36 ms·

Ask HN: Who has had a successful PWA product?

127 points by codazoda 2y ago

They say to find someone who’s done what you want to do. We’ll, I want to re-launch a successful progressive web app (PWA). I had some success ($500 MRR) with shareware, 20 years ago, but those methods probably don’t work anymore. What does work? If you’ve had success, maybe you would be willing to exchange some email?

brylie 2y ago
Start with the customer needs rather than the technology. Do you have some specific product ideas? Those ideas would help steer technology decisions, particularly during the initial prototyping phase.
- pedalpete 2y ago
  This is exactly what I was going to say, and PWA is like you're trying to build for 2 cycles ago. When you've got the problem you want to work on, is a PWA the best method of use/distribution/discovery? Perhaps a mobile app is the best method, or a hardware device. When you're thinking about what you want to build, don't forget about distribution. There is a saying that 1st time founders focus on product, 2nd time founders focus on distribution.
throwaway9143 2y ago
I'll give you a hard-earned tip: expect to fight Apple every step of the way. They will randomly erase all local data (cookies, localstorage, push subscription tokens, etc) in your PWA without warning. They say they don't do this, but I have the receipts. They want PWAs to suffer, and you will go insane trying to make workarounds on iPhone.
- thepra 2y ago
  Even IndexedDb? Having a PWA based on webassembly(Blazor) that I test on an updated iPhone 6 I have to say that I didn't ever run in such issues, the experience is good even though the device is old.
  - roywashere 2y ago
    They definitely clear localstorage. But they also are honest about doing this under disk pressure — can’t find the link right now though. My old company had a Cordova app and we stored the client token in localstorage and we found some 16G phones losing their tokens and it turned out to be this. We changed to store tokens in the keyring. From a real web app you can’t but I guess if you would use a cookie this might just work.
    - aragonite 2y ago
      Also sometimes localStorage gets cleared because it can easily become corrupted from concurrent writes. I had a userscript that made a few fetch calls whenever I visited a certain domain and saved the results in localStorage. Every week or so, all the data in localStorage would just get wiped. Switching to IndexedDB (via localForage) solved the problem.
      - dotproto 2y ago
        I was about to say "concurrent writes shouldn't be a problem because localStorage is synchronous and JS is single-threaded," but then I started thinking about multiple tabs, WebWorkers, and multi-process browsers and figured I should double-check the spec. > Warning! The localStorage getter provides access to shared state. This specification does not define the interaction with other agent clusters in a multiprocess user agent, and authors are encouraged to assume that there is no locking mechanism. A site could, for instance, try to read the value of a key, increment its value, then write it back out, using the new value as a unique identifier for the session; if the site does this twice in two different browser windows at the same time, it might end up using the same "unique" identifier for both sessions, with potentially disastrous effects. https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webstorage.html#introduction-15:dom-localstorage-2 https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webstorage.html#intro...
  - throwaway9143 2y ago
    Yes, a full local reset. Its an issue that plagued us for almost a year sporadically across several thousand customers. After instrumenting our app with very detailed remote logging, we were fortunate enough to catch it on one of our in-house local test iPhones. The logging showed an app with rich local state, the app close, then several minutes later the app open with no local state. Everything was wiped. This lined up with the feedback we had been receiving. Specifically for us, the push notification subscription tokens were being erased/revoked from the browser, meaning the customer couldn't receive notifications anymore. But the logging showed all local state was reset, including IndexedDb. If you dig through the Apple developer forums and StackOverflow, you will see many others complaining about this. You will also see links to resources claiming that Apple ITP does not do this for PWAs, specifically: https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/#intelligent-tracking-prevention-itp https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/#intelligent-tracking... "Home Screen Web Application Domain Exempt From ITP". This is 100% bullshit though. My personal belief is that Apple is purposefully nuking PWAs from orbit in a non-deterministic and "buggy" way because they are a threat to the app store business model, and I suspect if they frustrate enough developers, people will stay away from PWAs.
- ec109685 2y ago
  Great point. The fact that they don’t backup to the cloud PWA data makes it a non-starter for any app that wants a local only experience. It’s trash.
  - d1sxeyes 2y ago
    I am not sure that I would be happy with a 'local only' experience actually backing up data to the cloud.
    - ec109685 2y ago
      I mean if you explicitly enable iCloud backup, I think you’d expect that your app’s data is backed up.
- gnfedhjmm2 2y ago
  I’m not saying this isn’t true. Genuinely! but when I make up random unsubstantiated slander about other companies it gets removed instantly. What makes Apple different? You could never say this about substack or Tesla.
  - meiraleal 2y ago
    You can definitely say that about Tesla and most people don't care about substack
- bob1029 2y ago
  My most recent workaround for this is to put a session identifier in the URL somewhere and keep literally everything else on the server. You essentially have to build your app from zero with these limitations in mind if you want any chance at getting around them. This is a large part of why I am not a fan of frameworks and other popular design patterns. Having total control over how state is managed and communicated is really important if you don't want to get trapped in various tar pits.
- metadat 2y ago
  Are you saying the Safari browser on iOS intentionally cripples web applications by randomly erasing / deleting browser data (cookies, localStorage, etc)? And this happens on purpose because apple wants to boost App Store Apps usage? If there is evidence of the veracity of this claim, this topic deserves a whole lot more attention. Especially considering Apple's stance on 3rd party mobile web browser engines - Apple forbids them, although EU regulation may force this to change. I searched a bit and found no smoking gun, the closest hit was: https://old.reddit.com/r/Safari/comments/185cra6/safari_nuking_cookies_and_local_storage_randomly/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Safari/comments/185cra6/safari_nuki... But it seems more likely caused by legitimate bugs than any intentional campaign. Have I been nerdsniped here by a nutter? :-s
  - bob1029 2y ago
    > Are you saying the Safari browser on iOS intentionally cripples web applications by randomly erasing / deleting browser data (cookies, localStorage, etc)? I would absolutely make this claim. This isn't even a PWA thing. We had a really simple series of boring web forms that suffered from this. The first iteration of this had the server swap an initial tokenized link for a cookie when clicked. After some feedback from our customers, we discovered that iOS users were having a lot of trouble getting all the way through the desired workflow. We were able to replicate this on our iOS devices but it seemed completely arbitrary. After abandoning cookies in favor of maintaining a tokenized URL, we found we were getting 100% success rate for iOS end users. My theory is there is a malicious bit of code in iOS Safari that is applying some insane cookie policy over "unpopular" domains.
    - moralestapia 2y ago
      I think they have a thing now where all stored data gets wiped every few days (in the name of privacy, purportedly). And yes, that broke a bunch of apps.
  - cyanydeez 2y ago
    When do legit bugs turn into active negligence?
- DylanSp 2y ago
  Does Safari on iOS support the File System API, specifically the origin private file system? Can you use that to reliably persist data into a file/SQLite database?
  - streptomycin 2y ago
    No, that also gets deleted sometimes. But on the plus side, random deletions also happen on Android!
    - DylanSp 2y ago
      That's unfortunate. Good to know, though.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  Just refuse to service Apple customers. They can lie in the bed they've made.
  - Bjartr 2y ago
    The unfortunate truth is that for too many businesses this is equivalent to "stop running your business"
- streptomycin 2y ago
  Random data loss happens on Android quite a bit too. Source: I have a PWA with a lot of users, and my #1 complaint is data being lost on both Android and iOS. This is true even if you use Google's own tool to wrap your PWA and put it in the Play Store, and even if you use the so-called "persistent storage API" to have users request their data not be deleted - still get random data loss, and it makes it very hard to maintain a 4+ star rating when there are a bunch of 1 star reviews about users losing all their data.
  - iuvcaw 2y ago
    Genuine question - not defending Apple/google - does your pwa not use a dedicated server / db for user’s data? And then localstorage just as a cache if needed?
    - streptomycin 2y ago
      It doesn't... started as a hobby project in 2012, wanted to see if it was possible to make an app that stored a lot of client-side data in IndexedDB. Now, my app is successful so I don't really want to move to another platform, but also it creates too much data to easily and cheaply sync to a server. So I'm in a weird situation. https://basketball-gm.com/ https://basketball-gm.com/ if you're curious. I realize I'm a bit of an edge case. But also, ideally we could make PWAs that operate with similar data guarantees as native apps. That's kind of the idea of PWAs, that web apps should be able to mostly be the equivalent of native apps. And it almost works, except for the data loss issue. Kind of sad. Cause there are so many other advantages of a PWA... like being able to target all platforms with one PWA is incredible. Having no gatekeepers to "approve" my app updates is incredible. But the cost is sometimes users lose all their data :)
      - tomcam 2y ago
        Wait why not just charge a small amount?
twooclock 2y ago
For my users having a PWA is completely irrelevant. Once they add it to home screen it's an app for them (I don't even bother to explain anymore). It might be a discoverability issue since they can't find you in app stores though.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  why would you not put a wrapped pwa in the app store? isn't it a small racketeering/marketing price for the promissed discoverability?
  - goosejuice 2y ago
    Easier with Android. Apple requires many hurdles, at least for US. You'll also then have to revenue share. Depends on your audience on whether this will actually be worth the investment. Being on the app store doesn't necessarily make you visible anyhow. It's just easier to install for apple users.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      If you have a SaaS app, there is nothing stopping you from charging more in app to make up the difference and charging less outside the store
      - goosejuice 2y ago
        Good point, but I think app store presence would be more important in d2c rather than b2b SaaS. In that situation I don't think charging more would go over well with consumers. Have you seen this done?
        scarface_74 2y ago
        Spotify did it for awhile before they completely stopped accepting in app purchases. Paramount+ also use to do it. Netflix offers in app purchases for streaming subscriptions if you pay through their games. But only the ad tier. You can subscribe to YouTube or Hulu via in app subscriptions. But you can’t subscribe to YouTube TV or Hulu Live TV via the app. I guess these days I would offer a higher month to month subscription through in app purchases and a lower yearly subscription from the web.
goosejuice 2y ago
What's the alternative? Certainly multi platform native only makes sense at a certain scale. Your question might be too light on details to provide much advice.
- knallfrosch 2y ago
  Releases should be automated anyway. Once you set up the necessary pipelines, there is not that much work involved. I think our only pain point (team of ~7 devs) is keeping a Macbook around for iPad builds and debugging. But I guess you will need Macbook to debug any Safari issues too.
  - goosejuice 2y ago
    Are you referring to builds of a PWA wrapper shipped to the App store? If you don't mind sharing, how did your approval process go? Any hangups?
    - knallfrosch 2y ago
      Sorry for the confusion. We ship minimal Electron (Windows) / Cordova (iOS) wrappers to interface with our website. They're a pain to set up but don't require all that much code themselves. This allows us to publish to the respective stores. Would be hard to convince non-technical users to click "Install as PWA" because noone knows what that is.
      - goosejuice 2y ago
        Good to hear. I've read a few companies who really struggled getting approved with this method. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#minimum-functionality https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#min...
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  If it's about making money or making a living, your best alternative is probably to make an app exclusively for the platform where most of your profitable customers are. You can expand to other platforms later if you get the scale.
JoshTriplett 2y ago
What do you want to do with a PWA that you can't do with a webpage? If at all possible, try to use a webpage instead, to avoid the myriad problems and quirks that arise with PWAs. Only resort to a PWA if you need capabilities that you can't get as a webpage.
- pflenker 2y ago
  Push notifications, for starters. But the more compelling argument is that from the user’s point of view, an app is something else than a web page. Even the most basic feature - being represented at the Home Screen on the device - makes a huge difference.
  - JoshTriplett 2y ago
    I'm aware of the differences; I was encouraging the OP to consider whether those differences are worth the increased pain that comes with PWAs, particularly on Apple platforms.
vjeux 2y ago
excalidraw.com is a PWA, but not unsure how helpful it’s going to be as comparison. As mentioned in the comments, success is likely more due to the usefulness of the app rather than the tech used. vjeuxx@gmail.com if you wanna chat.
- keyle 2y ago
  Unrelated, but this is just a joy to use. Well done.
- cpcat 2y ago
  Unrelated, I'm interested in the tech behind it to build my own PWA. May I ask what tech stack you use. Sorry if it's obvious I'm just getting started
  - arthurmorgan 2y ago
    Not OP, but the source code can be found here: https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw
e38383 2y ago
I‘m using https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/ as PWA on all my devices and it works very good. Maybe you can contact them or look around the source yourself.
- LuisAPI 2y ago
  Speaking of messaging apps, there's also https://app.revolt.chat/ https://app.revolt.chat/ designed to target a sort-of different userbase. Been using them as a PWA for a very long time.
dualogy 2y ago
> had some success ($500 MRR) with shareware, 20 years ago Don't trigger my nostalgia! Fun times, been there done that 2005-2008 https://web.archive.org/web/20080118184913/http://www.sudoku-pro.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080118184913/http://www.sudoku... — then sold it on to another "micro-ISV" (the popular term for indie software maker back then)
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Don't copy that floppy! (Busts out greaseweazle and Central Point - Copy II PC Option Board Enhanced, and Nevrlock) The 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disk shareware cardboard bins on tables at Weird Stuff.[0] This was the equivalent to [Download Demo] in the 90's, except they made you drive to a brick & mortar store and pay for privilege. 0. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/weirdstuff-warehouse https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/weirdstuff-warehouse
- codazoda 2y ago
  So much nostalgia! I miss the used book stores and the shareware racks of floppies (which I think another user mentioned).
stpn 2y ago
I run a personal finance app that's built as a PWA (https://tender.run https://tender.run, my email is in my profile). I would say running as a PWA has been a mixed bag. There are quite a few missing features across web platforms (for starters, background sync, full featured push notifications, haptics) that make it hard to be competitive with native apps. Every WWDC, we watch in hopes that Safari gets more PWA features, but it's a thin drip. There's a reason so many apps repackage into electron/cordova/whatever shells. As other folks in thread have pointed out, it's probably worth thinking through why a product works particularly as a PWA vs alternative distribution methods.
sidcool 2y ago
Flipkart
palsecam 2y ago
https://FreeSolitaire.win https://FreeSolitaire.win is a successful PWA of mine. It’s a Klondike Solitaire game. It used to bring ~$500/mo of advertising revenue, but that’s significantly down these days: I refuse to have a cookie/consent banner, so I refuse customized ads (in the UE, in some US states now, &c.) Players do add it to homescreen. There is a non-intrusive button prompting them to do so, at the end of a game. People like to be able to play offline. Apart from that, I don’t use much PWA/browser features; no notifications, etc. More info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34483398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34483398 Happy to answer any question you may have! Happy to get some feedback too ;-)
- toldyouso2022 2y ago
  I'm really liking it, I've played multiple times and installed it. I will ask though: is it possible to remove the vibration?
  - palsecam 2y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! I understand your will to disable vibrations. But thing is, right now I can’t think of how to offer that option properly. For instance, adding a Setting menu+icon just for that would be lame. I’ll think about it more, tho.
    - toldyouso2022 2y ago
      A burger menu in the top right where you then see settings and help. Again, well done
- raybb 2y ago
  What ad network are you using?
  - palsecam 2y ago
    AdSense.
- 2y ago
joshstrange 2y ago
Whenever this argument comes up it reminds me of how detached from reality HN is on this subject. Customers want apps. Companies want apps. No one except us nerds want PWAs. We can talk about how PWAs are second class citizens and how unfair that is or we can remember that end-users _do not care_ about the underlying technology. We constantly make this mistake, customer don’t care what language you are using, they don’t care what framework you use, they don’t care about native vs web, they just want it to work. I’ve been developing cross platform mobile apps (web, iOS, native) for around 15 years (Titanium, Cordova, and now Capacitor) and while the lesson has been painful: no one cares about PWAs. I will tell clients “you can go to <website> and see exactly what your app will look like once it’s packaged for the app stores” and they will simply wait for the native app instead. I’ve lost count of the number of times the code has been running on the web for weeks+ and it’s not till it’s in the stores that I get _any_ feedback (things they could have easily seen in the web version but didn’t bother with till it was an “app”). You can complain about this, you can talk about how unfair it is, you can extol the virtues of PWAs but at the end of the day it just doesn’t matter. Customers have spoken, they want apps. I launched my current company as a website/PWA and all I got was a lot of heartache: “I can’t find it in the App Store”. Not a single person said “thank you for making this a website”. In fact, I get 1-2 complaints (from thousands of users) of “I don’t want to download an app” to which I tell them “you don’t have to, the website spells this out very clearly, you can use the website and/or save it to your home screen, no app install needed”. I tell that story to illustrate how few people even say they care, but also can’t grok that they don’t need to install an app. That “1-2” pales in comparison to the people who complained about it not being a “real app”. So if you want to fight against native apps be my guest but you’re fighting a battle that customers do not care about (I cannot stress enough that: HN != normal customers) and they will not thank you for. Yes, the 15-30% “tax” can suck but 15% of $X is better than 0% of $Y. You will simply miss out on a large number of customers if you refuse to make an app. No customer has ever cared if you use spaces or tabs internally and they don’t care if you provide a PWA, they just want open their platform’s App Store and search for your app. The ship has sailed on this topic and you can complain about it or you can live in reality and go to where your customers are, the app stores. You can say this isn’t fair but as my dad used to say: the fair comes once a year and if you miss it, it’s your own damn fault.
scubadude 2y ago
Apple killed PWAs years ago.
eggzy 2y ago
I run a web client for my app https://github.com/karlomikus/vue-salt-rim https://github.com/karlomikus/vue-salt-rim and I'm using some PWA features. It's mostly just to get the native app feeling since I don't want to maintain separate apps for all the platforms.
knallfrosch 2y ago
Definitely feels like you're putting the cart before the horse. You've got the technology nailed down, but haven't explained why. What platforms are you even targeting?
franciscop 2y ago
I have made 2 PWAs that I use daily myself, so I consider them a success! Also one Electron (which I later migrated to Tauri) desktop app and I'm wrapping up another (which took ~2 days). Nothing big/fancy as you probably want, but for me they are definitely successes for me!
cynx 2y ago
[dead]
iknowstuff 2y ago
https://sniffies.com https://sniffies.com is bar none the most successful PWA I’ve seen in the wild. Push notifications despite Apple’s nonsense and all. Impossible to have an equivalent on the app store. Nsfw.
the_florist 2y ago
https://flowery.app https://flowery.app is exclusively a PWA. It was designed from the ground up to prioritize the “Add to Home Screen” experience on iOS. The web is the ideal platform given the app’s emphasis on text and typography, and a native replica would be reinventing the wheel for no tangible benefit to the user. WebKit and Safari have come a long way. Flowery puts browser engines through their paces with its UI animation, which is smoothest on WebKit. Safari’s OS integration (e.g., elastic scroll, Sonoma’s “Add to Dock”) is more polished than Chrome’s. It wasn’t a walk in the park though. An early decision, after maddening attempts to circumvent browser quirks five years ago, was to build substitutes for common building blocks of the browser on mobile, notably the virtual keyboard, textboxes, and text selection. This wouldn’t have been possible without web components and Google’s excellent Lit library.
- codazoda 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing. The app functions really well and is beautiful. It took me quite a while to figure out what it does and I'm still not 100% sure I understand completely. Is the app profitable? How do people find out about it?
  - djhn 2y ago
    I find your experience rather relatable. I did figure out there is some sort of spaced repetition component to it, but that’s probably because I’m already an Anki user and aware of the concept. I quite like the eccentricity of it, although I’m sure it could be toned down a notch for wider appeal. Feature-wise, having thesaurus definitions immediately accessible is very useful.
    - the_florist 2y ago
      Thanks! I take the “eccentric” label as a compliment. I may have gone overboard with the minimalism. Users had been all the more baffled before I added the tooltips hinting to tap the hearts, so I should probably double down on some sort of tutorial.
  - the_florist 2y ago
danlugo92 2y ago
Twitter.
tk90 2y ago
tinder has a great PWA web app: tinder.com
Havoc 2y ago
I’m using the phind pwa on my iPhone so I guess that’s an example that I’d imagine could be classed as successful
noashavit 2y ago
Google meet has a PWA https://support.google.com/meet/answer/10708569?hl=en https://support.google.com/meet/answer/10708569?hl=en
akmittal 2y ago
Twitter was an excellent PWA untill someone ruined it so that everyone would use native app. Flipkart.com and housing.com and few good examples
- acidburnNSA 2y ago
  I still just use the website for twitter. What am I missing out on?
- postalrat 2y ago
  Apps don't have ad blocking, have more tracking options, etc. Of course they want to push you to an app.
janandonly 2y ago
I don’t, but the people who’ve build and run https://app.mutinywallet.com/ https://app.mutinywallet.com/ are rocking it.
nathancoleman 2y ago
As someone who started investing in PWAs earlier this year after jumping through Apple and Google’s hoops for years, I’d highly recommend progressier.com for making a PWA with an install experience that makes sense to less technical users. This was far and away the biggest hurdle for me. Haven’t had a single person confused since integrating Progressier.
- egorfine 2y ago
  Thanks for the link! Looks promising.
udit99 2y ago
I wouldnt call it a success (not yet at least) but I have a PWA with ~$130 in MRR for now (launched a couple months ago). Happy to chat
Barbara230 2y ago
[flagged]

nefarious_ends 2y ago
In Safari hit the share button then scroll down and hit Add to Home Screen.
- palsecam 2y ago
  This. Safari (and Firefox) does not have https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/BeforeInstallPromptEvent https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/BeforeInsta... So you can’t have a custom button/way to prompt players to install. However, they can install a PWA manually, by themselves; there is the option somewhere in their browser menu.
  - jb1991 2y ago
    That’s interesting, thanks. I just did it successfully, I don’t think I’ve ever installed an app like this before. So I guess when I click it it’s just opening a browser window with no actual browser controls and then loading the site?
    - palsecam 2y ago
      Exactly. “it’s just opening a browser window with no actual browser controls”: yes, due to the `display` setting in the app manifest: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Manifest/display https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Manifest/displa... It’s similar to a `WebView` component: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebView https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebView
      - jb1991 2y ago
        Why do they use the words progressive web app, seems like a fancy term for just saving a link to your home screen. Is there some additional benefit you get besides this shortcut? Does it do things a webpage does not once it’s been added to your home screen?
        palsecam 2y ago
        It basically is nothing more than a glorified shortcut. The installed app gets a custom load screen. It gets listed on the device installed apps list, and can be removed from there. But there is nothing a PWA can do that a website can’t do. It’s all about Web APIs. Take push notifications (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Tutorials/js13kGames/Re-engageable_Notifications_Push https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...): they make more sense for an (PW)app, but a simple website can do them too (if given permission). See MDN intro on PWA: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web..., or https://web.dev/learn/pwa/ https://web.dev/learn/pwa/ for more info.
  - goosejuice 2y ago
    Installing the app on iOS is a pain point for users. If you have a significant iOS user presence it's a concern. If Apple supported this API it would be much easier to convince stakeholders that PWA is enough. You can do browser detection and show a dismissible pop up with instructions but it will still just confuse some users and others with scoff at the need to do that.

throwaway9143 2y ago

"customer don't care what language/framework you are using" is a strange way to support a claim they do care about having a native app over a PWA. The first statement highlights that the user just wants something that works as advertised, and doesn't care about the framework. But the second statement highlights that, despite their disinterest in the technology, they care deeply about the app's delivery tech (PWAs vs native). I think this juxtaposition reveals a lot about why things are the way they are, and why users are forced to care about native apps over PWAs. Just like language is a vehicle for logic, the app delivery tech is just a vehicle for a UI. PWA tech sucks because platforms are incentivized to make it suck. People prefer native apps because they're being funnelled down that path by anti-competitive interests. You don't seem to make that connection. I get it, you were burned by PWAs and now you just want to build something that works for everyone relatively painlessly and makes money. Nothing wrong with that. But some of us also want support tech that fulfills the goals of the open web. You don't seem to care about that, but others do. Telling everyone its basically a lost cause is a silly and pointless endeavor, because PWAs are the long game, and you're playing the short game.

lynx23 2y ago
I have a different take. As a person reliant on accessibility, PWAs almost always deliver a worse experience for me. So after a while, I learnt to prefer native apps, simply because PWAs typically deliver a worse UX for me.
- throwaway9143 2y ago
  That's interesting. In what way is a PWA worse than a website wrt accessibility? I understand that you are comparing PWAs to native apps, but presumably you have a fine time with normal websites? PWAs shouldn't be any different.
  - lynx23 2y ago
    Haha, nice suggestive questioning, but I am not falling for it. Your base assumtion is wrong, websites are not nice and dandy, its more like throwing dice to see if you're happy or not. In fact, the more "progressive" a website is, the less likely it is accessible.. If it is nominally accessible, its often not comfortable to use.
iudqnolq 2y ago
The user doesn't care about the delivery tech. They care about the installation and usage experience. They want to go search the app store, click the button, and get an icon on their homescreen.
- Turing_Machine 2y ago
  How is requiring the user to open a completely different application a better "user experience" than installing it from the web page they're already on? Yes, I know that installing a PWA is confusing (especially on Apple's systems), but there no reason it has to be that way. PWA (if it were implemented properly): "Click here to install app". Click. Confirmation dialog. App is installed. App opens in the same window. App store: "Click here to install app". Click. An entirely different application opens. Confirmation dialog. App is installed. You open it, but now you're in a different context.
  - throwaway9143 2y ago
    Bingo. Defenders of the app store have severe stockholm syndrome. Apple ruins the PWA experience intentionally, so they blame people who use PWAs, instead of Apple.
  - meiraleal 2y ago
    PWA has no marketing budget and a lot of people invested on private app stores attacking it.
  - jmb99 2y ago
    > PWA (if it were implemented properly): "Click here to install app". Click. Confirmation dialog. App is installed. App opens in the same window. > App store: "Click here to install app". Click. An entirely different application opens. Confirmation dialog. App is installed. You open it, but now you're in a different context. You’re unfortunately oversimplifying the PWA installation. Say a user has heard of a new service called “Florb” which has a PWA and a native app. To install natively: 1. Open the App Store 2. Tap the search button (optional, might already be selected) 3. Search “Florb” 4. Tap Get 5. Confirm download For the PWA: 1. Open Safari 2. Search for Florb using your chosen search engine 3. Open Florb homepage 4. Tap “share” 5. Hunt and scroll for “Add to Home Screen” 6. Tap “Add to Home Screen” 7. Give the app a name 8. Tap Add This is ignoring the possibility that searching Florb returns other sites first (maybe news articles about the neat service, or a wiki page), nor that there are usually enough ads on google pages to completely obscure the first real results from the screen on page load. Yes, the App Store also shows an ad, and it’s possible for other similarly named apps to appear first in the list, but it’s generally less of a problem than relying on google searches. Even ignoring the fact that the average user doesn’t know or care that PWAs exist, the first option is simply easier and more reliable. There’s no getting around that. And that’s also ignoring that PWAs are, to an average user, “installing a website” rather than “installing an app,” which just feels wrong. “Add to Home Screen” has been available on iOS since at least iOS 4 (that’s the first time I remember seeing it, but it may have been around longer). If people don’t care about it yet, I have a hard time believing they will any time soon unless it is substantially and objectively better than the App Store.
joshstrange 2y ago
> But some of us also want support tech that fulfills the goals of the open web. You don't seem to care about that, but others do. Telling everyone its basically a lost cause is a silly and pointless endeavor, because PWAs are the long game, and you're playing the short game. Get off the cross, we could use the wood. Spare me. I love the web, in fact all my “apps” are built with web tech and I offer them all as websites/PWAs in addition to apps but standing on principals of only using the web as some kind of middle finger to the app stores AND your customers is just silly. So I bite the bullet and wrap my web apps in a thin wrapper and shove them into the App Store. You can call it principles but I just call it stubborn and dragging your customers into a crusade they don’t care about. At the end of the day I care about the customers of my products more than I care about trying to wage a losing war against something they actively want, apps from stores. Life is way too short to tie up your identity in things like this. I want to spend my time making products people enjoy using. If you actually care so much about PWAs then stop writing PWAs that your users hate using and go be a full time advocate for that instead. Right now shipping PWAs is a worse experience so the only one you hurt is yourself and your customers when you double down on them.
- meiraleal 2y ago
  Are you ok? Your hate for PWAs seems a bit excessive. Nowadays it's possible to build binaries for iOS and Android using PWAs and it'll behave just live your Cordova projects. Don't be stuck in the past.
  - joshstrange 2y ago
    Please read my full comment: > I love the web, in fact all my “apps” are built with web tech and I offer them all as websites/PWAs I'm well aware you can build binaries and ship a PWA, I literally do that. I don't hate PWAs, I dislike people that refuse to ship anything but PWAs and I especially dislike being told I don't care about the "open web". If you want to be a martyr and _only_ ship PWAs be my guest but pretending it's noble is just silly and drags your customers (you know, the people you should actually care about) into a battle they don't give 2 shits about all while making their experience worse.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]