5 ms·

Can you name one, that the group would know, that wouldn't be improved by a convergent phone or tablet offering?

by tata71 5y ago

acdha 5y ago
When was the last time you used an application from a gallery, archive, museum or library? How many people use https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wikipedia/id324715238 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wikipedia/id324715238 instead of visiting wikipedia.org? I'm not naming names but this came up a number of times at meetings I was involved with in the GLAM community where people mentioned having spent considerable amounts of money on apps, even winning design awards or getting featured in the Apple AppStore, and then seeing that their daily active users never came within 4 orders of magnitude of their web traffic. What they generally had in common is that they're content-heavy (i.e. solidly in what the web was designed for), might not require authentication, and most importantly aren't something most of the users wanted to use all of the time. If you are trying to get the hours for a tourist destination or even a restaurant, look at public information, etc. the time needed to login to the app store, authenticate to approve the purchase, wait for a large file to download, open the app and complete any mandatory enrollment, wait for it to retrieve content, etc. was often orders of magnitude slower than using the website. Restaurants and bars are a great example of this: if it's your hangout and they have something like integrated ordering, maybe a trivia night or something like that, the app can be useful. For most people, however, a webpage with the contact info and a menu with Apple/Google/Stripe buttons to pay is going to be better than an app they use a couple of times a year. The other key thing to understand is that this is a question of priorities and budgets. It wasn't that there is no possibility of doing anything useful for these organizations in a mobile app but rather than the cost wasn't worthwhile for the incremental benefit to the users, especially when you considered the opportunity cost of not spending that much money on something else, especially since most of the cool things you could do in an app could also be done on the web with very similar quality but with the difference that you only had to build one version rather than 2+ and the web version required much less ongoing maintenance.
- tata71 5y ago
  Yes, I think we're in agreement: fuck apps, use webapps. Progressive web apps with proper manifests so that I can put them onto my home screen.
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
Hn would be worse as an app, but more notably Twitter, and reddit would be better as pure web pages if they didn't purposely cripple them to funnel people into the app.
- scns 5y ago
  Well, i usually read HN on my mobile with Materialistic. It is one of the apps i use the most often.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    Same, it works offline, loads faster with bad mobile connection, better gestures & UX overall.
  - mikeyjk 5y ago
    There's no way to be notified of comment replies, or see votes, though. But otherwise I love it as well.
    - codazoda 5y ago
      Dumb question time… How do you get notifications on comment replies? I thought this missing feature was “by design” to limit bickering. Edit: I won’t (eventually) see your reply because I just hit the comment depth limit. Reach out by email if you want to answer. :P
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - acdha 5y ago
        There's a handy site if you see this: https://hnreplies.com/ https://hnreplies.com/
      - aspenmayer 5y ago
        There is no comment depth limit per se; to continue replying, you must click the timestamp of the comment you wish to reply to.
bccdee 5y ago
I for one will never download an app when I can just use the mobile website instead. That's what modern websites are — they're single-use disposable applications. Why would I throw that away for a native app that eats up disk space and has much greater access to my device?
- dotancohen 5y ago
  > Why would I throw that away for a native app that ... has much greater access to my device? You wouldn't, because you understand. But for every one of you there are 99 other who will install such a app if it is pushed to them. Apps are almost like bookmarks now. Bookmarks with access to your location, contacts, and camera.
  - selcuka 5y ago
    > Bookmarks with access to your location, contacts, and camera. Also bookmarks that usually point to an obsolete and/or inferior version of the web site.
brailsafe 5y ago
In the same way a mobile-first website can be done poorly—or non-existent—so too can a native app not add any value.

Can you name one, that the group would know, that wouldn't be improved by a convergent phone or tablet offering?

by tata71 5y ago

Can you name one, that the group would know, that wouldn't be improved by a convergent phone or tablet offering?

When was the last time you used an application from a gallery, archive, museum or library? How many people use https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wikipedia/id324715238 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wikipedia/id324715238 instead of visiting wikipedia.org? I'm not naming names but this came up a number of times at meetings I was involved with in the GLAM community where people mentioned having spent considerable amounts of money on apps, even winning design awards or getting featured in the Apple AppStore, and then seeing that their daily active users never came within 4 orders of magnitude of their web traffic. What they generally had in common is that they're content-heavy (i.e. solidly in what the web was designed for), might not require authentication, and most importantly aren't something most of the users wanted to use all of the time. If you are trying to get the hours for a tourist destination or even a restaurant, look at public information, etc. the time needed to login to the app store, authenticate to approve the purchase, wait for a large file to download, open the app and complete any mandatory enrollment, wait for it to retrieve content, etc. was often orders of magnitude slower than using the website. Restaurants and bars are a great example of this: if it's your hangout and they have something like integrated ordering, maybe a trivia night or something like that, the app can be useful. For most people, however, a webpage with the contact info and a menu with Apple/Google/Stripe buttons to pay is going to be better than an app they use a couple of times a year. The other key thing to understand is that this is a question of priorities and budgets. It wasn't that there is no possibility of doing anything useful for these organizations in a mobile app but rather than the cost wasn't worthwhile for the incremental benefit to the users, especially when you considered the opportunity cost of not spending that much money on something else, especially since most of the cool things you could do in an app could also be done on the web with very similar quality but with the difference that you only had to build one version rather than 2+ and the web version required much less ongoing maintenance.

tata71 5y ago
Yes, I think we're in agreement: fuck apps, use webapps. Progressive web apps with proper manifests so that I can put them onto my home screen.

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

Hn would be worse as an app, but more notably Twitter, and reddit would be better as pure web pages if they didn't purposely cripple them to funnel people into the app.

scns 5y ago
Well, i usually read HN on my mobile with Materialistic. It is one of the apps i use the most often.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  Same, it works offline, loads faster with bad mobile connection, better gestures & UX overall.
- mikeyjk 5y ago
  There's no way to be notified of comment replies, or see votes, though. But otherwise I love it as well.
  - codazoda 5y ago
    Dumb question time… How do you get notifications on comment replies? I thought this missing feature was “by design” to limit bickering. Edit: I won’t (eventually) see your reply because I just hit the comment depth limit. Reach out by email if you want to answer. :P
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - acdha 5y ago
      There's a handy site if you see this: https://hnreplies.com/ https://hnreplies.com/
    - aspenmayer 5y ago
      There is no comment depth limit per se; to continue replying, you must click the timestamp of the comment you wish to reply to.

bccdee 5y ago

I for one will never download an app when I can just use the mobile website instead. That's what modern websites are — they're single-use disposable applications. Why would I throw that away for a native app that eats up disk space and has much greater access to my device?

dotancohen 5y ago
> Why would I throw that away for a native app that ... has much greater access to my device? You wouldn't, because you understand. But for every one of you there are 99 other who will install such a app if it is pushed to them. Apps are almost like bookmarks now. Bookmarks with access to your location, contacts, and camera.
- selcuka 5y ago
  > Bookmarks with access to your location, contacts, and camera. Also bookmarks that usually point to an obsolete and/or inferior version of the web site.

brailsafe 5y ago

In the same way a mobile-first website can be done poorly—or non-existent—so too can a native app not add any value.