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)
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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)
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.
> 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
> 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.
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, "but muh games", or whatnot. 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 about the same difference between them and the commoner who knows nothing at all about tech.
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?
I read a UI book in the early 2000s that cited research showing that most users didn't understand filesystems. They would seem to, but then the idea that the same filename in two places was two unrelated files would just lead to a mental block. Those who got it, didn't find it hard. It's just that some people can't get it.
The disconnect is not between some developers, and the younger folks. It is between some developers, and most of the world.
I think 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.
> 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.
> 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 )
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.
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.
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. :)
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
(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.
> 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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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_.
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.
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.
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.
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 )
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
> 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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
It's usually done in such small portions the developers don't know exactly what they're doing. That, or they've become so numb to it to not really care
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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)
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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)
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.
> 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
> 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.
> 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, "but muh games", or whatnot. 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 about the same difference between them and the commoner who knows nothing at all about tech.
Maybe we need a geek ranking system or something.
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?
Wait, you mean typical consumers _don’t_ want to build my terminal-based TUI app from source?
Evergreen: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1atqusj/ne...
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
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.
I can't blame them. We've been force-upgraded to Windows 11 at work and they OS does it's 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.
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.
> 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.
> 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 )
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.
Did they also struggle to understand that some people have the same name yet are not the same person?
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.
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. :)
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.
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.
> 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
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
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
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.
> 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.
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"
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.
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.
Except pretty much the entire millennial generation knows about computer folders and files, as that was necessary information for graduating school.
(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.
> 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
> 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.
>> The even do homework on this small screens!
My big gorilla hands just shed a tear.
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
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.
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.
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.
So they issued you a company provided phone for this work specific functionality?
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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
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.
The generation conflict doesn't justify to permanently bug me with "install our app, it's awesome". It ends up with terrible UX.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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.
> 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).
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.
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
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.
> Unless the website is completely broken or the devs force me to download the app by blocking features
That's already the norm.
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.
Also they only have dark mode in the app, even though the app is (or was) clearly not native anyway.
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
Every time I end up trying an app for things like this, I end up missing tabs.
There is no reason they can’t have a native tab navigator. It kills me that Google maps app doesn’t have tabs.
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.
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.
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.
> 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...
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_.
But most of the time it’s really, really not.
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.
Famously, that's how shadow profiles got created for Facebook and LinkedIn and many others.
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.
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?
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.
Location can also be extracted by JS on a website with these geo functions, IIRC?
Requires permission.
so does an app
Using flatpaks or mobile apps, you can view the sandbox permissions and adjust them if you have to.
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.
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 )
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.
> 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-...
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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
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).
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.
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).
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.
iOS apps have to request permission from user to send push and for basically every other problematic permission.
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.
> 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!
And if the only option is an app, then I'm not interested in your product / store / company.
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-...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Still runs the kneecapped mobile os
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.
> 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.
Nah: https://www.magicbell.com/blog/using-push-notifications-in-p...
Reg. Notifications:
Isnt there are similar feature in iOS browser as in Firefox these "desktop notifications" that some webpages request?
Apple still doesnt give you the right dimensions for a page that switches between portrait and landscape.
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.
I trust the chrome sandbox and security more than a desktop or phone app.
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.
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.
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).
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Their mobile app sucks too. They just killed /r/all recently.
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
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.
you mean like in a way of "defending" the user from using the website and just go right away to the app?:)
Not really, more like "just pick whatever works, both usually suck"
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.
It's usually done in such small portions the developers don't know exactly what they're doing. That, or they've become so numb to it to not really care
Alternatively, they could just make the web UI good.
This isn't an alternative for the user (the person you're replying to).
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
TurboTax, for all its faults is one of those where the desktop app is better than the webapp they keep pushing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe. You’ll need to overcome DoorDash not wanting to give up the UI as a chance to upsell services.
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.
Ouch! Netscape 4.7 reloaded...
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.
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.
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
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.
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
If the elevator was invented today, use of it would require an app which demands access to one’s contacts and files, and has a rating of 1.4 stars.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I guess this is by intention since with a PWA you would have "near app experience" but for free?
Don't you need a certain level of convincing for the average person to use a PWA?
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.
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
> 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.
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
Stop asking me for access to my contacts, microphone, location, or permission to send me 5 kinds of useless notifications.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
So that's how she feels about me?
I have it the other way around. I want local first app. Don’t want everything in the cloud apps.
Luckily there is choice :)
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.
Can the "app" just load the mobile website. Then everyone is happy?
I like apps, much better then web version experience
Preach brother
Still holding my breath for the app that puts up a dialog on every launch asking "would you like to try our web version?"
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.
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?
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.
It depends. The parking app example is an example of an app I want, for so many reasons
Can't we run Android inside a browser these days?
WASM should be able to handle it now, I suppose.
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?!
Yes you will download the app because we will not offer a web version.
No, in that case I won't do business with you.
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.
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.
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.
I wish PWAs were more of a thing. That is actually what I'd use instead of installing a company app.
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.
Why though?
If only 1% of your user base is accessing your maps through the website, you aren’t going to keep supporting it.
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.
Somehow the one feature I need to use is the one feature broken on the website... every time.
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.
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.
I use Twitter/X on web because the iOS so bad.
Turns out if you use brave on iOS it auto-blocks all the ads too.
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.
gmail on mobile is particularly insidious in this context.
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.
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
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.
PWAs are dead.
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.
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.
Yes and now I use AI to build any website which locks me into their workflow and run it locally how I choose!
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.
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
The government is supposed to be pushing for web as the default.
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..
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
HI THERE REDDIT
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.
Is this what hacker news has become? screeds from jaded boomers?
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.
sounds like somebody who's never had to park in multiple cities