[HN Gopher] I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok
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I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok
Author : ssiddharth
Score : 795 points
Date : 2026-04-06 14:31 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.0xsid.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.0xsid.com)
| everdrive wrote:
| And if the only option is an app, then I'm not interested in your
| product / store / company.
| Larrikin wrote:
| If the app can be replaced by a website the app is useless. The
| web is not as powerful as an app and you will miss out on
| emerging tech. Facebook doesn't actually need an app, but I can
| not unlock my door, tap to pay, or connect to a specific
| selection of speakers in my home on a website.
| everdrive wrote:
| 100% of the emerging tech you listed either allows for a
| hacking / warrant / data leakage risk or is else so decadent
| I don't know how to respond. I don't want any of it.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Then all your interactions on the computer in your pocket
| that is more powerful than the computers that took us to
| the moon are just a bunch of JSON and REST calls. I will
| locally map out my home in 3D for renovations while you let
| social media dictate how you use your computer.
| functional_dev wrote:
| I am with you here.. there is actually name for why companies
| do this. They are not pushing app because it is better, but
| because browser tab cannot lock you in.
|
| Mapped it out here if curious -
| https://vectree.io/c/enshittification-how-digital-platforms-...
| denysvitali wrote:
| I understand the user point of view, but some web UIs nowadays
| are so bad and the app so good that I'm not sure this always
| holds true.
|
| I do agree that this seems to be exception rather than the rule -
| so having both is actually nice IMHO.
| owenpalmer wrote:
| Alternatively, they could just make the web UI good.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| This isn't an alternative for the user (the person you're
| replying to).
| denysvitali wrote:
| I can't think of a web app that really feels like a (good)
| native one. For example, I would never use Google Calendar
| as a web app / Google Maps as a web app as they're far
| inferior IMHO
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I used Home Assistant as a web app for years before
| deciding to download the companion app instead to give it
| access to my phone's sensors.
|
| I used to care a lot about app designs feeling "native"
| but when I actually took inventory of the apps I use, I
| came to the conclusion that all app developers (including
| Apple and Google themselves) will force their own designs
| and theming into every app. The only exception seems to
| be coming from a bunch of open-source apps that don't
| have branding concerns to worry about.
|
| With the realisation that most apps look and navigate
| must as bad as their website equivalent, I found it much
| easier to use web apps.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| TurboTax, for all its faults is one of those where the desktop
| app is better than the webapp they keep pushing.
| microflash wrote:
| > some web UIs nowadays are so bad and the app so good that I'm
| not sure this always holds true.
|
| 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.
| camdenreslink wrote:
| Reddit comes to mind. I have so many issues with their mobile
| website. The back button has been broken for years, comments
| will frequently just hang as loading indefinitely (only
| fixable with a hard refresh), videos will sometimes not be
| replayable, sometimes if you change the zoom on the page it
| will just hard refresh, etc.
|
| 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.
| jonathanlb wrote:
| Thankfully, old.reddit.com as a default option still works.
|
| The kicker is that the text is so small and to make the
| site usable (and readable) you need to rotate your phone to
| landscape mode.
|
| This works well enough that I haven't downloaded the reddit
| mobile app or used their mobile site ever since they killed
| Apollo.
| duped wrote:
| Their mobile app sucks too. They just killed /r/all
| recently.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| you can launch it from a comment linking to r/All (with a
| as upper case) iirc. How long that'll still be available,
| I have no clue, but I like to imagine the devs who work
| on reddit realise how braindead of a decision removing it
| is but have to please the shareholders by removing any
| obvious access of it
| duped wrote:
| I think they took the wrong signal from the people
| avoiding the default feed since it's filled with days-old
| posts you've already seen from subs you haven't joined.
| ragnese wrote:
| I'm especially angry that if you go to reddit.com in a
| mobile browser, it will sometimes fully block you from
| certain subreddits (not just NSFW ones) and tell you that
| you can only access it from the app. Meanwhile, you can
| easily visit the exact same subreddit by typing
| old.reddit.com/r/whatever. The outright lying bothers me so
| much. I refuse to be desensitized to lying just because
| everyone is lying all the time; it's still really wrong,
| and they really should be ashamed of themselves.
| mixtureoftakes wrote:
| reddit browser behavior got me into using frontends for
| various sites, such as redlib dot privacyredirect dot com
|
| there are surprisingly many of them for pretty much every
| social media website.
| ryandrake wrote:
| If it's really "by design" then you are saying they have a
| staff of web developers who are told, "No, no, no... all that
| quality work you're capable of--don't do it. Here are some
| JIRA tickets to make the web site shitty and slow and eat the
| user's battery. Go implement them and make everything worse!"
|
| 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.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| you mean like in a way of "defending" the user from using the
| website and just go right away to the app?:)
| denysvitali wrote:
| Not really, more like "just pick whatever works, both
| usually suck"
| skydhash wrote:
| Unless it's required (Starlink) or something I check often (not
| much this day), I don't use the app version. I prefer grabbing
| my laptop and use the web version. But best is when there's an
| API available so I can write my own tools.
| wbobeirne wrote:
| The author touches on this in the last section, but I'd reframe
| this a different way. The natural conclusion for a company who
| wants to funnel you to the app is, "the web version is a-OK?
| Let's make the web version worse."
|
| 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.
| 7777777phil wrote:
| This sentiment will probably resonate with a lot of people here.
| I literally won't use a service if they try to force me onto
| their app..
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| It's already been beaten into acceptance that I have to use the
| Ticketmaster app (shockingly awful) or Dice app (not quite as
| bad but still sucks) to get into a lot of music venues in
| Boston.
|
| 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
| darepublic wrote:
| dozens of apps on the smartphone is gross. an indicator for me of
| an elderly / technically illiterate smartphone user is the
| presence of a ton of apps, most of which were used long ago and
| seldomly.
| hooverd wrote:
| sounds like somebody who's never had to park in multiple cities
| cogman10 wrote:
| I wish PWAs were more of a thing. That is actually what I'd use
| instead of installing a company app.
| crsl wrote:
| I also find that because the web version is worse in order to
| push you to download the app, it is a good way to not get sucked
| into endlessly scrolling. Get in, do what you need, and get out
| because of bad experience.
| 8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote:
| Web browser is a sandbox by default. Worst a sketchy site does is
| eat a tab, less if you run an adblocker. Native app? Background
| processes, hardware ID shenanigans, your contacts, location. The
| whole buffet.
| Levitating wrote:
| Using flatpaks or mobile apps, you can view the sandbox
| permissions and adjust them if you have to.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > your contacts, location. The whole buffet.
|
| 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...
| duped wrote:
| Almost never is it useful for an app to have my contacts or
| location.
|
| That said only on some platforms is it possible to stop a
| native app from getting them.
| quesera wrote:
| Android and iOS both require user permission for apps to
| access contacts or location.
|
| Are there other platforms that can't even manage this basic
| level of user protection?
| grumbel wrote:
| As long as the application is made aware of the
| permissions and can prevent functioning when they get
| denied, that doesn't really help much. It's the choice
| between getting mugged or never leaving the house.
|
| The ability to deny permissions without the app noticing
| or filling it with fake data doesn't exist on either
| system.
| duped wrote:
| Yes, Windows.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Not a single platform require permission from each
| individual contact in your adress book to access them and
| that is the real problem.
| velocity3230 wrote:
| GrapheneOS allows for this. It's called Contacts Scope.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Not really it asks the user of the device, not the
| individual contacts whose PII data could be treated by
| third parties tb hey never gave consent to.
| ragnese wrote:
| One of the most enraging things about life since 2005-ish is
| that no matter how private and careful _I_ am, it doesn 't
| even matter because every other inconsiderate fool I know and
| interact with will HAPPILY let some random company have
| access to THEIR contacts--which includes me--in order to play
| Farmville for a month until they get bored of that and offer
| up my private information to the next bullshit ad company
| that asks for their contacts.
|
| 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.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Famously, that's how shadow profiles got created for
| Facebook and LinkedIn and many others.
| iib wrote:
| Or add your real name to photos of you stored in Google
| Photos.
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| I'd argue it's absolutely ludicrous to give _other people's
| information_ up to an app (or website). Your contacts contain
| names, phone numbers, potentially photos and addresses of
| _other people_.
| libria wrote:
| Not without _my_ knowledge or _your_ knowledge sure. But I 'd
| bet there's significant percentage of the population who is
| tired of thinking about permission popups and just hit yes
| yes YES to get the App started. Especially if it forces
| retries before going forward.
|
| 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.
| maccard wrote:
| But most of the time it's really, really not.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The weather app I used sent location data from pretty much
| everyone who didn't manually go through the effort to opt out
| to some shady American data broker that got hacked. Most
| people using the app gave it location permissions because of
| its ability to warn for rain coming to your precise location
| with decent accuracy.
|
| 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.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Location can also be extracted by JS on a website with these
| geo functions, IIRC?
| beardyw wrote:
| Requires permission.
| endyai wrote:
| so does an app
| zadikian wrote:
| Exactly. The only app-specific abuse I can think of is
| apps that wake in the background (Apple said this isn't
| the case, but it is), Android where apps get push by
| default, or apps that just hope the user will grant broad
| permissions that web can't do.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Apps have to request your permission for contacts and location.
| iOS is really good about not giving bad permissions to apps
| without user being asked for consent.
| chrash wrote:
| bias disclosure: i used to do Android dev and kinda hate the
| browser personally.
|
| 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.
| cjkaminski wrote:
| Good night, sweet reputation and flights of angels sing thee
| to thy rest.
|
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think it's more than that. It's a walled garden. If you want
| to leave go somewhere else, it's further away than just a tab.
| That increases stickiness.
|
| 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?)
| palata wrote:
| > Web browser is a sandbox by default.
|
| 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_.
| leptons wrote:
| >That the server can send you a backdoor every single time,
| made just for you, and nobody else will ever know?
|
| 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?
| AlBugdy wrote:
| It's obvious what GP meant - we can verify that the apps we
| download are the apps everyone else downloads.
|
| We can't do this with Proton where our mail is supposedly
| end-to-end encrypted. They can easily view our mail if they
| can send us a different code when we load their site.
|
| > That isn't what "sandboxed" means, it has nothing to do
| with checking hashes. And no, mobile apps are not really
| sandboxed
|
| Apps ARE somewhat sandboxes and GP didn't mean than
| sandboxing == checking hashes. It was 2 sentences appearing
| one after the other.
| asadotzler wrote:
| You cannot. An app can update just like a browser tab. In
| fact, a very many apps are just frickin' webviews.
| palata wrote:
| Well, you can verify that the code that you downloaded is
| the same that everyone else downloaded. Even if it
| contains webviews.
|
| Now if it contains webviews, it brings the security issue
| of... the webapps, of course.
|
| Personally, I want an open source app. You can audit an
| open source app and even compile it yourself. You can't
| really do that with a website. And I don't mean just
| mobile apps, that applies to desktop apps, too. I
| wouldn't run a web-based terminal, for instance (do
| people actually do that?).
| armadyl wrote:
| AlBugdy and the person you are replying to are literally
| right re: server delivered backdoors. Using E2EE
| applications in a browser moves the trust back from the
| client to the server.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47664103
|
| > 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?
|
| Yes and it's that you also trust the client, with a server
| that dynamically delivers code you have no way of knowing
| fully what payload it's sending you. An example of this
| vulnerability was discussed when it was pointed out that
| 1P, Bitwarden and others were susceptible to server side
| backdoors if used from the web in that research study that
| came out last month that was posted here.
|
| > 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.
|
| This is genuinely just not true, even if you click allow
| for all permissions on Android and iOS. An application on a
| non-rooted device doesn't have "full access."
| palata wrote:
| Dude, I was here to talk about security, not to be judged
| on the quality of my English. What I get from your take is
| that your English is better than mine, but not your
| security knowledge.
|
| > That isn't what "sandboxed" means, it has nothing to do
| with checking hashes.
|
| I didn't say it had anything to do with it. I meant that
| NOT ONLY it is sandboxed, but ON TOP OF THAT you can check
| that you received the same code.
|
| > You keep referring to "backdoor", and I don't think you
| really know what that means.
|
| The only explanation I see for you not understanding what I
| mean by "backdoor" for the end-to-end encryption is that
| you have no idea how it works. If you're just being
| condescending about my language, go for it. Tell me I can't
| speak your language. But don't tell me I don't understand
| security, you have absolutely no idea what I know.
|
| > Protonmail sending a "web page" that "leaks your key"?
| WTF?
|
| You obviously don't understand how it works if this
| surprises you. I would gladly elaborate with anyone who is
| not a jerk, but that does not seem to be the case here.
| zadikian wrote:
| Apps can download code too, and often do
| palata wrote:
| Well the idea is that the client should be open source, and
| audited.
|
| If you run a proprietary app, you have to blindly trust it
| (just like if you access a webapp).
|
| In terms of security, the best is an open source app, IMO.
| Zak wrote:
| Open source helps, but if you didn't build it yourself,
| you'll need to trust whoever did. F-Droid reproducible
| builds help in that you only need to trust either F-Droid
| or the developer, not both.
|
| The browser tends to be safer because it has a stronger
| sandbox than native apps on a mobile OS. It's meant to be
| able to run potentially malicious code with a very
| limited blast radius.
| AlBugdy wrote:
| > And that you can't check the "hash" of the webapp, like you
| can with an app?
|
| Can someone reading this make an addon for this?
| palata wrote:
| Meta and Cloudflare did something like that for WhatsApp
| Web, there is a nice blog post about it here:
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/key-transparency/
|
| Now it only ensures that Cloudflare doesn't tamper with the
| WhatsApp Web code they serve, you still have to trust Meta.
|
| I feel like reaching the same level as "checking the hash
| for the app" would be very hard in practice. I.e. the web
| is not built around doing that. Your extension would have
| to scan all the files you download when you reach a page,
| somehow make a hash of it, somehow compare it to...
| _something_ , but then make the difference between
| "tampered with" and "just a normal update".
|
| Also you just can't "download the sources, audit them and
| compile them yourself" with a webapp. If you do that, it's
| just "an app built with web tech", like Electron, I guess?
| tonymet wrote:
| Web browsers all support those facilities, with less obvious
| transparency and control than iOS and Android apps
| WhiteOwlLion wrote:
| I use Twitter/X on web because the iOS so bad.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Turns out if you use brave on iOS it auto-blocks all the ads
| too.
| villgax wrote:
| The government is supposed to be pushing for web as the default.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I've got an old-ish phone, so in most cases, I _can 't_ download
| your app even if I wanted to. You deliberately set your minimum
| iOS deployment version to be higher than what my phone can even
| install. So I have to go to your web site or just stop doing
| business with your ass. Just because your developers decided that
| developing for older phones is too hard to figure out, or it
| takes too much effort, and they'd rather just cut us off.
| realusername wrote:
| I think the blame is on Apple here, you can't support older
| devices even if you wanted to. (And it's the same on Android)
| ryandrake wrote:
| You can support older devices, but admittedly Apple does not
| make it super easy to find. The easy "happy path" in Xcode is
| to only support the most recent OS versions.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| iirc even then there's a minimum that xcode will still
| deploy to. The only way to have an app work on older
| versions than that is to not update it at all
| akshatjiwan wrote:
| That's my stance as well. Unless the website is completely broken
| or the devs force me to download the app by blocking features on
| the website I prefer the web.
|
| 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.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > the website is completely broken or the devs force me to
| download the app by blocking features on the website
|
| for me, this is signal that i wasn't supposed to be visiting
| that resource in the first place
| mcv wrote:
| Yeah, crippling your website in order to force users to
| download an app that may be able to access for of a user's
| data, is a clear sign that there are people you don't want to
| do business with.
|
| 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.
| ragnese wrote:
| Yep. If someone is trying to make you do something, or stop
| doing something, or buy something, your first question should
| always be "Why?".
|
| 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.
| mrd3v0 wrote:
| > Unless the website is completely broken or the devs force me
| to download the app by blocking features
|
| That's already the norm.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| As a developer, I resent having to go beg for permission for
| getting my app published. It just rubs me the wrong way to have
| to play approval roulette with some bored jerk working for
| Apple or Google. I've had both reject things that were
| previously alright, then weren't, and then were again.
|
| 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.
| akshatjiwan wrote:
| 100% agree. I'm not a big fan of apps being distributed
| through stores owned by big corporations.I had faith in
| Fdroid but sadly it hasn't taken off.
|
| 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.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Same. My app is a PWA. Most users won't install a PWA and
| won't repeatedly navigate to a website so it limits the
| reach. But the advantage is that I can deploy instantly. I
| love when someone sends a bug report and I can tell them it's
| fixed ten minutes later. Pretty great, compared to "it'll be
| fixed in there business days" you get with the iOS app store
| RajT88 wrote:
| > Unless the website is completely broken or the devs force me
| to download the app by blocking features on the website I
| prefer the web.
|
| 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).
| zem wrote:
| often the blocked features are specifically blocked on the
| mobile web (i.e. on your desktop they won't make you get your
| phone out to use the app instead), so forcing the webpage to
| desktop mode helps.
| dbvn wrote:
| Somehow the one feature I need to use is the one feature broken
| on the website... every time.
| jedberg wrote:
| While I sympathize with the author, and feel the same way, I
| think Apple/Google have some blame here. They make certain simple
| things only possible in the apps, because the APIs are not
| exposed via the web.
|
| 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.
| dyarosla wrote:
| Apple still doesnt give you the right dimensions for a page
| that switches between portrait and landscape.
| plagiarist wrote:
| That's one of the main reasons to not install an app. Extremely
| few apps are able to limit their notifications to actually
| transactional events. As soon as they have the capability they
| start spamming away.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Reg. Notifications:
|
| Isnt there are similar feature in iOS browser as in Firefox
| these "desktop notifications" that some webpages request?
| Lihh27 wrote:
| > having an app installed was the only way to send a
| notification
|
| 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.
| graemep wrote:
| Do people allow website notifications? One argument I have
| heard raised in favour of mobile apps is that people are more
| likely to give an app notification permission.
| sloum wrote:
| Nah: https://www.magicbell.com/blog/using-push-notifications-
| in-p...
| davebren wrote:
| How are you going to get a push notification from a site after
| the tab is closed?
| jedberg wrote:
| The web notification standard supports this. They have since
| adopted it, but it took them a long time to do so.
| peterspath wrote:
| I have it the other way around. I want local first app. Don't
| want everything in the cloud apps.
|
| Luckily there is choice :)
| dhedberg wrote:
| I take this to be mainly about cloud services that can/could
| just as well be used in the browser instead, and where
| installing the app doesn't really allow you to meaningfully use
| it offline anyway. It's largely orthogonal to the question of
| local apps vs cloud services.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| It's a waste of resources too. I've seen startups waste soooooo
| much time and effort on simple native apps that could trivially
| be webviews, it's _tragic_.
| chistev wrote:
| My Google Chrome app is by far the most used app on my phone. If
| you catch me at a random moment on my phone, chances are I'm on
| Chrome.
|
| 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.
| chistev wrote:
| I take back my comment on Twitter being better on mobile apps.
| I just tried it on my mobile browser and it doesn't have that
| stupid bug (feature?) where you leave the detail page of a
| tweet and the app automatically takes you to the top and you
| miss where you were initially.
| appsoftware wrote:
| I don't understand it from the app developers point of view.
| Having to pay app store cuts over basic card processing fees. I
| understand the appeal of access to a market, like selling on eBay
| gets you eyeballs. But once you have a customer using their app,
| what does the app give you that a PWA doesn't unless you need
| access to specific sensors / file system access patterns etc?
| chistev wrote:
| Don't you need a certain level of convincing for the average
| person to use a PWA?
| rickdg wrote:
| For years, Apple has muffled PWAs under a pillow. No one knows
| that you can add them to your homescreen or how that unlocks
| the possibility of getting push notifications. You also lose
| any stored data when you go from Safari to an homescreen web
| app.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| I guess this is by intention since with a PWA you would have
| "near app experience" but for free?
| bombcar wrote:
| How do you add them? I am using https://actualbudget.org as a
| Safari page, and it works surprisingly well when "off
| network" - but a button on the home screen would be nicer.
| hectdev wrote:
| As an app developer it comes down to the full access to phone
| APIs and the smoothest app experience. The more biased opinion
| is rooted in preference for the native language over web
| languages. And I recognize this is an opinion that is self-
| preservation in nature but it is what it is.
|
| 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.
| skyberrys wrote:
| I recently switched for m the developer mindset of build
| websites for everything to make apps if I can. My logic is that
| an app never needs to go back and forth with me, it's something
| the user can have without me managing hosting and constantly
| having a relationship with the user.
| rchaud wrote:
| The vast majority of apps come from companies where the app
| developer has little to no say in how things work. Amazon,
| Walmart, Instacart, Uber, Ebay, Shein, etc are certainly not
| paying Apple 30% for purchases made inside the app. They also
| operate at a scale where they get bulk rates from MC/Visa on
| processing fees.
| bombcar wrote:
| Lock-in - and not even some evil thing; just if you're used to
| using the eBay app you're less likely to go somewhere else.
|
| I think it's somewhat misguided, but companies gonna company.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| If a website disrespects "request desktop site" and still tries
| to force you into an app... ugh.
|
| 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.
| tannedNerd wrote:
| Why though?
|
| If only 1% of your user base is accessing your maps through the
| website, you aren't going to keep supporting it.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| I described my own attitude, obviously companies are going to
| do what they want.
|
| 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.
| Gimpei wrote:
| My gripe is how iOS allows these companies to constantly bug us
| to use their stupid apps. I ended up installing the NYTimes app,
| not because I use it, but just to shut it up. I switched to duck
| duck go because I was sick of being bugged to install chrome. How
| many times do I need to say no?
| chistev wrote:
| So that's how she feels about me?
| tannedNerd wrote:
| This also skips over with some hand waving that a lot of mobile
| app uses cases simply can't be replicated with web sites. Take
| gps or smart home control as two easy of the top of my head
| example the author skipped too.
|
| Also the fact that people here would rather have their info
| stored in the cloud vs local on device is interesting.
| ssiddharth wrote:
| I do mention cases where the browser model doesn't work, like
| accessing Lidar sensors. Just didn't want to bloat the post
| with too many examples. But I totally agree with you on this
| front: not everything can be done as a PWA.
| moffers wrote:
| It's a little tough these days. With AI and scraping, running an
| open webapp/website is now more expensive than ever before. My
| friends and I have launched a product in the last few months and
| decided to focus on mobile first and wait to develop a webapp
| simply because we couldn't feel we could optimize the costs of
| open webapp while we have so few resources.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Before AI I regularly consumed a larger international news
| aggregator ran by a single person.
|
| 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
| EMM_386 wrote:
| How expensive can it be?
|
| 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.
|
| https://railway.com/pricing
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Blocking AI scrapers and crawlers is not a huge ordeal.
|
| 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.
| simonw wrote:
| A few years ago I had an interesting experience at a company
| where I was working on a new prototype iPhone app and asked
| people around the office to install it... and a surprising number
| of people didn't want to do it because their phone was full
| already and they didn't want to delete photos in order to try a
| new app.
|
| 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.
| ben_w wrote:
| I should've thought of that, given how often I offload photos
| from my phone to my mac, but somehow this didn't even cross my
| mind before now, so thanks for sharing the anecdote :)
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| What most people dont get:
|
| 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)
| karimf wrote:
| This. I posted this on my other comment, but there's a meme
| that "Gen Z Kids Don't Understand How File Systems Work" [0].
|
| There seems to be a disconnect between some developers and the
| younger folks.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526
| mghackerlady wrote:
| I can say for certain this is true. People my age look at me
| like I have 3 heads if I ask them to do anything more complex
| than open a web browser
| quaintdev wrote:
| I'm in India, people give me same looks when I ask them to
| open browser.
|
| Internet to my parents and other old folks is YouTube and
| WhatsApp
| FabHK wrote:
| Famously, there were surveys where people said they used
| Facebook, but didn't use the internet...
|
| https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-
| no-id...
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| (17 yo here), I think that I am eternally grateful to my
| cousins who convinced my parents to give me a desktop
| computer which is still working right now (it had a minor
| hiccup in the processor recently but it works), before that,
| I was having a 1 gb crt monitor win7 on which I somehow ran
| Vscode smoothly.
|
| 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.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| > grateful in retrospect is they didn't buy me a gpu
|
| Great sentence! I will apply this to my kids as well, I
| guess.
|
| I always tell them already: "In the future, you can game as
| much as you want, IF you learn a good programming language
| [which will be defined by me]" - let me see how this will
| work out in 1-2 years :-D
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| The first thing that my brothers did when I had the
| computer was firstly change the wallpaper to a good
| mountain wallpaper, installed vscode and asked me to
| program a python program to reverse print in python so
| print 10 9 8 7.. 1 each in new line (iirc) [I was in 8th
| grade]
|
| then they asked me to square while reverse printing or
| something too. so printing 100 81 64 .. 1 each in new
| line.
|
| > let me see how this will work out in 1-2 years :-D
|
| Keep me updated haha! To be honest, I will admit though
| that I am not the _greatest_ within coding itself right
| now as much as I love tinkering with open source.
| Personally I am wishing to learn coding with better
| interest when I get into college, I will have 4 years to
| learn peacefully (well hopefully if I get into decent
| college ie) :D
|
| For me the challenge after using Linux was that I wanted
| to use archlinux because my brother (not cousin, real),
| flexed me his iirc distrotube archlinux once when we were
| eating something and I thus always considered arch to be
| the final boss of Linux lol and so I decided to install
| it and then I fell in love with arch (currently on cachy
| on desktop, but right now on mac which my brother gifted
| me :D)
|
| On my birthday iirc once long time ago I think in 5-6th
| not sure, my brother gave me his laptop, I wanted to do
| python but python wanted admin password on windows to
| install properly. So what I did was I dont even remember
| how, but download one operating system which could then
| crack the windows password so that I can set new and I
| used that to then set a new password to then install
| python. to then only print hello world :D (I think only
| because one of the cousins I really admire mentioned that
| he made 2k loc of python once and I thought during that
| time, python is the endgame). We are talking about
| windows 7 but I think that windows 10 security must've
| gotten better. So these are some things that I have done,
| I wouldn't call it coding as much as tinkering but I love
| doing these things from as long as I can remember :D
|
| I think this all started because I tried pirating
| pokemon-yellow so that I can play it. My brother just
| said to me google it, or told me the word rom and asked
| me to figure it out and I was in 2nd or 3rd grade maybe
| 4th grade lol and I pirated it (Hope nintendo doesn't sue
| me now xD)
|
| Sorry for making this long but your comment somehow made
| me remember somethings that I had forgot/weren't touched
| in a long time xD! I think the main takeaway is that I
| just treated all of these as challenges I guess, like I
| wanted to prove myself that I can do that or if a thing
| is possible/not. I haven't done too much coding myself so
| I just say that I am tinkerer :D
|
| I hope that this can be helpful to you to teach your kids
| what you mention. I mean make it a challenge where if
| they fail, they don't feel pressure but they also feel
| competitive just enough to try their best as much as they
| can :D and I think in some sense personally I just wanted
| some respect/to impress my elder cousins/brothers as they
| were really elder/mature than me. It's also not been all
| good though if you are too young than most of your
| cousins.
|
| The thing is, I don't have any measurable advice, a lot
| of what I have done till now is just unquantified. Coding
| on the other hand is quantifiable in some sense (it works
| or it doesn't). I just do things because I wanted to, and
| I think I still do that same way. Sometimes I wish if the
| things that I want are something measurable but my mind
| doesn't work that way.
|
| The thing is, which depresses me sometimes, is that I am
| just a number at the end of the day to many if not all
| whether including in future job/business etc., nobody to
| whom I interview when I wish to get a job from sometime
| from now is going to read a lot of this and with AI and
| some genuine problems in the industry like too many
| people, this problem gets even larger, sigh. So in that
| sense I just want to be happy sometimes.
|
| Sorry for the long comment once again and the depressing
| end, but I recommend watching some cat videos though and
| I wish you and your kids to have a nice day! :D Say hi to
| them from my side!!
| btilly wrote:
| That's not new.
|
| 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.
| technojamin wrote:
| I think that's perfectly understandable. File systems
| require the user to remember a hierarchy in their head
| (even if there are tools like breadcrumbs to help you out),
| and many people aren't willing or aren't able to hold an
| arbitrarily complex structure like that in their head. A
| name is a flat piece of information, no extra structure to
| imagine.
| mysterydip wrote:
| I worked with a professor one time that used floppies for
| all his files (after they had been surpassed by
| thumbdrives) because each floppy was essentially a single
| folder, and he could wrap his head around that
| conceptually.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| it's not complicated at all, it's how operating systems
| present them to the users.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I think a lot more people than most HN readers realize
| simply struggle significantly with abstract thinking and
| reasoning.
|
| It's natural that people who enjoy programming and hacking
| and related fields are very comfortable with such abstract
| types of thought. But I really think that isn't all that
| common amongst most people. I think the average person has
| to learn such thinking abilities with difficulty (though
| they _can_ ). I'm sure many people here got into
| programming precisely because abstract thinking came easily
| to them.
|
| > the idea that the same filename in two places was two
| unrelated files would just lead to a mental block.
|
| Which is actually why the "files and folders" metaphor is
| apt. In a filing cabinet in a school office (once upon a
| time) there were likely _hundreds_ of documents labeled
| "Report Card" in many different folders, each labeled with
| a different name.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| > I'm sure many people here got into programming
| precisely because abstract thinking came easily to them.
|
| Counter here: When I wanted to switch from TurboPascal
| during school (14y/15y) to C++ (because it was "more
| cool" and that was the tool that the 'big boy' game-dev-
| pros were, we thought), it was so damn hard for me -
| really! I was struggling so massivly, I head massive
| problems with this pointer stuff - it took me years to
| fully understand it.
|
| And I was hell-bad at math in school (or maybe just too
| lazy), the only thing to which I a relation was all this
| geometric stuff (because this was needed for .. game dev!
| :-D )
| Zak wrote:
| Pointers are famously difficult to learn and reason about
| even though the basic principles are simple. Programming
| in a style that requires direct manipulation of pointers
| when it's not actually necessary is usually regarded as
| unwise because it's so hard to get right.
| mhjkl wrote:
| OP had no problem with pointers prior to trying C++. I
| think there is a case to be made that C(++) makes
| pointers unnecessarily confusing and there is no real
| disconnect between understanding pointers in theory and
| in practice otherwise
| joquarky wrote:
| And C++ makes everything extra confusing with the
| capability of operator overloading.
|
| That has to be one of the worst features ever added to a
| language.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| > I head massive problems with this pointer stuff
|
| no, OP explicitly had problem _after_ getting introduced
| to pointer concept
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| ...thats the reason why I love managed environments like
| C#/Java/etc :-))
| t-3 wrote:
| Pointers aren't hard, it's C/C++ that make them
| complicated. Addresses and indirection in any assembly
| language are simple and straightforward, easy and even
| intuitive once you start actually writing programs.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Tell that to the thousands of comp sci students who drop
| out every year because they don't like programming in C!
| t-3 wrote:
| I used to think I was incapable of learning "real"
| programming because I didn't _get_ C. When I later read a
| book on programming in assembly, I realized that
| everything that had felt so complex was actually not so
| difficult. C pointer syntax is weird and doesn 't parse
| naturally for many people, especially programming novices
| who might not yet have a solid grasp on what/how/why
| they're doing anything.
| Sophira wrote:
| > Which is actually why the "files and folders" metaphor
| is apt.
|
| It's a starting point, but I certainly wouldn't say it's
| the best metaphor that there could be. The idea of
| subfolders just doesn't make sense in a filing cabinet
| analogy, because you have to consider paper size - any
| folder which could fit into another folder is not going
| to be able to contain your regularly sized documents.
|
| That said, I can't think of a better metaphor.
| saltcured wrote:
| People understand hierarchy. That named file is in a
| folder in a particular drawer of a particular cabinet in
| a particular room of a particular building in a
| particular neighborhood in a...
|
| What some people struggle with is recursive hierarchy
| where each step doesn't change the kind of container. I
| guess they never saw a Matryoshka doll when they were
| little.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| A better metaphor would be trees and branches. Which is
| already somewhat used for computing.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > The idea of subfolders just doesn't make sense in a
| filing cabinet analogy,
|
| Sure it does. The document is located in Building C, Sub-
| basement 2, Room 123, cabinet 415, folder labeled
| "Accounts". And a physical folder can certainly contain
| other folders. Nit-picking the analogy wastes everyone's
| time.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| > two unrelated files would just lead to a mental block
|
| Because in the analog world, each "document has usually a
| single/unique headline" and file names are often perceived
| as some type of unique identifier as well, Id guess?
|
| > It is between some developers, and most of the world.
|
| sigh
| bryankaplan wrote:
| Did they also struggle to understand that some people have
| the same name yet are not the same person?
| quesera wrote:
| In the time it took you to write this comment, you've
| thought more about the abstraction than most of the
| people who are confused by it -- and it will never
| succeed to coax them out of their confusion with such
| logic. :)
| moring wrote:
| By that logic, operating system developers struggle to
| understand that putting two files with the same name into
| the same folder(1) is very much possible in the physical
| world.
|
| (1) or referencing them from the same directory, which
| was the earlier metaphor.
| bryankaplan wrote:
| Hardly. That would be analogous to two people having the
| same name _and_ the same spacetime coordinates; they
| would indeed be the same person.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| But why are filenames equated with spacetime coordinates?
| That doesn't make any sense - reflect on why you leaped
| to that analogy. The spacetime coordinates are the disk
| ID and sector number. We've been using operating systems
| that work a certain way for so long that we _think_
| filenames are like spacetime coordinates.
| t-3 wrote:
| I've seen two people with the same name and birthday, in
| different departments of the same building. Caused
| regular problems with management and HR.
|
| I've also seen two different customers with the same name
| and phone number - the number got recycled and went to
| second one while the first hadn't updated their number on
| file. We had to tell them apart by address.
| LtWorf wrote:
| You cannot name 2 of your children the same names.
| dingaling wrote:
| I can't blame them. We've been force-upgraded to Windows 11
| at work and that OS and its apps do their upmost to obscure
| where files are located.
|
| I've frequently saved on OneDrive instead of locally, by
| accident, and then been perplexed when I try to reopen the
| file later.
|
| And I've been using filesystems for 35+ years, so I feel
| sympathy for those who don't understand the abstraction. At
| this point Android is more transparent about its files.
| array_key_first wrote:
| > We've been force-upgraded to Windows 11 at work and
| that OS and its apps do their upmost to obscure where
| files are located.
|
| That's because there's research that users don't
| understand filesystems. So then stupid companies who make
| bad decisions like Microsoft and Apple decide that that
| means they should pretend filesystems don't exist.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| not even the older generations. My parents save files on the
| Whatsapp chat, and my father is one who bought the first IBM
| PC when it came out, so someone who has touched these things
| for decades (tho very superficially).
|
| 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.
| neutronicus wrote:
| > My parents save files on the Whatsapp chat
|
| That's becoming dangerously true of my wife and I as well,
| to be honest.
|
| The friction is just so much lower than Google Drive or
| whatever. As long as I handle it right away. It's just
| finding something from more than an hour ago that's
| intolerable.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| I met a business partner who is doing some work for SME
| retail investors last week for lunch:
|
| He showed me his WhatsApp: People are sending _ALL_ type
| of critical documents by WhatsApp to him. Everything.
| (and bank statements are among the class of "less
| critical" documents in his case)
|
| My theory here is: "If you have any function in your
| product, people will use it for anything appropriate to
| them in a given minute"
| sdfjkhdfjkdhs wrote:
| I witnessed a cop attempting to manipulate some files I
| provided to him on a thumb drive. It was a slow laborious
| process of dragging files one at a time from the Windows
| _image viewer_ to shared folder. I would have liked to
| just do a Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, but that was way above
| his level of thinking and he didn 't seem like the type
| who wanted an education. So I just sat there through the
| long, painful process--and then at the end he completely
| screwed up the report. Idiot.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| maybe China is right: one app to rule them all
| GenerWork wrote:
| This exact scenario happened with me in a prior job.
| Invoices, payments, everything could (and sometimes was)
| sent through WhatsApp. It was absolutely shocking to see
| people do this.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Some European governments are effectively run via
| WhatsApp.
| FabHK wrote:
| To be fair, what other simple way is there to send a
| document to a contact through an e2ee channel? Mail +
| PGP/GPG? Wormhole?? openssl???
|
| Sending it via WhatsApp (which also has desktop clients,
| btw) strikes me as a perfectly reasonable solution.
| (Which is somewhat of an indictment of the current state
| of cryptographic software, but that's a different topic.)
| LtWorf wrote:
| Whatsapp "claims" to be e2e, but nobody knows for sure
| since its sources are closed.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Still more secure than non encrypted email yet a lot of
| people still use email to send fairly sensitive data.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| No. There is a disconnect between domain insiders and those
| that are not. This is not specific to any one domain. It's
| also not about age.
|
| 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.
| monocasa wrote:
| Except pretty much the entire millennial generation knows
| about computer folders and files, as that was necessary
| information for graduating school.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Filesystems aren't some universal truth. They were invented
| at a specific moment in time for specific reasons.
| th3iedkid wrote:
| Agree. Also depends on nature of experience you want to
| consume/deliver. There are somethings i've slowly to come to
| prefer an app for, but it's been overtime.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| > Most of folks on HN here are much older than todays "first
| customers" of 16y/17/18
|
| 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.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| > I feel like they prefer websites more than apps
|
| 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
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I mentioned privacy savvy friends because most of my
| friends aren't privacy savvy :D
|
| I can only count two (one offline, my former
| classmate/friend who we studied together for 11 years from
| KG to 10th grande) and some other people
|
| I have convinced my same offline friend I mentioned to use
| Linux, specifically hyprland so its a win :D
|
| > most in your age are not :-)
|
| So I agree in that sense. To be honest. I am saying out of
| all my friend/peer/former classmate circle, only 1-2 people
| are some that I consider to be privacy conscious.
| rvz wrote:
| PWAs were a cute experiment and they never took off, and even
| the vibe coders chose to vibe code native apps over half-baked
| PWAs.
|
| There you go.
| btown wrote:
| PWAs were more than an experiment - they were even mentioned
| in Apple keynotes (IIRC). And sandboxing was every bit as
| stable as website sandboxing.
|
| 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.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I saw a television advert the other day that specifically
| called out Millennials and how, yes, you _can_ book a vacation
| from your phone and you 're going to be okay, dad.
|
| 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.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Sure, I can book on the smartphone!
|
| 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
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Right?!
|
| How can I cross reference things and check deals and copy
| paste to my spreadsheet on a phone!
|
| I feel like you can do these things but I'm very skeptical
| that people aren't worse off by doing it on a phone (when
| they have the choice)
| BYazfVCcq wrote:
| >I saw a television advert the other day that specifically
| called out Millennials and how, yes, you can book a vacation
| from your phone and you're going to be okay, dad.
|
| 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?
| Aperocky wrote:
| I am spoiled by big screen and tmux, I objectively cannot work
| with small screens any more.
|
| 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.
| jliptzin wrote:
| I still remember when everyone was saying the only way to
| access a service would be through its AOL keyword.
|
| There is still no better interface than the command line.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I'd be happy to use the app if they didn't suck. The websites
| have more info and the browser is more capable by default. Like
| by default I can select any text I see, an address to copy into
| a calendar, a phone number to send to someone else, a name I
| want to paste into a search engine. an app is the opposite, by
| default nothing is selectable and I'm at the mercy of the
| nearly universally bad UX designer's whims
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| This hit the nail on the head.
|
| 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.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| > that is a galaxy away from how the average user interacts
| with the internet
|
| 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
| coffe2mug wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I don't think so. A majority don't want to. But they are
| forced by geeks/nerds. Geeks/nerds often show off
| especially in family/friends parties with older/common folk
| - telling - I can do this/that. Then average CEO or parent
| is forced to get a smartphone.
|
| Next the geek/nerd - has no time to maintain the
| computer/laptop of the parent. Or loses patience explaining
| updates/double-click/avoid scammer installing software.
| Then - boom - geek son/daughter - if smart gets a decent
| pixel/iphone - otherwise gets a shitty Android device -
| installs everything there. Moves on.
|
| And finally remember it is the young same geek/nerd that
| will eventually do programming for FAANG/palantir etc.
| which forces people to install apps, degrade privacy,
| worsen webapp/websites - all for money.
| array_key_first wrote:
| I think this is missing that older people are not stupid,
| and they could learn how to use software if they spent
| the time. Many older folks used _even more_ complicated
| software in the past, and then they lost the skill or
| didn 't keep it up to date.
|
| A lot of older people rely on yougins for tech support
| not because they have to, but because it's easy learned
| helplessness.
|
| A large part of this is ALSO software's fault, though.
| Software changes too quick and for no reason. Software
| these days lies to users, erroding confidence.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| Wait, you mean typical consumers _don't_ want to build my
| terminal-based TUI app from source?
| AnishLaddha wrote:
| Evergreen: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comment
| s/1atqusj/ne...
| sdfjkhdfjkdhs wrote:
| > Most people here are power users.
|
| As an actual power user, I take exception to this comment.
|
| Most people here are NOT power users. I've lost count of how
| many arguments I've seen for example where someone Just Can't
| Believe anyone would have a good reason to have more than
| 5-10 browser tabs open at a time. Meanwhile I've got a list
| of thousands and growing.
|
| Or look at the dogged adherence to Windows even to this day
| after decades of Microsoft abuse, and long spiels about the
| difficulty and complexity of the Linux command line.
| Especially when it comes to systemd for example, where one of
| the most common complaints against sysv is "eww, shell
| scripts? yuck!"
|
| I don't call these people power users, or recognize them as
| peers in the realm of technology. The difference between them
| and me is like the difference between them and the commoner
| who knows nothing at all about tech.
|
| Maybe we need a geek ranking system or something.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Honest question do you really use all of those tabs? As a
| small handful of tabs user I use the bookmark feature to
| hold things I want to keep for later. ctrl-d and it is in
| the list. Even then 99% of the time I open it again and go
| 'why did I keep this'. I get it that it is your workflow.
| Just sort of curious why you would consider that a 'power
| user' thing? Would not saving them to the bookmark list be
| more of 'power user' sort of thing to do?
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| I don't know why, but equating how many tabs a person has
| open to how much of a power user they are sounds like
| something right out of a south park episode.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Apparently bookmarks and self-hosting a read it later web
| app on my home server but only having 5 tabs open at a
| time makes me a filthy casual.
| wtallis wrote:
| I think you failed to correctly apply DeMorgan's laws to
| the statement you're reacting to.
| sdfjkhdfjkdhs wrote:
| The whole bookmark/tab system really needs to be
| completely revised. I have a new system I'm thinking
| about for my Chromium fork which will be radically
| different. More like a full-page "new tab" screen where
| everything can be visualized and sorted into different
| projects etc.
|
| Just look at how most people do a search, for instance.
| These days for me it often involves 20-30 tabs, or even
| more, due to the horrific state of internet search. Many
| results have to be explored, many links from those
| results also explored, more searches done to narrow in on
| the precise keyword needed to bring up some hopefully
| good results, etc. And I can't close all that until the
| answer is found, as I may need to backtrack, so they just
| pile up. It's really quite ridiculous how much work it
| takes to find a good answer these days.
|
| Compare with the typical person who just does one search
| with some suboptimal keywords then clicks on the first
| link, or starts dutifully absorbing the AI-generated
| garbage. Orders of magnitude difference.
|
| I have dozens of projects I'm actively working on just
| for my Linux distro. Dozens of tabs open for things like
| X11 window management, for instance, or some info on C++
| modules for another project. Lots of tabs open for a
| hardware project. All kinds of balls are up in the air
| here. Why put any of this stuff in bookmarks which is a
| waste of time and energy to manage, when I can just leave
| it in the tab list, organized in multiple windows spread
| across different desktops? (I have 64 desktops on my 55"
| plasma display.)
|
| (lol @ the other guy's reply. That didn't age well.)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I've never explored 20-30 search results. Not since
| Google anyway. If I don't find what I want in the first
| few I rephrase the search or try a different search
| engine. The world beyond the first page of results
| basically doesn't exist.
| weitendorf wrote:
| I agree with this a lot tbh. I think we need to have
| better support for tiling or something iframe-like in web
| interfaces. Probably for deep research or focused work,
| we need something more tree-shaped than the flat tabs-
| with-back-button structure web browsers expose.
| order-matters wrote:
| hey, light power user here - for a while I was using
| tabXpert browser extension for this, but they have
| recently changed to paid-only and I havent had a chance
| to check out their competition but might end up just
| buying it anyway
|
| it groups sessions, not just tabs, so i can (for example)
| have all my banking websites together as a session that i
| can open and close as a window of tabs. the convenience
| is it organizes the sessions as named things that i can
| manage in a UI. transfer tabs from one session to
| another, close tabs, check tabs that have been closed in
| that session, etc.
|
| if you know of any tools like this or an easy way to
| manage it independently without a 3rd party browser
| extension, I would be interested. Sounds like maybe you
| are doing something similar but at the desktop level,
| creating a new desktop to pick up and put down? are they
| savable and transferable between devices? I like to close
| everything down at night to run some games with friends,
| and am going to be building a new comp soon and for
| various reasons starting fresh with software and
| importing things as i need them rather than flashing my
| current setup forward to the new hardware
| thesuitonym wrote:
| This guy thinks he's a power user because he doesn't know
| how to close tabs.
| jsharpe wrote:
| Measuring tech skill by how many tabs you have open is
| like measuring carpentry skill by how disorganized your
| workshop is.
| wtallis wrote:
| It's a bit insulting to assume that having more than a
| dozen tabs open must be "disorganized", especially in a
| context where it is likely that the power user in
| question is using browser extensions. Something like
| TreeStyleTab makes it easy to keep hundreds of tabs
| organized with clear, easily-manipulated structure, and
| lower friction than manually creating and curating
| bookmarks.
|
| It looks like you're either showing off your own
| ignorance of tools that enable workflows you can't
| imagine, or you're assuming that everyone's organization
| methods must resemble your own habits.
| Boxxed wrote:
| > Or look at the dogged adherence to Windows even to this
| day after decades of Microsoft abuse
|
| Or the people who absolutely refuse to give up Chrome,
| despite the whole adblock situation. "But I don't like the
| way Firefox tabs look!"
| gretch wrote:
| > Or the people who absolutely refuse to give up Chrome,
| despite the whole adblock situation. "But I don't like
| the way Firefox tabs look!"
|
| Or have yourself a learning moment and recognize that how
| things look matters to a lot of people. And It's not
| wrong that they value it differently than you.
| Markoff wrote:
| what's wrong with Cromite or Ultimatum on Android or
| Vivaldi on desktop? FF is both on desktop and mobile
| inferior product with devs hating their own users
| beloch wrote:
| "Why do I need to download a 100+ MB app, give it permission
| to track my location, and let it run background processes
| just to browse through a restaurant menu, buy a ticket, or
| scroll through a list of posts?"
|
| -------------------
|
| 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.
| beams_of_light wrote:
| This cuts to the heart of it for me. I will not install
| Meta or LinkedIn apps on my phone because they have been
| found to be very intrusive.
| BloondAndDoom wrote:
| Very fair point, as an experienced B2B guy myself whenever
| someone ask me advice about B2C in like "I have no idea".
| Been doing this for 25 years but B2C especially today geared
| towards younger audience is impossible to related for me. I
| assume majority of the demographics of HN similar
| Yokohiii wrote:
| The generation conflict doesn't justify to permanently bug me
| with "install our app, it's awesome". It ends up with terrible
| UX.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > But today, the very first touchpoint with "the internet" for
| younger folks is a smartphone display. The even do homework on
| this small screens!
|
| 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.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| > For example, I read your comment on my phone and went to my
| computer to type this reply.
|
| 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)
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| technothrasher wrote:
| I just asked my college aged kid. He said pretty much
| everyone does their written homework on their laptop, but
| many will use their phones to do the reading.
| Groxx wrote:
| Aside from being a bit small and having to be held close,
| phones are good proportions for reading. Computers
| screens have gotten wider and wider, and UIs bigger and
| bigger, and it eats into reading space pretty heavily.
| Especially if you don't have a high-density screen.
| t-3 wrote:
| In addition to more space, having only one foreground
| application really reduces distractions and visual
| clutter. Also, for some reason I am comfortable using
| larger fonts on phones and tablets, which makes doing
| lots of reading easier than on my laptop.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| > reduces distractions
|
| Have you looked over the shoulder of somebody trying to
| "do" something on their phone recently?
|
| If so you might have noticed the constant pings and
| notifications from dating apps, news sites, random games
| and cool-apps-that-you've-long-forgotten-but-still-have-
| location-and-background-services-turned-on.
| qubitcoder wrote:
| That's where _Reduce Interruptions_ on the iPhone (or Do
| Not Disturb) comes in handy.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's not _just_ interruptions. It 's the notifications
| bar itself.
|
| I noticed this only recently - I switched the default
| phone launcher to a scifi theme built on Total Launcher
| (there's legit personal research project reasons behind
| that, it's not just to look cool!) and after few days
| (and a bunch of missed messages), I realized my life
| seems suspiciously _light_ in interruptions and random
| events. It took me a few more moments to pin-point the
| reason: the theme hid the notification bar entirely. It
| was still there, ready to pull down and expand with a
| gesture or a button tap - but that top line with icons
| was not visible (and through the stroke of luck, I
| misconfigured something in another experiment and had no
| notification indicators on the lock screen, either).
|
| Not having notification indicators visible on any surface
| is really all it took - and conversely, this means that
| just having them there created the majority of the burden
| for me. I _thought_ I successfully solved the distraction
| problem by silencing or eliminating ads and useless
| notifications, but now I know that even the important
| ones aren 't really that important for the burden their
| very existence creates.
| Zak wrote:
| Android modes provide control over notification display.
|
| Modes control which people and apps can trigger a
| sound/vibration, but also offer the option to hide the
| silenced notifications from the status bar, pull-down
| shade, and dots on app icons. I hide them from the status
| bar, but not the pull-down shade so that I can manually
| check if I want to, but don't see them at a glance.
|
| I'm not a heavy user of this feature though; I mostly
| don't install apps that have spammy notifications.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Right. I'm saying that living for a week without any
| notification bar _at all_ made me realize that even my
| usual well-curated notification bar is impacting me much
| more than I realized.
| Zak wrote:
| I imagine usage patterns vary greatly. For me, most of
| the time, I have it set to only allow messages from
| contacts, and I usually handle those immediately.
| Groxx wrote:
| I mean, some, sure. but it's a choice, and not all choose
| to do that. and I've watched quite a few (of all ages)
| escape it when they realize how much it's harming their
| ability to do what they need to do.
| encom wrote:
| This is the first time I've heard someone say a
| smartphone reduces distractions.
|
| As a millennial boomer, I prefer my triple monitor setup
| and mechanical keyboard, not to mention network- and
| client-level content blockers, whenever I have to input
| more than a sentence.
|
| I was at a conference last week, and I took notes in a
| fullscreened GNU Nano. Distractions, ADHD, etc. Did get
| some odd looks, but I couldn't imagine taking notes
| without an actual keyboard. I'm not an ultra fast typer,
| but I'm decent - I'd challenge any thumb typer on
| MonkeyType.
| t-3 wrote:
| I don't have any social apps or games on my phone. Other
| than the web browser there's nothing to distract me. I
| find it so easy to get caught up in checking the news or
| email or the episode of that show I was watching on my
| laptop, but I don't do any of those things habitually on
| my phone or tablet or reader so that's my "distraction
| free" device.
|
| That's only for reading though! For taking notes I go
| with a real keyboard or pencil and paper whenever I have
| the choice.
| Groxx wrote:
| similar here, I'm gradually removing more and more things
| from my phone. at this point it's mostly just a couple
| actually-important apps, a web browser, and messaging
| apps (because it's clearly superior to whipping out a
| laptop for brief things). "social" outside messaging is
| in the web browser or not on the phone at all. if I want
| to focus I just turn on Do Not Disturb for an hour.
|
| browsing is slowly reducing as time goes on too, as while
| it's _convenient_ on my phone, it 's rarely _efficient_.
| it doesn 't take long at all before I'd rather pull out a
| laptop and finish more quickly.
| AlBugdy wrote:
| > Computers screens have gotten wider and wider, and UIs
| bigger and bigger
|
| Sadly, most websites forcefully limit the width of the
| text. It's like they pretend our monitors are oriented to
| be tall rather than wide. Even HN has unnecessarily big
| margins. So unless I try to cram another window in my FHD
| monitor, I have ~50% or more completely wasted space.
| Margins should be 2-3 pixels wide, not 20-30% of the
| screen.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There are actual user studies to show that wider text is
| harder to read. https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-
| readability
|
| The major difference is that in the era of print, it was
| pretty logical where a multicolumn wide layout could go
| like on a newspaper, but in an desktop experience the
| browser markup is theoretically endless.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Solution: rotate your monitor 90 degrees, and inform your
| OS that you have done so. Now your monitor is 1080x1920.
| You'll _actually_ be amazed how much more of a document
| fits on screen without sacrificing readability.
| AlBugdy wrote:
| I can resize my window easily if I wanted shorter text.
| Or used ctrl-shift-m on Firefox. But I can't easily make
| the text longer without userscripts or addons.
|
| > actual user studies to show that wider text is harder
| to read
|
| That may apply to most people, but not to everyone.
| Groxx wrote:
| afaict it applies to literally everyone. there's a
| variable "sweet spot" of course, but once you get out to
| "extremely wide" it's reliably worse for everyone, and
| there are LOADS of computer monitors that qualify for
| that label.
|
| margins to control the width of large blocks of text have
| a ton of research in their favor, it's not just "more
| whitespace = more gooder" UI design madness. there's some
| of that of course, but there's a sane core underneath it
| all.
| halJordan wrote:
| Kinda stretching the definition of kid there, a little past
| the breaking point imo.
| dasil003 wrote:
| What do you mean? A kid is anyone younger than the
| speaker. My step dad used to refer to Bill Clinton as a
| kid because he was the first president younger than him.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Fun fact: dail003's stepdad wouldn't have been able to
| call any president a "kid" for over a decade now.
| NERD_ALERT wrote:
| I started college 10 years ago and all of my homework was
| computer based, including Calculus and Linear Algebra. Of
| course for those higher level math classes I had to use
| paper and pencil to get to the answer but absolutely
| everything was submitted through an online portal. For any
| other classes the work was purely done on the computer.
| fho wrote:
| Can't confirm. We had students at university (18-20-ish)
| that had not used a mouse prior to our courses. That was at
| least 3-4 years ago now and not a single case.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was somewhat shocked a while back when a coworker told me
| that they offered their kid a laptop for school work and the
| kid apparently said : Thanks but I'll stick with my phone.
| m463 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Many friends of mine send occasional nonsense in the
| middle of a text message, and it becomes obvious they 're
| using voice to text._
|
| I do that, but only sometimes, because of those dictation
| mistakes. If not for that, I'd use it _a lot_ , because
| it's super convenient way to communicate or operate the
| phone on the go, while pushing a stroller, holding your
| other kid's hand in your other hand, holding an umbrella in
| the third hand, and a bag of groceries in fourth.
|
| What I don't do, and hate with burning passion, is _voice
| messages_. I get the appeal for the sender, but excepting
| kids /teenagers, it's about the most annoying thing you can
| do for the recipient. There's hardly a moment in a busy
| adult's life where you can listen to someone's rambling
| without disrupting people around you and/or discomforting
| yourself and/or having to expend 100x the focus that
| reading takes.
|
| For me, voice messages over 5 seconds long go straight to
| "Share" -> save to file [Ghost Commander] -> attach to a
| prompt saying "transcribe that for me" [any LLM app] - and
| I'm working on automating this away completely.
| mathgeek wrote:
| For many kids, they have one device and it's a phone or
| tablet. They may have access to a computer, but not on
| demand. Much like when many of us were growing up and had one
| computer.
| pnexk wrote:
| It is also the case that PCs are still more expensive than
| phones. Had a work colleague in one of my first customer
| facing service jobs who relied almost completely on an
| android phone to get everything done from mortgage
| applications to entertainment before I gifted them one of my
| lesser used laptops.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| high end phones are 1k, you can buy a used thinkpad for
| 200$ or a chromebook for 500$ or now the macbook neo for
| 600$. Well it's also that the phone you need it so the
| laptop/pc it's an aditional cost
| anjel wrote:
| To this day, using soft keyboards + autocorrect boils my
| blood. Q: Are we not men?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| This isn't phone vs desktop. _It 's app vs browser_. To wit,
| there's no official HN app. I'm presuming you did both of
| these tasks in a browser.
| kstrauser wrote:
| This resonates. There are certain tasks, like dealing with
| any government or healthcare-related web page, that I won't
| even bother attempting on my phone. In my case, it's because
| I just know in my heart of hearts that the crummy mobile
| website won't be feature-complete enough for me to complete
| my goal.
|
| 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."
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| I was probably one of the first people doing some of these
| "big screen tasks" on my phone nearly two decades ago when I
| was a teenager who spent his first earned money to get an
| Openmoko Neo Freerunner - I learned a lot by programming the
| phone on the phone itself - but what was exciting about it
| was that I could do all these things even when I did not have
| a big screen and a keyboard in front of me. When I do, it's
| just so much more comfortable to do it there, especially
| these days when touch screens are capacitive and not very
| accurate anymore!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _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._
|
| 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_.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| It's because of limited RAM that this distinction started.
|
| 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
| sunaookami wrote:
| This still happens on Android phones with enough RAM, it
| drives me insane and Firefox is especially bad for this
| since it will literally always reload the current tab when
| moving back to it. Phone software is just horrible all
| around. Multi-tasking simply does not work on phones.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've been trying a bit of an experiment on my current trip
| and I'm still skeptical about iPad plus Magic Keyboard.
| Better than alternatives but still so-so. I think I'll go
| back to my 10+ year old MacBook Pro but unless something
| really changes I'll just pick up an Air for traveling at some
| point.
| armadyl wrote:
| I switched to using my iPad Pro M5 + Magic Keyboard nearly
| full time. I use it for literally everything and also have
| it connected to an external monitor.
|
| The only asterisk is that I also own a Mac Mini but I keep
| it attached running headlessly to my router and access it
| from the iPad via Jump Desktop and only use it exclusively
| for dev work (I only use a single external monitor anyway
| even with a normal Mac) or if I really need Chrome
| occasionally. But macOS used in that way feels almost
| native to the iPad.
|
| Prior to this I was looking at an MBP and selling the iPad
| but this has convinced me to stay with it for the time
| being and maybe just upgrade the mac mini to a studio
| instead and continue to use it remotely.
|
| People hate on it but so far I've been using it this way
| and it really feels next gen to the point that using a
| Macbook with macOS vs. the iPP + iPadOS feels genuinely
| archaic. With the latest iPadOS beta too things have gotten
| better on the Safari from as well and tabs no longer
| refresh as aggressively (though it's not perfect still).
|
| Not to mention the significantly higher amount of security
| with iPadOS and AppleCare benefits (specifically theft
| protection) that comes with this setup.
|
| If Android desktop mode improves a bit more and the
| Motorola devices for GOS next year look good then it
| wouldn't be inconceivable that I could drop my devices from
| 3 to 2 and not need a proper PC or Mac at all.
| AlBugdy wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| chrneu wrote:
| My partner is a therapist and so I wind up in a lot of
| therapist groups and support groups for therapists. Many of
| them are youth therapists. I also coach kids and help
| coordinate youth athletics. My best friend is also a middle
| school teacher, along with his partner. So I think I have a
| decent grasp on where kids are at nowadays. At least in my
| area.
|
| Most people I know who work with kids agree that the
| majority of children nowadays lack basic skills that will
| really handicap them in life. From a lack of basic
| reading/writing/typing/math skills to an ability to handle
| any kind of confrontation. The anti-social stuff is really,
| really bad and it compounds as life goes on, where kids
| never learn skills as they need to. Avoidance is really
| prevalent in people nowadays and this leads to never
| learning or atrophying basic skill sets. Then it also leads
| to not learning how to learn, or asking for help, etc.
|
| Kids also lack the basic ability to put a series of tasks
| together to accomplish a larger goal. Critical thinking is
| severely lacking. Kids have grown up being able to ask a
| search engine a question or have an AI do tasks for them.
| The ability to understand how things work, then manipulate
| those things to meet a goal is just not there for a large
| amount of kids. I think we really need to bring back things
| like shop class, home ec, etc to get kids using their hands
| more. Kids need to be able to have an idea and then
| implement it in the real world. This is a skill I rarely
| see in kids nowadays. Way too often kids are told to avoid
| making mistakes and to get someone/something else to do
| things for them. The agency is just not there.
|
| I really feel terrible for a lot of kids nowadays. Luckily,
| since I work with athletics and STEM kids, most of my tribe
| are eager to learn and move about. This is definitely not
| the norm nowadays though. My teacher friends are really
| struggling to feel like they're making a difference or
| benefitting these kids. It's sad because the problems are
| mostly related to their parents, not really the school
| system.
| InexSquirrel wrote:
| I think it's easier for kids to get hold of a phone at a
| younger age and become accustomed to it, and don't realise
| the jank / frustration it introduces when doing certain
| tasks.
|
| 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.
| bartilg wrote:
| Even on mobile I find the requirement for app installation to
| be an irritating requirement. Many of these mobile apps are
| much larger than they need to be, and clutter the user
| experience. Throw in excessive push notifications, and in many
| cases I would like to just go to a website for services I use
| infrequently.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Seriously, push notifications, requests to review the app,
| gratuitous permissions, ads that bypass my ad-blocker. Why
| would I want to do this?
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| This is true and goes further: There is no understanding of
| "the Web." For folks who "went online" and "surfed on the
| Internet" in the 90ies the whole thing with Internet addresses
| and the way a browser works are normal. For people gaining
| their experience on a phone the app icon on the home screen is
| the starting point to the individual offering.
|
| 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.
| scorpionfeet wrote:
| My company corporate card requires an app because it has an
| Authenticator to access the website. I tried the ole "but I
| only have a flip phone" and they said there was no other
| option. The bastards forced my hand.
| neuronflux wrote:
| So they issued you a company provided phone for this work
| specific functionality?
| caminante wrote:
| You haven't confirmed WHY they have a flip phone.
|
| If you're using a flip phone in this day and age, then it's
| not about the money.
| scorpionfeet wrote:
| YES! Immense waste of money. But I'm one out of hundreds
| that avoided a corporate iPhone for years. I hate it.
| graemep wrote:
| There are authenticator extensions for web browsers.
| scorpionfeet wrote:
| Unapproved by the company.
| antiframe wrote:
| Why would the company only issue you a flip phone if the
| Authenticator the require doesn't run on it?
| Zak wrote:
| Phones are perfectly capable of accessing websites. I think a
| lot of the shift here has to do with companies aggressively
| pushing apps because apps are more profitable, which in turn
| trains users to expect apps.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Sorry, there are by faaaar not as much useable mobile
| websites than crappy mobile websites - most mobile websites
| are not really optimized, more like "just let us deploy some
| custome mobile CSS and people will use it" style
| variaga wrote:
| Companies with poor quality mobile websites also usually
| have poor quality apps.
|
| The website can be objectively bad, but still better than
| the app experience.
| vanviegen wrote:
| I'm not sure about that. Kids around here seem to be learning
| to use a word processor (MS or Google), slide builder (MS,
| Google or Canva), search engine, as well as many educative apps
| on laptops at school starting from about age 8. Computers are
| not alien to them.
| mint5 wrote:
| Wrong. While I agree about younger people's impression and
| experience with apps and the internet, that is not what
| companies are responding to - in fact it's backward.
|
| 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
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Apps generally have a lot more access to the user info than
| Web sites. I remember getting into an argument, here (one-
| sided, I didn't argue then, and I won't now), about how a Web
| site is just as intrusive and privacy-endangering as an app
| (I think they wrote PWAs, and didn't want to cede the point
| to native apps). I feel they were wrong. Apps can get more
| information than web sites; even with sandboxing.
|
| 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.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| _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._
|
| What information do you think they got from your device
| other than what you gave them permission to have? If you
| actually have any info on how apps can break Apple's
| sandbox to leak your personal info, you should share it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yeah, it's OK. I said that I wouldn't argue, and I'm
| sticking to that.
|
| Have a great day!
| ranit wrote:
| > What most people dont get ...
|
| 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.
| moron4hire wrote:
| "The grandmas are too stupid to learn" but now it's the young
| people who are too dumb to figure out computers. So, I guess my
| generation is the only one that will ever figure out the
| Internet? Seems dumb.
| 8note wrote:
| this where i think any claims that an iphone is not a full
| computing experience as justification for disallowing freedom
| on it to build and run your own software as you see fit as a
| bit ridiculous.
| CivBase wrote:
| You're right... but I think you have incorrectly conflated
| "web" with "desktop". Websites work perfectly fine on
| smartphones when they are designed to do so. I'm using HN on my
| phone's web browser right now to type this comment. I don't
| need an app for HN.
|
| 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
| tosti wrote:
| If Android, try going into accessibility settings and set
| display size to maximum. Then see if you still like HN and
| many other websites with shitty unresponsive CSS.
| izacus wrote:
| That's an interesting mindset, since those 30+ tech savvy
| millennials are the ones that actually still have some money to
| spend left on apps and similar crap.
| foobarian wrote:
| It's worth mentioning that in many cases there is also the
| incentive to get away from Google's stranglehold on incoming
| traffic. Every app install is a path to your product that does
| not go through Google's SEO or SEM funnel.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| I don't see any evidence that is a user-driven change.
|
| 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.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Young people are the ones who claim they are most likely to
| abandon a purchase if they have to install an app:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/02/15/91-of-u...
| jaredsohn wrote:
| One thing that is useful to remember is that if you ask AI for
| help on using some app, it will likely refer to the mobile UI
| instead of the web UI. I find it annoying that sometimes there
| are features that are only available in the mobile UI.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I'm old. I use my phone for as much as I can, but if something
| isn't optimized for that screen, i will definitely use a large
| screen instead of suffering through the crap. As I said, I'm
| old - too old to be frustrated by shit software. Also, I prefer
| web apps to downloading native, with few exceptions. I don't
| want or need a lot of native apps.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I think what most people don't get is that an app is a gateway
| to get way more personal data of the user than the browser. I'm
| distrustful of any "app only" service for this reason. I think
| the article goes into more detail about other good reasons.
| What you're suggesting isn't a talking point because it's not
| pertinent.
|
| 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.
| jmull wrote:
| > Companies are seeing this switch, so they adapt.
|
| 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?
| Klonoar wrote:
| They're not confusing anything, you're just sticking your
| head in the sand.
|
| The modern entry path to "computing" is small screen devices
| (phones). Their point of newcomers not having our same entry
| path is accurate. This is organic, however much we don't like
| it.
|
| Anything past that is just market skating where the puck is.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I think they mean that a webapp is necessary desktop-first.
| Many websites/webapps are mobile-first. It resonate with me
| as I'm used to try new services on a (mobile) browser if
| available and switch to an app only if necessary.
|
| > the premise that "phone screen ==> native app not web
| app" is rather faulty, is it not?
| array_key_first wrote:
| Okay but that's not what he's arguing, you're missing the
| point.
|
| There's nothing stopping a website from being usable on a
| smartphone. In fact, almost all of these apps are just
| websites in disguise! They use web views to render.
|
| The reason it's an app and not a website isn't because apps
| are better for smartphones. It's because apps are native
| code running.
|
| It's also a choice that websites cannot present as apps
| (PWAs). Apple and Google purposefully did that so they can
| push users to apps instead of websites, for data farming
| purposes.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Yes, people (including the olds like myself) have been
| gravitating away from using a PC for everyday tasks and towards
| things like pocket supercomputers, and people new to the world
| definitely start with phones these days. Phones are similar to
| PCs, in that both kinds of devices have quite capable web
| browsers and can also run purpose-built software.
|
| 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.)
| wolfi1 wrote:
| > Companies are seeing this switch, so they adapt. I guess they
| see more the possibilities of getting more data on their
| customers and even selling their data to others
| neonstatic wrote:
| > 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
|
| 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.
| chrneu wrote:
| a few years ago I stopped using social media to interact with
| fans. One thing I realized is that no matter how i use my blog
| to present a story, 90% of users simply dont interact with
| content in a meaningful way.
|
| 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.
| raverbashing wrote:
| One very egregious example: Moovit
|
| 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
| ArchieScrivener wrote:
| Stop asking me for access to my contacts, microphone, location,
| or permission to send me 5 kinds of useless notifications.
| tbolt wrote:
| Agree with the article. I'm increasingly jaded by the state of
| the web.
|
| 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.
| narag wrote:
| Ouch! Netscape 4.7 reloaded...
| karimf wrote:
| This is my stance as well, but keep in mind that a lot of people
| have the opposite preference.
|
| 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.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526
| mghackerlady wrote:
| There's a reason the "small web" is having a revival among
| these kids, because they increasingly haven't experienced a
| real web to begin with. Circa ~2010, the web effectively died
| in the mainstream since Google decided it wasn't worth showing.
| Platforms become a thing, and despite being web-based, are
| practically their own intranets that use the web as a cross
| platform zero install delivery platform
| ragnese wrote:
| When you say "meme", it sounds like it might not be true. But,
| a few years ago I handed my stepson a USB flash drive with some
| files on it, he plugged it into his laptop and the very first
| thing he did was launch Google Chrome and then not have any
| clue what to do to access the files (it was a Windows laptop).
| happytoexplain wrote:
| My experience might be the minority, but I have found that 95% of
| the time, when an app is available on both web and native mobile,
| the native mobile version is significantly better - usually not
| because it's a fantastic app or has more features, but rather
| because the web version is more buggy/slow/confusing.
|
| 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.
| Vachyas wrote:
| Yea, webapps (even PWAs) still can't compete with native apps
| when it comes to responsiveness, but I still don't know why.
| I've yet to see even a demo PWA that passes the "native turing
| test" where I can't tell whether it's a native app or not.
|
| Even native apps that were built with cross-platform frameworks
| feel a bit "off" sometimes.
| bguebert wrote:
| I feel like its because other than the user, the people
| involved have a benefit to running native instead of as a
| webapp. The phone OS companies get their percent of apps
| developed in their stores and the app developers get better
| access to your data to resell. Apple in particular has been
| really hostile to webapps.
| Zopieux wrote:
| Can't relate. Except for Google Maps and Docs, I can't think
| of a native app that couldn't be a WebView. Hell, most of
| them are anyway!
|
| 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.
| davebren wrote:
| WASM apps get around this for the most part but there's so
| many more layers between the app and the hardware for web
| apps compared to native, plus it's javascript. And a lot of
| the cross-platform frameworks use a javascript bridge so that
| becomes the bottleneck. Kotlin/Compose multiplatform is fast
| on everything.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Hard to believe when most apps are just a webview.
| stvltvs wrote:
| Whether or not the UX is better, from a security standpoint I
| choose the web version because of browser sandboxing unless I'm
| forced to use the app. If I'm forced to use the app, I probably
| choose not to use the service.
| armadyl wrote:
| > from a security standpoint
|
| Ironically applications are far more secure running in the OS
| sandbox than the browser if you're on Android or iOS.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I've found that the apps often just entirely miss out features
| that are available in the web versions. That's why I don't have
| the GitHub app.
| libria wrote:
| > when an app is available on both web and native mobile, the
| native mobile version is significantly better
|
| Did you read the article? One of the author's main points is
| this is a deliberate result by vendors.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| Often it's because the teams of product managers, designers,
| and native mobile engineers in those companies are fully
| focused on the same mobile experience, while the web team has a
| split focus, and tends to be more focused on desktop web (where
| they inevitably do their primary testing and QA) than mobile
| web.
| cute_boi wrote:
| We should blame Apple for creating incentives that let it take a
| 30% cut from apps. I don't know why governments, especially
| foreign governments, allow Apple app store to operate in their
| countries.
| senfiaj wrote:
| Sometimes apps lack the features of the web versions. For
| example, I wanted to translate a document on Android. When I was
| trying to open Google translator website, the system was
| redirecting me to the app. Unfortunately, I couldn't see document
| translation feature in this app. Could still open the website in
| incognito mode. This is really maddening me.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Strava is an example where to enjoy all the features of the
| platform you have to use the app for some and the browser for
| others. Neither has all of them.
| tuckerman wrote:
| The site that irks me the most here is New York Times. Opening an
| article in the mobile browser often has a toast over the bottom
| third of the article to open it in their app for "a better
| experience". I struggle to think how nytimes isn't a perfect fit
| for a site over an app. The only frustrating experience I have
| with the web version that would be better in the app is not
| seeing that that pop-up.
| xixixao wrote:
| Also they only have dark mode in the app, even though the app
| is (or was) clearly not native anyway.
| cush wrote:
| NYT occasionally uses fancy interactive articles. They have
| games, and other things that are better on the app. The NYT app
| is actually very good
| adzm wrote:
| Every time I end up trying an app for things like this, I end
| up missing tabs.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| There is no reason they can't have a native tab navigator.
| It kills me that Google maps app doesn't have tabs.
| tuckerman wrote:
| For games I agree that an app makes sense (though I think at
| least the games I used to play were in a separate nyt games
| app). For interactive articles, I've not seen anything I
| couldn't use fine in my browser, but in theory I wouldn't
| mind covering up the interactive part with a "Open in the app
| for a better experience" button (similar to what YouTube does
| on the video portion of the page). Where I encounter this
| though is in standard, text-heavy articles that maybe include
| a photo or two.
|
| 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.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| I recently signed up for a membership (you can now supposedly
| cancel without making a phone call; WaPo has officially died in
| darkness) and this has been driving me mad, too.
|
| If I'm paying for your service, you should not be degrading my
| experience using UX anti-patterns in any way, for any reason.
| skybrian wrote:
| Having signed up for the New York Times recently, they're
| surprisingly hostile towards new customers:
|
| - 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.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| An HN post from last month discussed some of this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47390945
|
| NYT is one of the worst offenders.
| bcrescimanno wrote:
| Obligatory Dennis Reynolds / It's Always Sunny... thoughts on
| this:
|
| 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.
| Devasta wrote:
| The web version being ok is a sign of the degradation of the
| desktop experience more than it is a sign of the capabilities of
| the web.
| rvz wrote:
| PWAs are dead.
| rchaud wrote:
| PWAs make little sense at this point as most apps are useless
| without an active internet connection. You can't cache Uber
| ride searches, Amazon product listings or food delivery
| options.
| brianzelip wrote:
| gmail on mobile is particularly insidious in this context.
| sowbug wrote:
| Still holding my breath for the app that puts up a dialog on
| every launch asking "would you like to try our web version?"
| amusingimpala75 wrote:
| How much of the native app push is to bypass ad blockers? If
| you're just using a browser plugin like AdGuard or uBO it can't
| block in a dedicated app unless you replace it with AGH or
| PiHole, can't help but wonder if that plays a role as well
| davebren wrote:
| As a developer web never really felt like real programming to
| me, because it wasn't designed to be when browsers were just
| displaying html pages. So it took an evolving set of hacks to
| get something like web applications running.
| beardyw wrote:
| There is also the lack of support for bookmarks. I value the
| ability to reach a part I am interested in quickly.
|
| When Chrome started supporting PWAs you couldn't bookmark the
| content at all. They seem to have fixed that now.
| amelius wrote:
| Can't we run Android inside a browser these days?
|
| WASM should be able to handle it now, I suppose.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Mostly I am quite tired of the 30 step onboarding funnel all apps
| have. I was trying out a fitness app and the second I opened it,
| I was about step 9 into it and I just deleted the app.
| fer wrote:
| Only to find a paywall after going through all the hoops. I'd
| install an app to slap whoever made that decision.
| cush wrote:
| It depends. The parking app example is an example of an app I
| want, for so many reasons
| VirgilShelton wrote:
| Yes and now I use AI to build any website which locks me into
| their workflow and run it locally how I choose!
| prosaic-hacker wrote:
| I will cast my vote for mobile websites over apps on phones. For
| personal choice reasons I have always had a "budget" phone with
| less memory and storage (and less cost) than a flagship phone. I
| also kept them running for years.
|
| 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 )
| wisemanwillhear wrote:
| I decided to operate on a older budget phone for a while when
| my phone died outside of my planned budget and timeline for
| replacing it. By far the greatest problem was managing storage
| space. Except for core productivity apps, if a website option
| wasn't offered I was never going to be one of their users.
| troupo wrote:
| > I will cast my vote for mobile websites over apps on phones.
| For personal choice reasons I have always had a "budget" phone
| with less memory and storage (and less cost) than a flagship
| phone. I also kept them running for years.
|
| 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-...
| 63stack wrote:
| Yes you will download the app because we will not offer a web
| version.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| No, in that case I won't do business with you.
| 63stack wrote:
| Unfortunately you won't be able to submit any expenses then,
| because the company uses this other company who only offers
| an app for accounting.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Browsers don't allow notifications if you don't have the site
| open. Browser ads can get blocked by browser extensions. Browsers
| make it harder to have an icon for a site/service directly on the
| home screen. Browsers make it harder to get extensive
| permissions. Browsers allow content to displayed without first
| being run through an approval process.
|
| 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.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Browsers most definitely do allow for notifications if you
| don't have the site open. I use that feature all the time and
| it works perfectly.
|
| 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.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Darn as I wrote that I doubted myself.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| My analog is something along the lines of "please build a small
| room in your house, closet-sized at first, but with enough room
| to grow to twice that as we add features, so we can give you the
| best possible temperature and weather information. Also, we need
| access to your full contacts so you can share how you feel about
| the weather more easily, with just a push! Also also, we need a
| hot microphone in your closet, so you can shop our umbrella store
| by just talking to our AI assistant! Also also also, your privacy
| is important to us."
|
| 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.
| foresto wrote:
| > It only needs to be "an app" if it is using hardware to do
| it's main job.
|
| 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.
| pitbred wrote:
| We're all here debating the friction of downloading apps versus
| the convenience of the mobile web, but we might be missing the
| bigger picture. Both are UI-heavy paradigms designed for humans
| to click things. In a few years, we won't care if a service has a
| slick React app or a native iOS build. We'll just tell our AI
| agents: 'Book that flight' or 'Fix my billing issue,' and they'll
| talk to the APIs directly. The era of 'interfaces for humans' is
| peaking; the era of 'headless services for agents' is just
| beginning. Interfaces are becoming a legacy tax.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Maybe. You'll need to overcome DoorDash not wanting to give up
| the UI as a chance to upsell services.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Explanation and summarization without visual interactables is
| so much harder to do. A person can talk _to_ an interface but I
| don 't know how many people would like natural language back.
| _blk wrote:
| The whole premise doesn't make much sense (to me) if the app
| doesn't have an inherent benefit over a website. Don't tell me
| that all the app first people would rather have a web wrapped app
| for every website they visit? Seems to be more of a "we can get
| more metrics out of app users than website users" thing so they
| intentionally break the mobile website to aggressively push an
| app. #LinkedIn #Facebook
| jesterson wrote:
| The only reason they want you to download their app is to farm
| more data about you. They will push you to huge extent just to
| collect more data.
|
| 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.
| asah wrote:
| Folding phones are the big/small screen compromise. One you fold,
| nobody goes back.
|
| 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.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Still runs the kneecapped mobile os
| craftkiller wrote:
| > durability (dust, water)
|
| 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.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Many many people are downloading the apps, and this is pushing a
| lot of younger people into apps-first over native web
| experiences.
|
| 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.
| parpfish wrote:
| On one hand, I don't know why startups make apps. It requires
| more devs and keeping everything at parity is tough with desktop,
| iOS, android, mobile web. Seems pragmatic to just simplify and
| use web.
|
| 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
| arnvald wrote:
| I actually enjoy having mobile apps for lots of use cases -
| travel, news, entertainment, utility bills, banking. I have
| probably around 100 apps on my iPhone right now and I'm fine with
| this number.
|
| 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?!
| robshippr wrote:
| This is especially true for dev tools. Engineers already have 20
| browser tabs open with dashboards, CI/CD, docs, and logs. The
| last thing anyone wants is another Electron app eating RAM in the
| background. The best tools meet you where you already are.
| choward wrote:
| I'm not going to download an app for every company I do business
| with. It's as simple as that.
|
| 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.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I don't get apps. Apart from Audible, I don't have any installed
| and don't use any. I've never enjoyed using smartphones to do
| anything.
| blabla_bla wrote:
| I got the entire idea from the title, no need for the article 's
| body.
|
| 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?
| ape4 wrote:
| Can the "app" just load the mobile website. Then everyone is
| happy?
| pcorsaro wrote:
| I've been running a video game collection site for years. The
| number one request I get from people is to build an app. I've
| worked so hard on making the mobile version of the site to be
| just as functional as the desktop version, and I don't really
| understand why people want an app over just using the web
| version. I sometimes wonder if I should just do it to see if I'm
| missing out on market share, but I don't really want to have to
| maintain two different user interfaces.
| sloum wrote:
| You could add features to make it a PWA and explain to users
| how to save it t their desktop. I used ProtonMail for years
| that way (I do not have a smartphone anymore, so no longer do
| so).
| quesera wrote:
| Similar situation here.
|
| 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.
| mixtureoftakes wrote:
| building and maintaining a simple webview app might be easier
| than you think.
|
| if you ever end up making one im very very curious about how
| much market share that would gain
| yieldcrv wrote:
| what's funnier is that this could have been written 10 years ago
| and the situation was the exact same
|
| 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.
| bryankaplan wrote:
| If the elevator was invented today, use of it would require an
| app which demands access to one's contacts and microphone, and
| has a rating of 1.4 stars.
| AstroBen wrote:
| Do you really think developers are going through the hellish pain
| of dealing with Google and Apple for no reason? Real world users
| prefer and expect apps as opposed to web versions for many
| product categories.
| agdexai wrote:
| The restaurant QR menu situation is peak 'we installed an app for
| the app' energy. I scanned a code expecting a menu and instead
| got a Play Store redirect. Just let me see the food.
|
| 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.
| zvitiate wrote:
| > The restaurant QR menu situation is peak 'we installed an app
| for the app' energy. I scanned a code expecting a menu and
| instead got a Play Store redirect. Just let me see the food.
|
| 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!
| rkhaniukov wrote:
| I like apps, much better then web version experience
| bbminner wrote:
| I asked the same question a few years ago, and the answer I
| arrived at is that the app has, by default, more permissions (not
| only technical but also conventional) to collect data, send push
| notifications, and otherwise harass the user.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| iOS apps have to request permission from user to send push and
| for basically every other problematic permission.
| saltcured wrote:
| I'm only familiar with Android, and it bothers me that I
| cannot exert complete sandbox control over every app.
|
| 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.
| fer wrote:
| In terms of the usual data collection, I'm very happy with
| TrackerControl[0]. It's basically meant to run as an always
| on VPN (it isn't one) which allows it to block ads, social
| media, trackers, etc with quite reasonable granularity. I'm
| surprised at the amount of apps that fail to work correctly
| unless they have access to their data harvesting endpoints.
|
| In terms for pure access to the data/permissions,
| GrapheneOS seems to be the main (only?) choice. The default
| permissions apps get in current day Android allow to group
| activities and tie them to a single user across apps/sites.
|
| [0]https://f-droid.org/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol.
| fdro...
| b8 wrote:
| I trust the chrome sandbox and security more than a desktop or
| phone app.
| alunchbox wrote:
| Preach brother
| wg0 wrote:
| I think app stores are getting restrictive and their next attack
| would be on PWA because that's one loophole in their walled
| garden where they need to extract 30% cut. Only a matter of time.
|
| 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.
| bedroom_jabroni wrote:
| Anecdotally had the axios maintainer used the Zoom desktop app,
| he'd be used to seeing the "Open this link in the app" prompt on
| the call page and less likely to fall for the scam upon not
| seeing the same prompt when following the phishing link. I think
| there's some value in having the app installed for the extra
| validation.
| runjake wrote:
| I specifically do this with apps like Discord, because it seemed
| like every time I launched the app, there was a 200mb+ update.
|
| I can just use the web version instead and skip all that, along
| with the memory usage (for the most part).
| Jaxan wrote:
| I find it so annoying that certain apps update every single
| time I open them. Why can't they build something more stable?
| johanyc wrote:
| I do the same with discord. Idk why the app is so huge
| doug_durham wrote:
| I'm a huge supporter of the open web. However this issue was
| decided 16 year ago. If you recall the first push on smartphones
| were "web apps". Those sucked. The bottom line is that native
| apps provide a better user experience and that is why they became
| prevalent 16 years ago.
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| I feel the same. Take the Telegram app as an example: it's so
| slick, responsive. Even a simple button click doesn't work well
| on the web due to the long response time between clicking and
| seeing a response.
|
| 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.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Hall of shame:
|
| * 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)
| dudu24 wrote:
| old.reddit.com
| cainxinth wrote:
| I've been on reddit since the beginning. If they kill
| old.reddit, I'm gone.
| nosioptar wrote:
| Red reader is another option to make reddit usable.
|
| https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader
| lelandfe wrote:
| I fully expect it to get retired in the wake of the
| forthcoming de-anonymization of the web. But I'm frankly
| shocked they haven't already given how aggressively bad the
| "new" one has become.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| > SeatGeek won't let you attend events without their app (no
| mailed tickets, will call, print at home, or mobile web)
|
| 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.
| water-drummer wrote:
| Linkedin is the worst offender of them all. My feeds don't get
| updated for days when I use the web mobile version and I start
| seeing new posts only when I switch to desktop mode (switching
| to mobile shows the same old feed). They also don't even let
| you reply to comment replies or see reactions. They even scroll
| you all the way to the top if you dismiss their annoying
| "linkedin is better on app" pop-up just to punish you for not
| using their app. I'll never install apps of these companies
| that are actively hostile towards those that don't want to be
| constantly spied on by them.
| weitendorf wrote:
| They are so paranoid against scraping or someone building
| automations on top of their app they don't want you to have,
| that they are willing to make their actual application
| borderline unusable for the power users who would actually be
| willing to pay for their first party upsells and features.
|
| 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.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Instagram has had both significant mobile only features, and
| desktop only features.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| How about an 81-year-old Dodgers fan who has held season
| tickets for 50 years, and doesn't even own a smartphone, who
| can no longer order the traditional book of season tickets:
| https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/dodgers-fan-printed...
| claw-el wrote:
| A counter example, Bank of America app don't have functionality
| to do ACH transfer natively, you can only do it on the web app.
|
| But this may be on purpose by Bank of America.
| pull_my_finger wrote:
| Spotify arbitrarily gatekeeps even basic function like
| accessing your Liked songs on the PWA
| demaio wrote:
| * Untappd won't let you tag your co-drinking friends without
| their app
| leni536 wrote:
| Google maps is also severely nerfed on mobile web.
| docheinestages wrote:
| An app could offer a more stable identifier compared to an in-
| browser guest session which might have its cookies cleared.
| kogasa240p wrote:
| Agreed, if you have a website I'll just use that.
| hyperific wrote:
| See also https://idiallo.com/blog/dont-download-apps
| firefoxd wrote:
| Last year the same idea made it to the front page [0]. I
| understand that the apps can be faster, or easier to use. But
| that's intentional. Developers are deliberately making the web
| experience worst to force you to use the app. The reason is they
| have control over the experience in the apps. For example,
| blocking ads on the apps is much harder, and they can extract
| things like your contacts, GPS data, and run in the background.
|
| At this point, the only apps on my phone are bank apps. Even that
| is something I'm trying to get rid off.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44689059
| BostonFern wrote:
| Tougher adblocking is the best argument I've heard.
| asow92 wrote:
| I will not download them on a train, I will not download them on
| a plane, I will not download them in a box, I will not download
| them with Firefox. I will not download them Sam I am.
| Afftar wrote:
| Yes, the TC is right and I completely agree, but we all know the
| reason for forcing users to install an app: retention, ARPU and
| other metrics grow for this audience, and push notifications also
| help with that.
| joshstrange wrote:
| The sad reality is people _want_ apps and the people paying for
| web/apps to be built also want apps (even before we talk about
| tracking/ad-blocking reasons).
|
| 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!").
| marxisttemp wrote:
| Why is it sad to want an app?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| > The sad reality is people _want_ apps
|
| 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.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| I wish there was a version of this website that was simpler, more
| educated and that I could show to the "normies" who own business
| and insist on asking me to download their app (I'm looking at
| you, TKD school!). This one is too aimed at the cooks.
| k26dr wrote:
| The Politico website on Android has this issue. Can't login so
| can't read articles. Had to download app, but would prefer web
| page.
| marxisttemp wrote:
| I won't use your web app. The app version has better performance,
| lower memory usage, is more idiomatic and looks better.
| CephalopodMD wrote:
| I'm okay with downloading your app provided it's actually good
| and does something substantially better than a website could do.
| I'm talking seamless mobile UI, use of mobile features like gps
| or nfc, or easier/better security and authentication.
|
| 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.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| I at times wonder if my life would be easier if I were not so
| stubborn and just installed every app suggested along the way.
| krb5 wrote:
| The cookie/session isolation is underrated. Half the reason
| services push you to the app is because the mobile browser
| experience for juggling multiple web apps is genuinely bad -- not
| because the web can't do it, but because nobody's made it
| comfortable. I got annoyed enough to put together a small webview
| manager that keeps a few web apps in tabs with separate cookies:
| https://github.com/theoden8/webspace_app (yes, it's written in
| flutter)
| gonzalohm wrote:
| I would be fine having an app for everything if:
|
| 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
| jeroenhd wrote:
| For some reason, app sizes seem to have exploded, but
| especially on iPhones. Maybe it's the fact cheap Androids are
| still being used but I was surprised to find out how many 50MB
| Android apps were in 200MB iPhone apps.
|
| 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.
| prince005 wrote:
| You're not my target audience
| danabrams wrote:
| ios Native App > web app > android app > anything made with a
| cross platform toolkit like react native or flutter.
|
| 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.
| johnflan wrote:
| > a really well-crafted ios Native App with extensive attention
| to detail Which seems to becoming a rare thing
| palata wrote:
| Those are valid arguments but I like apps better, for other
| reasons. Mostly security.
|
| 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_.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| Preach your truth, brother!
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I think it's best to ignore this kind of user feedback and focus
| on the users who really want the service or product and are
| willing download an app if necessary or use the web version if
| necessary. Popular opinions on apps/web and desktop/mobile change
| every few years. I remember when Facebook became deeply unpopular
| and was afraid of going under because they didn't manage to
| provide a native app.
|
| 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.
| erelong wrote:
| Like you touched on, they're just trying to get you to make a
| small commitment to being in their walled garden and then they
| add on a bunch of other things
| polyamid23 wrote:
| This indeed is annoying. Burn it down. This year is the year of
| moving away from services pushing this nonsense. I am looking at
| you PayPal.
| Animats wrote:
| Unless you use it several times a day, downloading an "app" just
| gets in the way. You should never have to download an "app" for a
| one-time use.
|
| 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.
| zadikian wrote:
| Would've left just from seeing a QR code on the table
| tonymet wrote:
| App developers are not living up to the expectations and needs
| that these services have in our lives. MyQ for example, is a
| Garage Door opener . It's a key. It needs to meet the
| responsiveness and reliability expectations of a key. Instead,
| the app is slow, the buttons often freeze , the app logs itself
| out without notifying you - so in the most urgent situation you
| don't have access to open your door.
|
| 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.
| leros wrote:
| I have an app that is literally just a wrapper around the
| website. The mobile website and the mobile app are the exact same
| experience.
|
| 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.
| truetraveller wrote:
| SaasS or one-time? Did people pay via native App Store
| integration? Or pay via the desktop website? App price? Answers
| would be super helpful. Thanks!
| leros wrote:
| Its a monthly/annual subscription. They can pay on the
| website or via native payments in the mobile app. The
| subscription works no matter where you bought it.
| abustamam wrote:
| It is silly but you have to meet customers where they are.
|
| 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.
| leros wrote:
| Yeah, I had a lengthy customer service email template
| explaining how to install the PWA for when people asked about
| a mobile app. Almost nobody installed it.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| There's an install element in the works. Perhaps that will
| make it more obvious how to install it
| https://github.com/WICG/install-element?tab=readme-ov-file
| gpvos wrote:
| I actually don't know what you mean by PWA. Is that a mobile
| web site? And by installing it, do you mean installing a link
| to it on a phone's launcher?
| Zak wrote:
| That, but with a little more ceremony. It gets treated as a
| separate app by mobile OS app switchers and doesn't show
| the browser's chrome or other open tabs.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_app
| zadikian wrote:
| Besides users being more familiar with apps in the past, PWAs
| are still kneecapped in some subtle ways to make them want
| apps. I wish PWAs were the norm, so much easier.
| leros wrote:
| From what I gathered with my imperfect data, almost nobody
| was using the app as a PWA even with an in-app nudge for it.
| I instantly got lots of downloads when I released iOS and
| Android apps. My users just don't want PWAs for the most part
| it seems.
| zadikian wrote:
| That's typical. I think it's mainly familiarity, which in
| turn comes from PWAs missing basic capabilities in the past
| or present so everyone made apps instead. Push
| notifications in PWAs is a recent thing. PWAs don't share
| cookies with browsers, which entirely breaks some auth
| flows like Firebase. It's still hard to tell users to
| install it as you mentioned. And PWAs didn't even exist at
| some point.
|
| The other thing is, many websites have bad or broken PWAs.
| It's usually just the website without tabs or back arrow,
| which sometimes makes navigation awkward because they built
| it assuming a browser. I'll always use the browser over the
| PWA.
| sgt wrote:
| It could be that your app is amazingly well done. But most PWAs
| and web apps turned into an "app" are not meeting my quality
| standards. It's usually a clunky experience (well, like a
| browser).
|
| 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.
| leros wrote:
| My mobile app is pretty decent actually. Other than some
| stylistic differences, I can't tell where the native wrapper
| ends and then embedded view starts. The embedded view is a
| SPA though so it never does full page loads.
| yomansat wrote:
| How often do you need to push app updates in practice? In
| theory that's a one-off deployment on the app-stores.
| leros wrote:
| There's usually some random mandatory updates I have to do
| about 1-2 times a year, so you need updates even with no
| development.
|
| My React-Native wrapper app handles native auth and native
| payments, so I occasionally need to tweak that, but it's
| rare.
|
| I'm considering a rewrite in Capacitor so I can change those
| things without modifying the mobile app. It's not that
| releasing the mobile app is a big deal, but it's that it can
| take many weeks for users to update the mobile app, so I have
| to keep the website backwards compatible with the old mobile
| app. It makes testing new checkout flows and stuff more
| difficult.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| Ugh, I run a B2B SaaS app that's mobile friendly, but people
| keep asking for an app (and I really do need push
| notifications, I'm spending thousands per month on text
| messages right now), but I've been putting it off. Did the App
| Stores have issues with you publishing just a simple RN wrapper
| app?
| leros wrote:
| No issues at all. I have two tabs in the RN app. One tab is
| basically the entire app, which is just an embedded web view.
| The other tab is a basic account tab (sign in, log out,
| delete account, cancel plan). I also have native auth and
| native payments.
|
| I'm not 100% sure yet, but I might regret using React-Native
| over Capacitor. I have to bridge things like auth and
| payments between the web view and the native app. For
| example, the web app has a flow where you need to login, so
| it opens the login modal. If you're inside the mobile app,
| instead of doing that, it sends a message up to the native
| app to open the native app's login modal. Then once login is
| complete, the native app sends a message into the webview
| with the auth token. Similar thing for payments. That all
| works great, but occasionally I want to make a breaking
| change. Since it takes many weeks to get an update rolled out
| everyone, I have to keep the webapp backwards compatible for
| a long time. That slows down iterating on stuff like AB
| testing checkout flows. I don't think I'd have to worry about
| this if I was using Capacitor because the native
| functionality would be mostly driven from the webapp code.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I've more than once had a company reply to a bug report about
| their website, "did you try using the app instead." To which I
| usually reply, "why would I trust your site with direct access to
| my phone when you can't make a website that works correctly?"
|
| 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.
| pwr1 wrote:
| Yep. If your product needs me to install an app for a one-off
| thing, you've probably already lost me.
|
| 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."
| davebren wrote:
| >> The crazy part is how many teams still treat the web as the
| demo and the app as the "real" product.
|
| 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.
| pwr1 wrote:
| Native has its place for sure -- camera, sensors, offline,
| background tasks. But web has come a long way and for a lot
| of products it's genuinely enough. The issue is teams
| defaulting to "build an app" without asking whether the
| install friction is actually worth it for what they're
| building.
| davebren wrote:
| The friction is mostly learned helplessness it seems since
| software is easier to install than ever. But it's there
| nonetheless and the play store discoverability is pretty
| much gone, so yeah that's why I can't develop mobile only
| anymore. As a user, in general if the product is a website
| then I want a site, and if it's an application I use
| regularly I want an app.
| lrvick wrote:
| I had a doctor tell me that I had to buy an Android or iOS phone
| (I own neither) and install their new app, or they would be
| unable to continue seeing me as a patient.
|
| 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.
| FusionX wrote:
| I agree...except, I would've appreciated some self-awareness from
| the author. They represent a minority of the users, yet they fail
| to comprehend this simple fact.
|
| 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._
| rkomorn wrote:
| Are you implying with your last sentence that websites are less
| culpable of enshittification, dark patterns, and dopamine
| hacking?
|
| Or are you including the web-based properties of "modern apps"
| in said apps?
| sequoia wrote:
| Though I agree with the author & use the web version of various
| applications, there is another side to this. The author says s/he
| uses plugins to disable ads and so on. If its an ad supported
| site for which one does not pay, this is tantamount to expecting
| the provider to run the service for no compensation/revenue at
| all.
|
| 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?
| mancerayder wrote:
| I can't type on a smartphone. Even as I wrote this, c became a
| space, the word space started each time with an a, etc.
|
| 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.
| AlBugdy wrote:
| Being required to use an Android app sucks and is annoying, but
| an AOSP VM would solve the issue. Perhaps MITM-ing the app would
| be harder than MITM-ing a site without reversing the app. And not
| everyone has the hardware resources for an Android VM.
|
| 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.
| devinsewell wrote:
| Nah u right, it is possible to do BLE debug stuff from browser,
| but my tool is so fire and china keeps downloading it 200x per
| day i had to add that $4.99 monthly subscription wall.
| downrightmike wrote:
| To be perfectly honest, modern phone apps are so riddled with
| spyware that it would be unthinkable for a similar situation to
| have started on PCs.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| The web version would be a-ok if it wasn't artificially blocking
| me from consuming it when on mobile, like Yelp.
|
| Or it's full of annoying popups to use the app, looking at you,
| Google.
| gpvos wrote:
| My bank is now doing this: for a few newish and not-quite-
| essential services you can only use their app, the rest you can
| still do via the web.
|
| 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.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| The smartphone and it's consequences have been a disaster for the
| human race.
| abustamam wrote:
| I was helping my mom with the simple task of installing an app on
| her iPhone SE. "64 GB" of storage (about 20 of which taken by OS
| and other system files). It turned into a two hour long slog of
| me determining which apps she needs, and of the ones she needs,
| how to back up her data to icloud so Instagram and other apps
| aren't taking 500mb each on her phone.
|
| 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.
| johnea wrote:
| I fully agree. A web based UI is superior in every way.
|
| 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.
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