8 ms·

This article is all over the place. The debate is over. The web won. You can see that by the way popular websites will try and force you to install their apps.

This article is all over the place. The debate is over. The web won. You can see that by the way popular websites will try and force you to install their apps. That’s because their web experience is perfectly competent to scratch the users itch. They are forced to artificially cripple their mobile web experience to drive app installs. There is a strong niche left to native. I’m thinking of things like creative tools. Photo editors, development environments, etc. you don’t typically do these things on mobile though. Another sign the web is winning: This niche is slowly shrinking as well. The big software companies are building web versions of the most popular products like photoshop, office etc.

Supermancho 4y ago
> The web won. I don't think so. Either way the statements are rife with soft terminology, but I'll use raw traffic as my metric for dominance in the functional space. https://www.perficient.com/insights/research-hub/mobile-vs-desktop-usage#:~:text=Desktops%20drove%2028.9%25%20of%20visits,versus%20desktop%20usage%20in%202020 https://www.perficient.com/insights/research-hub/mobile-vs-d.... The majority of traffic is mobile and apps still rule that platform due to both a superior experience and better interfaces. The trend is clear and ongoing, so I'm not sure why people think the web is still the king. The reasons websites ask you to install the app is because the phone makes that simple when using a phone browser, not because they are implying it will be a better experience for a desktop user. As you mentioned, content creation tools are almost exclusively PC and so the individuals who are creators (like anyone on this forum) are unconsciously biased toward PCs. I really hate trying to use my phone for anything, because of this bias. My wife and most of my family (excepting my dad) has the opposite experience.
- theK 4y ago
  If I’m reading this correctly this survey only focuses on web usage. They even go to the point where their no. 1 takeaway at the end is „design your mobile web site first“. So I guess the web really did win, even on mobile.
  - finiteseries 4y ago
    ~90% of the average site’s mobile traffic, as a rule, comes from in-app browsers. Mobile users, as a rule, rarely open an internet browser, they are redirected there. It’s become a glorified zen-mode type feature for articles or indie web stores at this point for a substantial part of the population, especially young people, at least on iOS. This is a huge reason why “Open this in our app!1!” is a thing as well. The alternative isn’t browsing a mobile site through Safari, it’s using whatever social media app led you there in the first place.
    - theK 4y ago
      So mobile OSes allow App authors to force a worse and more insecure browser model upon their users, sure. Those still are browsers using the web. The fact that they are wrapped in something doesn't invalidate the fact that the web is being used as intended.
    - spideymans 4y ago
      >This is a huge reason why “Open this in our app!1!” is a thing as well. The alternative isn’t browsing a mobile site through Safari, it’s using whatever social media app led you there in the first place. Yes. The popularity of Instagram and Pinterest for shopping is a direct reflection of how relatively hostile the web is from a UX perspective. I often find myself using Pinterest, rather than the web, to browse retailers, because it's typically a better experience. This is rather precarious situation for retailers to be in, imo, as it means that Pinterest/Instagram effectively become gatekeepers to their stores. From this perspective, it's no wonder why these stores keep begging users to install their apps. I'm sure Ikea would much rather me use the Ikea app than Pinterest. However, I don't think every store needs or should have an app. I wonder if it's possible to deploy boilerplate native app experiences, that don't require these retailers to have a whole native development team.
      - rchaud 4y ago
        > The popularity of Instagram and Pinterest for shopping is a direct reflection of how relatively hostile the web is from a UX perspective. You may be conflating two different things. IG and Pinterest are private firms with a financial interest in adding a big "SHOP" button to user-generated content. "The web" is not a monolith, so not all sites will be shopping-oriented. That means you may have to use a search engine if you want to find stuff to shop for. Pinterest can be one of those search engines.
- zhte415 4y ago
  I think it's simpler than that: An app icon on a user's screen is the equivalent of a desktop bookmark icon shortcut circa 1998, like 'browser toolbar helpers' would 'helpfully install' - things that would more often be seen as malware today. Notifications pushed to the user the equivalent of constant marketing from subscribed email lists. Constant ~~marketing~~ 'experience'. Pretty close to spam today; such email is depreciated to another tab even in places like GMail. In-app analytics tracking finger movements, clicks, click times, pretty close to what would have been considered spyware 2 decades ago. But there are nicer terms now. 'Download the app', 'Notifications/Engagement' and 'Help us improve your experience'. The user is led to believe they're more in control. I feel it's near peak, but I'm not calling it.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    I don't know that a desktop icon is really considered malware. People still have tons of desktop shortcuts if they use a PC, and don't select the option to not have it even when provided it.
    - rchaud 4y ago
      I'd say it's considered 'bloatware'....additional software (usually trialware) the OEM bundles with the PC to subsidize the cost. But considering that ostensibly legit trialware like Norton scare users with its threatening popups, it may as well be malware to some.
      - bobthepanda 4y ago
        Not all desktop software with icons is bloatware? It's been a while, but I remember Adobe software (e.g. Photoshop) doing desktop shortcuts by default, Steam & Epic Games-vended software doing desktop shortcuts by default, etc.
    - bitwize 4y ago
      Counterpoint: LOVE LETTER FOR YOU.txt.vbs
- nawgz 4y ago
  How do traffic numbers account for intentionally crippled web apps? I don’t really feel as if you understood or addressed the GP’s point. Consider Reddit mobile web vs app, the traffic numbers of course would show the app winning but this has nothing to do with the platforms...
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  How much app traffic by data volume is video and audio? There are some natural divisions I'd make generally to Web activity: - Document-oriented content: mostly-static text and images. This is the domain of the web browser. - Multimedia: audio and visual. Here I vastly prefer an application which can natively manage, organise, queue, and filter content. I do make heavy use of a podcasting app, and occasionally listen to Internet radio. I hear some people may use music or video streaming tools. - Commerce. Shopping really should be divorced from the browser for far too many reasons. - Applications. Truly interactive tools. Where the line between "Web" and "App" lies specifically I'm not entirely sure, but I can see much of what's presently provided through JS being made browser-native (wins for consistency and familiarity, probably a loss at feature development, though this may not be a bad thing), and classing "App" as "requires programming and persistent data store". How well that holds up / sells I can't really say, though I've been advocating this for very nearly a decade: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_browsing_a_lousy_bandaid_over_poor_browser/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_...
  - fauigerzigerk 4y ago
    >- Commerce. Shopping really should be divorced from the browser for far too many reasons. What are those reasons? It seems to me that browsers are perfect for shopping as shopping is essentially browsing a product catalog. It's all basically document oriented content, static text and images, some short videos. Sharing links is absolutely critical for shopping. Leaving product pages open for later is how many people research what they may want to buy. Product pages need to be indexed by search engines and be clickable by everyone, including on desktop. All data lives on the server. There's little interactivity and no content creation. Offline use is rather pointless because the product database is on the server. There's no useful background activity. Notifications from shopping apps are mostly spam. Access to low level device functionality is neither necessary nor desirable. There are far more shops than anyone wants apps. Desktop remains an important platform for shopping. So there needs to be a fully featured website anyway. >- Applications I think for applications it depends on where the data lives and whether desktop is an important platform. That's why essentially all business apps are web first unless their purpose is content creation and complex editing. The real limitation of web apps is local data. There's no way for a web browser to reliably store data locally. Even though it sometimes looks as if you could use various forms of local data in a browser, on closer look it always turns out to be fragile, unreliable and only really useful as a cache.
- randomtwiddler 4y ago
  > The majority of traffic is mobile and apps still rule that platform due to both a superior experience and better interfaces. There is no evidence of your second claim in the link. Only that mobile, as a platform, is more popular than desktop. Nothing about "native apps" being the preferred way to interact with the platform. This is an oft proffered point with no solid backing. Rather the opposite. Users rarely, if ever, install apps, but they go to websites.
  - Supermancho 4y ago
    You're subtly conflating "native app" vs "app" by using slightly different terminology. For the purposes of being exact, I'll assume you mean "app" - regardless if it's a hybrid with a webview or pure native apis. > Users rarely, if ever, install apps My local car wash now has an app and my wife promptly installed it, because of some vague rewards tracking. The vast majority of mobile usage is through apps. That's a fact. This is primarily because of the low bar to adoption (click a link from a QR code/click an icon) paired with the expectation that the experience will be better than a website. If the previous website experience was bad, it's almost an instant conversion (hence the prompts to "install the app" before the user might find the web UI too problematic). Mobile users prefer apps (and probably trust them more) than the browser, on a mobile platform. You can say it's baseless supposition, but that's ignoring the existing evidence that companies have done (and continue to do) over the last decade. Find any company or data that contradicts that and a lot of people would be interested to see it, because nobody has for almost a decade. I can't be sure why you think that someone would consider the web to have a better experience/UI, but it doesn't matter.
    - randomtwiddler 4y ago
      > You're subtly conflating "native app" vs "app" by using slightly different terminology. For the purposes of being exact, I'll assume you mean "app" - regardless if it's a hybrid with a webview or pure native apis. It's not a conflation, it's intentional because it is what the parent poster claimed. I agree that there is more to it. > My local car wash now has an app and my wife promptly installed it, because of some vague rewards tracking. Your wife's anecdote doesn't match industry trends https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/25/majority-of-u-s-consumers-still-download-zero-apps-per-month-says-comscore/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/25/majority-of-u-s-consumers-... I can also match with anecdotes of users intentionally avoiding the app in favor of the mobile site for linked in, Reddit, etc, despite the constant intentionally of crippling the mobile web experience simply because the app is so invasive. Can I have access to your contacts for no good reason? Btw, we also snoop your clipboard. Basically, I want to take over your phone so you can see a message... App store conversion rates are low. If you do get it installed many users only use it once. Most people just won't pay for apps, various reasons but the race to the bottom and feeding off user data and eyeballs has pretty much had a full cycle now. If you are a company trying to get off the ground with a software product these are tough trends to fight.
- mech422 4y ago
  Personally, I'm wondering if the 'mobile first' stuff will reverse in 10-20 years when Millennials and GenZ start having eye trouble. I despise trying to do anything on a cellphone screen. They're just too small. A 12" tablet is about the smallest I can comfortably use.
  - ihateolives 4y ago
    You need better glasses, not those supermarket ones but real ones. Get your eyes checked by optometrist.
lampshades 4y ago
Pretty sure companies force their app for monetization reasons and because they know it’s a better experience and want you to see that. I remember when Reddit started throwing the app in my face everyday until I eventually downloaded it. Now I always open for an app. Even for newspapers. The web experience on mobile blows.
- wiseowise 4y ago
  > and because they know it’s a better experience and want you to see that. Not for a platform like Reddit.
- spideymans 4y ago
  At some point the industry needs to have an honest discussion with itself about the state of the UX of the open web. I feel like we keep telling ourselves the mobile web is fine because we have PWAs and all these other native-like gizmos, but truth be told the UX pales in comparison to native apps.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    > but truth be told the UX pales in comparison to native apps. I mean, Apple has every opportunity to improve their webapp experience. There's a number of PWAs I use on Android that really do "disappear into the background" when using them full-screen, I bet the experience would be just as nice on iOS if Apple was faster at adopting PWA tech and cared about making Safari an enjoyable experience.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    I think there's a hard ceiling in terms of PWA UX quality that can't be shattered until browsers start bundling better UI building blocks. There's just too much that's too easy to screw up with the "bring your own everything" approach.
    - spideymans 4y ago
      I agree completely. Native iOS and Android apps are fantastic in that, as long as you're willing to follow Apple's/Google's guidelines, it's pretty easy to create great user experiences and highly maintainable software. Until the web can match that relative ease, it'll always be second-fiddle to native on mobile. The problem with the web right now is that the tooling is a complete mess compared to native development. It feels like you end up spending 80 to 120 percent of the effort you'd put in to build two native apps, and even then the web apps would never feel as good as native. My company strongly considered building web apps, as we move away from MVP to a more mature product, but the web tooling just isn't at the level it needs to be. The only value proposition for web was that it's easier to hire web devs.
api 4y ago
The web won in the space of casual interaction and SaaS interfaces. Native is still a lot better for "pro" tools of every kind.
- elforce002 4y ago
  Exactly my thoughts. Quick info: check website. Full interaction, etc... Go to app. No questions ask.
sneak 4y ago
The web did not win as evidenced by the fact that websites cannot deliver notifications to the most popular phone in the world, because its manufacturer wouldn’t then be able to take a 30% cut of sales as a result of those notifications. There are tons of things that are extremely popular and completely unavailable without an app companion. The majority of the most popular services cannot be used web-only.
- aparticulate 4y ago
  Why are more notifications inherently desirable? My lock screen is a disaster and I honestly don't have that many apps. I can recall in 2007 when even having third party apps was a debatable topic. Call me fogeyish but it's inarguable that this was not really the intention of iOS, rather, we have mitigated and papered over the problem due to insane app store popularity. Macs didn't have native notifications for decades. In other words, our priorities have drifted significantly and it may be time to holistically reevaluate this.
  - spideymans 4y ago
    There’s some recognition within apple that push notifications were a mistake (at least as they’re implemented today). iOS 15 introduced notification filters and notification summaries iOS 16 doesn’t even show notifications on the Lock Screen unless the user explicitly asks to view them (there’s just a small “view notifications” button at the bottom of the screen). Further, the Live Activities widgets will eliminate a lot of the notifications sent by apps like Uber. If the trend continues, iOS 17 will further hide notifications. Perhaps this is why Apple now feels comfortable with web push notifications.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      I've certainly enjoyed notifications being "delivered silently" by default paired with the morning/evening summaries more than I thought I would. Most of the time those notifications contain nothing of value and on the odd occasion they do, the summary surfaces those pretty well without me needing to scroll through it all myself.
oblak 4y ago
Indeed. Discord is guilty of this. You can't make calls on the mobile site because there's an app for that. Hit the "request desktop site" and boom, the button is not disabled for arbitrary reason.
- MaxBarraclough 4y ago
  Sometimes a mobile website will be deliberately stripped of a long-standing feature just to pressure users to install the native app. Years ago Facebook removed the instant-messaging feature from the mobile version of their website.
  - archagon 4y ago
    Pro tip: if you go to facebook.com and request the desktop site (on iOS, at least), you’ll still be looking at a mobile-proportioned site, but Messenger will suddenly work. In other words, the mobile Messenger site already exists and has worked fine for years.
    - easrng 4y ago
      On Android request desktop site also forces the viewport to be desktop-sized. iOS doesn't.
kllrnohj 4y ago
kybernetikos 4y ago
> Photo editors Have you tried photopea? It's surprisingly good.
jrkrk8jdjf 4y ago
YetAnotherNick 4y ago
This is so illogical. Our government forces people to not use violence. So using violence is better?
karussell 4y ago
> The web won. I wish that were true. We wrote a navigation application with GPS, turn-by-turn instructions, fullscreen-mode, always-on-screen and more. This is possible directly in the browser! (its open source) But the problem is that even if you pick Chrome as target you'll still have a lot of problems to solve. Can you disable the display to save battery for your long hiking tour and navigate just by voice? A native app can do that in the background, but I have not found a way to make this possible for a web app. And then there are many Web APIs (sensor API, always on screen), that are only implemented by Chrome. Or did you mean "Chrome won" :) ?
- easrng 4y ago
  Always on screen can be emulated using an invisible video. There are libraries for this, like https://richtr.github.io/NoSleep.js/ https://richtr.github.io/NoSleep.js/. Which sensors are you talking about? Accelerometer and GPS are standard.
deleted 4y ago
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winternett 4y ago
The problem I have with the app economy is that it constantly feels like trying to function in a highly dysfunctional place... Each app requires you to click through multiple things now instead of minimized actions to benefit their action-based tracking and to serve more ad pages... I constantly feel like I'm walking into rooms, but then walking back out just to see if anything has updated. It seems like most of these app making companies hire more human psychologists than developers now, as there is a constant stream of subtle suggestive marketing in everything apps do now. App updates are done far too often in the background for lord knows what reason as well, usually not for security reasons of course... I'm tired of trying new apps, I only install what I need, the flood of apps in app stores that are even deceptively titled prove to me that the major device and OS makers have none of my interests in mind. These apps needlessly have access to tracking and other features of my device they don't need, and device and OS makers do nothing to limit their reach or help my awareness of how much my privacy is being tapped. Even well known app makers are selling out to the creepy consumer voyeurism craze that is rampant in the app making industry now... It's literally stalking users in apps that people often trust, on devices that they pay for, it represents one of the most egregious security derelictions of duty by Congress and Device makers ever to let this fraud continue. Why would a calculator app need weekly updates, or to know your physical location, and have access to all device cameras and files every time it's used? Why would TikTok need permissions to access the same things in order to even function? The app stores and device makers are complicit is giving apps too much access to your data as well. This is also why Microsoft over-complicates, and now hides Task Manager further in Windows 11 by not making it accessible in the taskbar, and by not distinguishing official software and services from unofficial ones. The amount of background bandwidth used for tracking information isn't considered for devices that also get throttled when data caps are reached as well. God knows how much bandwidth is used by these apps to send our data back to HQ... Data lines which we also pay for are used to share our private information with these creepy corporate voyeurs as well. I rebel against all this overreach nonsense with black electrical tape over my front camera, by turning all notifications off, and by putting my phone in a Faraday sleeve when I'm not using it. Something's got to give, this is not what anyone is paying for when they buy a "smartphone". Maybe we should call them "SpyPhones" moving forward?
dredmorbius 4y ago
I'd argue that the Web has a natural advantage over apps in general, but that the obvious objective of firms is to push apps and to turn the thumbscrews on native Web users (mobile most especially), which means that "win" may well yet turn to defeat. I'm coming to detest both apps and Web increasingly (though apps are far worse). The negative incentives and dark patterns are not only ubiquitous but cause for major societal and national security concern.
elforce002 4y ago
Based on what? Mobile has much more engagement (which is what companies want) and that level of loyalty that web is missing.
mr_toad 4y ago
> development environments, Depends. If your code lives on the network (e.g. under source control), and is executed on the network (servers, VMs, containers) then there’s not much of a case of having a local development environment. Web based IDEs also make it easier to move between machines and not have to worry about ‘works on my machine’ problems.

Supermancho 4y ago

> The web won. I don't think so. Either way the statements are rife with soft terminology, but I'll use raw traffic as my metric for dominance in the functional space. https://www.perficient.com/insights/research-hub/mobile-vs-desktop-usage#:~:text=Desktops%20drove%2028.9%25%20of%20visits,versus%20desktop%20usage%20in%202020 https://www.perficient.com/insights/research-hub/mobile-vs-d.... The majority of traffic is mobile and apps still rule that platform due to both a superior experience and better interfaces. The trend is clear and ongoing, so I'm not sure why people think the web is still the king. The reasons websites ask you to install the app is because the phone makes that simple when using a phone browser, not because they are implying it will be a better experience for a desktop user. As you mentioned, content creation tools are almost exclusively PC and so the individuals who are creators (like anyone on this forum) are unconsciously biased toward PCs. I really hate trying to use my phone for anything, because of this bias. My wife and most of my family (excepting my dad) has the opposite experience.

theK 4y ago
If I’m reading this correctly this survey only focuses on web usage. They even go to the point where their no. 1 takeaway at the end is „design your mobile web site first“. So I guess the web really did win, even on mobile.
- finiteseries 4y ago
  ~90% of the average site’s mobile traffic, as a rule, comes from in-app browsers. Mobile users, as a rule, rarely open an internet browser, they are redirected there. It’s become a glorified zen-mode type feature for articles or indie web stores at this point for a substantial part of the population, especially young people, at least on iOS. This is a huge reason why “Open this in our app!1!” is a thing as well. The alternative isn’t browsing a mobile site through Safari, it’s using whatever social media app led you there in the first place.
  - theK 4y ago
    So mobile OSes allow App authors to force a worse and more insecure browser model upon their users, sure. Those still are browsers using the web. The fact that they are wrapped in something doesn't invalidate the fact that the web is being used as intended.
  - spideymans 4y ago
    >This is a huge reason why “Open this in our app!1!” is a thing as well. The alternative isn’t browsing a mobile site through Safari, it’s using whatever social media app led you there in the first place. Yes. The popularity of Instagram and Pinterest for shopping is a direct reflection of how relatively hostile the web is from a UX perspective. I often find myself using Pinterest, rather than the web, to browse retailers, because it's typically a better experience. This is rather precarious situation for retailers to be in, imo, as it means that Pinterest/Instagram effectively become gatekeepers to their stores. From this perspective, it's no wonder why these stores keep begging users to install their apps. I'm sure Ikea would much rather me use the Ikea app than Pinterest. However, I don't think every store needs or should have an app. I wonder if it's possible to deploy boilerplate native app experiences, that don't require these retailers to have a whole native development team.
    - rchaud 4y ago
      > The popularity of Instagram and Pinterest for shopping is a direct reflection of how relatively hostile the web is from a UX perspective. You may be conflating two different things. IG and Pinterest are private firms with a financial interest in adding a big "SHOP" button to user-generated content. "The web" is not a monolith, so not all sites will be shopping-oriented. That means you may have to use a search engine if you want to find stuff to shop for. Pinterest can be one of those search engines.
zhte415 4y ago
I think it's simpler than that: An app icon on a user's screen is the equivalent of a desktop bookmark icon shortcut circa 1998, like 'browser toolbar helpers' would 'helpfully install' - things that would more often be seen as malware today. Notifications pushed to the user the equivalent of constant marketing from subscribed email lists. Constant ~~marketing~~ 'experience'. Pretty close to spam today; such email is depreciated to another tab even in places like GMail. In-app analytics tracking finger movements, clicks, click times, pretty close to what would have been considered spyware 2 decades ago. But there are nicer terms now. 'Download the app', 'Notifications/Engagement' and 'Help us improve your experience'. The user is led to believe they're more in control. I feel it's near peak, but I'm not calling it.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  I don't know that a desktop icon is really considered malware. People still have tons of desktop shortcuts if they use a PC, and don't select the option to not have it even when provided it.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    I'd say it's considered 'bloatware'....additional software (usually trialware) the OEM bundles with the PC to subsidize the cost. But considering that ostensibly legit trialware like Norton scare users with its threatening popups, it may as well be malware to some.
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      Not all desktop software with icons is bloatware? It's been a while, but I remember Adobe software (e.g. Photoshop) doing desktop shortcuts by default, Steam & Epic Games-vended software doing desktop shortcuts by default, etc.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    Counterpoint: LOVE LETTER FOR YOU.txt.vbs
nawgz 4y ago
How do traffic numbers account for intentionally crippled web apps? I don’t really feel as if you understood or addressed the GP’s point. Consider Reddit mobile web vs app, the traffic numbers of course would show the app winning but this has nothing to do with the platforms...
dredmorbius 4y ago
How much app traffic by data volume is video and audio? There are some natural divisions I'd make generally to Web activity: - Document-oriented content: mostly-static text and images. This is the domain of the web browser. - Multimedia: audio and visual. Here I vastly prefer an application which can natively manage, organise, queue, and filter content. I do make heavy use of a podcasting app, and occasionally listen to Internet radio. I hear some people may use music or video streaming tools. - Commerce. Shopping really should be divorced from the browser for far too many reasons. - Applications. Truly interactive tools. Where the line between "Web" and "App" lies specifically I'm not entirely sure, but I can see much of what's presently provided through JS being made browser-native (wins for consistency and familiarity, probably a loss at feature development, though this may not be a bad thing), and classing "App" as "requires programming and persistent data store". How well that holds up / sells I can't really say, though I've been advocating this for very nearly a decade: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_browsing_a_lousy_bandaid_over_poor_browser/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_...
- fauigerzigerk 4y ago
  >- Commerce. Shopping really should be divorced from the browser for far too many reasons. What are those reasons? It seems to me that browsers are perfect for shopping as shopping is essentially browsing a product catalog. It's all basically document oriented content, static text and images, some short videos. Sharing links is absolutely critical for shopping. Leaving product pages open for later is how many people research what they may want to buy. Product pages need to be indexed by search engines and be clickable by everyone, including on desktop. All data lives on the server. There's little interactivity and no content creation. Offline use is rather pointless because the product database is on the server. There's no useful background activity. Notifications from shopping apps are mostly spam. Access to low level device functionality is neither necessary nor desirable. There are far more shops than anyone wants apps. Desktop remains an important platform for shopping. So there needs to be a fully featured website anyway. >- Applications I think for applications it depends on where the data lives and whether desktop is an important platform. That's why essentially all business apps are web first unless their purpose is content creation and complex editing. The real limitation of web apps is local data. There's no way for a web browser to reliably store data locally. Even though it sometimes looks as if you could use various forms of local data in a browser, on closer look it always turns out to be fragile, unreliable and only really useful as a cache.
randomtwiddler 4y ago
> The majority of traffic is mobile and apps still rule that platform due to both a superior experience and better interfaces. There is no evidence of your second claim in the link. Only that mobile, as a platform, is more popular than desktop. Nothing about "native apps" being the preferred way to interact with the platform. This is an oft proffered point with no solid backing. Rather the opposite. Users rarely, if ever, install apps, but they go to websites.
- Supermancho 4y ago
  You're subtly conflating "native app" vs "app" by using slightly different terminology. For the purposes of being exact, I'll assume you mean "app" - regardless if it's a hybrid with a webview or pure native apis. > Users rarely, if ever, install apps My local car wash now has an app and my wife promptly installed it, because of some vague rewards tracking. The vast majority of mobile usage is through apps. That's a fact. This is primarily because of the low bar to adoption (click a link from a QR code/click an icon) paired with the expectation that the experience will be better than a website. If the previous website experience was bad, it's almost an instant conversion (hence the prompts to "install the app" before the user might find the web UI too problematic). Mobile users prefer apps (and probably trust them more) than the browser, on a mobile platform. You can say it's baseless supposition, but that's ignoring the existing evidence that companies have done (and continue to do) over the last decade. Find any company or data that contradicts that and a lot of people would be interested to see it, because nobody has for almost a decade. I can't be sure why you think that someone would consider the web to have a better experience/UI, but it doesn't matter.
  - randomtwiddler 4y ago
    > You're subtly conflating "native app" vs "app" by using slightly different terminology. For the purposes of being exact, I'll assume you mean "app" - regardless if it's a hybrid with a webview or pure native apis. It's not a conflation, it's intentional because it is what the parent poster claimed. I agree that there is more to it. > My local car wash now has an app and my wife promptly installed it, because of some vague rewards tracking. Your wife's anecdote doesn't match industry trends https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/25/majority-of-u-s-consumers-still-download-zero-apps-per-month-says-comscore/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/25/majority-of-u-s-consumers-... I can also match with anecdotes of users intentionally avoiding the app in favor of the mobile site for linked in, Reddit, etc, despite the constant intentionally of crippling the mobile web experience simply because the app is so invasive. Can I have access to your contacts for no good reason? Btw, we also snoop your clipboard. Basically, I want to take over your phone so you can see a message... App store conversion rates are low. If you do get it installed many users only use it once. Most people just won't pay for apps, various reasons but the race to the bottom and feeding off user data and eyeballs has pretty much had a full cycle now. If you are a company trying to get off the ground with a software product these are tough trends to fight.
mech422 4y ago
Personally, I'm wondering if the 'mobile first' stuff will reverse in 10-20 years when Millennials and GenZ start having eye trouble. I despise trying to do anything on a cellphone screen. They're just too small. A 12" tablet is about the smallest I can comfortably use.
- ihateolives 4y ago
  You need better glasses, not those supermarket ones but real ones. Get your eyes checked by optometrist.

lampshades 4y ago

Pretty sure companies force their app for monetization reasons and because they know it’s a better experience and want you to see that. I remember when Reddit started throwing the app in my face everyday until I eventually downloaded it. Now I always open for an app. Even for newspapers. The web experience on mobile blows.

wiseowise 4y ago
> and because they know it’s a better experience and want you to see that. Not for a platform like Reddit.
spideymans 4y ago
At some point the industry needs to have an honest discussion with itself about the state of the UX of the open web. I feel like we keep telling ourselves the mobile web is fine because we have PWAs and all these other native-like gizmos, but truth be told the UX pales in comparison to native apps.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > but truth be told the UX pales in comparison to native apps. I mean, Apple has every opportunity to improve their webapp experience. There's a number of PWAs I use on Android that really do "disappear into the background" when using them full-screen, I bet the experience would be just as nice on iOS if Apple was faster at adopting PWA tech and cared about making Safari an enjoyable experience.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  I think there's a hard ceiling in terms of PWA UX quality that can't be shattered until browsers start bundling better UI building blocks. There's just too much that's too easy to screw up with the "bring your own everything" approach.
  - spideymans 4y ago
    I agree completely. Native iOS and Android apps are fantastic in that, as long as you're willing to follow Apple's/Google's guidelines, it's pretty easy to create great user experiences and highly maintainable software. Until the web can match that relative ease, it'll always be second-fiddle to native on mobile. The problem with the web right now is that the tooling is a complete mess compared to native development. It feels like you end up spending 80 to 120 percent of the effort you'd put in to build two native apps, and even then the web apps would never feel as good as native. My company strongly considered building web apps, as we move away from MVP to a more mature product, but the web tooling just isn't at the level it needs to be. The only value proposition for web was that it's easier to hire web devs.

api 4y ago

The web won in the space of casual interaction and SaaS interfaces. Native is still a lot better for "pro" tools of every kind.

elforce002 4y ago
Exactly my thoughts. Quick info: check website. Full interaction, etc... Go to app. No questions ask.

sneak 4y ago

The web did not win as evidenced by the fact that websites cannot deliver notifications to the most popular phone in the world, because its manufacturer wouldn’t then be able to take a 30% cut of sales as a result of those notifications. There are tons of things that are extremely popular and completely unavailable without an app companion. The majority of the most popular services cannot be used web-only.

aparticulate 4y ago
Why are more notifications inherently desirable? My lock screen is a disaster and I honestly don't have that many apps. I can recall in 2007 when even having third party apps was a debatable topic. Call me fogeyish but it's inarguable that this was not really the intention of iOS, rather, we have mitigated and papered over the problem due to insane app store popularity. Macs didn't have native notifications for decades. In other words, our priorities have drifted significantly and it may be time to holistically reevaluate this.
- spideymans 4y ago
  There’s some recognition within apple that push notifications were a mistake (at least as they’re implemented today). iOS 15 introduced notification filters and notification summaries iOS 16 doesn’t even show notifications on the Lock Screen unless the user explicitly asks to view them (there’s just a small “view notifications” button at the bottom of the screen). Further, the Live Activities widgets will eliminate a lot of the notifications sent by apps like Uber. If the trend continues, iOS 17 will further hide notifications. Perhaps this is why Apple now feels comfortable with web push notifications.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    I've certainly enjoyed notifications being "delivered silently" by default paired with the morning/evening summaries more than I thought I would. Most of the time those notifications contain nothing of value and on the odd occasion they do, the summary surfaces those pretty well without me needing to scroll through it all myself.

oblak 4y ago

Indeed. Discord is guilty of this. You can't make calls on the mobile site because there's an app for that. Hit the "request desktop site" and boom, the button is not disabled for arbitrary reason.

MaxBarraclough 4y ago
Sometimes a mobile website will be deliberately stripped of a long-standing feature just to pressure users to install the native app. Years ago Facebook removed the instant-messaging feature from the mobile version of their website.
- archagon 4y ago
  Pro tip: if you go to facebook.com and request the desktop site (on iOS, at least), you’ll still be looking at a mobile-proportioned site, but Messenger will suddenly work. In other words, the mobile Messenger site already exists and has worked fine for years.
  - easrng 4y ago
    On Android request desktop site also forces the viewport to be desktop-sized. iOS doesn't.

kllrnohj 4y ago

kybernetikos 4y ago

> Photo editors Have you tried photopea? It's surprisingly good.

jrkrk8jdjf 4y ago

YetAnotherNick 4y ago

This is so illogical. Our government forces people to not use violence. So using violence is better?

karussell 4y ago

> The web won. I wish that were true. We wrote a navigation application with GPS, turn-by-turn instructions, fullscreen-mode, always-on-screen and more. This is possible directly in the browser! (its open source) But the problem is that even if you pick Chrome as target you'll still have a lot of problems to solve. Can you disable the display to save battery for your long hiking tour and navigate just by voice? A native app can do that in the background, but I have not found a way to make this possible for a web app. And then there are many Web APIs (sensor API, always on screen), that are only implemented by Chrome. Or did you mean "Chrome won" :) ?

easrng 4y ago
Always on screen can be emulated using an invisible video. There are libraries for this, like https://richtr.github.io/NoSleep.js/ https://richtr.github.io/NoSleep.js/. Which sensors are you talking about? Accelerometer and GPS are standard.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

winternett 4y ago

The problem I have with the app economy is that it constantly feels like trying to function in a highly dysfunctional place... Each app requires you to click through multiple things now instead of minimized actions to benefit their action-based tracking and to serve more ad pages... I constantly feel like I'm walking into rooms, but then walking back out just to see if anything has updated. It seems like most of these app making companies hire more human psychologists than developers now, as there is a constant stream of subtle suggestive marketing in everything apps do now. App updates are done far too often in the background for lord knows what reason as well, usually not for security reasons of course... I'm tired of trying new apps, I only install what I need, the flood of apps in app stores that are even deceptively titled prove to me that the major device and OS makers have none of my interests in mind. These apps needlessly have access to tracking and other features of my device they don't need, and device and OS makers do nothing to limit their reach or help my awareness of how much my privacy is being tapped. Even well known app makers are selling out to the creepy consumer voyeurism craze that is rampant in the app making industry now... It's literally stalking users in apps that people often trust, on devices that they pay for, it represents one of the most egregious security derelictions of duty by Congress and Device makers ever to let this fraud continue. Why would a calculator app need weekly updates, or to know your physical location, and have access to all device cameras and files every time it's used? Why would TikTok need permissions to access the same things in order to even function? The app stores and device makers are complicit is giving apps too much access to your data as well. This is also why Microsoft over-complicates, and now hides Task Manager further in Windows 11 by not making it accessible in the taskbar, and by not distinguishing official software and services from unofficial ones. The amount of background bandwidth used for tracking information isn't considered for devices that also get throttled when data caps are reached as well. God knows how much bandwidth is used by these apps to send our data back to HQ... Data lines which we also pay for are used to share our private information with these creepy corporate voyeurs as well. I rebel against all this overreach nonsense with black electrical tape over my front camera, by turning all notifications off, and by putting my phone in a Faraday sleeve when I'm not using it. Something's got to give, this is not what anyone is paying for when they buy a "smartphone". Maybe we should call them "SpyPhones" moving forward?

dredmorbius 4y ago

I'd argue that the Web has a natural advantage over apps in general, but that the obvious objective of firms is to push apps and to turn the thumbscrews on native Web users (mobile most especially), which means that "win" may well yet turn to defeat. I'm coming to detest both apps and Web increasingly (though apps are far worse). The negative incentives and dark patterns are not only ubiquitous but cause for major societal and national security concern.

elforce002 4y ago

Based on what? Mobile has much more engagement (which is what companies want) and that level of loyalty that web is missing.

mr_toad 4y ago

> development environments, Depends. If your code lives on the network (e.g. under source control), and is executed on the network (servers, VMs, containers) then there’s not much of a case of having a local development environment. Web based IDEs also make it easier to move between machines and not have to worry about ‘works on my machine’ problems.