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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 integra

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.

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.