11 ms·

Why haven’t PWAs killed native apps yet?

82 points by kbst 4y ago

giantrobot 4y ago
PWAs would be great in a world where everyone was good and honest. In that world oh frictionless pulleys and spherical cows no one would ever abuse things like push notifications or background updates. In the real world, where companies get really mad if they can't literally spy on every action you take, PWAs need a lot of extra permissions lest everyone be victims of fuckery. Every feature that would give PWAs parity with native apps will be routinely abused even by otherwise above board vendors.
babypuncher 4y ago
Users prefer native apps. I can always tell when an app I am using is just a web app bundled for iOS or Android. They never feel as polished or tightly integrated with the host OS; buttons don't look the same, UI paradigms are genericized, platform-specific features (RIP 3D-Touch) are flat out ignored. I say this as someone who develops web apps for a living: native apps are almost always more fun to use.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > native apps are almost always more fun to use I find myself deleting wrapped PWAs. If I need to use the service and am paying, I’ll ping their customer support email. If I’m not, do I really need it? Life is too slow for stodgy apps and hamburger menus on iOS.
- tootie 4y ago
  I have making web and mobile apps for a long time and have never understood what "native" UI even means. No two native apps look the same. And the thing I always notice is that I can't deep link or do a text search on a native app. You are absolutely correct that most users prefer native apps but I have no actual data on why.
  - jcelerier 4y ago
    as a user, because even of beast of a machine native apps are faster, snappier, don't have a ton of shitty useless animations and gigantic spacings & margins between everything. I swear whenever something animates in a UI it almost makes me reflex-xkill it. good: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/static/ripcord_screenshot_win_6.png https://cancel.fm/ripcord/static/ripcord_screenshot_win_6.pn... (densely packed information, respects the fonts of my OS, menus with dialogs, opens in 0.01 second, etc. bad: slack/discord. they make me want to stop using computers altogether whenever I have to interact through one of those as a developer, for now my experiments porting code requiring full-throttle maximal performance from the user's hardware in https://ossia.io https://ossia.io to wasm for https://ossia.io/score-web https://ossia.io/score-web really still puts wasm in the "toy" section, it's like going back to 15 years old hardware. Sure, there's likely wasm-specific optimizations that would help, but i don't need to do any of those for maintaining mac / win / linux versions so this is a bit frustrating. Also wasm is not likely to be able to load the tens of thousands of native VST, etc... native-code-based plug-ins developed over the last decades.
  - babypuncher 4y ago
    If you want a good example of what I'm talking about, go look at the official Reddit app and compare it to Apollo for iOS. The former feels like a wrapper for the mobile site with a few native flourishes on top. It ignores lots of iOS design conventions, because they want the experience to be the same on iOS and Android. Apollo on the other hand feels like a true native iOS app, it follows all of Apples design paradigms, and feels right at home next to the apps that come preinstalled on your iPhone.
  - locutous 4y ago
    The numbers aren't as good as the native proponents claim. A lot of sites put on a full court press to use native going so far as to intentionally cripple web in mobile. This is the environment that produces the numbers cited from time to time. The feel good answers by devs about native experience or OS integration don't have any real data backing them that I can find.
- ska 4y ago
  > Users prefer native apps. You've nailed it. Not just fun to use: Users prefer native apps because mostly they are a much better user experience.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Native apps are indeed better. However, I don't think it's because web apps are incapable of being good. Apple has kneecapped the functionality of their browser and locked users into it as the only option; it's obvious willful negligence to convince developers to write more native apps. Native apps that Apple has the exclusive right to profit from. So, why haven't PWAs killed native apps yet? Because Apple understands user experience, and they'll never add PWAs to the little blue App Store unless the US government holds Tim Cook at gunpoint. It's a senseless business decision to them, PWAs haven't succeeded simply because the dominant platform (Apple) decided they shouldn't. A next-generation software delivery system is being held back because one (1) company profits from the status quo's exclusive distribution rights. I hope the SEC is taking notes!
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Yes because Electron apps show just how great cross platform web based applications can be. /s
      - marcosdumay 4y ago
        Well, the usability can be really great. You should try doing some frontend with the modern DOM (not the frameworks), it's very flexible. It also performs quite well. Electron has a lot of other problems, that become worse on mobile. But UX restrictions is not one of them.
        scarface74 4y ago
        I count “not killing my battery” and “having a native interface” as part of usability.
- afavour 4y ago
  I'd say power users prefer native apps. I genuinely think the jury is out on whether regular users do. The fact that you're citing something like 3D Touch (which was canned precisely because so few users knew what it even was or how to use it) kind of illustrates the point. I think this is one of those cases where HN is going to just be an echo chamber audience. We're all power users, the majority of whom demand native apps. But we're not typical.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > the jury is out on whether regular users do The jury decided, went home and had grandchildren. If anything, power user tools are in web apps. (They benefit from the cloud backend.) It’s Shazam and Uber and your local paper’s goinga-on-about-town sections that have apps. Because they get dramatically more engagement there than on a web app.
    - afavour 4y ago
      I think you're oversimplifying. As the article states there are a lot of issues with PWAs that have nothing to do with the actual UI experience: discoverability, installing, that hamper web app adoption. But that's mobile. Look at Slack's desktop app. It's an Electron web app and every time it's mentioned on HN everyone agrees it's an awful resource hog and they should make a native version. The vast majority of people using Slack don't care, though.
      - enos_feedler 4y ago
        It just doesn't matter and the tie breaker is what the developer wants and the developer wants to make an app. Why? because the risk is you want to extend your "app" with features for which there is no browser API, only native access. You can do anything on the web you want on native but not vice versa.
        afavour 4y ago
        Sure but how many apps out there are doing little other than replicate functionality available on a web site? I'd argue very few apps are doing anything truly native that is impossible on the web. Most are just CRUD forms with a nicer UI than you get on the web. If your reason for spending huge sums of money on (usually two) native apps is because you think at some point in the future you might maybe need to extend beyond what the web can offer then you're making a bad business decision.
- matchagaucho 4y ago
  Transient apps, like for booking a flight or hotel, ordering food, really need to be PWAs. I mean, come on. Making me go to an app store and installing an app to do a simple business transaction is not a good user experience.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    How is booking a flight a transient app? The Delta app has my credit card information, my flight information, notifies me of the location of my check bags, tells me where I am on the list of free upgrades, etc.
    - zmgsabst 4y ago
      I do that all fine with an Alaska web account and emailed boarding pass.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Does your boarding pass in your email automatically update with gate changes, boarding time changes, etc? Is it really easier to dig through your email than just click on the app and your boarding pass show up? And since it knows that you’re going to probably scan it, the screen automatically lights up
    - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
      If you have to ask, you probably are in the 1% by a large margin: Most people do not fly regularly. Some people have never flown at all. You would probably be surprised how often someone's flight with an airline is either their first or, in fact, only ever time they will do business with said airline.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        If someone is flying occasionally, they probably don’t just have a carry on. They still will need to know where to pick up their bag. They will still need to know if their gate has changed or whether their flight is delayed.
- mklmdlkms 4y ago
  > platform-specific features (RIP 3D-Touch) are flat out ignored good riddance. as someone who uses various operating systems on a regular basis, niche "features" like 3D-touch are an annoyance and force adjustments and break muscle memory every time I switch between systems and UIs, which I do many times every day. apple's insistence on being special and not using basic keyboard and touch conventions like the other systems do is painful.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    What are the “standard” touch conventions that Apple should have followed when the iPhone was introduced?
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  > native apps are almost always more fun to use. But then do user care for apps they don't enjoy to use on a fundamental level ? My local garbage collection company has an app, and I only need it show me what garbage will be collected today and this week. I use it almost everyday, but couldn't care less if the buttons feel native, or if the UI paradigm is generic. Having all the resources downloaded on the phone still makes the app faster to open than the web site, and I'd have been 100% happy with a PWA. If we look at phones as tools, there are hundreds of tasks for which "there's an app for that" but an app built specifically for every platform is just overkill and a waste of resource.
- illuminati1911 4y ago
  Exactly. Can someone tell me what PWA even is from user perspective? I think most users just see web and web apps that they can use through their browser and then there is the app store and its native apps. Most people have no idea what the hell is a PWA. Even I don't fully know what it is because I don't really care. To me there is the web with collapsing non-optimized layouts, annoying forms, "Please login"/"Enter your billing address and credit card information" popups and then there is the perfectly crafted mobile UX with Face ID, Apple Pay etc. that just has all my data and just works.
  - layer8 4y ago
    Well, there are also app store apps that effectively just wrap a PWA, and also apps that are some shade of gray inbetween.
- beeandapenguin 4y ago
  One step further: serve the PWA from the plane’s LAN. Forgot to install the app before takeoff? No matter!
- _hypx 4y ago
  Give it another decade. PWAs will only get better and more integrated. PWAs could still kill off native apps eventually.
- ylg 4y ago
  The reasons people choose to develop PWA or native have greater impacts on the user experience than the differences between the two. For example, many predict PWA development will be cheaper for them in the short-term. They are first optimizing product development for short-term cost. That focus impacts the released product more than PWA’s strengths and weaknesses. Others choose PWA hoping for a way to rapidly release and iterate MVPs of experimental business ideas. Again, the rationale has a greater impact on the user experience than the tech. Some expect native stacks will let them more deeply tune and polish the user experience than PWA. Or access richer or more performant device capabilities that PWAs cannot. And, this focus on experience over cost impacts the users’ experiences more than the capabilities of native. In short, many PWAs feel poorer because of product development goals and constraints that precede PWA. These products were always going to give a poorer experience, regardless of the choice of PWA or native.
  - locutous 4y ago
    > For example, many predict PWA development will be cheaper for them in the short-term. It's objectively true if your requirements include multi platform support (particularly web) and don't have hard native requirements (such as device Bluetooth access). > Others choose PWA hoping for a way to rapidly release and iterate MVPs of experimental business ideas. Again, the rationale has a greater impact on the user experience than the tech. This isn't always true. Expedience, familiarity, or new and shiny are very strong gravity sources in making a decision. The design skill of the team and org will have a bigger impact on the final product than the decision. Crappy native apps are as bad as crappy web apps. And there are tons of crappy native apps. Exceptional software is a relatively rare breed of software. That said, I will grant that some organizations will have a rushing about management style that can pretty much only build short sighted crap and if given the choice they would probably opt for a PWA. Even as I repeat this logical seeming rational I have worked at such places and they haven't built PWAs, so it's not some universal. They still fell into one of the above gravity sources.
- kjellsbells 4y ago
  I'm smiling wryly at this comment, because it sounds exactly like what people used to way about Java apps on Windows. You could throw your latest sexy window toolkit at it, but it was never /quite/ native looking enough, and users could always tell.
  - peterashford 4y ago
    Hmmm... its not like it wasn't possible to make good UIs in Java. Intellij is written in Swing and I would content that its one of the best IDE UIs out there.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Same here, I have been developing native and Web applications for a couple of decades by now. Either give me a native app, or a pure URL for the system browser.
- skybrian 4y ago
  This doesn't seem true of everyone, at least for Reddit or Twitter. No matter how many times it tries to get me to install the native app, I'm always going to keep using the web app. From other comments on Hacker News, I don't think I'm alone? I don't know how many die-hards there are, though.
  - locutous 4y ago
    There is a very strong gravity source on hacker news for the compute efficient solution. Native over interpreted is one such manifestation. I'm with you preferring the web sites, I think big tech is generally into the better data harvesting potential of native. So you have companies that push their native apps hard when a PWA would be fine. There is truth to the ability of native to provide a better interface. I've built PWAs and cordova and now capacitor apps and I've experienced those limits. But the reality is, >95% of the time it just doesn't matter.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gz5 4y ago
>On paper, PWAs are the perfect alternative to native apps: only one code base to manage, instant updates that require no approval, and no commissions to pay on in-app purchases. What’s not to like? Most 'challengers' to any dominant methodology need 10x type benefits - at least for specific community, segment or use case. So the two immediate questions: 1. how can PWAs provide some segment of end users with 10x type benefits? 2. how can PWAs provide some segment of developers with 10x type benefits?
egypturnash 4y ago
A few examples of what higher authority could translate into: … Restrict access to the Push API to installed PWAs. Regular websites wouldn’t be allowed to request access at all. Goodbye BS spam. …hello every site trying to upsell you to their BS PWA. I expect someone to have the bright idea of refusing to serve you what you’re there for until you do.
- fn-mote 4y ago
  > …hello every site trying to upsell you to their BS PWA. I really can't tell if this is /s or not. It seems to me it happens already. Reddit is a prime offender. Discord. Slack. My bank (at least they have some plausible use for some of my personal info). Maybe it's their app not their PWA, I don't know and don't care. Still mostly BS. > I expect someone to have the bright idea of refusing to serve you what you’re there for until you do. Again, this is /s right? It's real.
  - egypturnash 4y ago
    I guess my adblockers are saving me from this particular hell.
footlose_3815 4y ago
[dead]
cercatrova 4y ago
Because when the duopoly of Apple and Google want to make money through their app stores, they don't want developers not going through their stores, and thus they'll restrict PWAs as much as possible under the guise of privacy. How else are they going to extract their pound of flesh?
- leeoniya 4y ago
  this. you cannot adblock in native apps like you can in web apps. and web apps can never be as invasive. no matter how good PWAs will be for the consumers, they lack all the user-hostile things producers expect to be able to do. this is why it will never happen, sadly.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    You can’t “ad block” with the most popular websites either that have “native ads” like FB.
    - leeoniya 4y ago
      you can at least attempt it, via NLP, etc. it's still DOM at the end of the day.
  - ohCh6zos 4y ago
    I do all kinds of adblock in native executables, but mostly blocking places that host ads in my firewall.
- scarface74 4y ago
  How many apps do you use right now that could be web apps do the developers actually accept payments through the App Store? It came out in the Epic trial that 80% of App Store revenue comes from games and in app purchases.
swatcoder 4y ago
> On paper, PWAs are the perfect alternative to native apps: only one code base to manage, instant updates that require no approval, and no commissions to pay on in-app purchases. Ask users, and they’ll never volunteer any of those things as something they’re looking for in an app. They might assent when you explain that commissions mean higher prices, or that updates can help security, and neglect to mention the associated tradeoffs. But they’ll never just go and name those things themselves. If you want PWA’s to kill native apps, maybe start by looking at what inspires users to want them (or not), instead of what inspires publishers to want them.
- notriddle 4y ago
  I can text someone a link to a website, they can click the link, and it just opens without going through an explicit install process.
  - swatcoder 4y ago
    Maybe people are using the terms differently now, but I think of what you describe as visiting a website. To my understanding, installation is precisely the thing that distinguishes PWA’s from traditional web content.
    - thewebcount 4y ago
      That and also, I can text anyone with the same brand of phone a link and they can install it. So GP’s point is not even much of a win in the first place.
afavour 4y ago
For one I don't think PWAs will, should or can kill all native apps. But I think they could replace a specific subset of native apps that aren't doing anything particularly ambitious in terms of feature set or UI. The article is pretty long but for me there are two core reasons: - people are used to getting apps from the App/Play Store. It's a very well understood dynamic. Installing from a web page is strange. - Apple have helped make the above an even bigger problem that it needs to be by making their 'add to Home Screen' option two menus deep with no way to trigger it as a result of user action. That's about it, really. I know people are coming to this thread to say PWAs fail because the UI is bad or because they're slow or this or that... I don't buy that argument simply because I know of a ton of slow native apps that have poor UI that are successful. Non-power users don't really care all that much if you're offering functionality they want to use (within reason, of course). I would still love to see a web API for something equivalent to UITableView, though.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  > I would still love to see a web API for something equivalent to UITableView, though. If browsers started shipping support for typical UI widgets like that, I would become much more interested in the web as a platform. Bring Your Own Everything is fine for traditional websites but I strongly dislike it for building something complex enough to be considered an "app".
dandigangi 4y ago
Natives apps preferred and dev adoption building PWAs is still growing.
cowmix 4y ago
The PWA for Zoom when I tried it on my Chromebook was horrible, FWIW.
- seabrookmx 4y ago
  Worked fine for me when I used it on Monday. Thankfully, since the old Chrome App is being deprecated (it runs in PNaCl IIRC).
duhbecause 4y ago
kitsunesoba 4y ago
> Funnily enough, installing an app directly from a website is both faster and more convenient. This only holds true if one directly navigates to the website in question, which I would argue is unusual at best. The next closest thing to searching the App Store/Play Store is searching for the app with Google, where one will be met with pages of results that are likely not helpful, particularly for the type of highly general queries that tend to be used when shopping around for an app (e.g. "recipe app"). Additionally, the App Store and Play Store provide some signal of app quality by way of reviews and ratings, which helps skip over the more obvious clunkers and lemons and filter out the options that don't have the features required. You don't get that with PWAs, making for more time wasted evaluating each PWA in the category. ———— On the question posed by the title, from the developer side of things a factor I don't see discussed as much is that for various reasons, a lot of devs don't want to write for the web ecosystem due to the tech stack involved. If it were easier to opt out of JavaScript and its associated ecosystem in favor of whatever devs prefer instead, takeup of PWAs would be more enthusiastic. WASM is promising for accomplishing this but doesn't seem to be where it needs to be quite yet.
thot_experiment 4y ago
I've been working on a project and because I really hate Java I'm trying to get it done with a PWA. There are like ten million annoying things that prevent you from having access to the hardware in easy ways but outside that using a browser for UI is pretty solid for my purposes. I'm only concerned with one user so I've been able to circumvent those issues by just running code on the underlying *nix subsystem on my phone and talking to the UI over websockets. For certain usecases WebBluetooth is actually enough to control a peripheral and you don't even need a rooted phone, just any android w/ chrome. A lot of the reasoning behind why phones are so locked down feels like safety theater, there may be good security reasons, but there are also DEFINITELY good business reasons. It's frustrating, if Android was actually an open platform (at least in the Windows sense LOL) I could do this shit without resorting to weird root-cloaking fuckery that gets broken every update.
azeemh 4y ago
Zedtopia is a PWA... Going Native App this early would cost too much to develop and maintain, and because our platform is for publishing, sharing, and discussing web2 and web3 content, our app would require using a webview to render user uploaded html. Thus might as well use a browser. Myspace was just a webapp. Facebook started off as a webapp. Reddit is a webapp. I don't like installing extra apps unless necessary. Bloatware is annoying to my target user -- Early adopters and innovators. Thus PWA is the choice for this platform. It guarantees universal accessibility which is really important to our core values of inclusion and universal design. It's easier to make a webapp that uses the ecosystems' accessibility tools for deaf, blind, and impaired users. with things like webgl, we can even do lightweight gpu calculations and 3d presentations on a phone browser. a native app is only necessary for apps that use native functions. furthermore, until we move past jwt auth for api based apps and backends, platforms will still get hacked.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Facebook was one of the first apps available on the App Store in 2008. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/10/facebook-apple-app-store-most-popular-apps-of-2008.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/10/facebook-apple-app-store-mos...
  - azeemh 4y ago
    It was a website in 2006 when millenials decided to use it to meet college only friends.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      It was a website that soon became popular by running Flash games.
resoluteteeth 4y ago
Aside from specific missing apis, the biggest problem with PWAs right now is probably that it's a PITA to maintain local state and also sync it with the server unless you use something like pouchdb that's specifically oriented around that. Once the filesystem storage apis get worked out, it should be much easier to have persistent sql.js, etc. without having to load the whole thing into memory and save it again constantly and without having to resort to complicated stuff like absurdsql. I think that finally being able to easily have sqlite in pwas will make it a lot easy to maintain local state and sync it without having to have a maintain a completely separate way of handling data for offline use, ideally without having to rearchitect the whole app as "offline first" but instead just optionally allowing offline use when it's installed as a PWA. This is assuming you want to enable offline use, but for me that's a major thing that justifies making a page into a PWA (otherwise why not just go to the site?).
- enos_feedler 4y ago
  I think the client server architecture is too deeply tied to the web to change this in a meaningful and impactful way across the web.
- slimebot80 4y ago
  > unless you use something like pouchdb that's specifically oriented around that There's your answer!
rablackburn 4y ago
As a user: I don’t think I’ve ever seen installing a PWA as an option. I’ve never been prompted (though I suppose some of those “use our app!” pop ups could be trying to install a pwa, but I think they always take me to the App Store). As the article mentions (on iOS) the install mechanism is to open the share menu and select “Add to home”. I don’t open the share menu on random web apps to see if I can install them. The option may as well not exist. I also highly doubt any regular user is aware of the term “PWA”. Why haven’t PWAs killed native apps? No one knows they exist. As a dev: The one time I wanted to make a PWA the use case relied on being able to send notifications. The user was on iOS, safari didn’t support it. Dead in the water. Maybe I’ll revisit it again now that support is finally here.
- 6figurelenins 4y ago
  > Maybe I’ll revisit it again now that support is finally here. I hadn't heard, thanks! https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-16/features/ https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-16/features/ "Web push notifications Coming in 2023." https://caniuse.com/notifications https://caniuse.com/notifications
- yen223 4y ago
  I have no idea how someone who isn't a web developer is supposed to know 1) what a PWA is, and 2) how to install and use a PWA. It feels like what QR codes were like 10 years ago
JohnHaugeland 4y ago
Development tools are preferences, and developers tend to be more important than technologies. You're just seeing the authors' favorite tools. Lots of developers don't like web stack.
spoonjim 4y ago
Because I vastly prefer native apps and maybe others do too? The biggest advantage is that they stay logged in. I haven’t used AirBNB in 2 years but it’s still logged in. The web app wouldn’t be.
- projektfu 4y ago
  That's really contrary to my experience on iOS. My apps are frequently forgetting they were logged in. In fact, I just checked AirBnB specifically and it has forgotten me.
nemothekid 4y ago
A number of responses in this thread are crying about companies needing trackers or notifications not working correctly. These are two tiny issues that just doesn't explain why there aren't any competitive PWAs yet. PWA just aren't as satisfying to use as Web Apps; it doesn't have anything to do with relatively esoteric APIs. Just look at Twitter iOS and Twitter Web. Just moving within the app is clunky, try clicking a tweet; while the native app is full of fast animations the web app is full of empty loading screens. On native videos play quickly and fluently while html5 video can't offer the same seamlessness. Is there a PWA out there that meets the level of polish of something basic like Twitter native app? If not, users will continue to prefer native apps; especially on mobile. PWAs will only win if they manage to make development so cheap that they kill any incentive to build natively. This is what happened on desktop
nathants 4y ago
webapps haven’t been done well yet. mostly they try to mimic native apps, and obviously that’s not the way. for webapps to succeed they need ux that fits their platform: a browser. the best thing about webapps is they seamlessly move between devices. all you need is a browser and your password.
plaguepilled 4y ago
Q: "Why haven't PWAs killed native apps yet" A: "Because PWAs are not performant and are harder to police from a platform perspective"
jacooper 4y ago
I use twitter web on my phone instead of the app, for privacy reasons. Its noticeably more janky, the browser crashes now and then, and the animations aren't as smooth or simply don't exist, also things take longer time to load for some reason. I think it depends on how the website is designed, but it might also be a general experience of PWAs. Tech details: Brave browser, Android 12, Pixel 4XL with CalyxOS.
- slimebot80 4y ago
  Maybe try Firefox? Brave is known to be laden with "interesting" extras.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    Its worse, especially on Android.
osrec 4y ago
Regarding PWAs accessing native features, I personally believe they should be able to, but only if explicitly installed and granted permission. I don't see why they shouldn't if I explicitly want to give them permission.
treelovinhippie 4y ago
pier25 4y ago
Pretty ironic all the people in here saying native apps are so much better... on a web app like HN.
- 6figurelenins 4y ago
  "Web app?" I remember when they were forums. Heck: bulletin boards. This page could be an email.
throw_m239339 4y ago
Because mobile web app performance is abysmal. What happened to "mobile first"? I don't know, but developers have given up on the mobile web. The few web apps wrapped in in a native app I use (restaurant apps) have garbage performances, the UI is completely unresponsive, taps take forever to register, scrolling is hijacked by god knows what library..., so much that even the website is faster for ordering food, so clearly, native apps aren't going anywhere given the state of the mobile web.
encryptluks2 4y ago
PWAs really are just lacking something akin to native messaging that is available within extensions to allow communication with a native backend app. Once that is implemented in the official spec there will really be no reason for Electron anymore.
wildpeaks 4y ago
I'd be more likely to notice the option to install as PWA even exists if it was in the "Add bookmark" menu because I would already be in the mindset "I want to save this for later". Being in the Share menu, I'd only see "Add to home" while already in the process of sending to someone else, so I wouldn't have time to check what this is (as it would distract from my goal), and I'd have forgotten the option exists by the time my task (sharing the site) is complete.
blooalien 4y ago
Because massive nosey corporations won't allow it. Native apps can more easily trick people into giving permissions which make it easier to spy on your device. Those corporations want that access badly.
exabrial 4y ago
Because they’re an awful experience in every regard… in addition they tend to be poorly tested and contain a ton of bugs.
travisgriggs 4y ago
The following was an interesting sleight of hand to me: > A PWA can’t read your phone’s contacts, send SMS on your behalf, or access any of your phone’s features that could expose your private information. Seems almost like a win, right? But repeat just this part in isolation: > or access any of your phone’s features You’re phone has a lot of features that are either unavailable or clunky to use from web tech, that aren’t privacy related per se. I do BLE apps. I do apps that operate equipment when there’s no connectivity or internet around. Or that need tuned performance. Haptic feedback. Custom hare sheets. So on and so forth. I would love to not have to code the same thing m not Kotlin and Swift. We’ve tried. It just fails to execute well in the end.
croes 4y ago
>instant updates that require no approval Not even from the user
- thewebcount 4y ago
  This is such an underrated point. I hate it when an app changes on me mid-project without my permission. With native apps I can turn off auto-update and not have to worry about it. Yes, that might put me at slightly more security risk, but I don’t think there are many state actors trying to get me. At this point, the positives of not updating on someone else’s schedule far outweigh the risks for me.
MBCook 4y ago
I bet you could ask 10,000 normal (non-developer) users to name a single PWA and you’d get 0 answers. You don’t even have to use the name PWA. At best, they’ll name websites they visit. Not PWAs. I’m a dev. I’m not sure I can name one. After 10m of thinking… is Wordle setup as a PWA? I know I’d much prefer a native app to what they have now. PWAs seem like many other things I’ve seen over the years. The people making something want it. They tell you you want it. But… I don’t. I’ve never heard an argument that makes me want it. If normal people wanted it at all it would be more popular. Yes you couldn’t have notifications or access Bluetooth/etc. but I use plenty of native apps that don’t do those things. So why hasn’t anything made noticeable inroads? If Android is 80% of phones worldwide why is it always Apple holding PWAs back? * You WANT to rent DIVX DVDs! You buy it and then throw it away. You don’t have to rerun it! * Windows is better with everything designed around touch. You’ll love Windows 8! * Why have to choose heated seats when you buy your car? You can rent them when you need them! PWAs haven’t caught on at all. And it’s always someone else’s fault. At this point I’m just flat out skeptical of “demand” that advocates say is out there. I’m not saying they are never useful or don’t have a place. But I don’t see them ever displacing native apps no matter what changes.
rektide 4y ago
Fugu needs more fuel & more fire. Keep ignoring the haters as you have. Keep developing good sensible apis as best you can. Imo part of the issue is the half-heartness. There's been endless shitty medium-level platform shit shows. File System API utterly failed to be reasonably performant cause it tried to coddle & protect webdevs from platform concerns & was utterly incapable of being reasonably useful at all for real work (gross violation of Low Level Extensibility Manifesto, demonstration of egotistical we-are-the-spec-authors-we-know-better shit-show-ism). So we have File System Access api which is trucking along but only has like a third of the use-cases implemented (origin private only, no actual useful filesystem interaction). And it's still a total shitshow cowtowing to emscripten as if it's literally the only stakeholder & the rest of the web can get bent. The people with a actual good ideas to make shit better are far far far away from the web itself. WASI is a great example, refusing & ignoring literally every single thing that has happened ever anywhere across the entire web to concot new capability-based POSIX like interfaces that make absolutely zero use of anything we've done so far. The high drama AssemblyScript author blew up over this[1], and they are high drama, but they're definitely right. The people who actually wamt to shoot for real targets, to improve the system, have no willingness or interest in doing it at all within the framework, using anything at all that exists so far, and have created their own parallel universe with absolutely no connection & no hope of being usable in the browser (but being rapidly accepted on the server under the lying pretense that this may become "web" tech, in spite kf wasi ignoring all webspecs & having zero presence in webspec world). We need to go further. We need to improve more willingly. We need to see & attune to what progress is fake & not convergent (wasi). Progress has been huge. Vast. The haters and the deniers are obviously wrong & not worth regarding, full of petty small zeal that begrudes the gains happening elsewhere. PWAs are winning. The platform is radically improving in so many ways. But understanding where our capabilities are immature & need improvement, being able to make big significant changes possible, responding & acknowledging difficulties faster; the community has limited limited resources, and as a non-centrally controlled universe of technologies, where naysayer opinions can hold huge sway; it blocks the good. Making good & progress possible is essential. Finding ways to open up what we are trying & exploring is essential, is what has always made the web so great. More! More more more!! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32750219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32750219
slimebot80 4y ago
Safari getting web push notifications in 2023 If a user could "save" a webpage to an app icon on their desktop, and get badges for new messages, then that could herald in a new wave. And seriously. I think there is money to be made form offering your website users privacy from tracking and analytics. Websites potentially have an upper hand there. (of course that's entirely debatable, but just my educated hunch)
nickm12 4y ago
> Or at the very least, Apple could change the wording of "Add to Home Screen" to "Install the app" This makes me think the article is parody. Apple will never call PWAs "apps". Apps come from the App Store, silly. The question isn't when will Apple provide parity with native apps, but why they support PWAs at all.
bradgranath 4y ago
Give me a private, cross platform browser that isn’t trash and I’ll never user another app again.
nunez 4y ago
I don't know, but a PWA version of Slack and some other popular apps would be divine. I hate installing apps.

82 points by kbst 4y ago

PWAs would be great in a world where everyone was good and honest. In that world oh frictionless pulleys and spherical cows no one would ever abuse things like push notifications or background updates. In the real world, where companies get really mad if they can't literally spy on every action you take, PWAs need a lot of extra permissions lest everyone be victims of fuckery. Every feature that would give PWAs parity with native apps will be routinely abused even by otherwise above board vendors.

babypuncher 4y ago

Users prefer native apps. I can always tell when an app I am using is just a web app bundled for iOS or Android. They never feel as polished or tightly integrated with the host OS; buttons don't look the same, UI paradigms are genericized, platform-specific features (RIP 3D-Touch) are flat out ignored. I say this as someone who develops web apps for a living: native apps are almost always more fun to use.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> native apps are almost always more fun to use I find myself deleting wrapped PWAs. If I need to use the service and am paying, I’ll ping their customer support email. If I’m not, do I really need it? Life is too slow for stodgy apps and hamburger menus on iOS.
tootie 4y ago
I have making web and mobile apps for a long time and have never understood what "native" UI even means. No two native apps look the same. And the thing I always notice is that I can't deep link or do a text search on a native app. You are absolutely correct that most users prefer native apps but I have no actual data on why.
- jcelerier 4y ago
  as a user, because even of beast of a machine native apps are faster, snappier, don't have a ton of shitty useless animations and gigantic spacings & margins between everything. I swear whenever something animates in a UI it almost makes me reflex-xkill it. good: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/static/ripcord_screenshot_win_6.png https://cancel.fm/ripcord/static/ripcord_screenshot_win_6.pn... (densely packed information, respects the fonts of my OS, menus with dialogs, opens in 0.01 second, etc. bad: slack/discord. they make me want to stop using computers altogether whenever I have to interact through one of those as a developer, for now my experiments porting code requiring full-throttle maximal performance from the user's hardware in https://ossia.io https://ossia.io to wasm for https://ossia.io/score-web https://ossia.io/score-web really still puts wasm in the "toy" section, it's like going back to 15 years old hardware. Sure, there's likely wasm-specific optimizations that would help, but i don't need to do any of those for maintaining mac / win / linux versions so this is a bit frustrating. Also wasm is not likely to be able to load the tens of thousands of native VST, etc... native-code-based plug-ins developed over the last decades.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  If you want a good example of what I'm talking about, go look at the official Reddit app and compare it to Apollo for iOS. The former feels like a wrapper for the mobile site with a few native flourishes on top. It ignores lots of iOS design conventions, because they want the experience to be the same on iOS and Android. Apollo on the other hand feels like a true native iOS app, it follows all of Apples design paradigms, and feels right at home next to the apps that come preinstalled on your iPhone.
- locutous 4y ago
  The numbers aren't as good as the native proponents claim. A lot of sites put on a full court press to use native going so far as to intentionally cripple web in mobile. This is the environment that produces the numbers cited from time to time. The feel good answers by devs about native experience or OS integration don't have any real data backing them that I can find.
ska 4y ago
> Users prefer native apps. You've nailed it. Not just fun to use: Users prefer native apps because mostly they are a much better user experience.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Native apps are indeed better. However, I don't think it's because web apps are incapable of being good. Apple has kneecapped the functionality of their browser and locked users into it as the only option; it's obvious willful negligence to convince developers to write more native apps. Native apps that Apple has the exclusive right to profit from. So, why haven't PWAs killed native apps yet? Because Apple understands user experience, and they'll never add PWAs to the little blue App Store unless the US government holds Tim Cook at gunpoint. It's a senseless business decision to them, PWAs haven't succeeded simply because the dominant platform (Apple) decided they shouldn't. A next-generation software delivery system is being held back because one (1) company profits from the status quo's exclusive distribution rights. I hope the SEC is taking notes!
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Yes because Electron apps show just how great cross platform web based applications can be. /s
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      Well, the usability can be really great. You should try doing some frontend with the modern DOM (not the frameworks), it's very flexible. It also performs quite well. Electron has a lot of other problems, that become worse on mobile. But UX restrictions is not one of them.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        I count “not killing my battery” and “having a native interface” as part of usability.
afavour 4y ago
I'd say power users prefer native apps. I genuinely think the jury is out on whether regular users do. The fact that you're citing something like 3D Touch (which was canned precisely because so few users knew what it even was or how to use it) kind of illustrates the point. I think this is one of those cases where HN is going to just be an echo chamber audience. We're all power users, the majority of whom demand native apps. But we're not typical.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > the jury is out on whether regular users do The jury decided, went home and had grandchildren. If anything, power user tools are in web apps. (They benefit from the cloud backend.) It’s Shazam and Uber and your local paper’s goinga-on-about-town sections that have apps. Because they get dramatically more engagement there than on a web app.
  - afavour 4y ago
    I think you're oversimplifying. As the article states there are a lot of issues with PWAs that have nothing to do with the actual UI experience: discoverability, installing, that hamper web app adoption. But that's mobile. Look at Slack's desktop app. It's an Electron web app and every time it's mentioned on HN everyone agrees it's an awful resource hog and they should make a native version. The vast majority of people using Slack don't care, though.
    - enos_feedler 4y ago
      It just doesn't matter and the tie breaker is what the developer wants and the developer wants to make an app. Why? because the risk is you want to extend your "app" with features for which there is no browser API, only native access. You can do anything on the web you want on native but not vice versa.
      - afavour 4y ago
        Sure but how many apps out there are doing little other than replicate functionality available on a web site? I'd argue very few apps are doing anything truly native that is impossible on the web. Most are just CRUD forms with a nicer UI than you get on the web. If your reason for spending huge sums of money on (usually two) native apps is because you think at some point in the future you might maybe need to extend beyond what the web can offer then you're making a bad business decision.
matchagaucho 4y ago
Transient apps, like for booking a flight or hotel, ordering food, really need to be PWAs. I mean, come on. Making me go to an app store and installing an app to do a simple business transaction is not a good user experience.
- scarface74 4y ago
  How is booking a flight a transient app? The Delta app has my credit card information, my flight information, notifies me of the location of my check bags, tells me where I am on the list of free upgrades, etc.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    I do that all fine with an Alaska web account and emailed boarding pass.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Does your boarding pass in your email automatically update with gate changes, boarding time changes, etc? Is it really easier to dig through your email than just click on the app and your boarding pass show up? And since it knows that you’re going to probably scan it, the screen automatically lights up
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    If you have to ask, you probably are in the 1% by a large margin: Most people do not fly regularly. Some people have never flown at all. You would probably be surprised how often someone's flight with an airline is either their first or, in fact, only ever time they will do business with said airline.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      If someone is flying occasionally, they probably don’t just have a carry on. They still will need to know where to pick up their bag. They will still need to know if their gate has changed or whether their flight is delayed.
mklmdlkms 4y ago
> platform-specific features (RIP 3D-Touch) are flat out ignored good riddance. as someone who uses various operating systems on a regular basis, niche "features" like 3D-touch are an annoyance and force adjustments and break muscle memory every time I switch between systems and UIs, which I do many times every day. apple's insistence on being special and not using basic keyboard and touch conventions like the other systems do is painful.
- scarface74 4y ago
  What are the “standard” touch conventions that Apple should have followed when the iPhone was introduced?
makeitdouble 4y ago
> native apps are almost always more fun to use. But then do user care for apps they don't enjoy to use on a fundamental level ? My local garbage collection company has an app, and I only need it show me what garbage will be collected today and this week. I use it almost everyday, but couldn't care less if the buttons feel native, or if the UI paradigm is generic. Having all the resources downloaded on the phone still makes the app faster to open than the web site, and I'd have been 100% happy with a PWA. If we look at phones as tools, there are hundreds of tasks for which "there's an app for that" but an app built specifically for every platform is just overkill and a waste of resource.
illuminati1911 4y ago
Exactly. Can someone tell me what PWA even is from user perspective? I think most users just see web and web apps that they can use through their browser and then there is the app store and its native apps. Most people have no idea what the hell is a PWA. Even I don't fully know what it is because I don't really care. To me there is the web with collapsing non-optimized layouts, annoying forms, "Please login"/"Enter your billing address and credit card information" popups and then there is the perfectly crafted mobile UX with Face ID, Apple Pay etc. that just has all my data and just works.
- layer8 4y ago
  Well, there are also app store apps that effectively just wrap a PWA, and also apps that are some shade of gray inbetween.
beeandapenguin 4y ago
One step further: serve the PWA from the plane’s LAN. Forgot to install the app before takeoff? No matter!
_hypx 4y ago
Give it another decade. PWAs will only get better and more integrated. PWAs could still kill off native apps eventually.
ylg 4y ago
The reasons people choose to develop PWA or native have greater impacts on the user experience than the differences between the two. For example, many predict PWA development will be cheaper for them in the short-term. They are first optimizing product development for short-term cost. That focus impacts the released product more than PWA’s strengths and weaknesses. Others choose PWA hoping for a way to rapidly release and iterate MVPs of experimental business ideas. Again, the rationale has a greater impact on the user experience than the tech. Some expect native stacks will let them more deeply tune and polish the user experience than PWA. Or access richer or more performant device capabilities that PWAs cannot. And, this focus on experience over cost impacts the users’ experiences more than the capabilities of native. In short, many PWAs feel poorer because of product development goals and constraints that precede PWA. These products were always going to give a poorer experience, regardless of the choice of PWA or native.
- locutous 4y ago
  > For example, many predict PWA development will be cheaper for them in the short-term. It's objectively true if your requirements include multi platform support (particularly web) and don't have hard native requirements (such as device Bluetooth access). > Others choose PWA hoping for a way to rapidly release and iterate MVPs of experimental business ideas. Again, the rationale has a greater impact on the user experience than the tech. This isn't always true. Expedience, familiarity, or new and shiny are very strong gravity sources in making a decision. The design skill of the team and org will have a bigger impact on the final product than the decision. Crappy native apps are as bad as crappy web apps. And there are tons of crappy native apps. Exceptional software is a relatively rare breed of software. That said, I will grant that some organizations will have a rushing about management style that can pretty much only build short sighted crap and if given the choice they would probably opt for a PWA. Even as I repeat this logical seeming rational I have worked at such places and they haven't built PWAs, so it's not some universal. They still fell into one of the above gravity sources.
kjellsbells 4y ago
I'm smiling wryly at this comment, because it sounds exactly like what people used to way about Java apps on Windows. You could throw your latest sexy window toolkit at it, but it was never /quite/ native looking enough, and users could always tell.
- peterashford 4y ago
  Hmmm... its not like it wasn't possible to make good UIs in Java. Intellij is written in Swing and I would content that its one of the best IDE UIs out there.
pjmlp 4y ago
Same here, I have been developing native and Web applications for a couple of decades by now. Either give me a native app, or a pure URL for the system browser.
skybrian 4y ago
This doesn't seem true of everyone, at least for Reddit or Twitter. No matter how many times it tries to get me to install the native app, I'm always going to keep using the web app. From other comments on Hacker News, I don't think I'm alone? I don't know how many die-hards there are, though.
- locutous 4y ago
  There is a very strong gravity source on hacker news for the compute efficient solution. Native over interpreted is one such manifestation. I'm with you preferring the web sites, I think big tech is generally into the better data harvesting potential of native. So you have companies that push their native apps hard when a PWA would be fine. There is truth to the ability of native to provide a better interface. I've built PWAs and cordova and now capacitor apps and I've experienced those limits. But the reality is, >95% of the time it just doesn't matter.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

gz5 4y ago

>On paper, PWAs are the perfect alternative to native apps: only one code base to manage, instant updates that require no approval, and no commissions to pay on in-app purchases. What’s not to like? Most 'challengers' to any dominant methodology need 10x type benefits - at least for specific community, segment or use case. So the two immediate questions: 1. how can PWAs provide some segment of end users with 10x type benefits? 2. how can PWAs provide some segment of developers with 10x type benefits?

egypturnash 4y ago

A few examples of what higher authority could translate into: … Restrict access to the Push API to installed PWAs. Regular websites wouldn’t be allowed to request access at all. Goodbye BS spam. …hello every site trying to upsell you to their BS PWA. I expect someone to have the bright idea of refusing to serve you what you’re there for until you do.

fn-mote 4y ago
> …hello every site trying to upsell you to their BS PWA. I really can't tell if this is /s or not. It seems to me it happens already. Reddit is a prime offender. Discord. Slack. My bank (at least they have some plausible use for some of my personal info). Maybe it's their app not their PWA, I don't know and don't care. Still mostly BS. > I expect someone to have the bright idea of refusing to serve you what you’re there for until you do. Again, this is /s right? It's real.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  I guess my adblockers are saving me from this particular hell.

footlose_3815 4y ago

[dead]

cercatrova 4y ago

Because when the duopoly of Apple and Google want to make money through their app stores, they don't want developers not going through their stores, and thus they'll restrict PWAs as much as possible under the guise of privacy. How else are they going to extract their pound of flesh?

leeoniya 4y ago
this. you cannot adblock in native apps like you can in web apps. and web apps can never be as invasive. no matter how good PWAs will be for the consumers, they lack all the user-hostile things producers expect to be able to do. this is why it will never happen, sadly.
- scarface74 4y ago
  You can’t “ad block” with the most popular websites either that have “native ads” like FB.
  - leeoniya 4y ago
    you can at least attempt it, via NLP, etc. it's still DOM at the end of the day.
- ohCh6zos 4y ago
  I do all kinds of adblock in native executables, but mostly blocking places that host ads in my firewall.
scarface74 4y ago
How many apps do you use right now that could be web apps do the developers actually accept payments through the App Store? It came out in the Epic trial that 80% of App Store revenue comes from games and in app purchases.

swatcoder 4y ago

> On paper, PWAs are the perfect alternative to native apps: only one code base to manage, instant updates that require no approval, and no commissions to pay on in-app purchases. Ask users, and they’ll never volunteer any of those things as something they’re looking for in an app. They might assent when you explain that commissions mean higher prices, or that updates can help security, and neglect to mention the associated tradeoffs. But they’ll never just go and name those things themselves. If you want PWA’s to kill native apps, maybe start by looking at what inspires users to want them (or not), instead of what inspires publishers to want them.

notriddle 4y ago
I can text someone a link to a website, they can click the link, and it just opens without going through an explicit install process.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  Maybe people are using the terms differently now, but I think of what you describe as visiting a website. To my understanding, installation is precisely the thing that distinguishes PWA’s from traditional web content.
  - thewebcount 4y ago
    That and also, I can text anyone with the same brand of phone a link and they can install it. So GP’s point is not even much of a win in the first place.

afavour 4y ago

For one I don't think PWAs will, should or can kill all native apps. But I think they could replace a specific subset of native apps that aren't doing anything particularly ambitious in terms of feature set or UI. The article is pretty long but for me there are two core reasons: - people are used to getting apps from the App/Play Store. It's a very well understood dynamic. Installing from a web page is strange. - Apple have helped make the above an even bigger problem that it needs to be by making their 'add to Home Screen' option two menus deep with no way to trigger it as a result of user action. That's about it, really. I know people are coming to this thread to say PWAs fail because the UI is bad or because they're slow or this or that... I don't buy that argument simply because I know of a ton of slow native apps that have poor UI that are successful. Non-power users don't really care all that much if you're offering functionality they want to use (within reason, of course). I would still love to see a web API for something equivalent to UITableView, though.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
> I would still love to see a web API for something equivalent to UITableView, though. If browsers started shipping support for typical UI widgets like that, I would become much more interested in the web as a platform. Bring Your Own Everything is fine for traditional websites but I strongly dislike it for building something complex enough to be considered an "app".

dandigangi 4y ago

Natives apps preferred and dev adoption building PWAs is still growing.

cowmix 4y ago

The PWA for Zoom when I tried it on my Chromebook was horrible, FWIW.

seabrookmx 4y ago
Worked fine for me when I used it on Monday. Thankfully, since the old Chrome App is being deprecated (it runs in PNaCl IIRC).

duhbecause 4y ago

kitsunesoba 4y ago

> Funnily enough, installing an app directly from a website is both faster and more convenient. This only holds true if one directly navigates to the website in question, which I would argue is unusual at best. The next closest thing to searching the App Store/Play Store is searching for the app with Google, where one will be met with pages of results that are likely not helpful, particularly for the type of highly general queries that tend to be used when shopping around for an app (e.g. "recipe app"). Additionally, the App Store and Play Store provide some signal of app quality by way of reviews and ratings, which helps skip over the more obvious clunkers and lemons and filter out the options that don't have the features required. You don't get that with PWAs, making for more time wasted evaluating each PWA in the category. ———— On the question posed by the title, from the developer side of things a factor I don't see discussed as much is that for various reasons, a lot of devs don't want to write for the web ecosystem due to the tech stack involved. If it were easier to opt out of JavaScript and its associated ecosystem in favor of whatever devs prefer instead, takeup of PWAs would be more enthusiastic. WASM is promising for accomplishing this but doesn't seem to be where it needs to be quite yet.

thot_experiment 4y ago

I've been working on a project and because I really hate Java I'm trying to get it done with a PWA. There are like ten million annoying things that prevent you from having access to the hardware in easy ways but outside that using a browser for UI is pretty solid for my purposes. I'm only concerned with one user so I've been able to circumvent those issues by just running code on the underlying *nix subsystem on my phone and talking to the UI over websockets. For certain usecases WebBluetooth is actually enough to control a peripheral and you don't even need a rooted phone, just any android w/ chrome. A lot of the reasoning behind why phones are so locked down feels like safety theater, there may be good security reasons, but there are also DEFINITELY good business reasons. It's frustrating, if Android was actually an open platform (at least in the Windows sense LOL) I could do this shit without resorting to weird root-cloaking fuckery that gets broken every update.

azeemh 4y ago

Zedtopia is a PWA... Going Native App this early would cost too much to develop and maintain, and because our platform is for publishing, sharing, and discussing web2 and web3 content, our app would require using a webview to render user uploaded html. Thus might as well use a browser. Myspace was just a webapp. Facebook started off as a webapp. Reddit is a webapp. I don't like installing extra apps unless necessary. Bloatware is annoying to my target user -- Early adopters and innovators. Thus PWA is the choice for this platform. It guarantees universal accessibility which is really important to our core values of inclusion and universal design. It's easier to make a webapp that uses the ecosystems' accessibility tools for deaf, blind, and impaired users. with things like webgl, we can even do lightweight gpu calculations and 3d presentations on a phone browser. a native app is only necessary for apps that use native functions. furthermore, until we move past jwt auth for api based apps and backends, platforms will still get hacked.

scarface74 4y ago
Facebook was one of the first apps available on the App Store in 2008. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/10/facebook-apple-app-store-most-popular-apps-of-2008.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/10/facebook-apple-app-store-mos...
- azeemh 4y ago
  It was a website in 2006 when millenials decided to use it to meet college only friends.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    It was a website that soon became popular by running Flash games.

resoluteteeth 4y ago

Aside from specific missing apis, the biggest problem with PWAs right now is probably that it's a PITA to maintain local state and also sync it with the server unless you use something like pouchdb that's specifically oriented around that. Once the filesystem storage apis get worked out, it should be much easier to have persistent sql.js, etc. without having to load the whole thing into memory and save it again constantly and without having to resort to complicated stuff like absurdsql. I think that finally being able to easily have sqlite in pwas will make it a lot easy to maintain local state and sync it without having to have a maintain a completely separate way of handling data for offline use, ideally without having to rearchitect the whole app as "offline first" but instead just optionally allowing offline use when it's installed as a PWA. This is assuming you want to enable offline use, but for me that's a major thing that justifies making a page into a PWA (otherwise why not just go to the site?).

enos_feedler 4y ago
I think the client server architecture is too deeply tied to the web to change this in a meaningful and impactful way across the web.
slimebot80 4y ago
> unless you use something like pouchdb that's specifically oriented around that There's your answer!

rablackburn 4y ago

As a user: I don’t think I’ve ever seen installing a PWA as an option. I’ve never been prompted (though I suppose some of those “use our app!” pop ups could be trying to install a pwa, but I think they always take me to the App Store). As the article mentions (on iOS) the install mechanism is to open the share menu and select “Add to home”. I don’t open the share menu on random web apps to see if I can install them. The option may as well not exist. I also highly doubt any regular user is aware of the term “PWA”. Why haven’t PWAs killed native apps? No one knows they exist. As a dev: The one time I wanted to make a PWA the use case relied on being able to send notifications. The user was on iOS, safari didn’t support it. Dead in the water. Maybe I’ll revisit it again now that support is finally here.

6figurelenins 4y ago
> Maybe I’ll revisit it again now that support is finally here. I hadn't heard, thanks! https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-16/features/ https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-16/features/ "Web push notifications Coming in 2023." https://caniuse.com/notifications https://caniuse.com/notifications
yen223 4y ago
I have no idea how someone who isn't a web developer is supposed to know 1) what a PWA is, and 2) how to install and use a PWA. It feels like what QR codes were like 10 years ago

JohnHaugeland 4y ago

Development tools are preferences, and developers tend to be more important than technologies. You're just seeing the authors' favorite tools. Lots of developers don't like web stack.

spoonjim 4y ago

Because I vastly prefer native apps and maybe others do too? The biggest advantage is that they stay logged in. I haven’t used AirBNB in 2 years but it’s still logged in. The web app wouldn’t be.

projektfu 4y ago
That's really contrary to my experience on iOS. My apps are frequently forgetting they were logged in. In fact, I just checked AirBnB specifically and it has forgotten me.

nemothekid 4y ago

A number of responses in this thread are crying about companies needing trackers or notifications not working correctly. These are two tiny issues that just doesn't explain why there aren't any competitive PWAs yet. PWA just aren't as satisfying to use as Web Apps; it doesn't have anything to do with relatively esoteric APIs. Just look at Twitter iOS and Twitter Web. Just moving within the app is clunky, try clicking a tweet; while the native app is full of fast animations the web app is full of empty loading screens. On native videos play quickly and fluently while html5 video can't offer the same seamlessness. Is there a PWA out there that meets the level of polish of something basic like Twitter native app? If not, users will continue to prefer native apps; especially on mobile. PWAs will only win if they manage to make development so cheap that they kill any incentive to build natively. This is what happened on desktop

nathants 4y ago

webapps haven’t been done well yet. mostly they try to mimic native apps, and obviously that’s not the way. for webapps to succeed they need ux that fits their platform: a browser. the best thing about webapps is they seamlessly move between devices. all you need is a browser and your password.

plaguepilled 4y ago

Q: "Why haven't PWAs killed native apps yet" A: "Because PWAs are not performant and are harder to police from a platform perspective"

jacooper 4y ago

I use twitter web on my phone instead of the app, for privacy reasons. Its noticeably more janky, the browser crashes now and then, and the animations aren't as smooth or simply don't exist, also things take longer time to load for some reason. I think it depends on how the website is designed, but it might also be a general experience of PWAs. Tech details: Brave browser, Android 12, Pixel 4XL with CalyxOS.

slimebot80 4y ago
Maybe try Firefox? Brave is known to be laden with "interesting" extras.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Its worse, especially on Android.

osrec 4y ago

Regarding PWAs accessing native features, I personally believe they should be able to, but only if explicitly installed and granted permission. I don't see why they shouldn't if I explicitly want to give them permission.

treelovinhippie 4y ago

pier25 4y ago

Pretty ironic all the people in here saying native apps are so much better... on a web app like HN.

6figurelenins 4y ago
"Web app?" I remember when they were forums. Heck: bulletin boards. This page could be an email.

throw_m239339 4y ago

Because mobile web app performance is abysmal. What happened to "mobile first"? I don't know, but developers have given up on the mobile web. The few web apps wrapped in in a native app I use (restaurant apps) have garbage performances, the UI is completely unresponsive, taps take forever to register, scrolling is hijacked by god knows what library..., so much that even the website is faster for ordering food, so clearly, native apps aren't going anywhere given the state of the mobile web.

encryptluks2 4y ago

PWAs really are just lacking something akin to native messaging that is available within extensions to allow communication with a native backend app. Once that is implemented in the official spec there will really be no reason for Electron anymore.

wildpeaks 4y ago

I'd be more likely to notice the option to install as PWA even exists if it was in the "Add bookmark" menu because I would already be in the mindset "I want to save this for later". Being in the Share menu, I'd only see "Add to home" while already in the process of sending to someone else, so I wouldn't have time to check what this is (as it would distract from my goal), and I'd have forgotten the option exists by the time my task (sharing the site) is complete.

blooalien 4y ago

Because massive nosey corporations won't allow it. Native apps can more easily trick people into giving permissions which make it easier to spy on your device. Those corporations want that access badly.

exabrial 4y ago

Because they’re an awful experience in every regard… in addition they tend to be poorly tested and contain a ton of bugs.

travisgriggs 4y ago

The following was an interesting sleight of hand to me: > A PWA can’t read your phone’s contacts, send SMS on your behalf, or access any of your phone’s features that could expose your private information. Seems almost like a win, right? But repeat just this part in isolation: > or access any of your phone’s features You’re phone has a lot of features that are either unavailable or clunky to use from web tech, that aren’t privacy related per se. I do BLE apps. I do apps that operate equipment when there’s no connectivity or internet around. Or that need tuned performance. Haptic feedback. Custom hare sheets. So on and so forth. I would love to not have to code the same thing m not Kotlin and Swift. We’ve tried. It just fails to execute well in the end.

croes 4y ago

>instant updates that require no approval Not even from the user

thewebcount 4y ago
This is such an underrated point. I hate it when an app changes on me mid-project without my permission. With native apps I can turn off auto-update and not have to worry about it. Yes, that might put me at slightly more security risk, but I don’t think there are many state actors trying to get me. At this point, the positives of not updating on someone else’s schedule far outweigh the risks for me.

MBCook 4y ago

I bet you could ask 10,000 normal (non-developer) users to name a single PWA and you’d get 0 answers. You don’t even have to use the name PWA. At best, they’ll name websites they visit. Not PWAs. I’m a dev. I’m not sure I can name one. After 10m of thinking… is Wordle setup as a PWA? I know I’d much prefer a native app to what they have now. PWAs seem like many other things I’ve seen over the years. The people making something want it. They tell you you want it. But… I don’t. I’ve never heard an argument that makes me want it. If normal people wanted it at all it would be more popular. Yes you couldn’t have notifications or access Bluetooth/etc. but I use plenty of native apps that don’t do those things. So why hasn’t anything made noticeable inroads? If Android is 80% of phones worldwide why is it always Apple holding PWAs back? * You WANT to rent DIVX DVDs! You buy it and then throw it away. You don’t have to rerun it! * Windows is better with everything designed around touch. You’ll love Windows 8! * Why have to choose heated seats when you buy your car? You can rent them when you need them! PWAs haven’t caught on at all. And it’s always someone else’s fault. At this point I’m just flat out skeptical of “demand” that advocates say is out there. I’m not saying they are never useful or don’t have a place. But I don’t see them ever displacing native apps no matter what changes.

rektide 4y ago

Fugu needs more fuel & more fire. Keep ignoring the haters as you have. Keep developing good sensible apis as best you can. Imo part of the issue is the half-heartness. There's been endless shitty medium-level platform shit shows. File System API utterly failed to be reasonably performant cause it tried to coddle & protect webdevs from platform concerns & was utterly incapable of being reasonably useful at all for real work (gross violation of Low Level Extensibility Manifesto, demonstration of egotistical we-are-the-spec-authors-we-know-better shit-show-ism). So we have File System Access api which is trucking along but only has like a third of the use-cases implemented (origin private only, no actual useful filesystem interaction). And it's still a total shitshow cowtowing to emscripten as if it's literally the only stakeholder & the rest of the web can get bent. The people with a actual good ideas to make shit better are far far far away from the web itself. WASI is a great example, refusing & ignoring literally every single thing that has happened ever anywhere across the entire web to concot new capability-based POSIX like interfaces that make absolutely zero use of anything we've done so far. The high drama AssemblyScript author blew up over this[1], and they are high drama, but they're definitely right. The people who actually wamt to shoot for real targets, to improve the system, have no willingness or interest in doing it at all within the framework, using anything at all that exists so far, and have created their own parallel universe with absolutely no connection & no hope of being usable in the browser (but being rapidly accepted on the server under the lying pretense that this may become "web" tech, in spite kf wasi ignoring all webspecs & having zero presence in webspec world). We need to go further. We need to improve more willingly. We need to see & attune to what progress is fake & not convergent (wasi). Progress has been huge. Vast. The haters and the deniers are obviously wrong & not worth regarding, full of petty small zeal that begrudes the gains happening elsewhere. PWAs are winning. The platform is radically improving in so many ways. But understanding where our capabilities are immature & need improvement, being able to make big significant changes possible, responding & acknowledging difficulties faster; the community has limited limited resources, and as a non-centrally controlled universe of technologies, where naysayer opinions can hold huge sway; it blocks the good. Making good & progress possible is essential. Finding ways to open up what we are trying & exploring is essential, is what has always made the web so great. More! More more more!! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32750219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32750219

slimebot80 4y ago

Safari getting web push notifications in 2023 If a user could "save" a webpage to an app icon on their desktop, and get badges for new messages, then that could herald in a new wave. And seriously. I think there is money to be made form offering your website users privacy from tracking and analytics. Websites potentially have an upper hand there. (of course that's entirely debatable, but just my educated hunch)

nickm12 4y ago

> Or at the very least, Apple could change the wording of "Add to Home Screen" to "Install the app" This makes me think the article is parody. Apple will never call PWAs "apps". Apps come from the App Store, silly. The question isn't when will Apple provide parity with native apps, but why they support PWAs at all.

bradgranath 4y ago

Give me a private, cross platform browser that isn’t trash and I’ll never user another app again.

nunez 4y ago

I don't know, but a PWA version of Slack and some other popular apps would be divine. I hate installing apps.