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Are there any examples of really a great PWA on mobile? I always find the experience of company's mobile site far worse than its app (such as YouTube or Spotify

by ryanyl 4y ago

Are there any examples of really a great PWA on mobile? I always find the experience of company's mobile site far worse than its app (such as YouTube or Spotify), and I'm never sure if it's just lack of effort and attention, intentional to push users to the app, or just the ever so slight annoyances like slight tap delay on Safari iOS.

freedomben 4y ago
Google's Santa Tracker is a pretty great PWA
- dylan604 4y ago
  for something where the tracked object is stationary for 364 days out of the year, seems like not a difficult task /s
  - freedomben 4y ago
    I know you're joking (and it was funny), but thinking about it I think it's actually harder in some ways because you go from almost no traffic most of the year to needing to scale really, really fast. And the PWA has a ton of games and other things in it, so not as simple as the old school trackers that don't even need a backend cause all of the "tracking" happens in the browser
    - dylan604 4y ago
      I'm 100% unawares of the Santa Tracker app that you speak, so yes, I was attempting to be funny. However, for that 1 day of the year, is it that hard to have the "tracking" done locally since it's literally just made up data? Just know the localized time and where sunset is, and have the "Santa" moving around in the nighttime areas of the globe. Guessing on efficiency suggests to me rapid movements along the North/South with magical speed roughly equidistant from the terminator at a distance equivalent to midnight.?? Again, since it's 100% make believe, it's not like your browser has to show the exact same location as someone else's. Any other games the app might be included are out side of the scope of the imaginary app in my mind.
anderber 4y ago
I think that it really depends on what the PWA is trying to do and its purpose. I think the Twitter, Instagram, and Starbucks apps are both good examples of what can be done. Potentially a lot more could be done with PWAs, if there was more push to make them better. https://appsco.pe/ https://appsco.pe/
- mostlysimilar 4y ago
  Scrolled around and decided to try the TikTok app. It’s perfectly functional but immediately pops up asking to install the native app for the “full experience”. The first popup was dismissible, so I kept swiping. Within two videos the same popup was back and it was not dismissible. Companies intentionally cripple the web experience.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  People keep bringing up Twitter as an example of a good PWA... But it is objectively horrendously bad. If that's the best example of a PWA, give me a badly implemented native app any day of the week and five times on Sundays.
doomrobo 4y ago
Personal experience as a web dev: the mobile Safari PWA experience (and even regular browser experience) is terrible. The browser is riddled with bugs and lacks support for features that have been around for a while. I apologzie for not having examples bc it was a few months ago that I was struggling with this, but hopefully someone else can fill some in. I honestly believe Apple's stranglehold on the mobile browsing experience has been one of the most disempowering things to mobile users in the last decade.
- ExMachina73 4y ago
  This was an interesting recent development if it ends up being true, specifically Apple opening up iOS browser engine restrictions: https://9to5mac.com/2022/12/13/apple-mulls-opening-browser-engine-nfc-and-more-to-third-party-apps/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/12/13/apple-mulls-opening-browser-e...
- lelandfe 4y ago
  Personal experience shipping a big PWA: Safari's PWA experience is not just bad, it's all but undiscoverable: Open the Share sheet, scroll down, tap "Add to Home Screen," fill in the information, tap Add. There are simply no users that do this, and it is not an alternative to having a mobile app in the App Store.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    > There are simply no users that do this… 100%. PWAs are not a priority for Apple (and shouldn't be for developers) because users don't search for apps in web search engines, they search for them in the App Store.
    - locutous 4y ago
      App store discoverability is very poor. Web discoverability is much easier to manage. It's something you have more control over and can buy easier through marketing via any channel you want. App store pages just don't convert well.
  - 4y ago
lrem 4y ago
I thought that a number of first party Google "native" apps is just a packaged PWA, isn't it? Disclaimer: I work for Google, but never paid much attention to that corner of the company.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > I thought that a number of first party Google "native" apps is just a packaged PWA, isn't it? I wonder what those are. Because the apps where they want actual fast responsive apps with smooth animations etc. (and tracking :) ) are all native as far as I can tell.
- saxomoose 4y ago
  Google Finance would be an example.
pjmlp 4y ago
Twitter is kind of ok for what I need from it. Also mobile Web is good enough for most forms over data kind of applications. Other than games, where Web 3D APIs are stuck in 2010, many "apps" could be easily done as mobile Web, specially all those that are basically mobile Electron.
smeagull 4y ago
I'd like an example of an app that isn't shit compared to just using the mobile browser.
dylan604 4y ago
Isn't the main purpose of a native app access to data collection that a browser would not have access? That way they can make money on that data collection? Am I just too cynical here?
- cokeandpepsi 4y ago
  also avoids adblock
- aqfamnzc 4y ago
  Many other benefits to the company: (not necessarily for the user) * Persistent shortcut button on device's launcher * Notifications to pull user back into app to consume content, spend money, view ads * Data collection like you say * Uniquely identify user w/ device identifiers * No browser UI and quirks * Persistent storage on user's device
  - cglong 4y ago
    All of those are possible with PWAs except #5, and I'd argue that having completely different SDKs for each platform is much worse :(
    - edgyquant 4y ago
      Notifications are not. Yea the browser technically provides them but no one allows this (nor should they)
      - cglong 4y ago
        Lyft has a PWA, which IMO is a really good use case for browser-based notifications.
    - EGreg 4y ago
      Unique identification is no longer possible thanks to the 7 day cap on script writeable storage. Notifications are coming in 2023. But the big one — access to the address book picker - is still behind an Experimental flag !!
cglong 4y ago
Starbucks put a lot of effort into their PWA [1] to ensure users of low-end devices were able to get a rich experience. I just found a case study [2] by the team that built it that goes into some interesting details. [1]: https://app.starbucks.com/ https://app.starbucks.com/ [2]: https://formidable.com/work/starbucks-progressive-web-app/ https://formidable.com/work/starbucks-progressive-web-app/
narrator 4y ago
Brave Browser on Android is better for youtube because of the ad blocker.
asdff 4y ago
i.reddit.com versus their app for example
geysersam 4y ago
What's wrong with the YouTube pwa? To me it looks and feels very similar to the app. Edit: just tried the Spotify pwa and it's not bad. Maybe not as good as native, but that's partly because of the big "Get App" button in the bottom right corner.
- stby 4y ago
  Agreed, both are pretty good. Especially the YouTube PWA runs just as good as the native app on my Android phone, up to the point where I often forget which one I'm currently using.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
The biggest thing hurting PWAs in my opinion is that SPAs and web apps in general is done as a cost-saving measure. This means that while they can be good, they very often aren’t because they aren’t getting the budgets and caliber of engineering talent they’d need to be good, and so it’s much more common that they fall somewhere on the less-great side of mediocre. Users then associate this degraded quality with web apps and disinclines them from using them, even on platforms where PWA installation is promoted (like with Edge/Chrome on Windows and Chrome on Android). Safari’s limitations play a part too but even if Safari vanished tomorrow PWAs would continue to get lukewarm reception so long as companies aren’t putting the same kind of resources they’d put into a flagship native app into their PWAs. At the end of the day, if you cheap out you get a crap experience.
NoThisIsMe 4y ago
GitLab
saxomoose 4y ago
I had a decent experience with the Qoezion app recently: https://app.qoezion.com https://app.qoezion.com Basic messaging functionality, ...

by ryanyl 4y ago

freedomben 4y ago

Google's Santa Tracker is a pretty great PWA

dylan604 4y ago
for something where the tracked object is stationary for 364 days out of the year, seems like not a difficult task /s
- freedomben 4y ago
  I know you're joking (and it was funny), but thinking about it I think it's actually harder in some ways because you go from almost no traffic most of the year to needing to scale really, really fast. And the PWA has a ton of games and other things in it, so not as simple as the old school trackers that don't even need a backend cause all of the "tracking" happens in the browser
  - dylan604 4y ago
    I'm 100% unawares of the Santa Tracker app that you speak, so yes, I was attempting to be funny. However, for that 1 day of the year, is it that hard to have the "tracking" done locally since it's literally just made up data? Just know the localized time and where sunset is, and have the "Santa" moving around in the nighttime areas of the globe. Guessing on efficiency suggests to me rapid movements along the North/South with magical speed roughly equidistant from the terminator at a distance equivalent to midnight.?? Again, since it's 100% make believe, it's not like your browser has to show the exact same location as someone else's. Any other games the app might be included are out side of the scope of the imaginary app in my mind.

anderber 4y ago

I think that it really depends on what the PWA is trying to do and its purpose. I think the Twitter, Instagram, and Starbucks apps are both good examples of what can be done. Potentially a lot more could be done with PWAs, if there was more push to make them better. https://appsco.pe/ https://appsco.pe/

mostlysimilar 4y ago
Scrolled around and decided to try the TikTok app. It’s perfectly functional but immediately pops up asking to install the native app for the “full experience”. The first popup was dismissible, so I kept swiping. Within two videos the same popup was back and it was not dismissible. Companies intentionally cripple the web experience.
dmitriid 4y ago
People keep bringing up Twitter as an example of a good PWA... But it is objectively horrendously bad. If that's the best example of a PWA, give me a badly implemented native app any day of the week and five times on Sundays.

doomrobo 4y ago

Personal experience as a web dev: the mobile Safari PWA experience (and even regular browser experience) is terrible. The browser is riddled with bugs and lacks support for features that have been around for a while. I apologzie for not having examples bc it was a few months ago that I was struggling with this, but hopefully someone else can fill some in. I honestly believe Apple's stranglehold on the mobile browsing experience has been one of the most disempowering things to mobile users in the last decade.

ExMachina73 4y ago
This was an interesting recent development if it ends up being true, specifically Apple opening up iOS browser engine restrictions: https://9to5mac.com/2022/12/13/apple-mulls-opening-browser-engine-nfc-and-more-to-third-party-apps/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/12/13/apple-mulls-opening-browser-e...
lelandfe 4y ago
Personal experience shipping a big PWA: Safari's PWA experience is not just bad, it's all but undiscoverable: Open the Share sheet, scroll down, tap "Add to Home Screen," fill in the information, tap Add. There are simply no users that do this, and it is not an alternative to having a mobile app in the App Store.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > There are simply no users that do this… 100%. PWAs are not a priority for Apple (and shouldn't be for developers) because users don't search for apps in web search engines, they search for them in the App Store.
  - locutous 4y ago
    App store discoverability is very poor. Web discoverability is much easier to manage. It's something you have more control over and can buy easier through marketing via any channel you want. App store pages just don't convert well.
- 4y ago

lrem 4y ago

I thought that a number of first party Google "native" apps is just a packaged PWA, isn't it? Disclaimer: I work for Google, but never paid much attention to that corner of the company.

dmitriid 4y ago
> I thought that a number of first party Google "native" apps is just a packaged PWA, isn't it? I wonder what those are. Because the apps where they want actual fast responsive apps with smooth animations etc. (and tracking :) ) are all native as far as I can tell.
saxomoose 4y ago
Google Finance would be an example.

pjmlp 4y ago

Twitter is kind of ok for what I need from it. Also mobile Web is good enough for most forms over data kind of applications. Other than games, where Web 3D APIs are stuck in 2010, many "apps" could be easily done as mobile Web, specially all those that are basically mobile Electron.

smeagull 4y ago

I'd like an example of an app that isn't shit compared to just using the mobile browser.

dylan604 4y ago

Isn't the main purpose of a native app access to data collection that a browser would not have access? That way they can make money on that data collection? Am I just too cynical here?

cokeandpepsi 4y ago
also avoids adblock
aqfamnzc 4y ago
Many other benefits to the company: (not necessarily for the user) * Persistent shortcut button on device's launcher * Notifications to pull user back into app to consume content, spend money, view ads * Data collection like you say * Uniquely identify user w/ device identifiers * No browser UI and quirks * Persistent storage on user's device
- cglong 4y ago
  All of those are possible with PWAs except #5, and I'd argue that having completely different SDKs for each platform is much worse :(
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    Notifications are not. Yea the browser technically provides them but no one allows this (nor should they)
    - cglong 4y ago
      Lyft has a PWA, which IMO is a really good use case for browser-based notifications.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    Unique identification is no longer possible thanks to the 7 day cap on script writeable storage. Notifications are coming in 2023. But the big one — access to the address book picker - is still behind an Experimental flag !!

cglong 4y ago

Starbucks put a lot of effort into their PWA [1] to ensure users of low-end devices were able to get a rich experience. I just found a case study [2] by the team that built it that goes into some interesting details. [1]: https://app.starbucks.com/ https://app.starbucks.com/ [2]: https://formidable.com/work/starbucks-progressive-web-app/ https://formidable.com/work/starbucks-progressive-web-app/

narrator 4y ago

Brave Browser on Android is better for youtube because of the ad blocker.

asdff 4y ago

i.reddit.com versus their app for example

geysersam 4y ago

What's wrong with the YouTube pwa? To me it looks and feels very similar to the app. Edit: just tried the Spotify pwa and it's not bad. Maybe not as good as native, but that's partly because of the big "Get App" button in the bottom right corner.

stby 4y ago
Agreed, both are pretty good. Especially the YouTube PWA runs just as good as the native app on my Android phone, up to the point where I often forget which one I'm currently using.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

The biggest thing hurting PWAs in my opinion is that SPAs and web apps in general is done as a cost-saving measure. This means that while they can be good, they very often aren’t because they aren’t getting the budgets and caliber of engineering talent they’d need to be good, and so it’s much more common that they fall somewhere on the less-great side of mediocre. Users then associate this degraded quality with web apps and disinclines them from using them, even on platforms where PWA installation is promoted (like with Edge/Chrome on Windows and Chrome on Android). Safari’s limitations play a part too but even if Safari vanished tomorrow PWAs would continue to get lukewarm reception so long as companies aren’t putting the same kind of resources they’d put into a flagship native app into their PWAs. At the end of the day, if you cheap out you get a crap experience.

NoThisIsMe 4y ago

GitLab

saxomoose 4y ago

I had a decent experience with the Qoezion app recently: https://app.qoezion.com https://app.qoezion.com Basic messaging functionality, ...