Most of folks on HN here are much older than todays "first customers" of 16y/17/18
For them: The "Smartphone is the internet", while for most of us the "Smartphone is an extension of the internet from our desktops" that we were used to (remember the years before dot com bubble, saying: "I will be down in the basement at the computer to surf on the net little bit" ? :-)
But today, the very first touchpoint with "the internet" for younger folks is a smartphone display. The even do homework on this small screens!
Companies are seeing this switch, so they adapt.
Personally, a service which is "only an app" will be not used by me as I prefer to have a larger screen with more information (actually I use my mobile phone only when Im in public transport or similar, at home I have a notebook laying around if I need something)
I saw a tweet recently that perfectly encapsulates this: for most people over 30, certain things are "big screen tasks". I use my phone for a lot, but for some things I put the phone down and use my computer instead. I am most comfortable using a large screen and a keyboard for anything that requires writing more than a few words or using any interface for more than a few clicks.
For example, I read your comment on my phone and went to my computer to type this reply.
I personally find the idea of doing homework on my phone horrifying but I suppose kids today are either used to it and comfortable with it, or they've simply never used a computer and don't know what they're missing. Though I'd wager they probably aren't comfortable typing on a keyboard.
Honestly I think Apple perfectly captured it with their "what's a computer?" ad for the iPad. I seem to remember them getting some flak online for it but I think they were right on the money with regards to the younger generations.
First hand from a couple of ~16 year olds I know. Definitely not a representative sample. Some know how to type at an acceptable speed. They're awful at shortcuts (alt-tab, many of the browser shortcuts that also present in many other programs (ctrl-w,-t,-s,-q) and most text-selection and movement shortcuts (ctrl-a,-x,-c,-v and (ctrl-)shift-left,-right)) so they navigate clumsily compared to us. They feel awkward when performing simple tasks but they do it faster than on a smartphone. They don't understand some of the terms and abstractions, likely because the smartphones keep that away from them.
Seeing them navigate things like homework or spreadsheets or multiple tabs in a browser from a smartphone is like watching a caveman trying to use a piece of brittle rock as a hammer. It will work in the end, but it's slow. I haven't looked at them closely enough, but I doubt they can comfortably keep more than 10 tabs open and navigate between them with the same speed as on a laptop or a desktop. I assume their browsing habits are qualitatively different than ours because of that. You can't really do adequate research on a smartphone.
For college aged kids, most people are definitely not doing their homework on their phone. Many are still using paper and pencil. The one person I know who did do their homework on their phone tried to evangelize it to their friends and got ridiculed for it.
On the other hand, I've noticed lots of people use voice on their phone instead of a keyboard.
Many friends of mine send occasional nonsense in the middle of a text message, and it becomes obvious they're using voice to text.
As a young kid, why would I laboriously type a homework paper when I could dictate it from the couch or some other better location than a desk?
I become unreasonably frustrated when having to search for things on the phone. Buying stuff online is a 'big screen task' not because of the security aspect, but because of needing to compare multiple products, which involve jumping between tabs. I can do that via shift/ctrl-tab, clicking, alt-tab etc - basically a single click. On the phone it's at least 3, and a genuinely grating experience saying nothing of having to copy and paste text for searching.
That said I've come across people that don't know basic copy and paste shortcuts / basic PC literacy, so for those I can see how the phone would feel no less efficient.
I think as kids get older, and their tasks require more digital complexity to complete, they'll slowly migrate towards laptops and larger screen devices (maybe including tablets, maybe not). Basic surfing etc is fine, but there is no way I want to be using even a spreadsheet on a phone - it's a miserable experience - saying nothing of something with genuine complexity like Blender.
Yup. From the frontier of mobile tech, I can say that a foldable phone (Galaxy Z Fold 7) is the first mobile device that successfully ate into this category, and bit a rather substantial chunks out of it. It's only been ~6 months into this experience, but the "big tasks" for me now are the ones that benefit from substantial use of keyboard and/or mouse. If it's only about screen space or doing things in 2-3 apps at the time, chances are my phone is now good enough for its mobility to beat inconvenience - though chances are also good that at least one of the programs will be a browser, because mobile apps still suck.
On especially older phones if I were to write a long comment and move to a different tab or app before submitting, I can all but guarantee the OS would kill and try reloading the tab and lose all my text. What's even worse is this could happen mid online purchase which can have even greater consequences (double booking or purchasing especially but things like flight tickets). People who grew up with older phones saw this happen all too often and moved to a desktop or laptop computer where that literally never happens, at least by default.
This, I'd bet, is the primary reason for big vs small screen activities, although of course there are many secondary ones, such as the phone being many kids' primary interface
My wife is the opposite. It doesn't occur to her that the problem may be with the janky website, not with her. She'll ask me for help with a thing out of frustration and my first troubleshooting step is to reach for my laptop. This is almost inevitably followed by "hey, wait, how come you're able to press the Submit button but I wasn't able to?" "Because the dev never tested this on a phone and it's broken." "So it's not just me being incompetent to use this website?" "Nope, never was."
Thanks for the honor! :)
Sometimes I even copy links from here and send them by mail to myself so I can reply later - maybe Im getting tooo old? :-D (on the iPhone I would store it in a simple textnote)
I find much of the HN community insightful and interesting, but in terms of consumer feedback (especially in a B2C environment) I wouldn't touch feedback here with a 10-foot pole.
I don't mean that to be an insult, quite the opposite. Most people here are power users. But that is a galaxy away from how the average user interacts with the internet.
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Hardware/software companies have, historically, targeted power users because regular users listen to them. The companies producing these apps do so because they can benefit from exploiting the data of regular users, but risk little blowback from power users if they keep their web versions up to date and in good shape.
That doesn't mean power users should ignore the presence of these apps however. We should be telling regular users to avoid them for their own safety. We should also be worried that, if we stay quiet and let regular users flock to apps, the motivation to maintain web access will be eroded. When all power users vanish into a single percentage point and a platform achieves total dominance over the alternatives, companies might well choose to focus on only apps.
Exactly! Esp if you just move away "one tile" from tech/IT or business-power-users, most people are more or less clueless what they are doing/have to do with a computer.
Yes, we are in a bubble here - as with every niche/special interest topic: It would be same for me if I would join a "car tuning event" or similar - Im just a car user, and I do not know of all these details and nuts & bolts
There seems to be a disconnect between some developers and the younger folks.
I read a UI book in the early 2000s that cited research showing that most users didn't understand filesystems. They would seem to, but then the idea that the same filename in two places was two unrelated files would just lead to a mental block. Those who got it, didn't find it hard. It's just that some people can't get it.
The disconnect is not between some developers, and the younger folks. It is between some developers, and most of the world.
I think that the software industry, especially operating systems, have completely failed to provide a balanced product between the overly bloated and messed up (Windows), the overly complicated (Linux) and the overly simplified (Android/iOS).
Maybe some Linux distros are now at the right spot, I was positively surprised by PopOS to give an example, but it's too late. With AI this is only going to get worse.
I am very frugal (to save money on webcam, in online classes, I had droidcam /wo-mic setup with one of my parents old phones that were so old that online classes couldn't work or were just too slow) but spending money on a decent personal computer is genuinely one of the best investments personally.
One thing my cousins did which I am sorta grateful in retrospect is they didn't buy me a gpu so my computer was really nice/smooth in everything but gaming, I still ran some games like portal series , inscryption and many other games like valorant and it was playing valorant when I started realizing its chinese company roots and kernel level access meaning that there was no proper way to guarantee to have piece of mind unless I reinstall it
So I felt like if I was reinstalling, I was watching some the linux experiments video anyway and was fascinated by linux, so I just decided to choose myself to use nobara-linux for the first time which was another one of the best decisions that I made as it opened me up to the terminal.
Some insiders know about this disconnect and fewer still can bridge it easily.
Those that cannot even sense this disconnect, they're a bit of a pain in certain situations. You know, like talking to project stakeholders or customers.
Companies have for ages pushed apps due to more control and data. That’s why younger folk grew up with apps.
The push to apps was absolutely not due to companies responding to consumer sentiment. Yes now it has been ingrained so now there are expectations, but those are due to companies pushing people to apps for years and years
In my experience, apps can figure out a lot more about the user, than a Web site.
I just reported a game to Apple, that, after the app has been resident for 24 hours, pops up an unescapable modal to sign into their Web site. I am sure the 24-hour delay, is so they don't get caught by the App Store folks. I suspect that what happens, during this "daily checkin," is that the app sends a bunch of encrypted data that it got from your device, to the servers in China.
Basically, they can learn more about you from the app, than from the Web site.
I generally avoid apps, where the Web site will do. I won't install banking apps, at all.
17yo here, I know that I might be a bit of an exception here but atleast within my privacy conscious friend circle, I feel like they prefer websites more than apps and I feel like that plays an impact, (Obviously this might make a difference as well that for some of my generation, they only use phone so phone applications feel more intuitive to them)
I used to say to my elder brother that I wish to make websites not apps if I do because websites are more portable etc., but he said that websites are hard to monetize etc. rather than apps which are easier to monetize. I think that one of the reasons is also that app are easily monetized and this has become a norm to many people outside of HN/privacy-conscious sphere in general.
I really wanted to make f-droid applications sometime ago but I don't know Java and I really love how easy it is to make an applicaation in golang/python/any lang in desktops usually but I tried making an tauri android rust application from my desktop Linux and it was really frustrating, I feel like there are some very low hanging fruits privacy win where open source tools can be converted into just bare minimum-ly good UI/UX android/ios apps (which works) and be published to something like f-droid.
The fact that you are here on HN tells me: You and your friends are tech savy, most in your age are not :-)
Edit: Regarding monetization -> yes, either carrier billing (if available) or just by iTunes account is much much easier and higher conversion, just becaues of the fact that people do not have to remember their payment details :-D
You’re confusing cause and effect here.
Companies are pushing apps very hard because it gives them a lot more ability to wield their various revenue enhancing dark patterns.
That kids see apps as the primary option is a corporate success metric, not an organic choice.
Anyway, the premise that “phone screen ==> native app not web app” is rather faulty, is it not?
The OP Blog post is comparing web versions vs applications. Both on the phone. And arguing that browser representation is often better than app functionality. Using desktop vs small screen phone is a different matter.
For years now, often multiple times with the save vendor, I've been installing some vendors software, using it to complete a purchase that I had started in a web interface, then uninstalling the software, all so I could take advantage of ann unrealistically good promotion. I'm not talking about the type of savings that might be in an exceptionally good holiday promotion, that eats into most of, if not all of, the margin in the transaction. I'm talking about the type of promotion that would be used to promote a credit card, banking account, or gambling platform-- the kind of promotion that costs months worth of income from a customer but is worthwhile because the customer will be milked for years to come.
This appears to be more related to modern security features that lock the vendor out of your computer, but lock you out of your phone, shifting which interface gives the vendor the advantage in future transactions.
This isn't about a user's age, or mobiles. You can use Firefox on your smartphone. It's about digital literacy in terms of security and privacy. No matter how old you are, you do have to be taught that you're the product of these services, not just the customer. You have to be taught why that matters and how to combat it.
The reason I mention social media is all the apps operate the same way: the user swipes up or down, left or right, double taps and moves on. A website or blog or interactive content requires interaction, it requires thinking, it requires the possibility of a mistake. Those things make most users never click more than once on a website. Once a website goes beyond the first page most users leave.
It's really weird how folks are conditioned to do the least amount of effort in everything and then we complain when things are confusing. Convenience is a disease.
I don't have many apps on my phone because I've found I simply don't need them. There are basically only two cases where I use apps:
1. When I want push notifications
2. When I want to use local files
Yes! My zoomer girlfriend tuned her phone to be work ready. Unless she has to, she'd be working on the phone. I would never do that. To me the phone is uncomfortable. To her, it's the small, comfortable thing she knows better than the computer.
There is still no better interface than the command line.
I can tolerate chatting with a gateway agent, but that only last for maybe a single hour before I seriously need to vet all of the work that it and the underlying horde of agents has done.
But if the question in the context of a phone is app-vs-web, then the analog on a PC is program-vs-web.
Which is interesting, I think.
Someone might download an app on their phone to accomplish a specific task instead of use a browser on that same phone, and that trend seems to be increasingly in favor of dedicated apps.
But on the PC side, it appears to be going the other way: Prior to the introduction of things like Sir Tim Berners-Lee's WWW and ubiquitous always-on Internet, most tasks on a PC were done with dedicated, local programs. That has changed.
Nowadays, we have things like whole office suites (pick any of them) and featureful CAD systems (like Onshape) that run quite well within a browser. POP and IMAP used to rule the day, and now we use Gmail in a browser. So on the PC, the longer trend seems to be more in favor of platform-independent web-based things instead of dedicated programs.
So, it seems that the two market segments -- while functionally similar -- are moving in opposite directions.
(I don't have an axe to grind here. I just think it's fun to think about these things.)
I think, "I'm not downloading your app" is of course a perfectly fine perspective. I rarely do. And blogging about it is playing one's role in the techno-cultural tug-of-war. But I'm consciously aware that I'm in the dying minority and the world is changing regardless of how much I choose to yell at the clouds.
But its super uncomfortable! :-)
And: Typing - I learnt in school to type perfectly with 10 fingers, on a smartphone only using my thumb is just too slow
I wonder when dynamic pricing will switch from booking on phones being more expensive because you're most likely in a hurry to booking on desktop being more expensive because you're old and have more money to spend. Did that already happen?
There you go.
They were killed because app store operators realized they bypassed an ability to police payments that could not be monitored and (effectively) taxed.
This was a technology that could have been successful in any environment where a merchant's freedom-to-request-direct-payment was protected. In such an environment, it would have shifted incentives that apps now become a burden on developers as well as on Apple and Google's review processes, and PWAs would flourish.
But that's not the environment we were in! And arguably, even post Epic's litigation, we aren't fully.
Companies however exploit that and instead of just putting the icon on the home screen provide an app which allows more tracking, preventing ad blockers, avoiding the user from browsing elsewhere.
For me apps are limiting (tabbed browsing, ad blocker, ... are essential for anything serious), but others don't have that experience.
* Reddit won't let you read "unreviewed" content on mobile web (but will on desktop web)
* PayPal won't let you pick your 5% rewards category, or set up balance auto-replenish without their app
* Robinhood Banking won't let you see your credit card statement or pay your balance without their app
* Instagram won't let you share posts as stories without their app
* SeatGeek won't let you attend events without their app (no will call, mailed tickets, print at home, or mobile web)
It's infuriating. I have literally tried all of their paid products in various forms (they are expensive but the value is clearly there if you're a business). If only they invested as much in making them actually good as they did in preventing you from using extensions or other tools to implement the features they can't or won't, I'm sure they'd get a lot more business.
Wow. I guess it's been a few years since I've used SeatGeek but this is news to me. Stuff like this and MSG's facial scanning regime (I'm sure the venues are all doing it to differing extents) make me not even want to bother with big concerts. Club shows are almost always a better time, anyways.
But this may be on purpose by Bank of America.
Before I built the app, people were constantly asking me to build a mobile app. Yes, I had a PWA but people still wanted an app.
I thought it was kind of silly but I eventually built that wrapper app. It immediately got thousands of downloads, users upgrading to paid plans increased by 10x, and app users have way better metrics that website users.
It's pretty interesting, but as a website owner, having an app is valuable.
I think the problem is also that PWAs don't have any discoverability, and no standardization. I did some consulting work for a company that had a PWA. They had a 200-line long react component that was intended to determine what modal to show the user depending on what web browser and OS they were using to instruct them how to install PWA depending on the combination of OS and browser.
This is a lot of friction for the dev, and it's not clear to an average user what a PWA is. But they are familiar with, and for better or worse, trust, the App store. If I didn't know what a PWA and a site said "open menu and click on 'install!'" I'd be very wary of following those instructions!
I think Android and iOS should provide some sort of hook between the app store and PWAs before they really start to catch on.
I think once you've seen the actual possibilities of what e.g. an iOS app can do, when done correctly, everything changes for you.
With responsive design becoming mainstream I'm fine with using my browser for 90% of my internet work. In some cases like Google docs it's painful to use the web version so I just use the app.
EDIT: I wish they'd add a console to mobile web browsers though.
for me, this is signal that i wasn't supposed to be visiting that resource in the first place
Why would someone try to force me off of my browser (that has ad-blocking and tracker-blocking mitigations) and on to a locked-down app that may want permission to run in the background, display notifications, access my files or camera, etc?
Maybe it really is to "improve my experience"... yeah, right.
There are several sites I use regularly for which I refuse to install the app. There are a lot more sites that I visit only occasionally because someone links to it, and that site immediately wants me to download the app and refuses to show me the content that was linked to. Fuck off with that.
I default to building web applications. Actually getting people to install your special app is in any case a race to the bottom. Some will, most won't. It's onboarding friction. If you can shave a few steps of your onboarding process, the chance that somebody comes out the other end is simply higher.
As a user, I rarely install apps to begin with and frankly the appeal of "native" is limited to well guarded APIs into jealously magical device capabilities that phones have that most applications don't actually need. I know how the sausage is made and there just isn't that much there.
As someone who worked on this "jerk" position (first as tier 1, (T2 was team lead), later promoted to small team tier 3s to actually judge the ambigous cases and discus enforcing the rules with the store head honcho) before they downsized our team from 200 to 20 people through multiple rounds by automating the system, it was not really up to me to decide whether app will pass or not.
We had to follow strictly the rules, if you would not follow them and someone found through random check you have issues, even if I though many of these rules were stupid and I was frustrated to have to reject app for stupid reasons.
And you are not allowed to reach to the dev outside the system to let them know how to circumvent the system and tell them the reason why their app was rejected. If you try to do this, dev will still reach to the company saying someone told him this, they will investigate it and find out it was you and you are again in trouble for trying to help the dev fight the stupid rules.
I also think app development requirements are too high. Just to compile your app and run the build process you need a very high end computer. I could never do it with my modest laptop and therefore gravitated towards web programming and more backend work. Thankfully I avoided all the pain of building apps and getting them approved by store owners. But I do have respect for people who have to deal with this bs.
It may sound too opinionated and may hurt some feeling but I don't like android at all. I think it sucks. But I have little choice. So I grin and bear.
That's already the norm.
Facebook seems to be in this game. Constant notifications to install the app, and as well increasingly degraded experience in the web version (both desktop and mobile).
It's kinda there. You just need to connect with adb and then use chrome://inspect. It's actually a really nice feature and I've used it quite a bit over the past two years.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/remote-debugging/...
Whether I prefer an app to be web or native is purely based on the use case (I probably would choose native for a dozen use cases and web for the remaining one million use cases), but that's orthogonal to the fact of which one is actually better.
Edit: And to be clear, I'm not referring to cases where the web app is purposefully restricted or injected with dark patterns to drive users to native. Even if you ignore those cases, this pattern still stands in my experience. Though, that doesn't mean there is no indirect quality bias, e.g. more money spent on the native devs than the web devs.
Even native apps that were built with cross-platform frameworks feel a bit "off" sometimes.
The worst kind is French banking apps or IBKR app: many features are native, but then because of some weird tech debt or incompetent tech leadership, they'll sometimes show you web pages in a shitty, slow, completely different UI-wise built-in WebView for mundane tasks like downloading a PDF statement.
Ironically applications are far more secure running in the OS sandbox than the browser if you're on Android or iOS.
Did you read the article? One of the author's main points is this is a deliberate result by vendors.
- Autoplaying videos on the front page with no pause button. I expect video from CNN, but not a newspaper. That's not what I'm there for.
- They send you many "introductory" emails with no way to unsubscribe.
I mostly gave up on the front page, but it's marginally useful for reading the occasional article linked to from elsewhere.
If I'm paying for your service, you should not be degrading my experience using UX anti-patterns in any way, for any reason.
I assume the reason they are pushing me to the app is that it benefits them not me (longer dwell times, maybe easier tracking for behavior/ads), and that is precisely why I want to stay in the browser. Covering up a good portion of the article and preventing me from scrolling until I click the tiny link to decline is hostile and is the only thing degrading the experience on the website for most articles I read.
NYT is one of the worst offenders.
So I take this is a security concern. How do you feel about the fact that when you open a webapp in your browser, you re-download that app code every time? That the server can send you a backdoor every single time, made just for you, and nobody else will ever know? And that you can't check the "hash" of the webapp, like you can with an app?
On the other hand, an app is sandboxed, too (on mobile OSes like Android and iOS). When you download it, you can check a hash that you can (if you want to) compare with a friend to see if they got the same app. With an app, there is intermediary (the "app store") that would need to collude with the developers to send a backdoor just for you, and even then you would still have the app binary as proof.
That's always a question I have with "secure" web services: if you use ProtonMail, you trust that Proton doesn't send you a web page that leaks your key. But if you trust Proton for that, what's the point of the end-to-end encryption? When you use the Signal app, the whole idea is that you don't have to trust Signal for the end-to-end encryption, at all.
For security minded and source-available apps like Signal, the latter is the right choice. For low trust companies with no expectation of app/server separation, the former seems right.
There is no "backdoor" when the browser is sandboxed. "backdoor" is a specific thing, I think you need to read up on it before you keep using it incorrectly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor_(computing)
>On the other hand, an app is sandboxed, too (on mobile OSes like Android and iOS). When you download it, you can check a hash that you can (if you want to) compare with a friend to see if they got the same app.
That isn't what "sandboxed" means, it has nothing to do with checking hashes. And no, mobile apps are not really sandboxed, they have full access to your mobile device once you install it and give it access - and let's be real, most people are just going to blindly click "allow" for anything the app requests after installing an app.
>With an app, there is intermediary (the "app store") that would need to collude with the developers to send a backdoor just for you, and even then you would still have the app binary as proof.
You keep referring to "backdoor", and I don't think you really know what that means.
>That's always a question I have with "secure" web services: if you use ProtonMail, you trust that Proton doesn't send you a web page that leaks your key. But if you trust Proton for that, what's the point of the end-to-end encryption? When you use the Signal app, the whole idea is that you don't have to trust Signal for the end-to-end encryption, at all.
That isn't how any of this works. The main value proposition of Signal is that we do trust its end-to-end encryption. Protonmail sending a "web page" that "leaks your key"? WTF?
Can someone reading this make an addon for this?
For example, let's say I'm an airline. I don't want you in the browser, where you're going to have my competitors in the adjacent tabs. I want you in my app, where all you see is my version of the world. (I mean, yes, you can have multiple apps open, too, and switch between them. It's still a bit more friction than moving between tabs. Or maybe that's just my mental model, and young people see apps as just another kind of tab?)
It's not like an app is getting those without your knowledge, and many times it's useful for an app to have your contacts or location...
That said only on some platforms is it possible to stop a native app from getting them.
Nobody wanted to share their location with these data brokers, but thanks to underfunded privacy watchdogs, you have no idea what happens to any app that you give any kind of permission.
It used to frustrate me that people didn't care about their own privacy, because I genuinely didn't want evil people to hurt them. But, it's even more angering that people don't have the common decency to consider whether their friends and family would want them sharing their phone numbers, email addresses, photos of them, etc.
I think they're counting on these popups wearing people out.
After GDPR made these incessant annoying cookie popups mandatory, I just robotically click any button to dismiss it as fast as possible. Some website could probably write "Give root access" in that box and I'd probably click it without thinking.
i don’t get this take. “Web browser is sandbox by default”. sure, it has to do the rail grind with a rake to access system calls, but in a modern system apps are also sandboxed, especially on a smartphone or when downloaded with a managed app service. the OS gives you the ability to specify permissions, although to what degree depends on your provider. your browser _obviously_ also has the permissions you’re talking about. and now we have introduced yet more vectors in the form of cookies where web _applications_ can track activity _between applications_ with that just kinda being part of the spec, and it totally neuters the protections that the OS gives you because once you configure Firefox to get your location for Open Maps, now you’ve totally given control to your location permissions for _all web apps_ to yet another corporate driven point of failure.
don’t even get me started on the UI mess.
my tinfoil hat theory is that the browser is pushed by mostly bad actors trying to get data, while anyone providing a real user experience has a nice native app.
press F for my reputation.
Seriously though, I appreciate this perspective. While I prefer using a browser whenever possible, I'm well aware of modern fingerprinting techniques. But I didn't know about permission "sharing" between apps in the same browser. Thanks!
Privacy and security have always been a game of cat and mouse. Doesn't seem like that's going to change anytime soon.
For companies these are all downsides but for me they are all upsides. It really is us vs them when it comes to apps vs browsers. The only reason they offer websites at all is out of fear of losing a big chunk of users.
Google Chrome does seem to catch spam sites that abuse notification permissions to send ads, though, so for a certain category of crapware websites aren't an option.
They didn't grow up with the world wide web. They only started using technology when Android and iPhone was popular. They only know Whatsapp, Youtube, TikTok. They're not used to using the browser.
There's a meme that "Gen Z Kids Don't Understand How File Systems Work" [0]
So, it'll depend on your target audiences.
Made me realize that for a lot of people who get cheaper phones with less storage installing a new app is actually a pretty big decision.
At the end of the cycle I can barely run the base phone let alone the menagerie of apps the world would like me to run.
I have opted out of app only service such as a Loyalty programs that forced me to transfer point from a partner only if I installed an app on my phone. They have enough info on me from purchase, they don't need more. (I even offer my card to strangers in the grocery cash if they did not have the loyalty card so they would get a discount and I would get a list of products I never buy in my loyalty list. Its a small, willful act of rebellion )
Then, unfortunately, apps are a better choice for such phones (unless the app itself is just a thin webview wrapper). These days too many websites would fry a budget phone.
Obligatory: The Performance Inequality Gap https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-...
Mapped it out here if curious - https://vectree.io/c/enshittification-how-digital-platforms-...
I too love the web, but throughout my career the idea of web-first/web-only has been DOA. There is some level of perceived prestige from having an app.
I've told this story countless times but on multiple occasions I've written cross-platform apps using web technology. Throughout the development process, I have urged or even begged the stakeholders to try out the web-based version on their phone. It's almost identical. You just see the browser chrome in the web version. And yet it's not until I provide native builds that some people will even bother to look at.
I provide web interfaces as part of the package but I could probably skip that and no one would bat an eye (I won't though, it's practically free to do that alongside the native apps and I prefer it).
There are a handful of things you can only do, or only do well, in an app so I do understand that argument. Also, I find some PWA-advocates to clearly not be living in reality: "You can do X in a PWA" - only if you hate yourself and enjoy silly limitations that clients do not and will not understand or care about ("Just make it work, an app can do this!").
I went to a gas station and they had someone offering to pay customers if they'd install their app. Discount gas for X months. No one seemed interested.
People do want apps for things they do quite often, but that's mostly social media or video games. The hassle of install and account setup simply exceeds the benefit of rarely used apps.
We never went back to the restaurant in Cupertino where the table QR code tried to force downloading an app that onboarded you into a food delivery service. That restaurant was treating on-site customers as delivery orders with a very short delivery distance. The food wasn't very good, either.
This standard of every random website having an app and poorly managing cache and storage needs to stop. My mom can't begin to even understand how to fix it, and worse, she didn't even recognize half the apps I mentioned to her, which probably means she mindlessly clicked install on a bunch of random websites.
We do not need more app bloat on our devices, especially if they are just thin wrappers over your web app.
It only needs to be "an app" if it is using hardware to do it's main job. There is never another reason to make it an app.
Even then, there's a good chance that web a API exists for the required hardware, so it still doesn't need to be an app.
The crazy part is how many teams still treat the web as the demo and the app as the “real” product. For a lot of stuff it's the opposite now.
I know there are edge cases, but most of the time “download our app” just means “please care way more about our product than you currently do.”
But that's just the technical reality of what can be implemented on web vs. native because you are within an ephemeral browser tab and have all the restrictions that come with that.
Found a new doctor, because anyone that thinks this way I do not trust my heath to.
Absolutely no one will make me own a cell phone or install corpo spyware. It is still actually a choice.
The worst offenders are services that literally work fine in mobile Safari but pop a banner saying 'for the best experience download our app' covering half the screen. The web version is already the app, you just painted a door on the wall.
Now you've triggered me lol. At that point I'll ask for a physical menu, and leave if they don't have one. And no, I'm not going to look at my friend's phone. It's ridiculous!
I think I should be able to completely cut it off from the network and/or local storage; prevent it from running even though it is installed; and prevent it from having any personalizing information about me, my movements, my network connectivity status or patterns, my device usage (i.e. screen on versus locked, any proxy like battery state of charge), etc.
I am very reluctant to install apps because I see that the platform is designed for needs and a mindset that is not my own. I do not see it as essential or preferable that an app be able to monetize my usage or really gather any telemetry at all.
I do agree that this seems to be exception rather than the rule - so having both is actually nice IMHO.
This is by design to force you install the app. Most of these days, I just treat it as a signal to neither use the app nor the website.
I'm not sure if it is intentional to push you to the mobile app, but I have to imagine the mobile app doesn't have all these issues.
What kind of sad, self-loathing software developer sits down and says "OK boss, whatever you say, boss, gonna go make it bad now..." I mean, I know to a lot of people, it's just a 9-5 and you do what your boss says, and "pride in your work" is not really a thing anymore, but come on. Who gets even a shred of satisfaction doing this?
I think a better explanation is just incompetence.
For local apps, I'll firewall it: on mobile I use rethinkdns and trackercontrol to block unnecessary network calls; on desktop I'll mostly just deal with it (I have an extensive hosts file), but that doesn't mean everything).
Notifications is a big obvious one. Not sure if they've changed it since I last looked into it, but having an app installed was the only way to send a notification to someone for a long time.
that used to be true, especially on ios. but web push has existed there for a while now for home screen web apps.
so that explains some of the history... doesn't really excuse today's habit of shipping the web as a second-class client.
Isnt there are similar feature in iOS browser as in Firefox these "desktop notifications" that some webpages request?
I can just use the web version instead and skip all that, along with the memory usage (for the most part).
My take on it is that frequent users perceive apps as desktop launchers/shortcuts.
They don't care about the difference between app and web, per se, but the bookmarking situation in mobile browsers is awful (desktop too, honestly), and an app presents a convenient launcher for the service/site/data they want.
Adding a springboard launcher for a PWA is easy but still apparently more frictional than installing an app.
if you ever end up making one im very very curious about how much market share that would gain
The samsung fold7 in particular is the same thickness/weight as slab phones, but unfolds to become a tablet. Please don't vote if you haven't held one. The compromise is cost, durability (dust, water), some battery life & some camera. Huge gains in productivity and night-to-day difference consuming video and photos. Google Maps FTW.
Not just dust and water but folding screens are plastic with a mohs hardness of 2-3, as opposed to normal phones with glass screens which are a 6-7 hardness. I like having phones that can't be permanently damaged by pressing my fingernail a little hard into it.
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hgg4YEdPak&t=140s
Another example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uS90jakOuw&t=107s
I also can trivially replace the screen on my regular phone at home, whereas I'd have to get a folding phone professionally repaired for many hundreds of dollars.
When I use, say, the Signal app:
- I can audit it, download it or even compile it myself from sources
- Once I have installed it, Signal doesn't get to change it "in my back"
- As a result, I don't need to trust Signal for the end-to-end encryption, which is the whole point of end-to-end encryption.
When I use a webapp, say ProtonMail:
- Every time I load the webapp, it is downloaded from the Proton servers. Even if I once stop to audit it, next time I load it, it may totally be a different codebase (that e.g. adds a backdoor, potentially just for me, and just this one time).
- I need to trust that Proton doesn't inject a backdoor to extract my key, then end-to-end encryption is useless. I could also trust Proton to not read my emails, right?
- If a webapp is served by a CDN, I have to trust that the CDN doesn't tamper with it. Actually Meta has an extension made for verifying that for WhatsApp Web. The extension is a bulky way to make sure that you loaded what Meta wanted you to load (i.e. that Cloudflare did not tamper with it), but it DOES NOT ensure that Meta did not inject a backdoor just for you, just this time.
But I'll also say some apps don't really need to be apps (like ordering food from one specific store) but I won't complain about having those apps if it is a convenience.
I think it's somewhat misguided, but companies gonna company.
Something that has been happening for a long time on iOS Safari that I only recently realized: pinch to zoom on sites like Reddit, instagram, shopping sites, and many others cause what I’m calling “website seizures.” Where I try to zoom in and half the time the page reloads completely or triggers a reload but ends up throwing an error.
But on the other hand, I’d love to pay you $0.99 if it meant I could get an ad free version of your little widget and I’m not sure how to do that easily with web
Also the fact that people here would rather have their info stored in the cloud vs local on device is interesting.
But for me the main issues with "you need our app" BS is that they don't give you the apk but tell you to download it from the Google Play Store. They don't give you the source for the apk as well, as if it's such a huge trade secret how some shitty API works. The worst offenders ask for all the attestation shit (unrooted phone and so on). That's what's wrong with apps vs sites, not just the format itself. We should fight for FOSS apks with no attestation if companies want to invest so heavily in apps.
Sometimes the mobile app experience is better than the mobile browser for me, though. Examples are Twitter, Spotify, Upwork, Google Keep Notes.
If I'm on my computer I don't even download the apps, I just use the browser. It just feels more convenient.
I haven't thought much about why they all feel good on my laptop browser while some apps offer better experience on mobile.
Edit: It's also why I keep procrastinating on getting into mobile app development. I just generally prefer web experience. With some exceptions as already stated here.
Even some of the better ones don’t take themselves seriously. Buggy, hostile UIs , slow.
Honestly I don’t believe most of the producers are even using their own apps. I’m able to discover critical bugs within 2 minutes using nearly any app.
That's just my thinking... I try not to install apps most of the time, I don't want them to have access or even the greater chance at breaking security/isolation. On a similar vein, I still can't believe that LinkedIn didn't get permanently banned from Apple and Google stores when they broke security to spy on emails.
Because of the walled gardens, duplication of efforts, and waste of resources I'd personally favor if apps died out but that is never going to happen because they always have better platform integration.
The same has been going on with radio and podcasts for a while: e.g., the BBC, or my newspaper, wants me to install their app to listen to their streams or podcasts, while I much rather concentrate all my listening in one central radio or podcast app for all my sources. Note that a system for paid-only podcast subscriptions via generic podcast apps actually exists, but I've never used it since no podcast maker I listen to actually uses it.
Furthermore, to say platform owners don't care about offending such users would be an understatement: platform owners likely want to actively repel such users. Why serve someone who neither pays a fee nor agrees to be shown ads?
When Chrome started supporting PWAs you couldn't bookmark the content at all. They seem to have fixed that now.
I have ditched a ton of apps, from Youtube, to X, Discord and what not.
Apps is the biggest trap, it grants techs full access to your device, unless you are running GrapheneOS of course.
Web version works just fine, faster, it is not bloated like the app and won't drain your battery since there is no app running in the background.
The only app I still have is Instagram when I wanna upload a video to my car account because they refuse to do that via browser.
If I place expects me to download an app to order, I am eating elsewhere.
I'd rather see this framed as, "if you don't have a high functioning web version, I don't need to use your service." Gimping my preferred medium will lose me as a customer. If enough people draw that line, "enshittifying" your web app should hurt your metrics, not help. That way maintaining a good web version is looked at as a long-term necessity, not a top of funnel.
Every time I try to load a PWA on my phone from my dev laptop, it breaks after a few weeks (days?) for no obvious reason. I investigated this for a bit but eventually gave up and went the electron/wrapper app route.
If we can find a real fix for this stupid issue, I would be more than happy to focus on PWAs.
1. Phone storage wasn't paid at an absurdly premium price. Sometimes the option with just higher storage may be $300 more.
2. High speed Internet was available cheaply everywhere.
If I'm in a town in the middle of nowhere. I'm not going to use my expensive data plan (because in the US mobile data is extremely expensive compared to EU) To download a 500Mb app that will take 5 minutes to download because the Internet is slow just to pay for parking
When it took ages to download the same app to my work iPhone as I was downloading to my normal Android I thought there was something wrong with the iPhone at first, but it was literally spending five times the data to download what seemed to be an identical app.
There's something to be said for downloading a 50MiB app to save yourself from downloading 1MiB every time you pull out the website, but with modern app sizes, things are getting ridiculous.
I just randomly looked at Railway and for $20 a month you get a whole lot. I've hosted many a web project (successful personal projects and enterprise projects alike) and I don't see a large barrier to entry on "hosting a website" here.
Blocking AI scrapers and crawlers is not a huge ordeal. Planning for a unicorn before just putting a product up isn't the way to go.
If you have content they want, then it is a huge ordeal. You can pay some one like CloudFlare to take care of it for you, but if you can't or won't make a deal with those types of companies, it's going to take up a significant chunk of your time.
Then with ChatGPT he had to enshittify his website with all these cloudflare capture stuff, making the site leeesssssssss fun to use; when complaining he mailed me that AI scrapers are slashing his servers
But on a keyboard I type hella fast.
Now, I also hate creating account after account, having all these applications needing to be installed with ads in them that I can't block or some permissions that I don't think it needs. F that.
This also means you don't have to be running this week's android version to use it, with all the increased surveillance consequences that implies.
But, as the article states, people who are actually paying attention are a small minority and an acceptable collateral damage to user numbers.
I think we should call on Apple and Google to make web apps/sites a more first-class experience, rather than ask app developers to stop going where the people are.
Luckily there is choice :)
Even with mobile FF and adblock their mobile website is completely unusable. Now ask me if I'm happy to download ther app if their website is a complete POS like that
The desktop website works "fine" for the most part though
I have found app-only experiences that cover looking for a job, looking for a house, doing accounting/personal finances.
How can you even stay organized or do any meaningful data entry on a phone?
For the large majority of users, phones are THE primary (if not only) device for their interaction with the internet. You can complain "them-lazy-brainrotting-GenZs" but some people don't have a choice. There are plenty of countries where a smartphone is the cheapest internet enabled device that a person can afford.
Secondly, the UX for "web browsing" on the phone is strictly worse compared to (well-made) apps. In fact, apps are the reason for the explosion in popularity of smartphones. And also the reason only android and iphone have survived the OS race (see windows phone and linux phones). So — much to my own disappointment — it does make sense for companies to treat mobile (app) users as first class citizens. You need to understand that you are not the target user anymore. And, yes it sucks.
That said, it does not justify the gradual enshittification, dark patterns and dopamine hacking that have been normalized in modern apps.
Or are you including the web-based properties of "modern apps" in said apps?
Or it's full of annoying popups to use the app, looking at you, Google.
I would much prefer a really well-crafted ios Native App with extensive attention to detail than anything, even a web app made with similar detail (in most cases). And also ios apps are far more likely to receive that level of attention than just about anything else.
But at one club they wanted me to install another app just to check my coat. I elected to hide it under a some furniture instead lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzb355qT8RI
I honestly don't mind downloading apps for things I use all the time so long as the app isn't a nightmare. It's when I am having a single interaction with a brand (such as buying my wife a gift) and I'm bombarded with "it's better in the app" that drives me nuts.
I realize that I am perhaps not the target demographic of this app-centric culture; but, I cannot count the number of times in a week that I utter the phrase, "no, I don't want to download your app" as I try to accomplish what should be a simple task.
apps function more so as a checkbox for investors to take an organization seriously, as well as for the founder to self aggrandize and feel like their own app store presence means something. for devs it is functionally a make-work program.
Had this happen yesterday when someone sent me a link to something on AllTrails. If the service was good and the website was usable, I might have even considered getting the app for offline features. Not anymore - screw companies that do this.
If only 1% of your user base is accessing your maps through the website, you aren’t going to keep supporting it.
In this case, AllTrails has a perfectly functional website which they allow users to access from computer web browsers, but they force mobile phones (even when in "request desktop site" mode) to redirect to the app. If a site breaks in that mode it's on the user - I'm specifically requesting to get access to something they already provide and being denied.
This is especially egregious given how many "apps" are just websites in a wrapper anyway.
I think that sucks, and I'm entitled to my opinion. Now get off my lawn.
WASM should be able to handle it now, I suppose.
Additionally, apps allow for good offline functionality (for times when you're not near a cell tower), which I feel is important even with ubiquitous internet access in the 1st world.
The solution I feel is to have better sandboxing functionality in mobile Operating Systems.
To share an egregious example, Mercury (which is a great bank) sent KYC notice literally saying "we noticed you use app outside of declared locations" for one of my friends companies. And yes they push their app hard.
There are 2 things though that make me dislike mobile apps.
First, regularly logging me out. It's so frustrating, especially if the app does not support biometric login. I have a password manager, so I can log in rather quickly, but I just want to be logged in for months.
Second, webviews, I just can't understand mobile apps that render part of their content inside webviews. Like, either commit to having a proper native mobile experience or just let me use your website. One of the more annoying cases for me personally is NBA app. I'm searching for some stat, I open their website in a browser, it redirects me to the app, the app opens and then renders the same web page in a web view. What's even the point?!
At this point, the only apps on my phone are bank apps. Even that is something I'm trying to get rid off.
I'm not going to download an app to order food from your restaurant. I'm not going to download an app to operate an appliance. I'm not going to download an app to get a discount on a beverage at your convenience store.
I don't care about your stupid rewards system for trying to get a reasonable price on overpriced items. I'm not downloading an app for it.
There are many people who download every app they do business with without hesitation. It's crazy. I can't imagine how many apps these people have on their phones.
However, I don't want your bloated or minimum effort dog-shit app just to watch a movie on a plane, browse a site like Reddit, order a pizza, read a news article/blog, or shop at your specific online store. I will begrudgingly download it if I must, but I'll hate you for it.
As for me, I would be mostly relying on PWAs.
Being a smaller company, try pushing an app to production on Android. Good luck with that.
And when I started reading I got bored after a few paragraphs since, again, I already got the idea.
Do we really need more than a title for these articles?
