[HN Gopher] Why Google and Apple act the way they do, working to...
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Why Google and Apple act the way they do, working to snuff out the
mobile web
Author : samwillis
Score : 101 points
Date : 2023-01-04 21:42 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (toot.cafe)
(TXT) w3m dump (toot.cafe)
| T-zex wrote:
| Youtube without adblocker is a completely different experience. I
| hope web survives.
| malermeister wrote:
| There's NewPipe if you want Youtube without ads on a native app
| :)
| mozman wrote:
| I really think there needs to be greater engine diversity on
| mobile and you should also be able to leverage extensions like
| ublock or tampermonkey for mobile to really be viable
| thewebcount wrote:
| I use uBlock origin on iOS and macOS via Orion. Works great!
| namrog84 wrote:
| I'm on android and switched to Firefox specifically because
| they support ublock on mobile and mobile chrome didnt.
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| So a google employee is defending google for using the exact same
| anticompetitive app store strategy apple did, and then promotes
| an attack on apple, the last browser vendor not financially
| dependent on google. Look, the EU app store regulations are
| great, but they should be paired with regulations that ban Google
| from abusing its search monopoly to subsidize its control over
| platforms like OS, browser and social media.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > the last browser vendor not financially dependent on google.
|
| Apple takes billions from Google for them to be the default
| search engine. Unsure if that counts as 'dependant' or not, but
| it's not an insignificant amount of money, and Apple doesn't
| seem to be a in a hurry to give that up.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| I don't know why people don't just create blogs, rather than
| these 20+ piece Twitter/mastodon post chains. It's hard to follow
| and feels disjointed, and fights against an authors motivation to
| go into detail or explore nuance
| alkonaut wrote:
| I prefer this medium to blogs. And I'm an old beard who reads
| newspapers and prefers scheduled TV to streaming.
|
| Tweet chains have a rhythm, no ads (with a decent client) and
| no filler.
|
| Blogs (and worse: podcasts or videos) are full of fluff and
| filler, and often packed with ads.
| blowski wrote:
| * * *
| [deleted]
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I don't know why people don't just create blogs, rather than
| these 20+ piece Twitter/mastodon post chains.
|
| Ultimately, it's because that's where the readers that they
| care about are.
|
| And sure, they could post a link in a tweet. But I suspect that
| results in much less engagement than a tweet storm.
|
| Don't get me wrong - I hate it too. But don't hate the player,
| hate the game.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| People can read it natively in the social app they find
| themselves already in. Also makes it easier for such readers to
| share, increasing the post/thread's reach.
| smeagull wrote:
| I can't. Twitter paywalls after scrolling a little bit.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| In some ways, I'm glad when twitter, reddit, etc. do things
| like aggressively pushing to the app or to login because it
| reminds me of the incentives involved and literally,
| actively discourages me from using their service.
| aflag wrote:
| You can also share a link pretty easily.
| rektide wrote:
| Most people dont scroll through their social feeds to click
| links. They come to social feeds to see content.
|
| I get that some people dont want to have this experience.
| But this here is using the medium as intended. It fits in
| the scene & participates actively with others, in a way
| that going-off-and-doing-your-own-isolated-thing (then
| linking to it) doesnt.
|
| It'd be so nice if we didnt have to keep having this debate
| every single time. There's advantages to both. Recognizing
| & accepting that different things can be happening in the
| world & that you should maybe have a little flexibility
| about it seems like the mature response I'd hope for.
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| Yes, why can't we all be flexible and mature, just like
| these disjointed social app threads that prioritize
| eyeballs, retweets and rash emotional responses over
| actual content are always promoting!
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| >> People can read it natively in the social app they find
| themselves already in
|
| Not saying you're wrong, but... if it was a blog wouldn't
| that "native app" be a browser?
|
| >> Also makes it easier for such readers to share, increasing
| the post/thread's reach
|
| I think this is a big part of it; it's not about connecting
| with a few deeply, but many shallow connections. I'd argue
| that these authors care more about the sharing than the
| communication aspects TBH.
| mcrad wrote:
| [dead]
| pugio wrote:
| I don't really use Twitter and also prefer blogs to reading
| tweet threads, but one interesting advantage of the Twitter
| model is that it allows easy quoting/replying/liking of
| individual paragraphs / sentences.
|
| I'm not sure if this outweighs the different reading
| experience, but that ability makes for something which is
| fundamentally different, rather than being a strictly worse
| version of a blog.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Does it though? Quoting was always available: select the
| text, copy it, and go. Is it really the deciding difference?
| Do people perceive selecting and copying as a major friction?
| jxf wrote:
| This kind of quoting doesn't link to the original source
| without extra steps. With Twitter it's one click.
| brundolf wrote:
| I don't know why people complain about this on HN every single
| time, rather than accepting that people do and will continue to
| use these formats
| aussiesnack wrote:
| It is a bit boring to see repetitive complaints. I suspect
| they just won't go away until it's made obvious from the link
| whether or not its worth clicking on (for those of us who
| won't read social media trains). Even knowing it's Twitter or
| Mastodon doesn't really help, because the poster might be
| sensible enough to post a link to a real piece.
| shagie wrote:
| It's to allow engagement for any part of the post chain.
|
| With blogs it is hard to respond to just part of it - and it is
| hard to respond in most blog comment systems. Twitter solves
| both of those problems.
| everdrive wrote:
| Could you please break your post up into multiple posts so
| that I can react to each part individually?
| sureglymop wrote:
| But that's also terrible. Now anyone can take any piece of it
| out of context and even comment on it. I mean it's worse on
| Twitter but anyway. These threads can also be used as a form
| of clickbait. Often on twitter the first tweet in a thread
| will have 3x the engagement of each following tweet.
| dilap wrote:
| It also promotes tighter writing -- it feels more egregious
| to have a filler tweet than a filler sentence in a
| traditional essay.
| blowski wrote:
| Copy and paste? Seems to work well enough on HN.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| Yes I always abandon these when I see they don't just contain a
| link to a blog post. You might have thought someone waxing
| about the merits of the web would have heard of hyperlinks
| (admittedly, I'm only assuming that's what he's doing as I'm
| not going to slog through a train of mastodon posts).
| jsnell wrote:
| A) The HN guidelines specifically request discussions not be
| about tangential annoyances (like the format of the content)
| rather than the submission itself. Now this potentially
| interesting discussion has been hijacked by the top thread, and
| most replies, being to yet another boring rehash of "why isn't
| this a blog post".
|
| B) In this specific case, the author _has_ written a lot of
| blog posts about this domain (though not this specific
| subject), and those have been on HN frontpage occasionally. So
| whatever reason they had to use Mastodon for this writing, it
| at least wasn 't coming from ignorance or a lack of a platform.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| kome wrote:
| I rage typed my message below, and I am happy I am not the only
| one!
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| Because setting up a personal blog is a lot of work. And it's
| not fun. And it requires maintenance over the year. Writing a
| sequence of tweets "just works".
|
| I say this as someone with a custom blog written in custom
| HTML/CSS/JS.
|
| If it makes you feel better a lot of people are creating
| substacks, with no intent to monetize, to act as their blog.
| nightpool wrote:
| It's just easier to write. You start with an idea about where
| you want to go, and then every step forward is published, so
| there's no editing or revision possible. Sure, the quality of
| the writing might suffer, but it makes up for it by allowing
| _so much more writing_ to happen without getting killed by
| second thoughts or hesitations. The prevalence of these threads
| on HN is a great example of how systems can succeed by
| optimizing for production instead of consumption.
| jefftk wrote:
| Is that actually what's happening? Or do people write out the
| whole thing ahead of time and then paste it into
| Twitter/Mastodon?
|
| (I had assumed the latter, but maybe not?)
| nightpool wrote:
| Yes, my anecdotal conversations with people who post these
| things is that that's mostly how they happen. The closest I
| ever get to writing the whole thing out ahead of time is
| just writing two or three posts worth of text into the
| reply box and then splitting it up before posting. Maybe
| e.g. journalists or writers with more long-form experience
| do sometimes write out their whole thread ahead of time and
| then post it, but I think that's a very small percentage.
| jolux wrote:
| Alex Russell used to work on Chrome, and would write threads on
| Twitter about why it was best for Chrome to dominate the browser
| market and claim that "engine monoculture" wasn't a problem for
| the web. Make of that what you will.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Regarding Chris Coyier's initial post "What does it look like for
| the web to lose" [1] and his conclusion "Let's ditch the idea of
| native apps. All web! All web! All web!" I've got to say, that's
| exactly how it looks like for the web to loose. By the web
| trailing the capabilities of native apps rather than innovating
| in what made the web uniquely successful.
|
| [1]: https://chriscoyier.net/2023/01/04/what-does-it-look-like-
| fo...
| CharlesW wrote:
| On an app-by-app basis it's easy to tell which mobile apps are
| built on web technologies, but has anyone figured out what
| percentage of "native" apps are actually web apps in native
| wrappers?
| smcleod wrote:
| As a user - I don't want web based "apps" - I actively avoid
| anywhere I can.
|
| I want native apps - they better align to my operating systems
| native UI/UX, are more performant, have less (potentially
| insecure).
|
| Yes - Platform APIs absolutely should be made available to
| varying technologies where security is less of a concern, But
| I'll take a few high quality apps over a plethora of 'creative'
| web-apps any day of the week.
| smadge wrote:
| Forgive me for inferring your reasons, but the reason you
| actively avoid web based apps is because the web app experience
| is inferior to native apps because (or at least as the thread
| claims) Apple and Android actively sabotaged support for web
| apps favoring improving native features instead of improving
| and supporting web features.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| As a user, I actively avoid installing apps from restaurants
| and stores. Web apps are far superior and don't waste flash
| write cycles updating themselves repeatedly or complaining that
| they need to be updated if I turn off automatic updates. Also,
| web apps are easier to modify with extensions than native apps
| are to modify with Vanced-like patching.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Agreed. Web apps are a last resort, to be used grudgingly with
| gritted teeth if no native apps are available.
| nottorp wrote:
| Is it just me, or he's talking like slow bloated web apps are a
| good thing?
| jbombadil wrote:
| I use native apps only when I need the functionality of a native
| app: particular performance concerns / notifications / peripheral
| connectivity / etc.
|
| But I try my best to not install any apps that I don't consider
| necessary. I feel everyone wants to push an app for what could be
| achieved trivially with a website (looking at you Xfinity).
| luckylion wrote:
| It's strange when I read about what some companies spend on
| apps (e.g. some crypto prices + news + educational videos)
| where they could've gotten away with Wordpress, Youtube and
| some API for the data. Instead of focusing on content, they
| spend months of multiple developers building an app, struggle
| with maintaining it on iOS and Android and have won the ability
| to ... I don't know, I guess you can now use the gyroscope and
| accelerometer to suggest shit coins to track?
|
| Is "being in the appstore" worth that much because it's
| starting to be the primary thing people search when they're
| looking for something instead of Google?
| ejb999 wrote:
| I agree - and the additional benefit of lots less opportunities
| to track you in ways that you don't want to be tracked.
| waboremo wrote:
| Or it being monetized in weird ways. Mobile apps (especially
| on iOS) are bizarre. Who is paying these $19/mo fees for a
| barebones yoga app? Apparently someone out there since every
| single app on iOS is pushing an extremely high subscription
| cost.
| kome wrote:
| Can we _please_ blog about this, instead of writing long stuff on
| websites that are meant for short communication?
|
| It's unreadable and it's bullshit. And I'm not talking about the
| content of the article. We have HTML: let's use it pls.
| [deleted]
| aaroninsf wrote:
| Independent of UX, universality, etc.,
|
| THE killer feature for native apps is that it takes a wide range
| of security concerns completely off the table.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| How so? I feel more comfortable viewing a webpage, than
| installing an app that can access anything to view the same
| thing
| joenathanone wrote:
| >When Apple was a niche PC maker, it needed the web as a way to
| help potential customers de-risk the purchase of luxury
| computers.
|
| What does this statement even mean?
| mywittyname wrote:
| During that era, MacOS suffered from a severe lack of third-
| party software. This was the biggest thing keeping customers
| from purchasing Macs. Computers are only useful if they have
| software.
|
| But lack of software wasn't an issue for websites, since Safari
| could, in theory, run any website as well as any Windows
| computer could.
| offlinenative wrote:
| While it enjoyed outsized influence, the Mac never had enough
| share to create a sufficiently large software ecosystem w/o the
| web.
|
| In this era (~'98-'12), the web provided a bridge over a moat
| formed by a competitor's proprietary stack winning through
| momentum and network effects. The web went "over the top" of
| both Macs and PCs, and while Apple desperately coveted native
| app builders for the Mac, was at least savvy enough to know
| that if it could add the universe of great web apps to the Mac
| experience, it would be a market-reality help at point of sale.
| smadge wrote:
| The other posts in the chain go into more detail. By improving
| and pushing the web experience on Mac, Apple gets access to a
| whole ecosystem of web-based application which make the Mac
| more valuable to customer, instead of relying solely on 3rd
| party native Mac application developers.
| svachalek wrote:
| It's saying that small market participants benefit from open
| standards and compatibility. People are buying a different
| entry point into a massive shared resource, rather than
| choosing between a massive network and a niche player.
| ryanyl wrote:
| Are there any examples of really a great PWA on mobile? I always
| find the experience of company's mobile site far worse than its
| app (such as YouTube or Spotify), and I'm never sure if it's just
| lack of effort and attention, intentional to push users to the
| app, or just the ever so slight annoyances like slight tap delay
| on Safari iOS.
| lrem wrote:
| I thought that a number of first party Google "native" apps is
| just a packaged PWA, isn't it?
|
| Disclaimer: I work for Google, but never paid much attention to
| that corner of the company.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Twitter is kind of ok for what I need from it.
|
| Also mobile Web is good enough for most forms over data kind of
| applications.
|
| Other than games, where Web 3D APIs are stuck in 2010, many
| "apps" could be easily done as mobile Web, specially all those
| that are basically mobile Electron.
| narrator wrote:
| Brave Browser on Android is better for youtube because of the
| ad blocker.
| smeagull wrote:
| I'd like an example of an app that isn't shit compared to just
| using the mobile browser.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't the main purpose of a native app access to data
| collection that a browser would not have access? That way they
| can make money on that data collection?
|
| Am I just too cynical here?
| cokeandpepsi wrote:
| also avoids adblock
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| Many other benefits to the company: (not necessarily for the
| user)
|
| * Persistent shortcut button on device's launcher
|
| * Notifications to pull user back into app to consume
| content, spend money, view ads
|
| * Data collection like you say
|
| * Uniquely identify user w/ device identifiers
|
| * No browser UI and quirks
|
| * Persistent storage on user's device
| cglong wrote:
| All of those except #5 are possible with PWAs, and I'd
| argue that having completely different SDKs for each
| platform is much worse :(
| threeseed wrote:
| Mobile web apps have existed for decades.
|
| It simply comes down to the fact that the user experience is
| not as good as native.
|
| And you can't run a successful business without making your
| users happy.
| cglong wrote:
| Starbucks put a lot of effort into their PWA [1] to ensure
| users of low-end devices were able to get a rich experience. I
| just found a case study [2] by the team that built it that goes
| into some interesting details.
|
| [1]: https://app.starbucks.com/
|
| [2]: https://formidable.com/work/starbucks-progressive-web-app/
| freedomben wrote:
| Google's Santa Tracker is a pretty great PWA
| anderber wrote:
| I think that it really depends on what the PWA is trying to do
| and its purpose. I think the Twitter, Instagram, and Starbucks
| apps are both good examples of what can be done. Potentially a
| lot more could be done with PWAs, if there was more push to
| make them better.
|
| https://appsco.pe/
| doomrobo wrote:
| Personal experience as a web dev: the mobile Safari PWA
| experience (and even regular browser experience) is terrible.
| The browser is riddled with bugs and lacks support for features
| that have been around for a while. I apologzie for not having
| examples bc it was a few months ago that I was struggling with
| this, but hopefully someone else can fill some in. I honestly
| believe Apple's stranglehold on the mobile browsing experience
| has been one of the most disempowering things to mobile users
| in the last decade.
| ExMachina73 wrote:
| This was an interesting recent development if it ends up
| being true, specifically Apple opening up iOS browser engine
| restrictions:
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2022/12/13/apple-mulls-opening-
| browser-e...
| lelandfe wrote:
| Personal experience shipping a big PWA: Safari's PWA
| experience is not just bad, it's all but undiscoverable:
|
| Open the Share sheet, scroll down, tap "Add to Home Screen,"
| fill in the information, tap Add.
|
| There are simply no users that do this, and it is not an
| alternative to having a mobile app in the App Store.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _There are simply no users that do this..._
|
| 100%. PWAs are not a priority for Apple (and shouldn't be
| for developers) because users don't search for apps in web
| search engines, they search for them in the App Store.
| function_seven wrote:
| Personal experience as a web user: I agree.
|
| I'm not even talking about _bugs_ per se. Just the
| experience. I find myself constantly battling misinterpreted
| gestures. I try to zoom out on a page. Safari thinks I want
| to switch to the Tab View. I don 't. Please just make the
| page smaller so I can see it all.
|
| Or, I try to grab a UI slider that's positioned near the left
| edge of the viewport. Safari thinks I want to navigate back
| to the previous page. Nope. Apparently if form controls are
| too close to the screen's edge, they're read-only at that
| point?
|
| So many gestures are overloaded now that it's a stressful
| thing sometimes to get it to do what I want. Being pixel-
| perfect with my fat dumb finger is no fun.
| MBCook wrote:
| Why is the answer to this question always "Safari sucks"?
|
| Are there no good PWAs that run on Android? Are there none
| that, though perhaps smaller is scope, run well in Safari?
|
| People have been advocating for PWAs for a very long time now
| but it's incredibly hard to get examples of good ones. There
| is always some complaint about Safari instead.
| cglong wrote:
| Apple's stronghold affects PWA feasibility on Android too.
| If I have to write a PWA for Android and a native app for
| iOS to cover gaps in Safari, why choose a PWA at all?
| Gigachad wrote:
| Telegram is probably the best example of a PWA. It's not as
| good as the mobile app, especially for gestures, but it's
| better than a lot of native apps.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Well, start by having WebGL and WASM catching up with modern
| hardware, instead of lagging behind native tech for a decade, and
| this includes desktops, not constrained by the issues described
| on the posts.
|
| WebGPU might finally get released this year, just in time to
| catch up with where Vulkan, DirectX and Metal were in 8 years
| ago, while forcing everyone to rewrite all their shaders.
| dekhn wrote:
| The web (browser) will always trail the desktop, because the
| web is an inner platform, and no inner platform can develop
| faster than the platform it runs on. Also, the web has to be
| compatible across 3 major operating systems, so you need to
| build wrapper layers.
|
| I've come to the conclusion that the browser shoudl have become
| a virtual machine host where every tab was its own VM. Then at
| least we could run normal apps on the web without WASM.
| spankalee wrote:
| That is not the web - the web is documents and hyperlinks in
| addition to URLs. Sounds like you might want Fuchsia?
| FractalHQ wrote:
| To be fair, this would be true if you just emerged from a
| 20 year coma.
| dekhn wrote:
| Browser are the largest individual representative of web
| technologies (in terms of traffic, users). The three things
| you listed are all consumed primarily through browsers. And
| the article we're discussing explicitly is talking about
| applications- either on the mobile phone, or in the mobile
| browser.
|
| No, I don't want Fuchsia, that's just _another_ OS on top
| of the 3 we have, with significant restrictions. It was
| really just a tool for Google to have more power over
| Android developers and hardware manufacturers.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| > There had been parallel tracks, and prototypes of a truly web-
| based OS, but they didn't launch. Cocoa was already Plan A when
| Jobs described the web as a "great application platform" at
| Moscone.
|
| AFAIK, this is completely false. There was never a webOS-type
| proposal. Where do people come up with this stuff?
| falcolas wrote:
| There's a lot of "here's the reasoning behind what they did"
| with nothing backing it up but their word. It's an implicit
| appeal to their authority, and I personally have no idea who
| they are.
|
| Digging in, it seems like they worked on Chrome for several
| years before moving over to Edge. That would give them at least
| some technical insight into what happened at Google, if not the
| reasons behind those decisions.
|
| Even so, it still feels like a lot more speculation than actual
| facts.
|
| But that's me.
| detourdog wrote:
| The Macs desktop widgets was considered as an alternative to an
| App Store. They would run on the existing iPhone.
| brookst wrote:
| Sounds interesting. Source?
| kefka_p wrote:
| I don't know anything about an AppStore alternative but I
| do seem to recall a presentation or two mentioning using
| Dashboard widgets as a route for development.
| manicennui wrote:
| I don't know what "truly web-based OS" means exactly, but Jobs
| was very resistant to third-party apps at first.
|
| "Initially, third-party native applications were not supported.
| Jobs' reasoning was that developers could build web
| applications through the Safari web browser that 'would behave
| like native apps on the iPhone'"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS#History
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(page generated 2023-01-04 23:00 UTC)