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My experience is similar. While Apple don't invest in PWA, PWA is doomed from a commercial point of view. It is a really sad situation because the user experi

My experience is similar. While Apple don't invest in PWA, PWA is doomed from a commercial point of view. It is a really sad situation because the user experience of PWA is match better than installing apps from the store (with higher install rate than native). Twitter is (or was) one of those examples. It took months until I realize that I was using a PWA than a native app.

kelthuzad 4y ago
Why do you think PWAs are doomed? Is it because you suspect that Apple will continue to sabotage them regardless of likely fines by regulators?
threeseed 4y ago
> Twitter is (or was) one of those examples. It took months until I realize that I was using a PWA than a native app. Something is very wrong if you can't tell the difference. The difference is night and day on iOS. PWA app has significantly lower responsiveness, constant mis-touches on buttons, loading screens for every click etc.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  > PWA app has significantly lower responsiveness, constant mis-touches on buttons, loading screens for every click etc. That's certainly not inherent to every PWA, e.g. there is no need to have a "loading screen for every click".
  - nvrspyx 4y ago
    Not to mention that the opposite is also true where a large number of "native" apps are really just wrapped up web apps and many suffer these same issues.
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      Right. Ultimately, it’s a business decision, because paying for 3x the people or 3x the time to implement one feature on web, iOS and android is not something that people like to do, let alone the headache of coordinating feature parity and release timeline with said teams.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Part of the reason I'm not more bothered by Apple making PWAs viable is that they've failed to crack down on apps that don't meet their performance standards, anyway, letting those apps get away with just being terrible-performing, non-native-feeling web-app wrappers. That whole class of trash-tier "app" may as well be a PWA, I guess. I'd rather they kick out every app with an unjustifiably-long launch time or with janky non-native behavior in places where it has no reason to be so, but since they're evidently not gonna do that, may as well have PWAs.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  The twitter web app is such a mess. Only slightly better than "new" Reddit, which is probably one of the single worst offenders in the world of bad SPAs.
  - toastal 4y ago
    I often forget how unusable Reddit is without old.reddit and a native, FOSS app like Infinity to make it acceptable.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      If it weren't for Narhwal and later on, Apollo (iOS reddit clients) my usage of Reddit would be somewhere between 0% and 10% of what it's been the past several years.
yamtaddle 4y ago
> the user experience of PWA is match better than installing apps from the store (with higher install rate than native). People have A/B tested "click this app store link to install" and "click this to install this webpage as a web-app" and found the latter gets more installs?
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  That’s not really surprising. More clicks = more friction = more people not making it to the end.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Is installing a PWA one tap instead of two (it's two, for iOS native apps), on Android?
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      To an appstore link, its at least three on ios Once to get to app store Once to click install A double tap to verify after face/touch/passcode on ios (I use iOS.)
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        Ah, forgot about the double-tap to verify. I'd hope PWAs on Android take at least two actions to install (though perhaps not three). One-tap is how you end up with every user having tons of apps installed they never intended to.
dmitriid 4y ago
> Twitter is (or was) one of those examples. It took months until I realize that I was using a PWA than a native app. I can't believe people keep saying this with a straight face. It's as if they've never seen an proper native app before (any of the third-party clients to Twitter come to mind before they were axed). Or haven't seen actual good fast implementations like the one Twitter actually bought and surprisingly still kinda maintains (see on desktop, https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/)

kelthuzad 4y ago

Why do you think PWAs are doomed? Is it because you suspect that Apple will continue to sabotage them regardless of likely fines by regulators?

threeseed 4y ago

> Twitter is (or was) one of those examples. It took months until I realize that I was using a PWA than a native app. Something is very wrong if you can't tell the difference. The difference is night and day on iOS. PWA app has significantly lower responsiveness, constant mis-touches on buttons, loading screens for every click etc.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> PWA app has significantly lower responsiveness, constant mis-touches on buttons, loading screens for every click etc. That's certainly not inherent to every PWA, e.g. there is no need to have a "loading screen for every click".
- nvrspyx 4y ago
  Not to mention that the opposite is also true where a large number of "native" apps are really just wrapped up web apps and many suffer these same issues.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Right. Ultimately, it’s a business decision, because paying for 3x the people or 3x the time to implement one feature on web, iOS and android is not something that people like to do, let alone the headache of coordinating feature parity and release timeline with said teams.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Part of the reason I'm not more bothered by Apple making PWAs viable is that they've failed to crack down on apps that don't meet their performance standards, anyway, letting those apps get away with just being terrible-performing, non-native-feeling web-app wrappers. That whole class of trash-tier "app" may as well be a PWA, I guess. I'd rather they kick out every app with an unjustifiably-long launch time or with janky non-native behavior in places where it has no reason to be so, but since they're evidently not gonna do that, may as well have PWAs.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
kitsunesoba 4y ago
The twitter web app is such a mess. Only slightly better than "new" Reddit, which is probably one of the single worst offenders in the world of bad SPAs.
- toastal 4y ago
  I often forget how unusable Reddit is without old.reddit and a native, FOSS app like Infinity to make it acceptable.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    If it weren't for Narhwal and later on, Apollo (iOS reddit clients) my usage of Reddit would be somewhere between 0% and 10% of what it's been the past several years.

yamtaddle 4y ago

> the user experience of PWA is match better than installing apps from the store (with higher install rate than native). People have A/B tested "click this app store link to install" and "click this to install this webpage as a web-app" and found the latter gets more installs?

bobthepanda 4y ago
That’s not really surprising. More clicks = more friction = more people not making it to the end.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Is installing a PWA one tap instead of two (it's two, for iOS native apps), on Android?
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    To an appstore link, its at least three on ios Once to get to app store Once to click install A double tap to verify after face/touch/passcode on ios (I use iOS.)
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Ah, forgot about the double-tap to verify. I'd hope PWAs on Android take at least two actions to install (though perhaps not three). One-tap is how you end up with every user having tons of apps installed they never intended to.

dmitriid 4y ago

> Twitter is (or was) one of those examples. It took months until I realize that I was using a PWA than a native app. I can't believe people keep saying this with a straight face. It's as if they've never seen an proper native app before (any of the third-party clients to Twitter come to mind before they were axed). Or haven't seen actual good fast implementations like the one Twitter actually bought and surprisingly still kinda maintains (see on desktop, https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/)