5 ms·

what's wrong with the web app

LPisGood 1y ago
In my experience web apps are almost always worse than native apps unless the native app is just a wrapper around a web app.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
  The native Spotify app is just a wrapper around the web app though.
  - sneak 1y ago
    This is decidedly untrue.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    Even for apps where that is true, sometimes the wrapper adds some features that it doesn't have running in a browser tab. For example, the Discord electron app can get hotkeys when it's not focused (useful for push to talk/mute when playing a game), but not when you run it in a browser.
  - lproven 1y ago
    > a wrapper around the web app All Electron apps are.
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  It is generally true regarding the intent of the platform owner (the app is supposed to be better, they'll put efforts into it). The funny part being, you might still want the web version to apply extensions on it. Youtube for instance is a lot better with the auto-dub features and title translations off, but it won't be possible in the native app as Google is actively forcing those on us. I don't use Spotify, but would advise looking it it.
  - umbra07 1y ago
    Spicetify offers a much better experience than web+extensions. And of course, you can use alternate, lightweight clients based on 'librespot' instead.
estimator7292 1y ago
It locks out a bunch of features
olyjohn 1y ago
It doesn't show up as a separate task. I have to go to Firefox and find the window. It's not as easy as an alt-tab and gets lost in all my other web apps that are in my browser.
- blibble 1y ago
  Chrome+Firefox support pulling tabs out as individual apps, with a separate window icon + launcher well, Firefox did, until Mozilla (of course) removed it Chrome still supports it
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  Secunding blibble's comment, the wrapper mode works fine in Chrome, and links will open in the standard Chrome instance so there is little downsides UX wise. Extensions aren't as accessible if you use them a lot, and of course you're stuck with Chrome though.
rossdavidh 1y ago
to be honest I don't know, I don't use Spotify much, but apparently for my wife it was a dealbreaker so I gritted my teeth and dived in, but then as I recall it was actually not hard to install at all. HOWEVER, IIRC, it involved typing something into a terminal¸ and for a lot of people that is also a complete dealbreaker for whatever reason.
- asoneth 1y ago
  > for a lot of people that is also a complete dealbreaker for whatever reason Seems like a perfectly reasonable dealbreaker to me. Terminal commands are a raw UI that is neither intuitive nor discoverable -- someone must either read documentation (man pages, tutorials, blog posts, etc) to learn the behavior and syntax or they must blindly copy strings from a trusted source. There's a reason most stories of nontechnical people using software like Linux always seem to include an expert friend, family member, or IT person in the background.
  - rossdavidh 1y ago
    You're not wrong, but in this case I believe all I had to do was copy the line of text and paste it into a terminal (it's a while ago so I might be misremembering). But, given that is what people are doing, it does raise the question of whether requiring them to copy and paste is actually any more secure than allowing click-to-install...
    - asoneth 1y ago
      > whether requiring them to copy and paste is actually any more secure than allowing click-to-install... Agreed. If your operating system requires that you occasionally search for instructions and copy-and-paste executable strings from the internet, that seems less efficient, less learnable, and less secure than any GUI I know of. Perhaps at some point terminals will bake in an LLM as an intermediary to convert between human-readable instructions and terminal commands, and then we just have to worry about the alignment of those LLMs...

In my experience web apps are almost always worse than native apps unless the native app is just a wrapper around a web app.

mathiaspoint 1y ago
The native Spotify app is just a wrapper around the web app though.
- sneak 1y ago
  This is decidedly untrue.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  Even for apps where that is true, sometimes the wrapper adds some features that it doesn't have running in a browser tab. For example, the Discord electron app can get hotkeys when it's not focused (useful for push to talk/mute when playing a game), but not when you run it in a browser.
- lproven 1y ago
  > a wrapper around the web app All Electron apps are.
makeitdouble 1y ago
It is generally true regarding the intent of the platform owner (the app is supposed to be better, they'll put efforts into it). The funny part being, you might still want the web version to apply extensions on it. Youtube for instance is a lot better with the auto-dub features and title translations off, but it won't be possible in the native app as Google is actively forcing those on us. I don't use Spotify, but would advise looking it it.
- umbra07 1y ago
  Spicetify offers a much better experience than web+extensions. And of course, you can use alternate, lightweight clients based on 'librespot' instead.

estimator7292 1y ago

It locks out a bunch of features

olyjohn 1y ago

It doesn't show up as a separate task. I have to go to Firefox and find the window. It's not as easy as an alt-tab and gets lost in all my other web apps that are in my browser.

blibble 1y ago
Chrome+Firefox support pulling tabs out as individual apps, with a separate window icon + launcher well, Firefox did, until Mozilla (of course) removed it Chrome still supports it
makeitdouble 1y ago
Secunding blibble's comment, the wrapper mode works fine in Chrome, and links will open in the standard Chrome instance so there is little downsides UX wise. Extensions aren't as accessible if you use them a lot, and of course you're stuck with Chrome though.

rossdavidh 1y ago

to be honest I don't know, I don't use Spotify much, but apparently for my wife it was a dealbreaker so I gritted my teeth and dived in, but then as I recall it was actually not hard to install at all. HOWEVER, IIRC, it involved typing something into a terminal¸ and for a lot of people that is also a complete dealbreaker for whatever reason.

asoneth 1y ago
> for a lot of people that is also a complete dealbreaker for whatever reason Seems like a perfectly reasonable dealbreaker to me. Terminal commands are a raw UI that is neither intuitive nor discoverable -- someone must either read documentation (man pages, tutorials, blog posts, etc) to learn the behavior and syntax or they must blindly copy strings from a trusted source. There's a reason most stories of nontechnical people using software like Linux always seem to include an expert friend, family member, or IT person in the background.
- rossdavidh 1y ago
  You're not wrong, but in this case I believe all I had to do was copy the line of text and paste it into a terminal (it's a while ago so I might be misremembering). But, given that is what people are doing, it does raise the question of whether requiring them to copy and paste is actually any more secure than allowing click-to-install...
  - asoneth 1y ago
    > whether requiring them to copy and paste is actually any more secure than allowing click-to-install... Agreed. If your operating system requires that you occasionally search for instructions and copy-and-paste executable strings from the internet, that seems less efficient, less learnable, and less secure than any GUI I know of. Perhaps at some point terminals will bake in an LLM as an intermediary to convert between human-readable instructions and terminal commands, and then we just have to worry about the alignment of those LLMs...