[HN Gopher] Why Are Tech Reporters Sleeping on the Biggest App S...
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Why Are Tech Reporters Sleeping on the Biggest App Store Story?
Author : cdme
Score : 41 points
Date : 2024-01-02 22:05 UTC (55 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (infrequently.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (infrequently.org)
| mpol wrote:
| Sure, the duopoly of app stores and browsers as a disruptor is a
| big story.
|
| But can I take offense of all this "The biggest story"?
|
| I see it so often, especially here on HN, and it feels overly
| dramatic. Maybe even self-centered, like; "this is the truth",
| where somebody went too far in some kind of cool-aid (of the
| wrong kind). It is not as awful as conspiracy theories, they are
| even more awful, but the feeling goes in the same direction.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| > The implication is clear: browsers unchained can do to mobile
| what the web did to desktop, where more than 70% of daily "jobs
| to be done" happen on the web.
|
| This was an actual debate in the early days of app stores.
| Facebook was the most prominent company that decided to go with
| an HTML5 app instead of a native one. Doing so was one of the
| biggest strategic mistakes they've ever made. Zuck's words, not
| mine. (https://www.engadget.com/2012-09-11-zuckerberg-
| html-5-facebo...).
|
| Web apps were slower, had issues dealing with the various
| browsers and saw less use.
|
| It doesn't seem like the author has done any real research here.
| qgin wrote:
| There's no technical reason this needs to be true though.
|
| It's wild that I can use a full-featured spreadsheet instantly
| on the web on my laptop, but on my phone someone wants me to
| download a 100mb binary to order a pizza.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I've always assumed it was by design, because you can't use
| ad blockers or privacy addons in an app.
| outworlder wrote:
| These days they will ask you to download 100MB of JS, CSS,
| HTML and assets to order the same pizza.
| Eridrus wrote:
| "My highly abstract cross-platform framework must be as fast
| as native code" is not a sane view on this.
|
| A tonne of effort has gone into making spreadsheets work on
| the web; both in the browsers as well as the spreadsheet apps
| themselves.
|
| The fact that the web works as well as it does is a huge feat
| of engineering, but in no way indicative of there being no
| technical reason that native apps can be better.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Maybe a few things changed since 2012.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > This was an actual debate in the early days of app stores.
| Facebook was the most prominent company that decided to go with
| an HTML5 app instead of a native one. Doing so was one of the
| biggest strategic mistakes they've ever made.
|
| That was over a decade ago. Back then, Youtube was still using
| Flash (the HTML5 beta was only around a year old), JavaScript
| engines were _way_ slower, Chrome was still using WebKit...
| HTML5 today is not what it was in 2011.
|
| Even putting aside the fact that the web was "slower" in part
| because of the decisions mentioned in the article that are
| intended to encourage native app design, it's not a foregone
| conclusion that the same is true today.
| yodon wrote:
| The state of the art 12 years ago and the state of the art
| today are generally quite different things.
| echelon wrote:
| Maybe if Apple didn't purposely deliver a slow, dated browser
| and force it to be the only one.
|
| The cellphone duopoly is using their power to make sure the web
| cannot match native. That's how they make their gobs of money
| that hasn't been subject to real competition. They get a free
| rake off of the innovation of others.
|
| If you allow web downloads of apps with no store and no scare
| wall, companies will develop better / native-level browsers.
| They'll happily chip away at Google and Apple.
|
| With WASM, we have the tech. As soon as it goes multithreaded,
| it's game over for native apps. (So long as the DOJ clears the
| runway and forces these companies to allow fair competition and
| progress.)
| politelemon wrote:
| I'm thinking that if Python becomes "easy to pick up" to do
| WASM development, it could go a long way towards helping PWAs
| thrive. I'm not very familiar with WASM but most tutorials
| seem to be around C/C++, Rust, or C#, so I wonder if there's
| something holding back Python + WASM. I only mention Python
| because of its current popularity and accessibility to the
| masses.
| tallowen wrote:
| I am surprised that part of Mozilla's never introduced an Android
| launcher for progressive web apps.
|
| Given that they already have Firefox on Android and their history
| with FirefoxOS, I expected this to be a key lever to get
| app/website developers to consider this as an option.
|
| Are there barriers such as performance or API issues (e.g. double
| click behaviors) that prevent the webmanifest and other
| approaches from gaining traction here?
| njroute22 wrote:
| Another angle is - "tech reporters" don't want to touch this
| because some mysterious blacklisting would result and their
| digital life would slowly come crumbling down. They're afraid to
| ruffle feathers.
| qgin wrote:
| It's not outside the realm of possibility for web apps to have as
| good of an experience as binary apps for most use cases. But
| Apple has no motivation to make "the good stuff" easily available
| to web developers.
|
| Letting a webapp capable webpage have an in-page "install this
| app" button that added it to the home screen would wipe out 50%
| of app store usage. But as it is, as an "add to home screen"
| option on the share menu of a webpage, which very few have
| noticed or understand the meaning of... it keeps web apps from
| taking off.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, I can say why I don't expect coverage of this. As far as I
| know, mobile OSes already allow the user to navigate to whatever
| web page they want. There's nothing to unblock.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Because they want to make sure Microsoft/X gets the priority, so
| they can pretend we have an "open market" ;)
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > This, in turn, will enable competitors to replace app stores
| with directories of Progressive Web Apps.
|
| > Work is also underway to give competing browsers a chance to
| facilitate PWAs that can install other PWAs. Web App Stores would
| then become a real possibility through browsers that support
| them, and we should expect that regulatory and legislative
| interventions will facilitate this in the near future. Removed
| from the need to police security (browsers have that covered) and
| handle distribution (websites update themselves), PWA app stores
| like store.app can become honest-to-goodness app management
| surfaces that can safely facilitate discovery and sync.
|
| It's ironic that this article criticises tech media for sleeping
| on web apps and focusing on app store competition only to
| envision Web App Stores.
|
| There's no need for app stores on the web. We already have
| discovery (Hacker News) and search (Google). I could imagine a
| subreddit specifically for web apps, but is even that necessary?
| Zetobal wrote:
| Two different mobile oss tried exactly this and they both failed.
| Three if you count webOS from palm.
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(page generated 2024-01-02 23:00 UTC)