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> I'm not even sure why are we, as developers, allowing this to happen — there's usually not any good reason to develop mobile applications at all anymore. It's
by pmontra 3y ago
> I'm not even sure why are we, as developers, allowing this to happen — there's usually not any good reason to develop mobile applications at all anymore. It's time to move back to open (web) standards and take control back into our own hands!
In general yes, but if I look at the apps on my phone I have
A mail client, K9, old UI. This clearly can't be replaced by a web app because I'm using it to look at my mail in a few POP3 servers and then I'll download those messages on my laptop (Thunderbird)
OSMAnd, offline maps and trop recording. Can't be web based.
Password manager, with a local dB synced with Syncthing.
Syncthing.
Epub reader, from files stored on my phone.
Photo gallery, for files on my phone. I backup to my laptop with Syncthing.
Banking apps, that I must use for 2FA in the web sites of those banks.
A network scanner, useful to debug networking issues.
Etc.
Of all the apps that are currently installed on my phone the ones that could be web apps are:
Go4Go, to view game records of pro games.
Elementary.
Chwazi.
- jarm0 3y agoAgree that not everything can be web-based and your list of apps seem to be non-typical if there exists a list of typical apps of course.
- omniglottal 3y agoThis list of apps is very typical for the class of user who chooses F-droid as a repo source.
- moron4hire 3y ago> OSMAnd, offline maps and trop recording. Can't be web based. There's no reason this couldn't be browser based.
- Filligree 3y agoOffline maps. Browsers tend to delete PWA data without asking the user first, which can be as threat to life and limb in this case.
- moron4hire 3y agoYou can save files and load them from disk. You'll just have to have the user pick the file.
- gnum4n 3y agoYeah, but if the phone/browser decides to delete some of the PWA's code to save space, you won't be able to use any maps at all until you connect back to the internet. Before you say "just download the code to your phone as a file", I'm going to assert that's exactly what an app is ;)
- anders_p 3y agoThat would be worse than an app.
- hyperhopper 3y agoChwazi can be a website
- marcosdumay 3y agoThose could all run in a browser. A PWA isn't cloud software, it's just software that runs on your browser. But they would indeed ask for all kinds of permissions. And K9 and the network scanner would get a really scary-looking permission dialog.