At AutoTempest we resisted making an app for years, because anything that a hypothetical app could do, we could do with the website. And in my opinion, when searching for cars, it's more convenient to be in your browser where you can easily open new tabs, bookmark results, etc.
And for years, it was our most requested feature, by far. We had instructions for how to pin the site to your home screen, and would explain to users how the website does everything an app can do. Still, constant requests for an app. Finally we relented and released one, and very quickly around half our mobile traffic moved to the app without us really trying to nudge people at all.
People just really like apps! I think it suits our mental model of different tools for different uses. We've also found that app users are much more engaged than website users, but of course much of that will be selection bias. Still, I can see how having your app on someone's home screen could provide a significant boost to retention, compared to a website they're liable to forget. For us now, that's the main benefit we see. Certainly don't use any additional data, though I won't argue that other companies don't.
>We had instructions for how to pin the site to your home screen, and would explain to users how the website does everything an app can do. Still, constant requests for an app.
This is the result of the inconsistent user experience to which gatekeepers like Apple have been actively contributing through active sabotage of web apps, such that all profitable apps can be more effectively and reliably taxed through Apple's App Store.
The manufactured perception of the general public then became that web apps are not "real apps" despite offering the exact same features. They have been dragged down by the subtle artificial friction that makes the UX feel subpar.
This reminds me of my own experience of mobile websites when they first emerged. I thought that the desktop version of a website is the "real website" i.e. that there is only one static original website and that its mobile version was some fake substitute, so I always activated the option "show desktop version". Then I learned about responsive web design and it clicked for me. I predict that a similar epiphany will occur among casuals once the active sabotage of web apps stops due to regulations reigning in the anti-competitive business practices of gatekeepers.
I'm sure that some people will still prefer "native" apps for whatever reason. However, if regulators do a proper job and allow web apps to compete on a level playing field, then a lay person wouldn't even be able to differentiate between them. This is even the case today where some developers simply wrap their web app in a WebView and ship it as a "native" app.
> I thought that the desktop version of a website is the "real website" i.e. that there is only one static original website and that its mobile version was some fake substitute, so I always activated the option "show desktop version".
It wasn't that long ago that when you used the mobile internet, you would be getting a "fake version" of the site that could render speedily, despite the limited speed of 2G networks.
First it was all about WML[0], which would be processed by a proxy that would deliver the file in a binary format that would be smaller.
And even when mobile phones that could access proper HTML content hit the market, it was often still accessed through the use of an accelerator proxy[1] which would optimize the page (stripping unnecessary parts) that you were trying to access so that it could be downloaded faster.
These technologies are still in use in some places, as I understand it. But it's generally not necessary nowadays for locations with access to 3G or better.
Exactly, web apps are superior in most ways to mobile apps for the user experience, but only if vendors support the web and stop actively trying to make it like apps are the better option.
The preference for apps is a learned behavior, not something fundamental. The vast majority of people with real understanding would prefer the web
Whereas on Mac, Meta are keeping their native app presumably because they can't be in the Mac app store with just a web wrapper
But maybe I've just got the exact delusion youre talking about in that I view the app as having more functionality. Maybe they need to free web apps to be on a level playing field as you say
> This is the result of the inconsistent user experience to which gatekeepers like Apple have been actively contributing through active sabotage of web apps, such that all profitable apps can be more effectively and reliably taxed through Apple's App Store.
If web apps were any good, we'd see a plethora of them on Android. There are none (or very, very, very few).
If web apps were any good, nothing Apple "gatekeeps" would prevent you from building an amazing web app for iOS. The things Apple "gatekeeps" (such as mobile push) would not prevent you from making a smooth fast web app.
And yet here we are.
> if regulators do a proper job and allow web apps to compete on a level playing field
They already are competing on a level playing field. It's not "lack of NFC" or "lack of Bluetooth" or "lack of <another moving goalpost>" that prevent you from having good web apps.
> The manufactured perception of the general public then became that web apps are not "real apps" despite offering the exact same features
But they're not real apps, they're webpages. They are two different things, both very useful, but both very different.
It's a very good thing for a user to be aware that there's a real and important difference between a signed binary from the App Store which lives on their device and a blob of minified JS coming down from quite literally anywhere.
And they're correct to feel that way! Apps, when made correctly, feel way better to use! It's a bit surprising to me you attribute this preference for ""native"" apps to "whatever reason". I've always felt the difference was extremely stark and obvious, I couldn't imagine getting them confused. It seems you're a little misinformed with how most native apps are built; it's just not true that any meaningful number of apps you interact with regularly with "simply wrap their web app in a WebView." In fact, if you try to ship an app which does solely this (webpage in a WebView), Apple will reject it. Have you built any mobile apps, kelthuzad?
I encourage you to try Google Docs or Youtube from a mobile browser and observe whether you find differences between that and the native experience. I think you'll be surprised :)
I would say people really hate websites on mobile. The browsers are horrible, the pages are slow and oftentimes broken in some way. You get all these popups everywhere, ads are much more intrusive. It's just bad experience, so of course people would prefer app for something they use.
I avoid the browser on mobile as much as possible and I don't remember ever having a good time using it.
I refuse to use Facebook's app. It's been years, I don't remember why, don't ask me.
Their web app is fundamentally broken in half a dozen ways, and has been for years. A couple examples (not all):
If you are in the middle of typing a comment and switch to another app, when you come back, it will reload the display, losing your comment.
Video shorts load in a way that hides the video after about two seconds. Editing the URL to remove the parameters fixes this.
The layout of comments/posts often breaks, forcing me to switch to "ask for desktop version" to make one feature work, then switch back to "mobile version" to make another feature work. Neither is completely functional.
As I said, there are more. As I said, I don't even remember why I rejected their app, but at this point, if they can't make a mobile web site, why would I trust them to make an app?
This. I dislike most mobile websites as much as I hate the mobile apps. So to pick my poison, I have a formula.
- Banking: Install it on a different android profile because my websites forces me to use the App one way or the other anyway.
- If the site uses an existing open protocol to interact (IndieWeb, Fediverse, etc), use a non-browser/non-electron app that can handle multiple instances of such protocols.
- If not, and it has PWA, is responsive, and I use it at least twice a day, use the PWA (so far I have one).
- If it does not have PWA, but have has nice responsive layout, Firefox Android with uBlock Origin (I use Iornfox).
- For everything else, if I'm outside without a laptop, whine, complain, and use the website in the mobile browser, enable desktop mode if it has a crappy UI.
Thats because you don't use mobile firefox with ublock origin (on android). I very much prefer sites for stuff I do, they provide 100% of same experience, with one exception - can't easily block ads in apps.
Mostly that's because devs want to drive people to the app, where they can track you a lot better, so they make their mobile sites shitty on purpose. Plenty of mobile apps are just webapps anyway under the hood. There's absolutely no reason for a mobile site to be massively worse than the app unless the devs want it that way.
right, and the problem is that even if you have a good site on mobile it is sitting in the browser, the gateway to all the awful site experiences, to get to your good site people may go through a bunch of crap. Thus they would rather have an app.
The problem is not just to make your site mobile friendly, it is also that the rest of the web isn't.
Many of those things are true in general, but fwiw I think we've done a decent job making the site fast and usable on mobile. It's comparable to the app in most ways, but many still prefer that.
I hate everything on mobile. The apps are badly put together. The web sites are crap.
I think Apple's core apps that ship with iOS are about the only things that don't annoy me. They work offline and disconnected for days at a time quite happily and generally work as intended. No one else seems to bother with that and rather ships some fat web turd instead that works occasionally and forces you to sign in all the time.
I think this is a much more accurate characterization, especially in AutoTempest's case. Their experience on mobile has always been slow and glitchy. I'm not sure what makes their web "app" so heavy, but it's very noticeable.
Most people don't know how to use a computer well. Most people are just slightly above computer-illiterate. They were introduced to phones which have apps. Now in their minds that's how everything must be. Anything else induces fear into their minds.
While technically competent people might go:
"Oh neat, I don't even need to install an app, if I just put the website icon onto my home screen."
Most users are like: "Oh my god noooo! Not another way to do something! Aaaaa I cannot cope!" and panic.
I saw a tweet where some Zoomer was roasting an "Elder Millenial" for switching devices from a mobile phone to a desktop when making a big purchase (airline tickets? I forget).
I didn't feel like wading into that argument (what's the point? like spitting in a campfire), but... yeah.
Some folks say that we are regressing wrt technological proficiency, but it's really just that more people use technology than they used to. Regression to the mean, maybe? Is that the right expression?
Using a website instead of an app isn't signaling some particularly strong computer literacy. Not that it matters - the web, both mobile and general, has been neutered so much over the years that webpages are just as useless, locked down experience siloes as apps; really the main difference in practice is the icon experience and how unobtrusive surveillance is :).
This is an unnecessarily rude and reductive take. Tons of people without your exalted computer science background are perfectly competent and comfortable with using computers “well”.
Their mental model of how they LIKE to use them is different from yours though - and that should be ok instead of arousing angst.
Why do you think people have to be "computer illiterate" to prefer apps? That’s pretty narrow, and obviously just an explanation you came up with to fit your mental model.
I just find apps more practical and convenient than websites in a browser most of the time, on my phone.
I remember when ChatGPT was released. I talked about it to a friend who is not technical. She said "oh wow, I really need to try it". She later said "I couldn't find the app in my AppStore".
I kept saying they had a website and why would you need an app. She couldn't understand what I was saying.
Seems like indeed the general public really likes apps and even thinks you can't do so many things in the browser.
I don’t buy this for one second. The web is well known, and well understood - I’ve never run into anyone, in any age group, with any level of education, who wouldn’t understand what a website is.
Either you’re being overly dramatic and exaggerating here, or you had a very difficult time pronouncing the words you were intending to say.
This is it. I’ve worked on plenty of projects that have web/iOS/Android, and the reason for offering native apps has always been user demand. All of this “spy on the user” crap literally never even comes up in conversation. We don’t care at all. We care about native apps because users care about native apps.
I think this is probably more true than not in terms of proportion of apps that offer a native client interface to an existing web service, but I don't think it's true for Reddit or other large companies who's primary business is selling advertising and data.
This is a very interesting, but it doesn't explain why companies push so hard to download their apps. It's even contradictory: since it seems users want apps so much, there should be no need to push them.
Businesses want you to use their app for a few reasons: it’s stickier because they can start sending you push notifications right away without even signing in/making an account, they get their logo right on your home screen, there are expedited login methods available like FaceID, they bypass most normal ad blocking so they can show users ads but also get much more reliable telemetry, they get access to APIs that allow them to request/slurp additional user data like your contacts list, persistent location services, and camera roll metadata, plus they can access a broader set of system APIs for fingerprinting purposes (even if against the ToS).
Then there’s a measurement element where app installs became an important KPI around the time ad blocking became more popular and interfered with detailed website engagement tracking, creating a self-fulfilling kind of thing.
On top of this I think another factor is that many websites are in terrible shape, super bloated by ten thousand tracking pixels and third party snippets added willy nilly by marketing teams using Tag Manager, so apps benefit from gatekeeping that bloat to a degree.
My wife is one of these people. We couldn't be more different in that regard. I loathe apps and generally only install them when there's no alternative. She seems to either not understand or trust websites, and wants an app.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Every time I grab her phone I get dizzy and lost from the hundreds of apps. When she grabs mine, she wonders how I accomplish anything at all.
At the last company I worked for we wanted to shut down our app to save expenses. The idea being that most people would just the website if we removed the app. It seems like you didn't gain anything by making an app, you just created more expenses and complexity.
My guess would be that it's because (as the above poster says) "app users are much more engaged than website users" and only "half our" moved without nudging - the sites would like more engagement from all users.
That said, the harder you "nudge" me, the more I want to avoid the app and the whole business. Especially if you have any other dark patterns - I will assume you want me to download your app just so you can abuse me better.
Because they don't accept their website is not worth an app. Most of that long tail of businesses has a transactional relationship with users, who by very nature would ideally want to think about them as little as possible and only for the short moment of actual transaction.
In short: I do install apps of main platforms and physical shops I frequent. It's usually vastly better than a website, even if it just wraps a webview. But I don't want to install an app for every site I visit, for the same reason I don't want to go on a date with every stranger that smiles at me when I pass them by on the street.
Yeah, as others have said, I'm guessing it's primarily for the enhanced engagement and retention. And come to think of it, I've experienced it myself in reverse, in that social media is much easier to ignore when the app icon isn't right there on your home screen.
Apps have the ability to send notifications, web apps meanwhile have to deal with a pesky browser that prompts you to provide explicit consent for them to do that.
Thank you for trying to resist app-insanity. It really sucks that my doctor's office tries to get me to use one. No, I don't want to download an app for the one time I need it each year. Just make a freaking website. There are some exceptions like a calculator app that is completely offline.
Thank you for this extensive analysis. In my country now's the phase that every shop, even small one, wants me to download an app (for the client identification purposes). And tbh one thing is making an app for people who want it, another is requiring an app. Those "loyalty card" apps all weigh at least 100MB because of the browser bundled inside, and they are too heavy for my phone. I mitigated it using catima, an open source loyalty card wallet, but some of the app creators started to generate time based codes, so it's no longer a viable solution for me in those cases, and I started suspecting those apps do more than showing a code
Mobile apps do not bundle a browser. They use Chrome/Android System WebView on Android or WKWebView on iOS. Capacitor is one project that lets you build on top of installed browser engines, unlike Electron, which bundles Chrome.
A new Capacitor app has a size of 3-5 MB at most.
If such a simple app has 100 MB, they bundle shit like Facebook SDK and such.
“On the web you can open multiple tabs” - Interesting how people categorise things as only possible with browser. You can design experience in app to allow having multiple searches or whatever user needs multiple tabs for.
I hate having 300 apps on my phone (and I can't have them all on my home screen), but unfortunately, they're often much nicer to use than the corresponding websites.
They're much faster / snappier as they don't need to load everything.
Even if each click only takes a second to load or wait, it's annoying for many clicks.
Then there are all kinds of usability issues, like the page reloading in the middle of a form or process when scrolling up was misinterpreted as a refresh.
However, I'm not talking about apps that just load a webpage.
What about just using PWABuilder? Sure maybe it's not as nice an experience as a native app, but the savings on costs and time with having 1 product mean you can do way more innovation elsewhere
I would say using the web"app" give a better user experience since you always have the latest version without the need for updates.
Only if offline use is possible an app would be necesarry.
I don't really know or care whether I'm using the latest version of anything. To care about that, I would first of all need to be aware that I'm not using the latest version.
Mostly it was just moving from mobile web. I think it it is contributing somewhat to long term growth as well, but that's more difficult to determine amongst other factors.
Doesn't an app allow for caching which makes the whole experience much more responsive?
I think antifingerprinting means that browsers are constantly re-loading and rerendering tons and tons of resources. The web is much much slower than it could be in theory. If you have an siloed app then you don't need to worry about that and can reuse everything. You open a new tab and nearly everything displays instantly (except the different car or whatever you're displaying)
This would also decrease your network bandwidth load. So a win for you and your customers
I cannot agree more and this has always been a pet peeve of mine.
Most native apps are some half gig large where even the heaviest website is a few mb. They dont let you highlight text and have other bizarre design choices. Even worse, they request importing contacts list which isnt even an option on the web.
Native apps could be butter but more often than not they are like margarine. Smooth, oily, and not good for you.
A lot of native apps are just wrappers around a JS context with a few bridges into native APIs and they are pure data grabs.
Reddit always asks you to use its native app, for example. Why the fuck would I care so much about Reddit that I want it outside of my browser? Same goes for any other website.
This is so funny. For me, it was as if the "monkey's paw" had played me.
Back in the early 2000s, I loved desktop applications. My thinking was that there's no way a web app could do what a desktop application could. I loathed slow, proprietary, online-requiring, HTML based web apps .
25 years have passed, and now we DO have some "native" device apps... but they are just HTML web elements bubdled in a freaking custom browser.
Edit: anyone remember the "PortableApps" wave? I loved having that in a usb drive.
The most annoying thing is repeat questions ( reddit, linkedin, facebook, ... ). If I already told the site 10 times that I don't want to use the mobile app, stop asking me. That's even worse than cookie consent banners, at least those stay away
Your comment got me a bit curious and so I spent time playing around creating a simple Android app using webView for my personal website and got it working, the only permission I added was INTERNET. So what's the next level of awfulness - do I add additional permissions and then additional information can be presented to my website server, or would I actually have to implement an additional path to collect the kind of info these apps are trying for?
It is just the app producers forcing you. Like AliExpress, the app is just the website (it does not even respect the default text size), but only the app allows you to do reviews. Some only give you rebates if you install their spyware. Many do not support notifications for no obvious reason. IMHO we need more user scripts to fix some of those stupidities.
Most apps, these days, seem to be “hybrid,” where they use a system like Ionic or React. These systems usually slap on some considerable libraries.
I understand why, but I’m not a fan of hybrid apps. I like to do native, which results in much smaller, faster, and more efficient apps. It’s just not as cost-effective, if you want to support multiple platforms.
However, native apps aren’t automatically well-behaved ones. In fact, they usually have access to even more tools for eroding privacy or user agency.
Good behavior is up to the app developers, and that doesn’t seem to be much of a priority, these days.
If it's not a game or a large company's app, it's probably a web view app. At my company I work on the website, and we have an app that is essentially just a bunch of web views of the website. Why we need an app I don't know. I suppose people are just used to apps more than they are websites, which makes me sad.
I am particularly incensed by governments that require citizens use apps to access their digital services.
Especially so in the EU, where on one hand they're annoyed at big tech, and on the other they're forcing citizens to be customers. Even services which are web-based rely on an app for login authentication.
Funny cause I was just thinking about the tradeoff of "internal wasm app" vs "internal native app".
The former has convenient distribution, but worse performance and other limitations.
The latter can be tricky to keep updated, ensure the environment is the same for everyone and/or cross-platform differences, etc., but significantly better/faster.
But both binaries about the same size. Assuming using something like sokol or SDL3.
:-) be nice to margarine. It can be used to better your health. Because it's not butter, it can be supplemented with vitamins and minerals and can be used to lower cholesterol. But, I get your point.
of course Apple doesn't list the size of their own apps like Apple Maps, Photos, Music, etc...
I am quite surprised at a few apps I know are just a webpage, because I can to go to the webpage and see it's exactly the same, are still 40meg to 80meg. I'd expect them be able to be as small as a few K. Open a webview, navigate to https://mycompany.com. The end
> If you've ever opened Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or practically any popular service on your phone's web browser, you've likely encountered it.
Another website that asks to Get The App is https://imgur.com/ , every time you open a link to just view that image you instantly got asked to Get The App. It's really annoying!
The "download app" notifications on reddit are like some kind of art project to maximimally annoy you. Probably the worst offender is facebook where they have what can only be called an intentionally broken mobile website - the idea of losing the person's name if you edit a comment, the page deciding to reload you back to the main page if you switch tabs to research something or the post box clearing out if you switch focus, the comment box being nearly impossible to navigate through with the cursor, these are all profoundly egregious bugs that have been there for years.
Basically if you intend it to do something more substantive than comment a series of emojis, they have a bunch of bugs that block you.
I'm guessing someone has made the calculation that being terrible in these ways are more profitable.
Maybe people doom scroll more if the content is vapid?
I'd love to see the user stories. "Brenda is a 52 year old professional who likes commenting "Happy Birthday" to AI generated images of people with cakes. She loves multilevel marketing and buying stuff on Temu. Her husband Greg, reposts memes programmatically generated by content farms using LLMs and topic trackers"
Reddit used to have a really excellent mobile experience at i.reddit.com. It was a minimalist fast-loading mobile-first formatted version of the website. Unfortunately they shut it down not too long ago.
A recent mobile web A/B test on Reddit will tell you when opening a link that the subreddit has not “been reviewed” and blocks access unless you open on the app or login.
They’re this close to just 100% shutting down the mobile web version.
Also uhh the default search engine in mobile Safari. Just Google searching gives you a half-page notice to install the app. If you have the app, it's a half-page notice to use the app. And guess what's inside the app, a website.
I believe that's done based on user-agent header; but it shouldn't be surprising that the UA on a mobile browser is the hardest to change, showing once again that users' control of their computing devices is extremely important. With the appropriate UA, imgur will just give you the raw image data directly.
The worst for me is when you open Google Maps in the browser and the appears with the blue continue button. If you click it, it opens the iOS store page. If you then move back to your browser it re-opens and focuses the iOS store page one more time.
I hate Imgur. Even with the app installed I find it doesn’t work well. I don’t understand why people use it — does it just work for them in a way it doesn’t for me, or are they more tolerant of its terrible usability?
Imgur is particularly infuriating because it was initially touted as an alternative to the shitty image-sharing sites of the day (photobucket and the like) - one that would let you just link to an image without any bullshit. Now it's completely unusable.
Every ~5 years someone makes a new good site, it's great at first, funded from donations. Then they hire people, feature creep, add ads, sellout to VC, enshittyfi, rinse and repeat.
And a big thumbs down to Google Maps, that when presenting a location on the web, that's already being shown, it will cover it with a pop-up heavily steering the user to download the app.
I hate imgur with their freaking redirects of deep links that have .jpg or .png in their URLs. They redirect to the HTML and then ask me to download a shitty app and prevent me from looking at the damn content.
If you cannot afford the web traffic, just shut down your webservers instead of this bullshit.
Don’t agree, but to each their own. The native app experience for every app noted in the article is better and smoother than the mobile web version, in my opinion. Lots of people hate Electron apps, which suggests to me that my preference for native apps isn’t unique.
Web apps can ask for your location or microphone the same way native apps can. Just reject it, there’s nothing that says you have to accept on either platform, so to say that’s a negative for native apps is odd.
The biggest downside of native apps is you can’t customize them with extensions or user styles like you can with websites.
The author is not contesting that the app experience is better. Yeah, the web experience is worse -- because the product people are treating the entire web presence as a _marketing surface_ for the app. So, the web version is basically an ad for the app. This is true of Reddit, Yelp, and others. How could it not be worse?
It's too bad because it's not like the web is incapable of providing a beautiful ux for those products. But then so why do you think these companies employ massive teams of devs, for Android, and then again for iOS, reimplementing their functionality on every platform? All that to provide you with that sweet extra smooth native "feel", 2% nicer than the web could do? No, it's not for you...
This is key. Companies pushing apps is not for your benefit. It's so they can further monetize you right under your nose and with your full permission by accepting their EULA. This is just a furtherance of the if you don't pay for the product you are the product.
> It's too bad because it's not like the web is incapable of providing a beautiful ux for those products.
I’ve never seen a web app I was happy with being a web app. I understand that a lot of people prefer web-based tools but a lot of us cannot stand them and try to get our work out of the browser as much as possible because we dislike the UX of the browser platform.
The web is definitely incapable of hacking the speed of light, though. And if you want truly instantaneous search - I mean deterministic, keystroke by keystroke - you have to put your data as close to the customer as possible, ideally right on the same device, ideally right in the same process.
Is this necessary for most commercial projects? Of course not. But many of the programs I consider the nicest to work with today are that way precisely because someone fought back against the call of the network.
Mobile apps are so limited compared to an actual web browser's interface. The reddit mobile app only lets you view one topic/conversation at a time. Same with the IMDB app; it's impossible to do any research, like comparing actors or movies, using the IMDB mobile app because the flows are all captive and there's very limited ways to navigate between the resources. With a browser, I can open up multiple sets of content at once. So many mobile apps are just fixed views and offer no compelling interface for anything but the extremely limited way they want (force) you to use their app. The fact that a browser allows multiple tabs and can do bookmarking makes up for (works around) the relatively lack luster interfaces both website and mobile apps have.
Mobile IMDB is not the best example -- simply navigating backwards causes a page reload, or at least a long stall and jitter as the page scrolls you around. I'd prefer an app experience (however I just use the Letterboxd app instead.)
Tabs are a big win for mobile web, I agree. I just don't think it outweighs the annoyance of navigating the app in more traditional ways.
The reason I believe the web experience is inferior is because companies put more resources into apps at the expense of the web.
Apps break often. They need a lot of support. Everything must be constantly updated. You never know when Samsung or Apple will push an update that breaks things because of some esoteric policy shift or setting change.
But the web? If you do it right, maintenence is much easier. If things do break: users can try different browsers or devices to get around instead of being bricked.
I can't be the only one who _never _ updates software on my phone until I absolutely have to. Everything is so brittle. I'm sick of being gaslit that apps make that better. Despite it's own horrible implementations, the web is far more stable.
> The reason I believe the web experience is inferior is because companies put more resources into apps at the expense of the web.
The main reason is just a single company - Apple. They have been hell bent on nerfing Safari so that they can continue their rent seeking behavior on App Store.
If Spotify has a functional mobile website, they cant take 30% cut from their app. The way Apple does is 2 fold. 1) deliberating not investing $$ into Safari 2) claiming that you'll get malware from internet.
As a mobile dev who’s done a little web work, my experience has been the opposite. If you’re writing your apps with native OS SDKs and mostly stock widgets (don’t go reinventing wheels for the sake of branding), maintenance generally isn’t too bad.
Web app projects on the other hand always feel some degree of held together by bubblegum and duct tape. Do so much as breathe wrong and they fall apart (which is part of why the industry has become docker-centric). None of the old web projects I have laying around are trivial to get into good enough shape to develop on again, whereas I can pick up and old iOS app that hasn’t been touched in a decade and getting it running in an afternoon.
I will say however that there’s a class of poorly built cross platform mobile app that I’ve come to abhor, because as you say they’re brittle and break easily on top of generally being unpleasant to use.
I feel like many web developers want this to be true, but it is categorically false.
When you target a higher level abstraction, be it web, or flutter or whatever, you are explicitly choosing not to follow the platform native UX.
It’s more convenient to developers not to have to worry about that.
That’s it.
Web is easy. It’s free.
That doesn’t mean it’s better, or that it’s even possible for it to be as good as a native experience.
You can make a web app that is good; but it is the unavoidable and undeniable reality that web applications have a glass ceiling.
It is. Not. Possible. to write a web app that is as good as the equivalent native application can be. Certainly not a cross browser one.
There are reasons, you can blame Apple and safari or whatever you want, but that’s where it’s at, today.
> The reason I believe the web experience is inferior is because companies put more resources into apps at the expense of the web.
It’s not a falsifiable argument.
“That is not as good because I believe less effort was put into it”.
Ok.
I believe that for the equivalent effort you could create a better web app than a native app. I think you could measure that, and it would be pretty clear.
However, I believe many large native applications could not be implemented using the web platform. I think react native and the disaster that is is a reasonably solid proof that this is true.
They’re worse because web is worse, not because they didn’t bother to put effort in; because it wasn’t possible to do it using the web platform.
Native is always better if you out the effort in. It has capabilities that web doesn’t.
>But the web? If you do it right, maintenence is much easier
Eh, I'll argue this isn't as true as you think. Browsers are constantly updated these days and have their own fun things that break or mess with experiences.
But that's not the biggest issue with browsers, at least on the PC, it's that the average user seems completely incapable of keeping mal/adware off their device. For those users the app world is an escape from the hell they were in.
For me as a power user apps suck. But they became popular quickly for a reason.
With exception to Reddit, I generally prefer apps to sites because mobile process management is considerably nicer than browser tab management.
App processes are sorted in order of most recent use, keeping the most relevant ones at hand, and those that aren’t used for a while just silently go away without much fuss.
In comparison browser tabs aren’t organized unless the user does that themselves, and so with each web app tab management overhead increases. Some browsers have an idle tab auto-close feature, but that closes the wrong tab (usually a page with info pertinent to something I’m working on) quite often. “Installing” PWAs can be an ok-ish workaround, but the problem there is that a lot of sites don’t have the little bit of manifest magic that makes saving to home screen “install” a PWA instead of just opening a browser tab.
>The native app experience for every app noted in the article is better and smoother than the mobile web version, in my opinion. Lots of people hate Electron apps, which suggests to me that my preference for native apps isn’t unique.
I want native programs on my PC, and fewer apps on my phone.
I get all my apps from F-Droid. If I need to use Steam chat or view the menu at Taco Bell, mobile website it is. I am not gonna put their proprietary software on my phone. This also brings up another interesting difference. There is no desktop program for Taco Bell, that would be super weird. I think other comments already addressed that, but a lot of mobile apps are basically just the website.
A game like Luanti or some sort of Tetris is something I'd want native in both places (desktop and mobile). Games in browsers are a mess.
> The native app experience for every app noted in the article is better and smoother than the mobile web version
I've found it to be the opposite. Perhaps if you're heavily involved on Reddit, LinkedIn, etc., then it's more convenient. But I only go to those sites via a search link. Why would I want to spend time and effort installing the app, just to see the same content I just landed on?
It's a huge red flag when websites push their app so intrusively. It means the app has little value and will be just as bad or worse when you use it.
That's partially by design. Apple makes it a pain to make proper PWA's, and companies with websites make extremely intrusive elements to ruin the mobile website in order drive to the app. Which is easier to monetize and harder to adblock, I imagine. Some places outright disable the mobile view for the app.
More simply, I don't need an app for every website I visit. a bookmark is much more lightweight than downloading yet another app to clutter my drawer.
That sounds like a potential attack vector. Similar to copy/pasting commands from web pages. I'm surprised it's allowed, but I suppose it's also very tricky to fix.
People who know what Electron is and profess hatred for it are usually mostly annoyed by the fact that it bundles all of Chrome, giving the app an absurd memory and storage footprint relative to its functionality. People don't complain the same way when apps are made with Tauri.
If this was actually done, let's say as a government-imposed requirement, we may actually see some innovation in browser usage and the release of new UI frameworks.
But I think a lot of the frustration comes from how aggressively companies push the app, even when the web version is perfectly serviceable for casual use
it doesn't seem like you even read the relatively short post since:
"The native app experience for every app noted in the article" doesn't make any sense, the article lists none.
"Lots of people hate Electron apps, which suggests to me that my preference for native apps isn’t unique."
again......what does this have to do with the article at all? Aren't you merely reinforcing the articles point?
" Just reject it, there’s nothing that says you have to accept on either platform, so to say that’s a negative for native apps is odd."
Except that most app's would stop working if anyone confined them to the minimum amount of data required, case in point any scooter app that won't let you rent unless you have google location services turned on vs just regular GPS.
OPs point is that app are a walled garden of functionality that lock users in because of expedience for living life.
These things only exist because some people just allow it. They allow it and occasionally buy something, enabling the entire hellhole we now all live in.
I also hate obligatory mobile apps, especially when they’re linked to hardware: At the battery company I work for - pilaenergy - we’re aware that our hardware may well outlive our software, so we’re providing a mobile app that’s accessible over an WiFi access point or over your local WiFi, as well as the traditional mobile apps. This way - the software comes bundled with the hardware and can’t be sunset. Something that has long been an issue with IoT products.
The problem is, this article assumes that you have an option to choose between the app and web page. This is not true in most important cases. The web site is gone or made a useless page which only tells you to download the app. Banks won't allow you to do much on their website. Infact, you can't login to their website if you don't have the app. I can't login into my work PC or laptop, if I don't use my company apps.
Same goes for every serious app which need to ID you. The app-based 2FA/MFA is becoming the standard for the web access. This is a need or pattern created by availability of a bad solution. Similar to how the cars created sprawling cities in the USA which prohibits you using your legs.
So, telling people to use website instead of app, is the same as telling them to walk to the corner shop instead of using a car. You can't walk to the many other essential places anymore, though.
You can escape from the car if you live a small village that has everything you need. But you can't escape from apps and internet if you need to feel that you exist in this world.
All European banks require you have the app to be able to do anything with your account. The is more of compliance/regulatory thing.
And to login into my work, I need to first login into my laptop and then enter into a very elaborate way of login into VPN or company WiFi. VPN/WiFi login requires you to first login into company app on your mobile to get a temp password. The company app need to work with other auth apps in a very complex way, making you hop through multiple ID checks. It is very likely that one of these apps might not like your speed of response and block you, requiring you create an incident ticket which itself requires logging into your account first. Since you can't create the ticket, you will call help desk and wait for half-day as they keep shifting your ticket across support queues.
One of the two medical networks in my area just locked their EHR portal down and require the mobile app, there is no way to access it from their website on mobile or desktop.
I wouldn’t care, except they require it for payments and in 2024 they auto-enrolled us in “paperless”. Fixable - by using the EHR systems configuration (needs a mobile app to access) back to mailed bills.
Major issue is though, I was sending their voluminous useless survey emails to spam, as they do not allow patients to unenroll their email address (it’s the primary key essentially), and their unsubscribe is essentially useless, and so I did not see repeated requests for payment.
This resulted in a $90 copay *going to collections*. Which of course sent me a paper bill, thankfully, and I got to it before it impacted our ability to access credit.
OTP in Hungary is sunsetting their mobile web site in favor of the app. Website still accessible from PC. App seems to be a webview of the actual website.
I don't know if they're affiliated but I recently came across one after already knowing of the other. The name means something like "app compulsion" in both languages, as in being forced to use apps. Very much in line with the submitted article above
Is there such a resource for English already? A place or movement we can link to
I was a heavy Quora user from 2014 to 2019 with fairly many answers and questions. In 2019 they essentially blocked website for mobile users and urged them to download the app. That's when I decided to respect my dignity and deleted my account.
If you have a website, everyone with a browser should be able to use it.
Quora has been known for its dark patterns. At one point they didnt't show you a page if you clicked a link to it within their site and prompted to login, though if you copy paste the page link to a new tab it opened.
Readit News
And for years, it was our most requested feature, by far. We had instructions for how to pin the site to your home screen, and would explain to users how the website does everything an app can do. Still, constant requests for an app. Finally we relented and released one, and very quickly around half our mobile traffic moved to the app without us really trying to nudge people at all.
People just really like apps! I think it suits our mental model of different tools for different uses. We've also found that app users are much more engaged than website users, but of course much of that will be selection bias. Still, I can see how having your app on someone's home screen could provide a significant boost to retention, compared to a website they're liable to forget. For us now, that's the main benefit we see. Certainly don't use any additional data, though I won't argue that other companies don't.
This is the result of the inconsistent user experience to which gatekeepers like Apple have been actively contributing through active sabotage of web apps, such that all profitable apps can be more effectively and reliably taxed through Apple's App Store.
The manufactured perception of the general public then became that web apps are not "real apps" despite offering the exact same features. They have been dragged down by the subtle artificial friction that makes the UX feel subpar.
This reminds me of my own experience of mobile websites when they first emerged. I thought that the desktop version of a website is the "real website" i.e. that there is only one static original website and that its mobile version was some fake substitute, so I always activated the option "show desktop version". Then I learned about responsive web design and it clicked for me. I predict that a similar epiphany will occur among casuals once the active sabotage of web apps stops due to regulations reigning in the anti-competitive business practices of gatekeepers.
I'm sure that some people will still prefer "native" apps for whatever reason. However, if regulators do a proper job and allow web apps to compete on a level playing field, then a lay person wouldn't even be able to differentiate between them. This is even the case today where some developers simply wrap their web app in a WebView and ship it as a "native" app.
It wasn't that long ago that when you used the mobile internet, you would be getting a "fake version" of the site that could render speedily, despite the limited speed of 2G networks.
First it was all about WML[0], which would be processed by a proxy that would deliver the file in a binary format that would be smaller.
And even when mobile phones that could access proper HTML content hit the market, it was often still accessed through the use of an accelerator proxy[1] which would optimize the page (stripping unnecessary parts) that you were trying to access so that it could be downloaded faster.
These technologies are still in use in some places, as I understand it. But it's generally not necessary nowadays for locations with access to 3G or better.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Markup_Language
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accelerator
The preference for apps is a learned behavior, not something fundamental. The vast majority of people with real understanding would prefer the web
Whereas on Mac, Meta are keeping their native app presumably because they can't be in the Mac app store with just a web wrapper
But maybe I've just got the exact delusion youre talking about in that I view the app as having more functionality. Maybe they need to free web apps to be on a level playing field as you say
If web apps were any good, we'd see a plethora of them on Android. There are none (or very, very, very few).
If web apps were any good, nothing Apple "gatekeeps" would prevent you from building an amazing web app for iOS. The things Apple "gatekeeps" (such as mobile push) would not prevent you from making a smooth fast web app.
And yet here we are.
> if regulators do a proper job and allow web apps to compete on a level playing field
They already are competing on a level playing field. It's not "lack of NFC" or "lack of Bluetooth" or "lack of <another moving goalpost>" that prevent you from having good web apps.
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But they're not real apps, they're webpages. They are two different things, both very useful, but both very different.
It's a very good thing for a user to be aware that there's a real and important difference between a signed binary from the App Store which lives on their device and a blob of minified JS coming down from quite literally anywhere.
And they're correct to feel that way! Apps, when made correctly, feel way better to use! It's a bit surprising to me you attribute this preference for ""native"" apps to "whatever reason". I've always felt the difference was extremely stark and obvious, I couldn't imagine getting them confused. It seems you're a little misinformed with how most native apps are built; it's just not true that any meaningful number of apps you interact with regularly with "simply wrap their web app in a WebView." In fact, if you try to ship an app which does solely this (webpage in a WebView), Apple will reject it. Have you built any mobile apps, kelthuzad?
I encourage you to try Google Docs or Youtube from a mobile browser and observe whether you find differences between that and the native experience. I think you'll be surprised :)
I would say people really hate websites on mobile. The browsers are horrible, the pages are slow and oftentimes broken in some way. You get all these popups everywhere, ads are much more intrusive. It's just bad experience, so of course people would prefer app for something they use.
I avoid the browser on mobile as much as possible and I don't remember ever having a good time using it.
Their web app is fundamentally broken in half a dozen ways, and has been for years. A couple examples (not all):
If you are in the middle of typing a comment and switch to another app, when you come back, it will reload the display, losing your comment.
Video shorts load in a way that hides the video after about two seconds. Editing the URL to remove the parameters fixes this.
The layout of comments/posts often breaks, forcing me to switch to "ask for desktop version" to make one feature work, then switch back to "mobile version" to make another feature work. Neither is completely functional.
As I said, there are more. As I said, I don't even remember why I rejected their app, but at this point, if they can't make a mobile web site, why would I trust them to make an app?
- Banking: Install it on a different android profile because my websites forces me to use the App one way or the other anyway.
- If the site uses an existing open protocol to interact (IndieWeb, Fediverse, etc), use a non-browser/non-electron app that can handle multiple instances of such protocols.
- If not, and it has PWA, is responsive, and I use it at least twice a day, use the PWA (so far I have one).
- If it does not have PWA, but have has nice responsive layout, Firefox Android with uBlock Origin (I use Iornfox).
- For everything else, if I'm outside without a laptop, whine, complain, and use the website in the mobile browser, enable desktop mode if it has a crappy UI.
- If I'm not outside, browse it from my laptop.
Thus mobile is often even a better experience.
The problem is not just to make your site mobile friendly, it is also that the rest of the web isn't.
I've literally never had that problem. Firefox Mobile + uBlock Origin eliminates ads.
I think Apple's core apps that ship with iOS are about the only things that don't annoy me. They work offline and disconnected for days at a time quite happily and generally work as intended. No one else seems to bother with that and rather ships some fat web turd instead that works occasionally and forces you to sign in all the time.
While technically competent people might go:
"Oh neat, I don't even need to install an app, if I just put the website icon onto my home screen."
Most users are like: "Oh my god noooo! Not another way to do something! Aaaaa I cannot cope!" and panic.
I saw a tweet where some Zoomer was roasting an "Elder Millenial" for switching devices from a mobile phone to a desktop when making a big purchase (airline tickets? I forget).
I didn't feel like wading into that argument (what's the point? like spitting in a campfire), but... yeah.
Some folks say that we are regressing wrt technological proficiency, but it's really just that more people use technology than they used to. Regression to the mean, maybe? Is that the right expression?
Their mental model of how they LIKE to use them is different from yours though - and that should be ok instead of arousing angst.
I just find apps more practical and convenient than websites in a browser most of the time, on my phone.
I kept saying they had a website and why would you need an app. She couldn't understand what I was saying.
Seems like indeed the general public really likes apps and even thinks you can't do so many things in the browser.
I don’t buy this for one second. The web is well known, and well understood - I’ve never run into anyone, in any age group, with any level of education, who wouldn’t understand what a website is.
Either you’re being overly dramatic and exaggerating here, or you had a very difficult time pronouncing the words you were intending to say.
This is it. I’ve worked on plenty of projects that have web/iOS/Android, and the reason for offering native apps has always been user demand. All of this “spy on the user” crap literally never even comes up in conversation. We don’t care at all. We care about native apps because users care about native apps.
Then there’s a measurement element where app installs became an important KPI around the time ad blocking became more popular and interfered with detailed website engagement tracking, creating a self-fulfilling kind of thing.
On top of this I think another factor is that many websites are in terrible shape, super bloated by ten thousand tracking pixels and third party snippets added willy nilly by marketing teams using Tag Manager, so apps benefit from gatekeeping that bloat to a degree.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Every time I grab her phone I get dizzy and lost from the hundreds of apps. When she grabs mine, she wonders how I accomplish anything at all.
I discovered that all our self hosted applications were easily adopted after I added SSO. My wife just wants one account to rule them all.
I got her accustomed to installing web apps by adding all the links in a shared note. She clicks the link, pins the site and uses SSO to log in. Easy.
That said, the harder you "nudge" me, the more I want to avoid the app and the whole business. Especially if you have any other dark patterns - I will assume you want me to download your app just so you can abuse me better.
In short: I do install apps of main platforms and physical shops I frequent. It's usually vastly better than a website, even if it just wraps a webview. But I don't want to install an app for every site I visit, for the same reason I don't want to go on a date with every stranger that smiles at me when I pass them by on the street.
A new Capacitor app has a size of 3-5 MB at most.
If such a simple app has 100 MB, they bundle shit like Facebook SDK and such.
Even if each click only takes a second to load or wait, it's annoying for many clicks. Then there are all kinds of usability issues, like the page reloading in the middle of a form or process when scrolling up was misinterpreted as a refresh.
However, I'm not talking about apps that just load a webpage.
Of course it’s possible to mess that up, but the default is superior.
I think antifingerprinting means that browsers are constantly re-loading and rerendering tons and tons of resources. The web is much much slower than it could be in theory. If you have an siloed app then you don't need to worry about that and can reuse everything. You open a new tab and nearly everything displays instantly (except the different car or whatever you're displaying)
This would also decrease your network bandwidth load. So a win for you and your customers
Most native apps are some half gig large where even the heaviest website is a few mb. They dont let you highlight text and have other bizarre design choices. Even worse, they request importing contacts list which isnt even an option on the web.
Native apps could be butter but more often than not they are like margarine. Smooth, oily, and not good for you.
Reddit always asks you to use its native app, for example. Why the fuck would I care so much about Reddit that I want it outside of my browser? Same goes for any other website.
But I'll eat my hat before I'll install Reddit's own app. Reddit killing off 3rd party apps is why I post here and not there.
Back in the early 2000s, I loved desktop applications. My thinking was that there's no way a web app could do what a desktop application could. I loathed slow, proprietary, online-requiring, HTML based web apps .
25 years have passed, and now we DO have some "native" device apps... but they are just HTML web elements bubdled in a freaking custom browser.
Edit: anyone remember the "PortableApps" wave? I loved having that in a usb drive.
I understand why, but I’m not a fan of hybrid apps. I like to do native, which results in much smaller, faster, and more efficient apps. It’s just not as cost-effective, if you want to support multiple platforms.
However, native apps aren’t automatically well-behaved ones. In fact, they usually have access to even more tools for eroding privacy or user agency.
Good behavior is up to the app developers, and that doesn’t seem to be much of a priority, these days.
Especially so in the EU, where on one hand they're annoyed at big tech, and on the other they're forcing citizens to be customers. Even services which are web-based rely on an app for login authentication.
The former has convenient distribution, but worse performance and other limitations.
The latter can be tricky to keep updated, ensure the environment is the same for everyone and/or cross-platform differences, etc., but significantly better/faster.
But both binaries about the same size. Assuming using something like sokol or SDL3.
Not nowadays they aren't.
And haven't been for at least a decade!
iOS:
of course Apple doesn't list the size of their own apps like Apple Maps, Photos, Music, etc...I am quite surprised at a few apps I know are just a webpage, because I can to go to the webpage and see it's exactly the same, are still 40meg to 80meg. I'd expect them be able to be as small as a few K. Open a webview, navigate to https://mycompany.com. The end
Capital One is 435MB...
Garmin Connect is 518MB for some stupid reason, while Strava is half that and Gaia GPS (great app), is under 100.
Another website that asks to Get The App is https://imgur.com/ , every time you open a link to just view that image you instantly got asked to Get The App. It's really annoying!
Basically if you intend it to do something more substantive than comment a series of emojis, they have a bunch of bugs that block you.
I'm guessing someone has made the calculation that being terrible in these ways are more profitable.
Maybe people doom scroll more if the content is vapid?
I'd love to see the user stories. "Brenda is a 52 year old professional who likes commenting "Happy Birthday" to AI generated images of people with cakes. She loves multilevel marketing and buying stuff on Temu. Her husband Greg, reposts memes programmatically generated by content farms using LLMs and topic trackers"
They’re this close to just 100% shutting down the mobile web version.
Profile/settings icon/button is rendered half way or fully out of the page.
Chat feature is completely unusable
Every ~5 years someone makes a new good site, it's great at first, funded from donations. Then they hire people, feature creep, add ads, sellout to VC, enshittyfi, rinse and repeat.
If you cannot afford the web traffic, just shut down your webservers instead of this bullshit.
Web apps can ask for your location or microphone the same way native apps can. Just reject it, there’s nothing that says you have to accept on either platform, so to say that’s a negative for native apps is odd.
The biggest downside of native apps is you can’t customize them with extensions or user styles like you can with websites.
It's too bad because it's not like the web is incapable of providing a beautiful ux for those products. But then so why do you think these companies employ massive teams of devs, for Android, and then again for iOS, reimplementing their functionality on every platform? All that to provide you with that sweet extra smooth native "feel", 2% nicer than the web could do? No, it's not for you...
This is key. Companies pushing apps is not for your benefit. It's so they can further monetize you right under your nose and with your full permission by accepting their EULA. This is just a furtherance of the if you don't pay for the product you are the product.
I’ve never seen a web app I was happy with being a web app. I understand that a lot of people prefer web-based tools but a lot of us cannot stand them and try to get our work out of the browser as much as possible because we dislike the UX of the browser platform.
Is this necessary for most commercial projects? Of course not. But many of the programs I consider the nicest to work with today are that way precisely because someone fought back against the call of the network.
Tabs are a big win for mobile web, I agree. I just don't think it outweighs the annoyance of navigating the app in more traditional ways.
Apps break often. They need a lot of support. Everything must be constantly updated. You never know when Samsung or Apple will push an update that breaks things because of some esoteric policy shift or setting change.
But the web? If you do it right, maintenence is much easier. If things do break: users can try different browsers or devices to get around instead of being bricked.
I can't be the only one who _never _ updates software on my phone until I absolutely have to. Everything is so brittle. I'm sick of being gaslit that apps make that better. Despite it's own horrible implementations, the web is far more stable.
The main reason is just a single company - Apple. They have been hell bent on nerfing Safari so that they can continue their rent seeking behavior on App Store.
If Spotify has a functional mobile website, they cant take 30% cut from their app. The way Apple does is 2 fold. 1) deliberating not investing $$ into Safari 2) claiming that you'll get malware from internet.
Both are hypocritical.
Web app projects on the other hand always feel some degree of held together by bubblegum and duct tape. Do so much as breathe wrong and they fall apart (which is part of why the industry has become docker-centric). None of the old web projects I have laying around are trivial to get into good enough shape to develop on again, whereas I can pick up and old iOS app that hasn’t been touched in a decade and getting it running in an afternoon.
I will say however that there’s a class of poorly built cross platform mobile app that I’ve come to abhor, because as you say they’re brittle and break easily on top of generally being unpleasant to use.
When you target a higher level abstraction, be it web, or flutter or whatever, you are explicitly choosing not to follow the platform native UX.
It’s more convenient to developers not to have to worry about that.
That’s it.
Web is easy. It’s free.
That doesn’t mean it’s better, or that it’s even possible for it to be as good as a native experience.
You can make a web app that is good; but it is the unavoidable and undeniable reality that web applications have a glass ceiling.
It is. Not. Possible. to write a web app that is as good as the equivalent native application can be. Certainly not a cross browser one.
There are reasons, you can blame Apple and safari or whatever you want, but that’s where it’s at, today.
> The reason I believe the web experience is inferior is because companies put more resources into apps at the expense of the web.
It’s not a falsifiable argument.
“That is not as good because I believe less effort was put into it”.
Ok.
I believe that for the equivalent effort you could create a better web app than a native app. I think you could measure that, and it would be pretty clear.
However, I believe many large native applications could not be implemented using the web platform. I think react native and the disaster that is is a reasonably solid proof that this is true.
They’re worse because web is worse, not because they didn’t bother to put effort in; because it wasn’t possible to do it using the web platform.
Native is always better if you out the effort in. It has capabilities that web doesn’t.
It is impossible for it not to be better.
Eh, I'll argue this isn't as true as you think. Browsers are constantly updated these days and have their own fun things that break or mess with experiences.
But that's not the biggest issue with browsers, at least on the PC, it's that the average user seems completely incapable of keeping mal/adware off their device. For those users the app world is an escape from the hell they were in.
For me as a power user apps suck. But they became popular quickly for a reason.
right there with you brother
App processes are sorted in order of most recent use, keeping the most relevant ones at hand, and those that aren’t used for a while just silently go away without much fuss.
In comparison browser tabs aren’t organized unless the user does that themselves, and so with each web app tab management overhead increases. Some browsers have an idle tab auto-close feature, but that closes the wrong tab (usually a page with info pertinent to something I’m working on) quite often. “Installing” PWAs can be an ok-ish workaround, but the problem there is that a lot of sites don’t have the little bit of manifest magic that makes saving to home screen “install” a PWA instead of just opening a browser tab.
I want native programs on my PC, and fewer apps on my phone.
I get all my apps from F-Droid. If I need to use Steam chat or view the menu at Taco Bell, mobile website it is. I am not gonna put their proprietary software on my phone. This also brings up another interesting difference. There is no desktop program for Taco Bell, that would be super weird. I think other comments already addressed that, but a lot of mobile apps are basically just the website.
A game like Luanti or some sort of Tetris is something I'd want native in both places (desktop and mobile). Games in browsers are a mess.
I've found it to be the opposite. Perhaps if you're heavily involved on Reddit, LinkedIn, etc., then it's more convenient. But I only go to those sites via a search link. Why would I want to spend time and effort installing the app, just to see the same content I just landed on?
It's a huge red flag when websites push their app so intrusively. It means the app has little value and will be just as bad or worse when you use it.
More simply, I don't need an app for every website I visit. a bookmark is much more lightweight than downloading yet another app to clutter my drawer.
On the other hand, for mobile apps, there is still a device-specific mentality.
Imagine web apps being built with a different flavor for all the major browsers...
I hope that the same level of standardization comes to mobile apps too with the option to use more device-specific features on top of the generic UI.
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"The native app experience for every app noted in the article" doesn't make any sense, the article lists none.
"Lots of people hate Electron apps, which suggests to me that my preference for native apps isn’t unique."
again......what does this have to do with the article at all? Aren't you merely reinforcing the articles point?
" Just reject it, there’s nothing that says you have to accept on either platform, so to say that’s a negative for native apps is odd."
Except that most app's would stop working if anyone confined them to the minimum amount of data required, case in point any scooter app that won't let you rent unless you have google location services turned on vs just regular GPS.
OPs point is that app are a walled garden of functionality that lock users in because of expedience for living life.
At the risk of nitpicking, the second paragraph mentions Reddit, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
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so using the web is my go-to
i dont have reddit, on my phone for example.
Also, all those app icons are just "advertisement" every time you look at your phone screen... i dont need that.
if you REQUIRE me to use an app, then i'm only using it if i absolutely have to. (there's almost always an alternative)
You wouldn't believe the volume of actual advertisements that show up as push notifications on my wife's phone
https://support.google.com/android/answer/9079661?hl=en
Especially when they come from apps you can't delete like your bannking app.
Same goes for every serious app which need to ID you. The app-based 2FA/MFA is becoming the standard for the web access. This is a need or pattern created by availability of a bad solution. Similar to how the cars created sprawling cities in the USA which prohibits you using your legs.
So, telling people to use website instead of app, is the same as telling them to walk to the corner shop instead of using a car. You can't walk to the many other essential places anymore, though.
You can escape from the car if you live a small village that has everything you need. But you can't escape from apps and internet if you need to feel that you exist in this world.
And to login into my work, I need to first login into my laptop and then enter into a very elaborate way of login into VPN or company WiFi. VPN/WiFi login requires you to first login into company app on your mobile to get a temp password. The company app need to work with other auth apps in a very complex way, making you hop through multiple ID checks. It is very likely that one of these apps might not like your speed of response and block you, requiring you create an incident ticket which itself requires logging into your account first. Since you can't create the ticket, you will call help desk and wait for half-day as they keep shifting your ticket across support queues.
I wouldn’t care, except they require it for payments and in 2024 they auto-enrolled us in “paperless”. Fixable - by using the EHR systems configuration (needs a mobile app to access) back to mailed bills.
Major issue is though, I was sending their voluminous useless survey emails to spam, as they do not allow patients to unenroll their email address (it’s the primary key essentially), and their unsubscribe is essentially useless, and so I did not see repeated requests for payment.
This resulted in a $90 copay *going to collections*. Which of course sent me a paper bill, thankfully, and I got to it before it impacted our ability to access credit.
German: https://appzwang.de
I don't know if they're affiliated but I recently came across one after already knowing of the other. The name means something like "app compulsion" in both languages, as in being forced to use apps. Very much in line with the submitted article above
Is there such a resource for English already? A place or movement we can link to
It's a good initiative, and I hope (non-tech) people realize more about this.
If you have a website, everyone with a browser should be able to use it.
They've never had my trust, and never will.