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We’ve been hearing about web being the future of mobile apps for at least 15 years now. Yet alas, mobile users still spend the vast majority of their time in na

We’ve been hearing about web being the future of mobile apps for at least 15 years now. Yet alas, mobile users still spend the vast majority of their time in native apps. What’s going wrong here? I feel like we’re spinning our tires in the mud.

birdyrooster 4y ago
Just wait until the year of the Linux desktop, no one will even think of using the web on their phones.
kllrnohj 4y ago
Well, a kinda big thing is the web still hasn't gotten any faster. DOM manipulation is still miserably slow. You can try to rebuild the stack on top of canvas, but that has a huge amount of issues as well. WebWorkers still have insane overhead, severely limiting their usefulness. The end result is web apps on mobile still have that pervasive chug to them. You still get laggy text input when a page is first loading. You still get chunky animations. All the problems of 15 years ago still exist in the completely identical way.
depressedpanda 4y ago
> Yet alas, mobile users still spend the vast majority of their time in native apps. What’s going wrong here? Easy: - Apple only allows one browser -- their own -- on iOS - Apple uses this control to cripple PWAs on iOS - Apple's iPhone market share is significant enough that if Safari/iOS doesn't support something, businesses won't spend time on using it E.g.: chat/communication apps cannot be written as PWAs, since Safari on iOS still doesn't support notifications.
- pixel_tracing 4y ago
  Apple does not only allow one browser you can download Chrome or Firebox from the App Store
  - depressedpanda 4y ago
    No. What you're downloading is a different skin for Safari. Apple does not allow any other browser engine than WebKit.
- spideymans 4y ago
  This doesn't explain why PWAs are still a rarity on Android though. You'd think that the ability to target both desktop (web) and Android (web/PWA) would've attracted more developer interest. I can't really comment on other companies, but my company is currently moving our product from MVP to a more mature project. When comparing various options (PWAs/web, Flutter, React, Native), PWAs/web was immediately discarded as an option because we didn't believe we could deliver the level of UX excellence we're targeting. Nor did we believe that PWAs would be any easier to develop and maintain than two native apps. Perhaps the strongest argument in favour of the web is that it's a lot easier to hire web devs than iOS and Android developers. But that's all moot if the web can't deliver the product experience we're targeting. We're still considering React, but I feel like we're inevitability going to end up building a full native experience. Generally speaking, I feel that PWAs and the web have a long way to go in terms of tooling, performance and UX excellence, before companies in our position will be comfortable adopting it. At least with iOS, it's really easy to create fantastic user experiences and maintainable software as long as you're willing to follow Apple's guidelines. It's a lot more difficult to achieve the same on the web.
  - depressedpanda 4y ago
    > When comparing various options (PWAs/web, Flutter, React, Native), PWAs/web was immediately discarded as an option because we didn't believe we could deliver the level of UX excellence we're targeting. Nor did we believe that PWAs would be any easier to develop and maintain than two native apps. Interesting. What did you find lacking regarding UX for PWAs? To me it's often glaringly obvious how many native apps are written for iOS first, then ported to Android. In these apps I think the UX is much worse than if they had just given me a decent web app to interact with. Regarding why a PWA would be easier to maintain than two native apps, you mention it yourself in the next paragraph: it's much easier to find a decent web dev. Their knowledge also directly translates to being able to build/maintain marketing and store websites for you. Other benefits I've noticed is that with a web app - there's no 3rd party gatekeeper between you and your end users. - The app updates itself when used, meaning users will almost always be running the latest version of your app - There's no app store review for you to wait on before being able to publish bug fixes or new features - You can sell stuff inside your app without a gatekeeper taking a 30% cut - Speed of development: as only two web devs responsible for web app, marketing website, and product checkout we could still keep the web app in sync with the mobile iOS and Android apps produced by a team of three devs. In what ways do you think the tooling is lacking? I think the tooling and flexibility is actually quite good :-) I've often amazed people by setting up an ngrok tunnel, giving them a live preview of whatever feature I'm working on at the moment. While this can mostly be dismissed as just a cool thing you can do, it was invaluable when the UX-designer and I worked on a feature during lockdown. All that said, I don't know what kind of app you're building, and there are of course types of apps that are best done natively. In my opinion, however, they are very few: 9 out 10 apps on my phone would work just as well being PWAs.

birdyrooster 4y ago

Just wait until the year of the Linux desktop, no one will even think of using the web on their phones.

kllrnohj 4y ago

Well, a kinda big thing is the web still hasn't gotten any faster. DOM manipulation is still miserably slow. You can try to rebuild the stack on top of canvas, but that has a huge amount of issues as well. WebWorkers still have insane overhead, severely limiting their usefulness. The end result is web apps on mobile still have that pervasive chug to them. You still get laggy text input when a page is first loading. You still get chunky animations. All the problems of 15 years ago still exist in the completely identical way.

depressedpanda 4y ago

> Yet alas, mobile users still spend the vast majority of their time in native apps. What’s going wrong here? Easy: - Apple only allows one browser -- their own -- on iOS - Apple uses this control to cripple PWAs on iOS - Apple's iPhone market share is significant enough that if Safari/iOS doesn't support something, businesses won't spend time on using it E.g.: chat/communication apps cannot be written as PWAs, since Safari on iOS still doesn't support notifications.

pixel_tracing 4y ago
Apple does not only allow one browser you can download Chrome or Firebox from the App Store
- depressedpanda 4y ago
  No. What you're downloading is a different skin for Safari. Apple does not allow any other browser engine than WebKit.
spideymans 4y ago
This doesn't explain why PWAs are still a rarity on Android though. You'd think that the ability to target both desktop (web) and Android (web/PWA) would've attracted more developer interest. I can't really comment on other companies, but my company is currently moving our product from MVP to a more mature project. When comparing various options (PWAs/web, Flutter, React, Native), PWAs/web was immediately discarded as an option because we didn't believe we could deliver the level of UX excellence we're targeting. Nor did we believe that PWAs would be any easier to develop and maintain than two native apps. Perhaps the strongest argument in favour of the web is that it's a lot easier to hire web devs than iOS and Android developers. But that's all moot if the web can't deliver the product experience we're targeting. We're still considering React, but I feel like we're inevitability going to end up building a full native experience. Generally speaking, I feel that PWAs and the web have a long way to go in terms of tooling, performance and UX excellence, before companies in our position will be comfortable adopting it. At least with iOS, it's really easy to create fantastic user experiences and maintainable software as long as you're willing to follow Apple's guidelines. It's a lot more difficult to achieve the same on the web.
- depressedpanda 4y ago
  > When comparing various options (PWAs/web, Flutter, React, Native), PWAs/web was immediately discarded as an option because we didn't believe we could deliver the level of UX excellence we're targeting. Nor did we believe that PWAs would be any easier to develop and maintain than two native apps. Interesting. What did you find lacking regarding UX for PWAs? To me it's often glaringly obvious how many native apps are written for iOS first, then ported to Android. In these apps I think the UX is much worse than if they had just given me a decent web app to interact with. Regarding why a PWA would be easier to maintain than two native apps, you mention it yourself in the next paragraph: it's much easier to find a decent web dev. Their knowledge also directly translates to being able to build/maintain marketing and store websites for you. Other benefits I've noticed is that with a web app - there's no 3rd party gatekeeper between you and your end users. - The app updates itself when used, meaning users will almost always be running the latest version of your app - There's no app store review for you to wait on before being able to publish bug fixes or new features - You can sell stuff inside your app without a gatekeeper taking a 30% cut - Speed of development: as only two web devs responsible for web app, marketing website, and product checkout we could still keep the web app in sync with the mobile iOS and Android apps produced by a team of three devs. In what ways do you think the tooling is lacking? I think the tooling and flexibility is actually quite good :-) I've often amazed people by setting up an ngrok tunnel, giving them a live preview of whatever feature I'm working on at the moment. While this can mostly be dismissed as just a cool thing you can do, it was invaluable when the UX-designer and I worked on a feature during lockdown. All that said, I don't know what kind of app you're building, and there are of course types of apps that are best done natively. In my opinion, however, they are very few: 9 out 10 apps on my phone would work just as well being PWAs.