I'm responsible for an internal tool at the company I work for, hosted as a website, that handles a bunch of miscellaneous tasks that other employees need. Think reimbursements, documentation and reporting, gathering and presenting business data. That sort of thing.

When I took it over, it was desktop only ( a lot of <table> formatted pages with fixed px sizes). I spruced it up, modernized it to work on screens of any size, and created a mobile version of any pages that just didn't translate well to small screens (think "large tables of information").

When I announced the update, the number of people who asked me variations of "how to get website on phone if website on computer" or requested I make the damn thing an app was outrageous.

We take tech literacy for granted, because it's like a dozen levels down fundamental to our entire field. But the tech illiterati exist, and they love apps.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my actual app is pretty much garbage. I don’t expect it to be popular. It’s basically a worse version of stuff that is already available.

I expected this to be a learning exercise about the process of getting stuff published.

Long story short, by the end of the ordeal I was somewhat surprised that anyone independent bothers to publish apps at all. The amount of red tape and nitpicking by the initial app review process is astounding. The business/legal side is also annoying. I might be misremembering or misinterpreting, but it seems like you really need an LLC with a mail forwarding service and a cheap second phone line just to avoid the App Store sending the whole internet to your personal phone and address.

On a website you can just not deal with any of that, and not give Apple $99/year just to keep your app on the store.

And we haven’t even gotten into the big royalties you’re paying for App Store purchases.

Still, I understand the appeal at some point, just not for an app like OP was forced to use. I certainly wouldn’t want to use something like Immich or Opencloud without an app: these apps need to deeply integrate with my phone to be truly useful.

I don't remember the source or methodology for that number, but I have no trouble believing it. An app gives the developer a foothold on the user's device. It can more easily send notifications, track the user's location, resist customization like ad blocking, and remain present on the user's device even when closed. It's easier to funnel users into profitable behavior with an app.

Companies wouldn't do this if a large fraction of users refused the app, but most users don't.

I have published a few of them in the last few years, and I have tens of them which I haven't published. I use them for tons of different things:

* allowing only text tweets on X

* blocking photos and videos on all Meta products

* blocking explicit content

* customizing exchange rates for online shopping (Argentine peso, you wouldn't get it™)

* having reddit hot as default for the home and subreddits (they been pushing the "best" for a couple years and it's actually trash)

browser extensions have allowed me to regain some of my cognitive sovereignty while being a heavy internet user.

The short version: ad blockers work on browsers but not apps[0].

[0] https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle

Businesses have the incentive to give their users that low friction experience (at the point of need) using already familiar rails (i.e. "install app from app store").

The makers of both iOS and Android treat the ability to "bookmark" a web URL onto your home screen as a power user feature that requires navigating through complex, technical-sounding menus. Does it have to be like that? Of course not. They just have a business interest in pushing users away from the open web and towards their walled gardens.

--

Mind you, I'm not saying, "advertising doesn't play a role in this". A clump of well aligned motivations is obviously going to be more powerful than a single isolated motivation. But let's not forget that apps built for non-technical users, which—I cannot stress this enough—IS MOST USERS, benefit greatly from lowest common denominator solutions where they never feel like they have to learn anything to get going.

Most web apps suck too though so I guess pick your poison. My strong belief is they want apps because they can spam you with notifications to get your attention.

If done for the right reasons, a native app could theoretically be a bit more power- and bandwidth-efficient for a given level of polish.

But usually what you're getting is some cross-platform mystery meat UI, a boatload of tracking, and no real system/OS integration (because it isn't trivial to do from whatever cross-platform environment they chose).

> It reports tracking data associated with your Google Account back to the developers.

Fortunately webpages never do any tracking whatsoever, let alone “Gobshite LLC and its 1131 partners need your permission for (contd. p94)”

I want my phone to be the portal to the places I want to go to and the things I want to see. I want to have the same experience going to a web app or website I regularly visit as with a normal app.

Like, I want to click on an icon and be there. I don't want to click on the browser and then find the tab.

Also, I want PWAs and website shortcuts to be first class citizens. I want a normal icon, not one that has some sort of visual marker that it's not a normal app.

It's been an ongoing annoyance, but it's getting to be more commonplace of an issue because there are a lot of people building cool things on atproto, and they generally start as a web app before they maybe build a phone app.

  > With only a couple of minutes experimentation I discovered that the app works by concatenating the username and password5 and using it in a URL of the form:

We worked hard so you don't have to vibe code your way to get the experience you prefer.

[0] https://prepbook.app

By the way, the link doesn't load for me, so I used the archive to read it. https://archive.ph/ByFBN

If the app just shows a webpage then no.

I'm only surfacing two api requests that Costco's app is using, but even with a server as a middle man between the browser and Costo's backend this is way faster than the app.

Source: https://github.com/DavidZirinsky/costco-deals

What I want to know is: How many people actually used the website? How many people prefer the website?

It's easy to forget that many people use their computers (and phones) differently than the typical HNer.

Also: I wonder how easy/hard it is to do this with an LLM / vibecoding? Seems like there could be a Napster moment for bad apps where the LLM installs the app in a sandbox and makes educated guesses about how to turn it into a simple website.

It's ×(multiplication), not +(plus). Interface is not simply overlaid on Information; it actively changes how information is perceived and used, thus User Experience (UX).

Users have limited screen space, attention time, context retention, etc. So, apps must be wise about what information matters at any given moment, and make the best out of those limited resources.

Developers have been crazy about this: A/B testing, CVR, retention, churn, LTV, ARPU, DAU/MAU, North Star Metrics. Deploy and analyze, develop and optimize, rinse and repeat, and apps end up as revenue-generating machines.

A side effect of this optimization loop is that, apps become a designed thinking process for users. Apps decide what to show, what to hide, what to emphasize, and what comes next. They actively shape how people see and think, all to lure them into spending money.

So, "this could have been a webpage" misses the point of what apps are for, and, by extension, who apps are for.

Still, I see a bit of potential here. Document is a natural user interface -- almost all apps, including even SPAs, have document-like or document-driven views. Perhaps we've been too obsessed with computer-program-like UI. Documents can always be dynamic and interactive without being overdesigned. Perhaps this is what folks wanted to point out.

Like on most other technical opinions this person has I probably agree, but they're so absolutely wrong (for the majority of modern consumers you will fail without an app) that it makes me wonder what other seemingly obvious things we're both completely wrong about.

I've been wanting to write an article on a very similar topic myself for some time now. Perhaps I'll finish it and share it here. Absolutely done with this modern 'convenience' and app culture.

However, there's a lot of stuff that does, indeed, require a native app.

That's the stuff I like to do. Doesn't really scale to Web pages.

What annoys me is not that "this app could've been a webpage". It is that "this app should also have a web version".

TripIt comes to mind as the opposite way: they started as a website only, and quickly the need to have an app was obvious: GPS integration, offline access, contact list for sharing, and more.

One criticism, though: I wish you would have made a simple form-based alternative to the app's population mechanism, rather than just make the one-off consumer for yourself(/those you shared with). Definitely way more work and not something you should have to do. But that would have been a cherry on top. Not only prevent needing the app for viewing, but also removing future incentive for an organization turning to an app like that in the first place.

Full circle.

I remember when people were complaining that native was smaller, faster, and had richer accessibility integration.

yikes

That ought to work better for people who don't have fancy phones and data plans. I've heard they exist somewhere.

I think the answer is "only when there is no native app for the system I use", ie Linux.

So FOSS people want for apps to become much worse for everybody else, so that they can have the apps also through a web browser. Remembering that everybody else is who pays for the apps and all development, while FOSS people will never pay a dime to software developers.