on mobile Apps. That said, an app for learning as an example should actually have a very different mobile experience as a user wont want hour-long study sessions on the subway (or in line at a subway restaurant.)
LAC-Tech 5y ago
0% of people know how to visit a website? :) I should have specified B2B in my original comment though, B2C I have no experience in.

pwdisswordfish8 5y ago

It makes zero sense for most small-to-medium companies to make any kind of end user-facing app, period (whether native or a webapp). Most small businesses' needs don't call for a content pipeline substantially more complicated than a word processor, with some of them needing to be able to handle a simple form every now and then. Even in the case of online sales, does every business in the world really need a bespoke storefront? How about people publish their catalog, and then, like, 3 or 4 interoperable "shopper" apps (with preferably at least one developed in the open) can emerge to do the heavy lifting? The way it works now, where Amazon and O'Reilly and AutoZone all have to hire for developers mirrors the ridiculousness of the streaming media platforms, where just because Amazon or Disney+ or whoever has the content and Netflix doesn't, people act as if it makes complete sense that we should have to enter their dumb app and use that provider's shitty title browser and video player, instead of the user picking the app that works the way they want and using it to play from whichever catalog has the content they need.