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At AutoTempest we resisted making an app for years, because anything that a hypothetical app could do, we could do with the website. And in my opinion, when sea

At AutoTempest we resisted making an app for years, because anything that a hypothetical app could do, we could do with the website. And in my opinion, when searching for cars, it's more convenient to be in your browser where you can easily open new tabs, bookmark results, etc. And for years, it was our most requested feature, by far. We had instructions for how to pin the site to your home screen, and would explain to users how the website does everything an app can do. Still, constant requests for an app. Finally we relented and released one, and very quickly around half our mobile traffic moved to the app without us really trying to nudge people at all. People just really like apps! I think it suits our mental model of different tools for different uses. We've also found that app users are much more engaged than website users, but of course much of that will be selection bias. Still, I can see how having your app on someone's home screen could provide a significant boost to retention, compared to a website they're liable to forget. For us now, that's the main benefit we see. Certainly don't use any additional data, though I won't argue that other companies don't.

rplnt 1y ago
> People just really like apps! I would say people really hate websites on mobile. The browsers are horrible, the pages are slow and oftentimes broken in some way. You get all these popups everywhere, ads are much more intrusive. It's just bad experience, so of course people would prefer app for something they use. I avoid the browser on mobile as much as possible and I don't remember ever having a good time using it.
- PhasmaFelis 1y ago
  Mostly that's because devs want to drive people to the app, where they can track you a lot better, so they make their mobile sites shitty on purpose. Plenty of mobile apps are just webapps anyway under the hood. There's absolutely no reason for a mobile site to be massively worse than the app unless the devs want it that way.
- crinkly 1y ago
  I hate everything on mobile. The apps are badly put together. The web sites are crap. I think Apple's core apps that ship with iOS are about the only things that don't annoy me. They work offline and disconnected for days at a time quite happily and generally work as intended. No one else seems to bother with that and rather ships some fat web turd instead that works occasionally and forces you to sign in all the time.
- RealCodingOtaku 1y ago
  This. I dislike most mobile websites as much as I hate the mobile apps. So to pick my poison, I have a formula. - Banking: Install it on a different android profile because my websites forces me to use the App one way or the other anyway. - If the site uses an existing open protocol to interact (IndieWeb, Fediverse, etc), use a non-browser/non-electron app that can handle multiple instances of such protocols. - If not, and it has PWA, is responsive, and I use it at least twice a day, use the PWA (so far I have one). - If it does not have PWA, but have has nice responsive layout, Firefox Android with uBlock Origin (I use Iornfox). - For everything else, if I'm outside without a laptop, whine, complain, and use the website in the mobile browser, enable desktop mode if it has a crappy UI. - If I'm not outside, browse it from my laptop.
  - Einenlum 1y ago
    I honestly hate PWAs. Last time I tried it, I realized I couldn't open a link in a new tab. Some people tried to make me use the PWA instead of browsing the website, but to me, it just makes my life harder.
    - brulard 1y ago
      On desktop you can, but it opens the tab in the browser.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  right, and the problem is that even if you have a good site on mobile it is sitting in the browser, the gateway to all the awful site experiences, to get to your good site people may go through a bunch of crap. Thus they would rather have an app. The problem is not just to make your site mobile friendly, it is also that the rest of the web isn't.
- ryukoposting 1y ago
  I think this is a much more accurate characterization, especially in AutoTempest's case. Their experience on mobile has always been slow and glitchy. I'm not sure what makes their web "app" so heavy, but it's very noticeable.
  - tempestn 1y ago
    Can you share details? Or feel free to email me directly, nathan at autotempest. I'd like to learn more about your device, browser, and search criteria so we can try and reproduce what you described.
    - ryukoposting 1y ago
      Firefox on a Galaxy S24. I've had issues with search results not showing up until I refresh, and search filters getting glitchy. Of course, now that I'm trying to reproduce those issues, I can't! So who knows, maybe you guys already fixed it.
- jajko 1y ago
  Thats because you don't use mobile firefox with ublock origin (on android). I very much prefer sites for stuff I do, they provide 100% of same experience, with one exception - can't easily block ads in apps. Thus mobile is often even a better experience.
  - rplnt 1y ago
    Your experience matches that of roughly 0% of users, unfortunately. Usable browser was one of the many things I missed when switching from Android to iOS.
- tempestn 1y ago
  Many of those things are true in general, but fwiw I think we've done a decent job making the site fast and usable on mobile. It's comparable to the app in most ways, but many still prefer that.
- gcanyon 1y ago
  I refuse to use Facebook's app. It's been years, I don't remember why, don't ask me. Their web app is fundamentally broken in half a dozen ways, and has been for years. A couple examples (not all): If you are in the middle of typing a comment and switch to another app, when you come back, it will reload the display, losing your comment. Video shorts load in a way that hides the video after about two seconds. Editing the URL to remove the parameters fixes this. The layout of comments/posts often breaks, forcing me to switch to "ask for desktop version" to make one feature work, then switch back to "mobile version" to make another feature work. Neither is completely functional. As I said, there are more. As I said, I don't even remember why I rejected their app, but at this point, if they can't make a mobile web site, why would I trust them to make an app?
  - devnullbrain 1y ago
    >If you are in the middle of typing a comment and switch to another app, when you come back, it will reload the display, losing your comment. This is the rule for a lot of apps and mobile websites now. I don't understand why - we have so much RAM available - but they love to refresh whether there's a reason to or not. And even if there's a reason not to. I can't count the number of times I've tapped on a tab that has a minature version of all the information I want, only for it to be replaced by a loading screen or 404. A while ago I noticed my battery usage had gone way up. It was because any time I was distracted from my phone (or lost internet connection on a train), I would just leave the display on. Locking the phone meant that I'd lose whatever context I had.
    - JimDabell 1y ago
      > I don't understand why - we have so much RAM available It’s not even that. There are APIs to persist state beyond app termination. Even if your app gets killed due to memory pressure, it should continue where it left off.
    - Frotag 1y ago
      It's probably refreshing because iOS is aggressive about killing websockets, even if you only backgrounded safari for a few seconds. And it's easier to do a reload than determine which messages were missed. It's hard to even tell if the websocket is dead since it just stays open but is unable to receive / send messages. Or at least this was my experience working on a mobile PWA a few years ago. I don't even own an apple device, it's just the ios bugs were always the most painful / memorable.
- driverdan 1y ago
  > You get all these popups everywhere, ads are much more intrusive. I've literally never had that problem. Firefox Mobile + uBlock Origin eliminates ads.
  - rplnt 1y ago
    That works well on Android, but on iOS not so much I think? Also, those damn cookie banners in EU.
IshKebab 1y ago
Interesting. Why do you think so many websites try to foist apps on you if people will voluntarily download them anyway?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
  My guess would be that it's because (as the above poster says) "app users are much more engaged than website users" and only "half our" moved without nudging - the sites would like more engagement from all users. That said, the harder you "nudge" me, the more I want to avoid the app and the whole business. Especially if you have any other dark patterns - I will assume you want me to download your app just so you can abuse me better.
  - W3zzy 1y ago
    My wife and daughter seem to be very receptive to dark patterns. It's about education and understanding but you also need to care. They don't. Alas.
    - trinsic2 1y ago
      Same here. I did spark some interest in my family when I sent them this UI Test [0] We talked about it on hacker h news awhile back[1] [0]: https://games.productartistry.com/games/dark-patterns https://games.productartistry.com/games/dark-patterns [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42737778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42737778
      - W3zzy 1y ago
        That's neat! Thanks! I also like his other applications. https://games.productartistry.com/ https://games.productartistry.com/
- figassis 1y ago
  The ones that do are usually the ones that know people will be reluctant to download.
kelthuzad 1y ago
>We had instructions for how to pin the site to your home screen, and would explain to users how the website does everything an app can do. Still, constant requests for an app. This is the result of the inconsistent user experience to which gatekeepers like Apple have been actively contributing through active sabotage of web apps, such that all profitable apps can be more effectively and reliably taxed through Apple's App Store. The manufactured perception of the general public then became that web apps are not "real apps" despite offering the exact same features. They have been dragged down by the subtle artificial friction that makes the UX feel subpar. This reminds me of my own experience of mobile websites when they first emerged. I thought that the desktop version of a website is the "real website" i.e. that there is only one static original website and that its mobile version was some fake substitute, so I always activated the option "show desktop version". Then I learned about responsive web design and it clicked for me. I predict that a similar epiphany will occur among casuals once the active sabotage of web apps stops due to regulations reigning in the anti-competitive business practices of gatekeepers. I'm sure that some people will still prefer "native" apps for whatever reason. However, if regulators do a proper job and allow web apps to compete on a level playing field, then a lay person wouldn't even be able to differentiate between them. This is even the case today where some developers simply wrap their web app in a WebView and ship it as a "native" app.
- troupo 1y ago
  > This is the result of the inconsistent user experience to which gatekeepers like Apple have been actively contributing through active sabotage of web apps, such that all profitable apps can be more effectively and reliably taxed through Apple's App Store. If web apps were any good, we'd see a plethora of them on Android. There are none (or very, very, very few). If web apps were any good, nothing Apple "gatekeeps" would prevent you from building an amazing web app for iOS. The things Apple "gatekeeps" (such as mobile push) would not prevent you from making a smooth fast web app. And yet here we are. > if regulators do a proper job and allow web apps to compete on a level playing field They already are competing on a level playing field. It's not "lack of NFC" or "lack of Bluetooth" or "lack of <another moving goalpost>" that prevent you from having good web apps.
o_m 1y ago
At the last company I worked for we wanted to shut down our app to save expenses. The idea being that most people would just the website if we removed the app. It seems like you didn't gain anything by making an app, you just created more expenses and complexity.
- oc1 1y ago
  but did the idea pan out? did the users switch to the website or did you lose em?
  - o_m 1y ago
    Too many people were "working" on the app (mainly non-developers, like marketing), so we got too much push back. I learned that a lot of gen-x love saying they are working on an app, even if they don't do design or programming. There was no reason for the company to have an app. This was for an industry that has too little supply with too high demand, so users would have no problem going to the website, especially with their strong brand. Piece by piece all of the app was replaced with web views for the website, and keeping the native tab menu at the bottom. No money was saved, but at least they didn't have to update the native parts of the app as features stopped working because of legacy systems being shut down. They kept the native mobile devs and fired some of the web devs instead to save money. Even though the website now needed a browser version and a slightly modified app-friendly version. No biggie, but it complicated the testing, as the responsibility for most of the app was moved to the web teams.
- djeastm 1y ago
  Well don't leave us hanging! We need the anecdata!
silisili 1y ago
My wife is one of these people. We couldn't be more different in that regard. I loathe apps and generally only install them when there's no alternative. She seems to either not understand or trust websites, and wants an app. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Every time I grab her phone I get dizzy and lost from the hundreds of apps. When she grabs mine, she wonders how I accomplish anything at all.
- W3zzy 1y ago
  Your wife probably just wants a smooth user experience and an app delivers on that. Apps have a clear way of installing and onboarding. I discovered that all our self hosted applications were easily adopted after I added SSO. My wife just wants one account to rule them all. I got her accustomed to installing web apps by adding all the links in a shared note. She clicks the link, pins the site and uses SSO to log in. Easy.
  - AbstractH24 1y ago
    > Your wife probably just wants a smooth user experience and an app delivers on that. Apps have a clear way of installing and onboarding. To a certain extent, I fall in this camp. With privacy in general. Without dedicating my life to it I won't be able to beat the system I live in, so why not just accept it and take what I can from it?
W3zzy 1y ago
I would say using the web"app" give a better user experience since you always have the latest version without the need for updates. Only if offline use is possible an app would be necesarry.
- akoboldfrying 1y ago
  I don't really know or care whether I'm using the latest version of anything. To care about that, I would first of all need to be aware that I'm not using the latest version.
  - W3zzy 1y ago
    By the latest I also lean the lost secure and patched version of an app. You should care.
- distances 1y ago
  There's no reason a website should be more up to date than an app. Could just as well be the other way around.
  - W3zzy 1y ago
    You need to update the app on your device. That's automated for a lot of users but not all. A web app should be maintained by the developers and should be updated to the latest stable version at all times. A web app shouldn't depend on your OS either so it would also run on OS'es that aren't supported anymore.
    - distances 1y ago
      That's fair, but the number of people who don't have automatic app updates is clearly miniscule, not really relevant for this consideration. I do grant that web is likely more up to date. But only because they can ship immediately, without the app store review process. Technically web could also be slower to release, nothing guarantees web freshness.
p0w3n3d 1y ago
Thank you for this extensive analysis. In my country now's the phase that every shop, even small one, wants me to download an app (for the client identification purposes). And tbh one thing is making an app for people who want it, another is requiring an app. Those "loyalty card" apps all weigh at least 100MB because of the browser bundled inside, and they are too heavy for my phone. I mitigated it using catima, an open source loyalty card wallet, but some of the app creators started to generate time based codes, so it's no longer a viable solution for me in those cases, and I started suspecting those apps do more than showing a code
- WA 1y ago
  Mobile apps do not bundle a browser. They use Chrome/Android System WebView on Android or WKWebView on iOS. Capacitor is one project that lets you build on top of installed browser engines, unlike Electron, which bundles Chrome. A new Capacitor app has a size of 3-5 MB at most. If such a simple app has 100 MB, they bundle shit like Facebook SDK and such.
JimDabell 1y ago
> People just really like apps! This is it. I’ve worked on plenty of projects that have web/iOS/Android, and the reason for offering native apps has always been user demand. All of this “spy on the user” crap literally never even comes up in conversation. We don’t care at all. We care about native apps because users care about native apps.
- landgenoot 1y ago
  People just don't like bloated JS heavy websites
- brailsafe 1y ago
  I think this is probably more true than not in terms of proportion of apps that offer a native client interface to an existing web service, but I don't think it's true for Reddit or other large companies who's primary business is selling advertising and data.
- xigoi 1y ago
  If that’s the case, why do so many websites try to push you into using the app even if you have no problem with using the website?
  - JimDabell 1y ago
    > why do so many websites try to push you into using the app It you’re talking about the intrusive stuff that gets in the way of you using the website, then the answer to this is pretty simple: they don’t. The sites that do that are comparatively rare. They just appear more numerous than they really are because it’s the really big sites like Reddit that do it. The norm is either a page on the site that tells you about the app, or the banner that appears at the top of a page.
Einenlum 1y ago
I remember when ChatGPT was released. I talked about it to a friend who is not technical. She said "oh wow, I really need to try it". She later said "I couldn't find the app in my AppStore". I kept saying they had a website and why would you need an app. She couldn't understand what I was saying. Seems like indeed the general public really likes apps and even thinks you can't do so many things in the browser.
- kaptainscarlet 1y ago
  Devs are usually disconnected from the average user's experience. I too used to be the same.
  - AbstractH24 1y ago
    Weren't PMs supposed to fix this problem? The dev's ambassador to the common man.
- happyopossum 1y ago
  > She couldn't understand what I was saying I don’t buy this for one second. The web is well known, and well understood - I’ve never run into anyone, in any age group, with any level of education, who wouldn’t understand what a website is. Either you’re being overly dramatic and exaggerating here, or you had a very difficult time pronouncing the words you were intending to say.
  - tortilla 1y ago
    No, a lot of non-technical people don't know the difference. My friend was trying to explain an app to me. How everyone at his work was amazed at how well it worked compared to their Salesforce solution that they were forced to use. The app? A website. Not even a web application. It was just a brochure type web catalog that allowed them to show their customer the brands and products they sold. Other's I've told about ChatGPT or Claude, have trouble finding it. They go into the App Store and search for the apps. They are inundated non-official versions. All with similar titles. Some stop, some install the wrong versions.
zelphirkalt 1y ago
Most people don't know how to use a computer well. Most people are just slightly above computer-illiterate. They were introduced to phones which have apps. Now in their minds that's how everything must be. Anything else induces fear into their minds. While technically competent people might go: "Oh neat, I don't even need to install an app, if I just put the website icon onto my home screen." Most users are like: "Oh my god noooo! Not another way to do something! Aaaaa I cannot cope!" and panic.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  Using a website instead of an app isn't signaling some particularly strong computer literacy. Not that it matters - the web, both mobile and general, has been neutered so much over the years that webpages are just as useless, locked down experience siloes as apps; really the main difference in practice is the icon experience and how unobtrusive surveillance is :).
  - neilalexander 1y ago
    Most people can’t explain the difference between a website and an app, to them the web browser is just a more confusing construct with additional overheads (tabs/links etc).
  - zelphirkalt 1y ago
    > Using a website instead of an app isn't signaling some particularly strong computer literacy. I am not claiming it is. But it is different from what some people got introduced to. That's enough already to strike fear. But what do you mean with websites have been neutered? Didn't HTML, CSS, and JS only got more capabilities over time?
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      > Didn't HTML, CSS, and JS only got more capabilities over time? They did, but almost all of them are just there so serve developers, to enable them to build even more sophisticated interactive billboards. The web serves marketing and advertising. So do apps, but the web does it better in many ways. What I meant by websites being neutered, is along the dimension of empowering users. Webapps as tools that provide functionality and play well with others. Composability, interoperability, end-user authonomy. Those are anathema to modern web. And as I said, apps ain't better. It's really "pick your poison", whether you want to be fighting with your browser sandbox, or with your OS sandbox - and half of the things you need sit on the server-side anyway, out of your reach.
jajko 1y ago
The question is - did you notice users uptick when adding an app, or just some web users moved to it?
- tempestn 1y ago
  Mostly it was just moving from mobile web. I think it it is contributing somewhat to long term growth as well, but that's more difficult to determine amongst other factors.
geokon 1y ago
Doesn't an app allow for caching which makes the whole experience much more responsive? I think antifingerprinting means that browsers are constantly re-loading and rerendering tons and tons of resources. The web is much much slower than it could be in theory. If you have an siloed app then you don't need to worry about that and can reuse everything. You open a new tab and nearly everything displays instantly (except the different car or whatever you're displaying) This would also decrease your network bandwidth load. So a win for you and your customers
bambax 1y ago
This is a very interesting, but it doesn't explain why companies push so hard to download their apps. It's even contradictory: since it seems users want apps so much, there should be no need to push them.
- neilalexander 1y ago
  They are potentially operationally cheaper. Answering a few API requests is cheaper than sending the same HTML over and over and over again.
  - graemep 1y ago
    The cost is minimal. It also needs to be offset against the cost of maintaining both unless you go app only. Some app seems to wrap a web view anyway.
- eddd-ddde 1y ago
  When most people want mobile apps, it makes no sense to develop a mobile website with feature parity for the handful of people that will use it.
- macNchz 1y ago
  Businesses want you to use their app for a few reasons: it’s stickier because they can start sending you push notifications right away without even signing in/making an account, they get their logo right on your home screen, there are expedited login methods available like FaceID, they bypass most normal ad blocking so they can show users ads but also get much more reliable telemetry, they get access to APIs that allow them to request/slurp additional user data like your contacts list, persistent location services, and camera roll metadata, plus they can access a broader set of system APIs for fingerprinting purposes (even if against the ToS). Then there’s a measurement element where app installs became an important KPI around the time ad blocking became more popular and interfered with detailed website engagement tracking, creating a self-fulfilling kind of thing. On top of this I think another factor is that many websites are in terrible shape, super bloated by ten thousand tracking pixels and third party snippets added willy nilly by marketing teams using Tag Manager, so apps benefit from gatekeeping that bloat to a degree.
dontlaugh 1y ago
Proper native apps simply have better UX. Of course it’s possible to mess that up, but the default is superior.
willsmith72 1y ago
What about just using PWABuilder? Sure maybe it's not as nice an experience as a native app, but the savings on costs and time with having 1 product mean you can do way more innovation elsewhere
7thaccount 1y ago
Thank you for trying to resist app-insanity. It really sucks that my doctor's office tries to get me to use one. No, I don't want to download an app for the one time I need it each year. Just make a freaking website. There are some exceptions like a calculator app that is completely offline.
dostick 1y ago
“On the web you can open multiple tabs” - Interesting how people categorise things as only possible with browser. You can design experience in app to allow having multiple searches or whatever user needs multiple tabs for.
taegee 1y ago
I hate having 300 apps on my phone (and I can't have them all on my home screen), but unfortunately, they're often much nicer to use than the corresponding websites. They're much faster / snappier as they don't need to load everything. Even if each click only takes a second to load or wait, it's annoying for many clicks. Then there are all kinds of usability issues, like the page reloading in the middle of a form or process when scrolling up was misinterpreted as a refresh. However, I'm not talking about apps that just load a webpage.
lippihom 1y ago
Currently in this boat. Avoiding pushing an app version but seems like it might be time...
shark1 1y ago
Is it because apps are usually faster? Milliseconds make a difference in UX.
- daemin 1y ago
  There's no speed difference in downloading HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a browser or in the app.

rplnt 1y ago

> People just really like apps! I would say people really hate websites on mobile. The browsers are horrible, the pages are slow and oftentimes broken in some way. You get all these popups everywhere, ads are much more intrusive. It's just bad experience, so of course people would prefer app for something they use. I avoid the browser on mobile as much as possible and I don't remember ever having a good time using it.

PhasmaFelis 1y ago
Mostly that's because devs want to drive people to the app, where they can track you a lot better, so they make their mobile sites shitty on purpose. Plenty of mobile apps are just webapps anyway under the hood. There's absolutely no reason for a mobile site to be massively worse than the app unless the devs want it that way.
crinkly 1y ago
I hate everything on mobile. The apps are badly put together. The web sites are crap. I think Apple's core apps that ship with iOS are about the only things that don't annoy me. They work offline and disconnected for days at a time quite happily and generally work as intended. No one else seems to bother with that and rather ships some fat web turd instead that works occasionally and forces you to sign in all the time.
RealCodingOtaku 1y ago
This. I dislike most mobile websites as much as I hate the mobile apps. So to pick my poison, I have a formula. - Banking: Install it on a different android profile because my websites forces me to use the App one way or the other anyway. - If the site uses an existing open protocol to interact (IndieWeb, Fediverse, etc), use a non-browser/non-electron app that can handle multiple instances of such protocols. - If not, and it has PWA, is responsive, and I use it at least twice a day, use the PWA (so far I have one). - If it does not have PWA, but have has nice responsive layout, Firefox Android with uBlock Origin (I use Iornfox). - For everything else, if I'm outside without a laptop, whine, complain, and use the website in the mobile browser, enable desktop mode if it has a crappy UI. - If I'm not outside, browse it from my laptop.
- Einenlum 1y ago
  I honestly hate PWAs. Last time I tried it, I realized I couldn't open a link in a new tab. Some people tried to make me use the PWA instead of browsing the website, but to me, it just makes my life harder.
  - brulard 1y ago
    On desktop you can, but it opens the tab in the browser.
bryanrasmussen 1y ago
right, and the problem is that even if you have a good site on mobile it is sitting in the browser, the gateway to all the awful site experiences, to get to your good site people may go through a bunch of crap. Thus they would rather have an app. The problem is not just to make your site mobile friendly, it is also that the rest of the web isn't.
ryukoposting 1y ago
I think this is a much more accurate characterization, especially in AutoTempest's case. Their experience on mobile has always been slow and glitchy. I'm not sure what makes their web "app" so heavy, but it's very noticeable.
- tempestn 1y ago
  Can you share details? Or feel free to email me directly, nathan at autotempest. I'd like to learn more about your device, browser, and search criteria so we can try and reproduce what you described.
  - ryukoposting 1y ago
    Firefox on a Galaxy S24. I've had issues with search results not showing up until I refresh, and search filters getting glitchy. Of course, now that I'm trying to reproduce those issues, I can't! So who knows, maybe you guys already fixed it.
jajko 1y ago
Thats because you don't use mobile firefox with ublock origin (on android). I very much prefer sites for stuff I do, they provide 100% of same experience, with one exception - can't easily block ads in apps. Thus mobile is often even a better experience.
- rplnt 1y ago
  Your experience matches that of roughly 0% of users, unfortunately. Usable browser was one of the many things I missed when switching from Android to iOS.
tempestn 1y ago
Many of those things are true in general, but fwiw I think we've done a decent job making the site fast and usable on mobile. It's comparable to the app in most ways, but many still prefer that.
gcanyon 1y ago
I refuse to use Facebook's app. It's been years, I don't remember why, don't ask me. Their web app is fundamentally broken in half a dozen ways, and has been for years. A couple examples (not all): If you are in the middle of typing a comment and switch to another app, when you come back, it will reload the display, losing your comment. Video shorts load in a way that hides the video after about two seconds. Editing the URL to remove the parameters fixes this. The layout of comments/posts often breaks, forcing me to switch to "ask for desktop version" to make one feature work, then switch back to "mobile version" to make another feature work. Neither is completely functional. As I said, there are more. As I said, I don't even remember why I rejected their app, but at this point, if they can't make a mobile web site, why would I trust them to make an app?
- devnullbrain 1y ago
  >If you are in the middle of typing a comment and switch to another app, when you come back, it will reload the display, losing your comment. This is the rule for a lot of apps and mobile websites now. I don't understand why - we have so much RAM available - but they love to refresh whether there's a reason to or not. And even if there's a reason not to. I can't count the number of times I've tapped on a tab that has a minature version of all the information I want, only for it to be replaced by a loading screen or 404. A while ago I noticed my battery usage had gone way up. It was because any time I was distracted from my phone (or lost internet connection on a train), I would just leave the display on. Locking the phone meant that I'd lose whatever context I had.
  - JimDabell 1y ago
    > I don't understand why - we have so much RAM available It’s not even that. There are APIs to persist state beyond app termination. Even if your app gets killed due to memory pressure, it should continue where it left off.
  - Frotag 1y ago
    It's probably refreshing because iOS is aggressive about killing websockets, even if you only backgrounded safari for a few seconds. And it's easier to do a reload than determine which messages were missed. It's hard to even tell if the websocket is dead since it just stays open but is unable to receive / send messages. Or at least this was my experience working on a mobile PWA a few years ago. I don't even own an apple device, it's just the ios bugs were always the most painful / memorable.
driverdan 1y ago
> You get all these popups everywhere, ads are much more intrusive. I've literally never had that problem. Firefox Mobile + uBlock Origin eliminates ads.
- rplnt 1y ago
  That works well on Android, but on iOS not so much I think? Also, those damn cookie banners in EU.

IshKebab 1y ago

Interesting. Why do you think so many websites try to foist apps on you if people will voluntarily download them anyway?

tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
My guess would be that it's because (as the above poster says) "app users are much more engaged than website users" and only "half our" moved without nudging - the sites would like more engagement from all users. That said, the harder you "nudge" me, the more I want to avoid the app and the whole business. Especially if you have any other dark patterns - I will assume you want me to download your app just so you can abuse me better.
- W3zzy 1y ago
  My wife and daughter seem to be very receptive to dark patterns. It's about education and understanding but you also need to care. They don't. Alas.
  - trinsic2 1y ago
    Same here. I did spark some interest in my family when I sent them this UI Test [0] We talked about it on hacker h news awhile back[1] [0]: https://games.productartistry.com/games/dark-patterns https://games.productartistry.com/games/dark-patterns [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42737778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42737778
    - W3zzy 1y ago
      That's neat! Thanks! I also like his other applications. https://games.productartistry.com/ https://games.productartistry.com/
figassis 1y ago
The ones that do are usually the ones that know people will be reluctant to download.

kelthuzad 1y ago

>We had instructions for how to pin the site to your home screen, and would explain to users how the website does everything an app can do. Still, constant requests for an app. This is the result of the inconsistent user experience to which gatekeepers like Apple have been actively contributing through active sabotage of web apps, such that all profitable apps can be more effectively and reliably taxed through Apple's App Store. The manufactured perception of the general public then became that web apps are not "real apps" despite offering the exact same features. They have been dragged down by the subtle artificial friction that makes the UX feel subpar. This reminds me of my own experience of mobile websites when they first emerged. I thought that the desktop version of a website is the "real website" i.e. that there is only one static original website and that its mobile version was some fake substitute, so I always activated the option "show desktop version". Then I learned about responsive web design and it clicked for me. I predict that a similar epiphany will occur among casuals once the active sabotage of web apps stops due to regulations reigning in the anti-competitive business practices of gatekeepers. I'm sure that some people will still prefer "native" apps for whatever reason. However, if regulators do a proper job and allow web apps to compete on a level playing field, then a lay person wouldn't even be able to differentiate between them. This is even the case today where some developers simply wrap their web app in a WebView and ship it as a "native" app.

troupo 1y ago
> This is the result of the inconsistent user experience to which gatekeepers like Apple have been actively contributing through active sabotage of web apps, such that all profitable apps can be more effectively and reliably taxed through Apple's App Store. If web apps were any good, we'd see a plethora of them on Android. There are none (or very, very, very few). If web apps were any good, nothing Apple "gatekeeps" would prevent you from building an amazing web app for iOS. The things Apple "gatekeeps" (such as mobile push) would not prevent you from making a smooth fast web app. And yet here we are. > if regulators do a proper job and allow web apps to compete on a level playing field They already are competing on a level playing field. It's not "lack of NFC" or "lack of Bluetooth" or "lack of <another moving goalpost>" that prevent you from having good web apps.

o_m 1y ago

At the last company I worked for we wanted to shut down our app to save expenses. The idea being that most people would just the website if we removed the app. It seems like you didn't gain anything by making an app, you just created more expenses and complexity.

oc1 1y ago
but did the idea pan out? did the users switch to the website or did you lose em?
- o_m 1y ago
  Too many people were "working" on the app (mainly non-developers, like marketing), so we got too much push back. I learned that a lot of gen-x love saying they are working on an app, even if they don't do design or programming. There was no reason for the company to have an app. This was for an industry that has too little supply with too high demand, so users would have no problem going to the website, especially with their strong brand. Piece by piece all of the app was replaced with web views for the website, and keeping the native tab menu at the bottom. No money was saved, but at least they didn't have to update the native parts of the app as features stopped working because of legacy systems being shut down. They kept the native mobile devs and fired some of the web devs instead to save money. Even though the website now needed a browser version and a slightly modified app-friendly version. No biggie, but it complicated the testing, as the responsibility for most of the app was moved to the web teams.
djeastm 1y ago
Well don't leave us hanging! We need the anecdata!

silisili 1y ago

My wife is one of these people. We couldn't be more different in that regard. I loathe apps and generally only install them when there's no alternative. She seems to either not understand or trust websites, and wants an app. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Every time I grab her phone I get dizzy and lost from the hundreds of apps. When she grabs mine, she wonders how I accomplish anything at all.

W3zzy 1y ago
Your wife probably just wants a smooth user experience and an app delivers on that. Apps have a clear way of installing and onboarding. I discovered that all our self hosted applications were easily adopted after I added SSO. My wife just wants one account to rule them all. I got her accustomed to installing web apps by adding all the links in a shared note. She clicks the link, pins the site and uses SSO to log in. Easy.
- AbstractH24 1y ago
  > Your wife probably just wants a smooth user experience and an app delivers on that. Apps have a clear way of installing and onboarding. To a certain extent, I fall in this camp. With privacy in general. Without dedicating my life to it I won't be able to beat the system I live in, so why not just accept it and take what I can from it?

W3zzy 1y ago

I would say using the web"app" give a better user experience since you always have the latest version without the need for updates. Only if offline use is possible an app would be necesarry.

akoboldfrying 1y ago
I don't really know or care whether I'm using the latest version of anything. To care about that, I would first of all need to be aware that I'm not using the latest version.
- W3zzy 1y ago
  By the latest I also lean the lost secure and patched version of an app. You should care.
distances 1y ago
There's no reason a website should be more up to date than an app. Could just as well be the other way around.
- W3zzy 1y ago
  You need to update the app on your device. That's automated for a lot of users but not all. A web app should be maintained by the developers and should be updated to the latest stable version at all times. A web app shouldn't depend on your OS either so it would also run on OS'es that aren't supported anymore.
  - distances 1y ago
    That's fair, but the number of people who don't have automatic app updates is clearly miniscule, not really relevant for this consideration. I do grant that web is likely more up to date. But only because they can ship immediately, without the app store review process. Technically web could also be slower to release, nothing guarantees web freshness.

p0w3n3d 1y ago

Thank you for this extensive analysis. In my country now's the phase that every shop, even small one, wants me to download an app (for the client identification purposes). And tbh one thing is making an app for people who want it, another is requiring an app. Those "loyalty card" apps all weigh at least 100MB because of the browser bundled inside, and they are too heavy for my phone. I mitigated it using catima, an open source loyalty card wallet, but some of the app creators started to generate time based codes, so it's no longer a viable solution for me in those cases, and I started suspecting those apps do more than showing a code

WA 1y ago
Mobile apps do not bundle a browser. They use Chrome/Android System WebView on Android or WKWebView on iOS. Capacitor is one project that lets you build on top of installed browser engines, unlike Electron, which bundles Chrome. A new Capacitor app has a size of 3-5 MB at most. If such a simple app has 100 MB, they bundle shit like Facebook SDK and such.

JimDabell 1y ago

> People just really like apps! This is it. I’ve worked on plenty of projects that have web/iOS/Android, and the reason for offering native apps has always been user demand. All of this “spy on the user” crap literally never even comes up in conversation. We don’t care at all. We care about native apps because users care about native apps.

landgenoot 1y ago
People just don't like bloated JS heavy websites
brailsafe 1y ago
I think this is probably more true than not in terms of proportion of apps that offer a native client interface to an existing web service, but I don't think it's true for Reddit or other large companies who's primary business is selling advertising and data.
xigoi 1y ago
If that’s the case, why do so many websites try to push you into using the app even if you have no problem with using the website?
- JimDabell 1y ago
  > why do so many websites try to push you into using the app It you’re talking about the intrusive stuff that gets in the way of you using the website, then the answer to this is pretty simple: they don’t. The sites that do that are comparatively rare. They just appear more numerous than they really are because it’s the really big sites like Reddit that do it. The norm is either a page on the site that tells you about the app, or the banner that appears at the top of a page.

Einenlum 1y ago

I remember when ChatGPT was released. I talked about it to a friend who is not technical. She said "oh wow, I really need to try it". She later said "I couldn't find the app in my AppStore". I kept saying they had a website and why would you need an app. She couldn't understand what I was saying. Seems like indeed the general public really likes apps and even thinks you can't do so many things in the browser.

kaptainscarlet 1y ago
Devs are usually disconnected from the average user's experience. I too used to be the same.
- AbstractH24 1y ago
  Weren't PMs supposed to fix this problem? The dev's ambassador to the common man.
happyopossum 1y ago
> She couldn't understand what I was saying I don’t buy this for one second. The web is well known, and well understood - I’ve never run into anyone, in any age group, with any level of education, who wouldn’t understand what a website is. Either you’re being overly dramatic and exaggerating here, or you had a very difficult time pronouncing the words you were intending to say.
- tortilla 1y ago
  No, a lot of non-technical people don't know the difference. My friend was trying to explain an app to me. How everyone at his work was amazed at how well it worked compared to their Salesforce solution that they were forced to use. The app? A website. Not even a web application. It was just a brochure type web catalog that allowed them to show their customer the brands and products they sold. Other's I've told about ChatGPT or Claude, have trouble finding it. They go into the App Store and search for the apps. They are inundated non-official versions. All with similar titles. Some stop, some install the wrong versions.

zelphirkalt 1y ago

Most people don't know how to use a computer well. Most people are just slightly above computer-illiterate. They were introduced to phones which have apps. Now in their minds that's how everything must be. Anything else induces fear into their minds. While technically competent people might go: "Oh neat, I don't even need to install an app, if I just put the website icon onto my home screen." Most users are like: "Oh my god noooo! Not another way to do something! Aaaaa I cannot cope!" and panic.

TeMPOraL 1y ago
Using a website instead of an app isn't signaling some particularly strong computer literacy. Not that it matters - the web, both mobile and general, has been neutered so much over the years that webpages are just as useless, locked down experience siloes as apps; really the main difference in practice is the icon experience and how unobtrusive surveillance is :).
- neilalexander 1y ago
  Most people can’t explain the difference between a website and an app, to them the web browser is just a more confusing construct with additional overheads (tabs/links etc).
- zelphirkalt 1y ago
  > Using a website instead of an app isn't signaling some particularly strong computer literacy. I am not claiming it is. But it is different from what some people got introduced to. That's enough already to strike fear. But what do you mean with websites have been neutered? Didn't HTML, CSS, and JS only got more capabilities over time?
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    > Didn't HTML, CSS, and JS only got more capabilities over time? They did, but almost all of them are just there so serve developers, to enable them to build even more sophisticated interactive billboards. The web serves marketing and advertising. So do apps, but the web does it better in many ways. What I meant by websites being neutered, is along the dimension of empowering users. Webapps as tools that provide functionality and play well with others. Composability, interoperability, end-user authonomy. Those are anathema to modern web. And as I said, apps ain't better. It's really "pick your poison", whether you want to be fighting with your browser sandbox, or with your OS sandbox - and half of the things you need sit on the server-side anyway, out of your reach.

jajko 1y ago

The question is - did you notice users uptick when adding an app, or just some web users moved to it?

tempestn 1y ago
Mostly it was just moving from mobile web. I think it it is contributing somewhat to long term growth as well, but that's more difficult to determine amongst other factors.

geokon 1y ago

Doesn't an app allow for caching which makes the whole experience much more responsive? I think antifingerprinting means that browsers are constantly re-loading and rerendering tons and tons of resources. The web is much much slower than it could be in theory. If you have an siloed app then you don't need to worry about that and can reuse everything. You open a new tab and nearly everything displays instantly (except the different car or whatever you're displaying) This would also decrease your network bandwidth load. So a win for you and your customers

bambax 1y ago

This is a very interesting, but it doesn't explain why companies push so hard to download their apps. It's even contradictory: since it seems users want apps so much, there should be no need to push them.

neilalexander 1y ago
They are potentially operationally cheaper. Answering a few API requests is cheaper than sending the same HTML over and over and over again.
- graemep 1y ago
  The cost is minimal. It also needs to be offset against the cost of maintaining both unless you go app only. Some app seems to wrap a web view anyway.
eddd-ddde 1y ago
When most people want mobile apps, it makes no sense to develop a mobile website with feature parity for the handful of people that will use it.
macNchz 1y ago
Businesses want you to use their app for a few reasons: it’s stickier because they can start sending you push notifications right away without even signing in/making an account, they get their logo right on your home screen, there are expedited login methods available like FaceID, they bypass most normal ad blocking so they can show users ads but also get much more reliable telemetry, they get access to APIs that allow them to request/slurp additional user data like your contacts list, persistent location services, and camera roll metadata, plus they can access a broader set of system APIs for fingerprinting purposes (even if against the ToS). Then there’s a measurement element where app installs became an important KPI around the time ad blocking became more popular and interfered with detailed website engagement tracking, creating a self-fulfilling kind of thing. On top of this I think another factor is that many websites are in terrible shape, super bloated by ten thousand tracking pixels and third party snippets added willy nilly by marketing teams using Tag Manager, so apps benefit from gatekeeping that bloat to a degree.

dontlaugh 1y ago

Proper native apps simply have better UX. Of course it’s possible to mess that up, but the default is superior.

willsmith72 1y ago

What about just using PWABuilder? Sure maybe it's not as nice an experience as a native app, but the savings on costs and time with having 1 product mean you can do way more innovation elsewhere

7thaccount 1y ago

Thank you for trying to resist app-insanity. It really sucks that my doctor's office tries to get me to use one. No, I don't want to download an app for the one time I need it each year. Just make a freaking website. There are some exceptions like a calculator app that is completely offline.

dostick 1y ago

“On the web you can open multiple tabs” - Interesting how people categorise things as only possible with browser. You can design experience in app to allow having multiple searches or whatever user needs multiple tabs for.

taegee 1y ago

I hate having 300 apps on my phone (and I can't have them all on my home screen), but unfortunately, they're often much nicer to use than the corresponding websites. They're much faster / snappier as they don't need to load everything. Even if each click only takes a second to load or wait, it's annoying for many clicks. Then there are all kinds of usability issues, like the page reloading in the middle of a form or process when scrolling up was misinterpreted as a refresh. However, I'm not talking about apps that just load a webpage.

lippihom 1y ago

Currently in this boat. Avoiding pushing an app version but seems like it might be time...

shark1 1y ago

Is it because apps are usually faster? Milliseconds make a difference in UX.

daemin 1y ago
There's no speed difference in downloading HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a browser or in the app.