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I’ve always been vocal against web apps and pro native apps. Actions like this and also the direction Apple is taking with SwiftUI actually makes me interested

by steve1977 3y ago

I’ve always been vocal against web apps and pro native apps. Actions like this and also the direction Apple is taking with SwiftUI actually makes me interested in web apps again.

CuriouslyC 3y ago
Web apps will win eventually, there's only so much chrome and flash you can stuff in a native app and with WebASM/WebGPU becoming more robust the performance difference between native and webapp for things short of stuff like games is not really meaningful.
- Towaway69 3y ago
  From a technological point of view you're quite right but there are financial interests in creating gatekeeper-based app stores. It becomes worse since the gatekeepers are also those that sell us the mobile devices to access the app stores. It comes down to marketing. As longer there isn't a largish corporation marketing alternatives to native apps, the current situation won't change much - in the short term.
szasamasa 3y ago
I can assure you now it is totally possible to create the same standalone UX on iPhone from the web more securely than using a native app... if Apple is forced to allow at least other browser engines to use web capabilities securely (just like they could do this on macOS or any OS is capable) is it easy to create good web UX, not... most web desgners are not real programmers and most websites are terrible, I do not really use many web apps but plenty of them might be terrible now, too but it all comes down to the developer behind the product... if you get less native offerings in the future (there are areas where native is better, it is actually also a good bot protection to require native apps) then your good programmers simply deliver good web apps to you and it actually will be the same UX only cheaper interestingly enough, if everybody has to pay the apple tax and it is the user who pays it in the end, developers may just stay by native, no competitive pressure one area is that smaller innovative apps from even sole developers may never come to realisation because it is expensive to pay android and ios developers... I just checked lichess... it is a mixed website that is not responsive (on smaller screens terrible) but uses webassembly for stockfish, that is a plus still one of the biggest expense is 1 or 2 app developers, if they did not get 500k donations they might not even exist because of app store restrictions... that would be a loss actually they should have just invest that money to create a responsive design and maybe some offline functionality and they could deploy "apps" on iPhones and Android and actually on all desktops... but you might just want to use lichess as tabs there, one tab for analysis, one for broadcasts etc... that is a good example how we might lose great small projects like lichess... and why we only have 2 greats chess sites, one getting 100 million dollar from subscriptions... it is simply difficult to create a cross platform solution even if the stockfish ai is free and open source one monopoly creates others...

I’ve always been vocal against web apps and pro native apps. Actions like this and also the direction Apple is taking with SwiftUI actually makes me interested in web apps again.

CuriouslyC 3y ago

Web apps will win eventually, there's only so much chrome and flash you can stuff in a native app and with WebASM/WebGPU becoming more robust the performance difference between native and webapp for things short of stuff like games is not really meaningful.

Towaway69 3y ago
From a technological point of view you're quite right but there are financial interests in creating gatekeeper-based app stores. It becomes worse since the gatekeepers are also those that sell us the mobile devices to access the app stores. It comes down to marketing. As longer there isn't a largish corporation marketing alternatives to native apps, the current situation won't change much - in the short term.

szasamasa 3y ago

I can assure you now it is totally possible to create the same standalone UX on iPhone from the web more securely than using a native app... if Apple is forced to allow at least other browser engines to use web capabilities securely (just like they could do this on macOS or any OS is capable) is it easy to create good web UX, not... most web desgners are not real programmers and most websites are terrible, I do not really use many web apps but plenty of them might be terrible now, too but it all comes down to the developer behind the product... if you get less native offerings in the future (there are areas where native is better, it is actually also a good bot protection to require native apps) then your good programmers simply deliver good web apps to you and it actually will be the same UX only cheaper interestingly enough, if everybody has to pay the apple tax and it is the user who pays it in the end, developers may just stay by native, no competitive pressure one area is that smaller innovative apps from even sole developers may never come to realisation because it is expensive to pay android and ios developers... I just checked lichess... it is a mixed website that is not responsive (on smaller screens terrible) but uses webassembly for stockfish, that is a plus still one of the biggest expense is 1 or 2 app developers, if they did not get 500k donations they might not even exist because of app store restrictions... that would be a loss actually they should have just invest that money to create a responsive design and maybe some offline functionality and they could deploy "apps" on iPhones and Android and actually on all desktops... but you might just want to use lichess as tabs there, one tab for analysis, one for broadcasts etc... that is a good example how we might lose great small projects like lichess... and why we only have 2 greats chess sites, one getting 100 million dollar from subscriptions... it is simply difficult to create a cross platform solution even if the stockfish ai is free and open source one monopoly creates others...