Every single company has turned this into a situation where I cannot trust your apps with privacy or security, and the risk and hassle isn't worth the install.
I'm done. The only say I have is in how I spend my money. Those companies won't get any of mine if I can help it.
I am the customer, not the product dammit.
Linkedin isn't a dating site? Sure it is. I've seen the messages friends receive, and the way people try to sell themselves in the fakest possible ways - it's the only way to judge it these days.
X remains a large, influential real-time news and conversation platform (~half a billion combined MAUs)
- About 550 million monthly active users across X + Grok combined as of March 2026
- Up from about 520 million in December 2025
- ~ 350 million daily posts; 1.3 billion accounts active in the prior 12 months
Not news from anyone I want to hear about, not people I want to have a conversation with.
Ditto local organisations announcing things: are there any respectable originations (such as local government and sports groups) that still wish to be associated with the cesspool Xitter has become?
I think you're taking a very particular partisan US view and projecting it onto the rest of the world.
I feel like suing every blue checkmark person for deceptive advertising.
Yes, that was the biggest topic under discussion in the threads about the Nitter C&D. And most of sports is apparently still on there, to the point I hear people talking about how they only use it for sports news.
Honestly, the belief that Twitter has suddenly become a cesspool and everyone left is a (vocal) minority view, and it's only the liberal tech/terminally online left echo chamber chamber that thinks that.
Most Apps are just emasculated and spyware-infested WebApps version of the website, anyway. Why not just use the Browser and get the real experience?
I do not want you app of crap.
This. I get Frame.work and install Fedora. Use Firefox for everything possible. Once my current phone dies, I'll get a Fair phone, Motorola, or whatever gives me control.
Can't complain if I keep choosing hostile products for some convenience
Uh, yeah you can.
Most people using this sort of rhetoric probably don't like black kids working in mines and yet they still use devices or cars built off of that produce.
Worse, to sell a tesla, you are the person saying "ok, install the app, then I can transfer ownership to you, conveniently!"
and this is getting normalized with other car manufacturers.
(and it ALL goes back to apple... who started the whole app nonsense, and promoted a look-and-feel that gave tesla a terrible tap and swipe iphone/ipad type ui in a moving car)
Works for me. No Tesla it is, then.
Not the only reason, but one of several.
But a newer car, everything had to go through the app and complete milestones and other nonsense.
(It's fine by me, if that's their design and I don't think they are hiding it or tricking anyone. People should be allowed to buy products that I don't like.)
There’s an easier solution: don’t buy Tesla.
Not sure why you’re blaming Apple for Tesla’s mistake of thinking a phone UI is appropriate for a car system UI.
Besides, you can “trace it back” to anyone you want really. The problem is not Apple. The problem is people accepting this nonsense from bullshit companies and apps in the first place.
That’s an illusion that died a long time ago, unfortunately.
Just because you’re using their service on a browser doesn’t stop them from harvesting data from your usage, especially if you’re logging in (and if you’re using their services, chances are that you are).
Using browser over app can help, but it doesn’t eliminate it.
Like it or not, we’re the product, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Some, like Home Depot, have websites that are terrible and battery-draining enough to make the app nominally useful by comparison.
I don't take this as a signal to install the app. It is a signal to avoid the store. They clearly don't feel like they need to work to gain your business, and instead take it for granted. You can see this indicated by their actions - they clearly feel that it is more profitable to inconvenience you for a token amount of tracking data than to serve your needs. Why continue to use them?
In theory we could have gotten back in the car and looked for parking elsewhere but the curtain was in 30 minutes and who's to say they didn't have a contract with the city that covered all the parking?
Overall a very hostile experience and I was annoyed about how little I felt I had a choice in it.
Mail in a check a few times a year and park whenever you want.
All that say, I think you're probably right... next time instead of using my phone to install and sign up for a parking app, I'll just use it to check what the fine is and wipe hands on pants.
All that to say, I can fully understand how we ended up with "here's a sticker with a number on it, pay on your phone"; it's just, the pay on your phone option should be a one step apple/google pay webpage where you at most have to enter your license plate, and it certainly should not be collecting credit card details within the app.
Paying by phone is a step up from that old world; I just want it to be one tap, not a whole sequence that tries to upsell me on a monthly pass or establishing an in-app "parking wallet" or whatever.
Where I live the city commissioned its own mobile app for parking, and all numbered parking spots in the city use that app.
There are private lots that use Honk or Robbins or whatever, but the municipal lots and all parallel parking spaces downtown all use the same single app and the revenue goes to the city.
The city parking app works reasonably well, no ads, it just does one thing. If you leave early you open the app and hit "stop parking" and it only charges you the 37 cents or whatever that you actually consumed. It sends you a push notification when your parking is about to expire. And if you don't like the app for whatever reason, you can still pay with a card at the pay machines on every block. It's unglamorous, but it's fantastic technology.
The worst part is not that, but.. _which is the app for this area?_
I've been looking to do this setup. Would you share a few details of which tools you've used?
But this: >My phone is always VPNed into my home network which has DNS-level ad and tracker blocking. This doesn't cover all the bases though.
Is a great idea for a fun weekend project. Any tips, good practices or things to watch out for when setting it up?
Uhaul is a great example of this. The app looks a little better on mobile, but if you don’t make an account and search by reservation ID, all features related to things like extending a reservation time are nonfunctional. I have to go to the mobile site which looks bad and has poor navigation, trying to hijack my session and redirect me to the app, but at least it works.
And it wants a photo of my license EVERY GODDAMN TIME. And no I can't store a photo of my license on my phone and just upload it - it has to take a photo directly. And boy does it not like to take photos in bright sunlight. You know, when I'm outside in a parking lot beside a white truck.
Seriously, like most people, I have dozens of apps on my phone, forced on me by various needs. The ONLY one that makes anything easier or better is my password manager, which I have to have to safely keep and lookup the logins and passwords for all the damn apps...
(Starbucks, too. They just discontinued the little protein box with hard-boiled eggs in favor of yet another one with cheese.)
I have seen lots of complaints and memes to this effect, but never has it been my lived experience. I’ve also never had an issue with politely saying “excuse me, I actually ordered X and I got Y by mistake.” No nervous breakdown at all
That's what the linked article is all about.
I was at a car park in UK and you didn't have to install an app, just scan the QR to go to the web page, simple payment. Sadly they then messed it all up by not offering payment through normal services.
Lord no!
Scanning a random QR code.... where is the worst it will take you?
They'll get analytics from digital menus regardless of if a QR code is scanned or not. The QR code isn't really making a difference here, other than maybe adding in a specific table ID.
> built in table identified ordering...attack vector
Oh no, they're going to know table 36 ordered the appetizer sampler and a few beers. The horror. They couldn't have possibly known that before.
They're going to get a lot more verifiable information about me when they run my payment card than what they'll glean from a fresh browser tab.
I'm not promoting QR codes here. When I can avoid them I do. It's just that the incentives for owners and consumers are better with them and that's the challenge.
> Oh no, they're going to know table 36 ordered the appetizer sampler and a few beers. The horror. They couldn't have possibly known that before
I have no idea what you're on about here. I'm clearly referring to quishing to collect payment info. It's very easy to copy a website and plop a QR code onto a picnic table over the old one.
I will scan a QR code on a check the waiter printed for me and pay through that.
> You know exactly how many times your menu was scanned in house
The vast majority of the time I've seen a QR code stuck to a table its just goosejuicerestaurant.com/menu or https://taplist.io/demo-brewery on the QR code. About the only real time I've seen otherwise has been McDonalds, but they have raised metallic emblems glued to the table, it would be pretty obvious if it was messed with. And I'm not sure if they're even useful outside of the app.
Yes, that's what I'm referring to.
And I usually prefer to just scan a QR code to get the wifi details. Once again, its far fewer taps.
If you could do something with just two clicks or do something with 26 clicks, which path would you normally take?
To paraphrase George Bush: Goatse me once, shame on...shame on you. Goatse me — you can't get Goatse'd again
type out: https://thisislegitparkingpaymentwebsite.com
Is this goatse or is it the real payment website for your parking? You won’t know unless you go there
No, I don't just go around and scan every random QR code sticker on every single lamp post without any kind of context. But a QR code on the back of a business card with their contact information already nicely digitally formatted? Sure. A friend's QR code of their WiFi credentials on a little plaque in the den? Sure. A QR code at the bar showing the live tap list menu? Sure. A presenter giving the presentation slides by QR code? Sure.
And I pay attention to the URL that QR code is sending me to before I actually decide to go there. The QR code is just so I don't have to type in reallylongannoyingurl.ninja/some-horrific%20path/and?with=junkinit. It shows me the URL and asks "Do you want to go to obviousgoatse.com?" after it scans the code. That's the tap 2 of the two taps.
If they did they would not need to be pushed to apps by "it works better on the app" or offered discounts for using the app.
I'm sure every industry is different. For my current work, our users overwhelmingly want a native app. The majority of traffic is mobile and iOS. Everytime I tell someone about what I do they open up the app store and I have to tell them it's not on there and they ask why.
Anyway, apps have higher monetary conversion. The desire to push users to the app needs no other reason.
No, the average middle manager demands an app.
The average user has gotten over the novelty of having seven million apps on their phone.
The Customer Service department (we're a real business, so we have one of those) forwards all email, social media, and phone contacts about it to me.
Number of middle managers who have brought up having an app since 2019: Around five.
Number of actual users who asked for an app since 2019: One. Maybe two.
Your turn.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK616185
https://www.aba.com/news-research/analysis-guides/preferred-...
https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-IAB-Glob...
Which is pushing me to not use them at all.
As a result the only native apps I use on my phone are Kindle, Authy and Firefox because I trust Firefox to prevent apps doing a lot of the sketchy shit locally a lot more than I trust an app/the host OS to do so.
I'll bite. What important features can only be done in an "app" but not a web app nowadays?
It might be coming to the web - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_NFC_API
Somewhat confusingly, the iOS App Store description [0] of the app says that it is not a government app, while the rest of the internet and Kazakh government sites say that it is the official government app for the purpose of applying for the ETA.
- anything privacy sensitive
- anything processing intense (using optimized binaries)
- widgets
- camera and audio based features *can* work, but are more finicky (or outright broken on ios)
- local storage (exists in web app, short lifetimes on web site)
- performance/latency sensitive work
- (I'm less familiar, but probably local sensors, like gps and acceleration)You've got that backwards. Web is more private than an app.
Every regulated healthcare company has a web site. None require an "app."
Native apps can work reasonably well offline and online. Web apps can’t, currently.
Privacy is the opposite of what you get with an app. Privacy? Really?
Local storage is available to browsers. Office 365 literally functions in a browser with full access to local storage.
Anything processor intensive can be compiled to WASM. This isn't 2005 anymore.
So... widgets?
I can see an argument for games, where you want to pre-install a large amount of resources, and maybe have a better i/o story. Even that is a function of convenience over necessity.
I'd actually prefer that stuff stay in a browser and far away from my local storage on a device I take everywhere. Seems far riskier having it locally.
> anything processing intense
I can play Half-Life 2 in a browser window these days. I can do photo editing and CAD in the browser. I can have entire IDEs in the browser, compilers, non-linear video editors, and more. We're also kind of scoping this to phone apps, they're usually not very processing intense as you quickly hit heat and battery limits.
> camera and audio based features can work, but are more finicky (or outright broken on ios)
Sounds more like an overly restricted OS than anything else.
> local storage (exists in web app, short lifetimes on web site)
Once again, sounds like an overly restricted OS than a browser issue.
> (I'm less familiar, but probably local sensors, like gps and acceleration)
https://sensor-js.xyz/demo.html < works fine
https://openstreetmap.org < works fine
No one wants to troubleshoot a card decline by logging into their mobile browser bank account in checkout at the grocery store.
But that's because the user experience as designed is more hostile or not otherwise accounting for mobile use--right? Or are you saying there is a limit to the web platform's ability to reduce friction?
Trying to check why your card was declined at a checkout—while still standing at said checkout? Troubleshooting "PIN issues" (meaning your bad)? Is everyone still standing behind you at this point? LOL. Exactly.
A web app is almost never better.
Not really true anymore, especially on mobile. Plus the privacy invading abilities of native are much higher
> Plus the privacy invading abilities of native are much higher
Your privacy is already completely invaded if your data is in the cloud, as it has to be with web apps.
I get it, "I'm just traveling, why do I need to download an app which will be useless when I'm done traveling". Just delete it then, takes two steps!
Our reviews between our Web App and iOS app are like 2 sigma apart. Un-intuitively, our web app users are out fiddling with the app 2-3x more than our iOS app.
Please just put placards on your exhibits, then I can take as long ( or as quickly ) as I need to digest the info.
People can then use their phone to translate into other languages, if needed.
That describes silicon valley tech culture to a tee.
>>The issue is that people often forget to uninstall these apps almost all the time
Fundamentally though, iOS will auto-offload the unused apps for you (you won't get any notifications). For all intents and purposes, it is an ephemeral app already.
In addition to choosing not to use needless apps, some HN users here might have the opportunity for a stronger vote: refuse to (or at very least push back on) develop an app that could be a website.
Fdroid harbors the paradise we imagined in the early days where we just had these little computers in our pockets and didn't have to worry that everything on them was drowning in ads, scams and surveillance.
So if I do think I might want or need an app I immediately go and check on Fdroid. I can install apps from there without fear. If Fdroid doesn't have what I need, most likely I'm just tapping out. I won't use my phone. I barely use it these days when I'm not on the go anyway.
When we need to access the app again, we just have to restore it, which actually downloads the app and puts the app data back into it. It brings us back to exactly where we were before.
I do this to a lot of my apps these days, and it works very well. When we look at it, apps are nothing but a logged-in state for services that makes it easy to access them. On a typical web browser, you would have to keep logging in every now and then. Apps have a more persistent logged-in session that sometimes lasts forever as well.
You should find it insulting that they are likely selling that location data, not even to the highest bidder, but to a data broker that resells that data to anyone that will buy it for any price they'll pay.
Amusingly, I know of a very large hospital chain that has it the other way around.
The app version is the most limited. Mobile web has some more options. But if you want everything, that's desktop only.
Except for scheduled ordering from the coffee shops or placing in-patient meal orders. Those require an app. Except with the meal app, you get more menu choices from the web version.
Modern tech is a mess.
I try to never use apps anyway, because adblocking on them is hard or impossible (which is the reason they exist in the first place).
The result is that instead of building one app that works on all platforms, software companies need to build three apps: Web, iOS, and Android. I'm sympathetic to why most software companies (including my own) choose to just build a web app wrapped in a native wrapper. If a company does decide to build a totally separate iOS app, I dunno, it seems reasonable not to build support for every single niche feature that the web app has. I'm not sure I get the outrage here, especially since Google has a long track record of preferring web apps to native.
[1]The "reasons" primarily are that Apple refused to support PWAs, hamstrung mobile Safari, and refused to allow third-party browsers. So while it's true that native apps can offer a better experience than mobile web apps, that's mostly just because Apple artificially restricts web apps.
Everyone complained, loudly, and they caved in and launched the app store.
(Source: https://www.emarketer.com/content/search-behavior-being-rede...)
So in the future, when you have those three versions you need to build, its starting to make sense to have the mobile version be the full functionality version. Although, I guess it would be crazy to go to a link on your computer and be told it only works on mobile.
> …clear that mobile is the future…
And also, "mobile" is tangential to "app" vs "website".
https://youtube.com/watch?v=szrsfeyLzyg&pp=0gcJCYsCo7VqN5tD&...
HN's take -- Clearly this is Apple's fault.
ROFL. I mean, this is beyond parody at this point.
When I started working there (2012) L&S were already openly pushing "mobile first" and then later even "mobile only" because they saw it (mobile adoption) as existential threat to advertising revenue and worried that us engineers had a desktop bias that was going to set them back. I worked on several products where the PMs saw the web as a hindrance not a goal. e.g. I worked on Google WiFi and there was never an out-of-box experience or administration story for it for browser. Us SWEs asked for it, said we'd build it even, and the PMs and leadership level said no.
Google makes a browser, but a large part of the company is openly hostile to the open web at this point.
Installing an app is a matter of trust; trying to push me to install one against my will is the best way to demonstrate that you should not be trusted.
(Interestingly, I've heard a stance from technically well-informed iPhone users that don't see an app install as a large trust decision, because they assume that iOS is actually decent at protecting their privacy and rights in general. I don't know if that's true; on Android it certainly isn't.)
So ultimately yes, installing an app on iOS is not a trust decision because the dev are very limited in what they can do. The biggest trust decision is toward Apple that might have private secret APIs allowing them to do things developers cannot. That's a possibility, but overall Apple business has never been around ads, big data and users profiling so the chances are not this high.
Every UK bank is, IME.
The only thing I can think of is regular background pings to track the user through IP geolocation.
I mean if you use Google products it can be assumed you don’t care about privacy anyway.
I made one purchase on Amazon while connected to a VPN.
Amazon froze my account and demanded proof of identity.
Amazon don't accept an existing photo of primary ID for their preferred ID verification check, it must be a photo taken by a camera on-device, and I don't have a webcam on my desktop PC. Once you select the secondary method, it seems you can't go back to the primary.
My bank can't issue a statement on the mobile app.
My bank, even through the website, can't issue a statement that has the required details (name, credit card details - blanked except for last four digits, and transactions) that includes pending transactions.
I had to manually request a statement from my bank (via a phone call) that included the pending transaction, edit it in an image editing app, submit it to Amazon via their web-site.
None of the apps (bank, Amazon, government ID, camera) had the flexibility to solve the problem.
The root cause was using a VPN to make an online purchase of a $12 piece of hobby electronics.
Not only are apps broken, the current state of the internet (and the random ways companies try to enforce "security") is also broken.
In my experience, it was not possible to complete the verification via computer, even with a webcam. The verification site assumes and seems to require that you use a cellphone.
Unfortunately for me, a lot of my books are tied to them.
So unless a napkin and a receipt are books, what actually makes something a book is its content structure, intent, and writing. Not the paper it's printed on.
What I think is going on here is:
* You have some app developers working on an app and caring about its particular user experience.
* Then you have framework UX designers/developers working on new design systems and rolling them out across hundreds of apps.
Those two have limited coordination with each other. So when a new design system like Material drops into every app, unconsidered interactions between the design system and the app's specific UI go sideways and no one is in a good position to notice or address it.
Google certainly takes the blame in this case, but I don't think it's a problem unique to Google either. There is always a tension between wanting a consistent user experience across many products and features and wanting a user experience that makes the most sense for one particular product or feature.
Yes, it's annoying that you can't get to stuff under the plus button. But users really do learn that "oh, the plus button will always be on the bottom right" and that provides real value to them for that to be consistently true across many apps. It makes each app easier to be productive in.
User experience design is hard and I don't think there's a silver bullet, though obviously this case is particularly annoying.
It’s just BIZARRE. Google apps and services are such a travesty; I detest that people have become so accustomed to them they’re basically the norm. Google sucks. Period.
PWA's are freaking awesome for both users and developers. Users don't have to install a massive app and me as a developer can focus on making one platform better rather than 3.
And they are pretty freaking powerful in what you can do. Not to toot my own horn too much but I created an "app"[1] for viewing cities on the other side of the earth from where you're standing. It's got camera, gyro and GPS to determine what you're looking at to the folks I've shown it too, anyone non-technical has been completely fooled and thought it was a proper app.
I anticipate if you start getting public feature requests a native app will be at the top of the list.
Almost no one else except the PC gamers I know really like using desktop (or laptop) computers. Most people love being able to sit on the couch and use apps on their phone. Its not like massive portions of the population were loving their desktops until smartphones arrived and they transitioned, no - smartphones are what helped the internet revolution really inseminate into the general population.
As a developer and (web) app vendor, I understand that many users still want apps. I just had a user ask when we'd be releasing our app for iOS. I explained that we did have an app and that it would be identical to what we'd release for iOS. Then I explained the maze of submenus she'd have to click through to get the icon on her home screen.
Apple and Google hate the open web so they make it excessively difficult to "install" PWAs and then in some cases, they're less functional than the website itself. More blame lies at the feet of Apple and Google than on web-first vendors who release sub-optimal apps as a delivery workaround.
We're not releasing apps yet precisely because I want us to be focusing on features. Having to target two additional platforms increases the surface area for testing and takes time away from developing features with the potential cost of releasing a "sub-optimal" app.
On iOS, is it not just a matter of tapping the "send" button and tapping [+] Add to Home Screen?
When switching between google accounts on a random app or game, no issue. Quick code, you’re in. When I switch between accounts on Claude on mobile, I have to sign in, enter the code, screen freezes, I sign in again, can’t verify it’s me, I sign again, wait 30 seconds, I’m in.
I have to sign in three separate times when signing into a single google account in Claude. For every single other app it’s very quick.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Anthropic and google are working together to degrade sign-in performance for multi-account users. I can’t fully prove it yet but I plan to be able to in the week or two.
If you’ve used Claude Code for any length of time you’re familiar with all of the strange rendering bugs, freezes, etc. OpenAI is even worse, their horrific software makes it difficult to _pay_ them, which should be top priority for a company.
But when it comes to software, we all just kind of accept that shitty software is the norm and totally fine? Let's start calling it what it is, its defective.
In my case, I use both, for different reasons, and continuously test other.
I have thousands of people on an org. I had to go through every page to extract the top spenders.
Openai... you captured the sentiment.
The whole thing is nuts:
1. All of reddit's content is UGC. They write literally nothing themselves. There's a strong argument that everything there written by unpaid users should be considered a public good.
2. Tech companies are now, ostensibly, aware of value of having users who engage intentionally instead of compulsively. Mobile apps, with their notifications etc., encourage compulsion. Websites less so.
It will be an interesting reckoning when the polity wakes up to the idea that as social media companies don't pay for the content, they should have no right to restrict access to it. LLMs likewise wouldn't work at all without the petabytes of data they either got for free from users or purloined, and so the argument for their weights being public goods is similar.
(Yelp is mostly useless now, because they're not effectively purging dead businesses. About a third of listings in popular categories seem to be dead.)
What baffles me is that, there's no way in the web app to assign a default calendar for new events. When I create a new event on the web, I have to scroll through all the calendars that I have and choose the one that I want every time. Meanwhile, in the mobile app, I can simply tap on a new block, the event window appears, and the selected calendar defaults to what I used for my last added event.
Getting a contents policy in a safe neighborhood where you know that there's little risk is likely not a good deal. Getting a contents policy when you've learned that your neighbors are getting into hard drugs is probably a good deal.
Paying $19/mo for third-party full coverage + theft on your $1,000 mobile phone is probably not a good deal even if you know you are high risk, for the simple reason that at $19, they game must be that they will find any reason to refuse to pay, and will give you a poorly refurbished phone for your troubles if you make them honor the insurance.
I also look at Application Insights / Azure Monitor w/ their OTel SDK, Teams, SharePoint, Visio, <insert MS product here>. Basic functionality is missing and requests are left open for years or decades. Nothing is ever polished. Nothing is ever finished. Everything is good-enough.
It's not without issues obviously. Most of the time the first thing I have to do is update the damn app just to order a burger or park my car or whatever it is I'm using it for. And it's dumb that we need to have a 150 meg download (per update...) for what's basically a bookmark.
But still, the better integration with my phone's native stuff like keychain etc usually means I'm more satisfied after using an app to do something, than using the _exact same web page_ in my mobile browser.
It's interesting how different things bother people in different ways. Because when this happens to me, I want to throw my phone into the sun. It's a viscerally irritating experience that sticks with me for the rest of the day.
I have my essentials (browser, email, Signal) of course. But besides that, nearly all my apps fit into one of the following 3 categories: transit (airlines, rideshare, city bikes), finance (banks, brokerage), and...
baseball. MLB has put a shocking amount of effort into their apps. The ticketing experience is genuinely really good, so much better than any ticketmaster trash. All apps are trash, unless you're a baseball fan, in which case all but 2 apps are trash. I guess.
Yes we're solving an app problem with another app, but just highlighting that is a solution for the ads.
So I have zero social media networks on my phone and, looking at everyone around me who does, I'm very pleased with this decision.
It's probably better this way. Hopefully bots will kill off social media before even more countries decide to ban it.
Messenger doesn’t work but luckily I rarely if ever use it.
Web is such a powerful platform and so many people still treat their web applications like they're just interactive documents. I think the most bothersome thing on mobile web is if an application has shifting framing ("chrome") when you pan around, like you're looking at a PDF.
Let me know, but I developed it almost entirely focused on iPhone SE as a target to give myself the most claustrophobic possible experience, and I think that helped guide a lot of the decisions.
* In the anecdote, the problem is that the web version works better and the app is missing functionality.
* The title pays reference to an annoying observation about many products where the web version lacks functionality the app has.
Both are frustrating. If a company is going to bother to have both an app and a website, users deserve an experience where both are fully featured. It should be an professional embarrassment for a company to have to route users from the app to the site or vice versa because one is half-baked.
Have some God-damned professional pride and do it right.
Time to upgrade to the latest cheapy? Well, thanks AI boom, there aren't really any cheapies any more. And even $600+ phones now come with... drum roll... 5GB of RAM. OK, which maybe covers me for another two years of bloat until I'm right back where I started.
Yes, it's possible to stay ahead of the bloat if you pay $1.5K+ for your phone and upgrade somewhat regularly. A colleague has hundreds of apps on his phone and they all work.
Me, I use a desktop browser. Except for certain things that are only available as an app. The xda-developers types say no problem, just unlock and root the d*mn thing and then you can run debloating tools and if you jump through all the right hoops the banking app will still work. Bleech.
People have cheaper phones here, so devs are naturally more exposed to low end hardware.
It's been awesome for me! I have a fairphone 4 which isn't top of the line at all anymore but the apps work MUCH better here on average than when I was in the US. Websites also load quicker too for similar reasons.
(I think it was for a chain or churches or a similar civic organization)
IE, I think someone made a group of locations in Google Maps, and then for the "Locations" link on their website, just linked to the group of locations in Google Maps. In the browser, this works fine, but on mobile, Google Maps just imports the link to my account without asking.
I know not everyone can do this, and some PWAs are downright terrible if they work at all, but for my usecase it has been great.
On mobile, Googling 'radio 4 schedule' is the quickest way, and the only negative bit about the entire experience is the popup that tells me 'it's better in the app'.
It's not. Not by any metric.
My search and opening a webpage takes a second or two. Opening the app takes several seconds, then navigating to the Radio 4 page and scrolling down the schedule takes several more.
I submitted a bug report on the topic and they basically told me "we hear you but shush and use the app".
And the new icons of their apps look like a kindergarden project. Can't they just leave the design alone, or ask the user? Seems impossible.
Since about 2018 or so, most apps have failed to properly support rotating the device. When you load the same service in a web browser, you gain that feature back. Facebook is a big example.
Other apps actually have MORE functionality in the browser than their app version. This is why PWAs are now much more preferable than before.
I deleted 150ish.
I have no issues.
I will delete another 30 to see how it will go.
This is one instance, with one vendor, but our day is made up of thousands of interactions across multiple vendors. And all big (major) vendors seem to have these kinds of issues.
That's a problem because these interactions add up. To the point where I’ve personally been accused of “[liking] being angry”
I’m not sure what the answer is. But for me, I’ve been trying to find and use tools that don’t piss me off, paid or otherwise. So for mail and calendar, for example, I tried out https://www.hey.com/ and it not only does it not piss me off, but I like it for how I use calendar and mail.
I don’t know if anyone here has read Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich, but the book comes to mind every time I run into these kinds of frustrating interactions.
It makes me wish it didn't become the norm to lock down site/service APIs are reserve them for private use only so crappy web apps would have to compete with superior third party alternatives.
I myself do not have a personal smartphone (and my work smartphone is powered off the moment the clock says 5pm).
Frankly, my life is better for it.
Isn't this likely because Google Calendar was abused a lot in phishing? e.g. fake "CLICK TO PROCEED" links as ads -> redirected to Google Calendar named "CLICK [+] SIGN TO CONTINUE" -> "URGENT: re-enter your credit card number at https://scam.example/buy-us-bitcoin" fake schedules recurring every x minutes etc.
They charge you 25% for each sale you do via their platform, but the latest thing they did was to force you to "identify" you are you via a website where they track your face features and scan your ID "because of security". Yeah, that sounds good, so I did that in 2021.
They asked this again last year because of reasons. But this time they won't let you use a regular web browser: they forced you to do this via their app. No matter how much you try, it will always fail citing "compatibility issues" or "errors". I tried to complain but their customer support is incredibly shitty, if you even manage how to find to contact them.
But oh surprise, their "app" is just a web wrapper.
It's a shame there's no alternative to Meli. I'm shopping around for a macbook and I would much rather have a marketplace with verified identities and profiles than the shady whatsapp groups and contacts I'm finding.
And since having the app installed at all sort of hijacks AllTrails links, you really don't even want it installed at all. Yet you constantly are told to install the app...drives me up the wall.
I think they do it to be able to send you notifications and sell you more flights, but I don't understand why they need to be so anti-user. I try to NOT fly Ryan Air unless there is no other airline available. I'd rather pay twice as much than support their poor and sometimes borderline-criminal business practices.
I recently chose to fly with a MUCH more expensive airline than deal with this (and yes, I was spending my own money).
Ryan Air is the pits.
We can't even have haptic vibration on Safari. And when we did for a little while earlier this year, it was because of a "bug" that that they promptly fixed.
Apple is not interested in making with apps as seamless and integrated as native because: money.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/befo...
Yes one can. They got greedy.
https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-int...
I want to pin the app, not share.
That seems purposefully misplaced. As usual with malicious compliance.
In Android: Menu > Install and create shortcut. Much cleaner, intentional, and visible with a single click for me.
I just asked my colleague and they had no clue how to do it in their iPhone. I guess a win for Apple.
More and more I'm giving up on apps, and online self-servicing as the structures and scope of what either one can do is increasing narrowing. It's much much easier to just call these days (fortunately AI answering the phone is still not prevalent). Customer service will obviously inform you that "You can just our self-service solutions in the future", even if you literately just called in because you can't due to inflexibility and options you don't understand.
Also "you can manage it from your phone" is not the sales pitch it once was, because it's no longer the entire truth. You can in fact ONLY manage it from your phone. If whatever you're selling requires an app, chances are that I'm not buying and if it's a service, I will seek out your store or staff and make them do it for me.
Literally bought new networking gear from Ubiquiti because of this crap, and could not be happier with it. Only problem is the ISP literally blocks any modem that's their stupid combo router modem Internet-of-Shit cloud-connected hardware-as-a-service garbage. Modem works for a few hours, then the line goes suddenly dead (even to their own router) until I've called them and gotten told that my modem is faulty even though it was working fine until they cut the line, etc. so I have to deal with still having their router in front of my own gear
Yes, I know some apps wouldn't make it in the browser. These are sacrifices I am willing to make.
I thought that they just want to collect more data about you.
Like, I think that the instinct to make everything a web app is what partially leads to things like what this article complains about. Well, besides laziness, of course.
At the very least, I disagree about GPUs, OpenGL/Vulcan, and various audio and video related things.
Says who exactly though? The big companies and web devs who think your browser needs raw access to HIDs? Why exactly does a web browser need this level of access when a native application is far superior (and doesn't need to deal with the limitations of a web browser)? All this does is require that browsers be more and more complicated and be more and more invasive so that we can pretend that the web browser is our operating system. That in turn makes it harder and harder for web browsers to even be implemented in the first place.
E.g. your fitness tracking app or your parking app, they don't need any of those features. They can work perfectly fine as simply forms, they aren't "apps".
It's impossible though. There actually isn't a single company alive that's capable of doing something like that, because it would require a decision maker to say "instead of these two things I want just one thing" and the second that happens it will be the end of the world.
To be fair, bookmarking is easy but browsing and locating a bookmarked URL is far from easy. To bookmark in chrome on desktop requires pressing an obvious star button on the right of the address bar (it's always there, so easy to locate). But browsing/locating a bookmark requires clicking on the vertical ellipses on the right-most of the browser, finding 'Bookmarks and lists' amongst a lot of wordy options, then the fun starts: you can scroll bookmarks but cannot even see the full bookmark (only the first 40 characters and favicon) and they're not even in alphabetical order. If you have several hundred, like I do, that's a lot of work, and consequently, I approximately never do it. Easier to copy the url into an email and send it to yourself.
For folks like myself who use different browsers across operating systems, it's even more convoluted for obvious reasons (e.g. I use safari on iOS and chrome on macOS, so something bookmarked on iPhone doesn't make it to macbook and vice-versa).
tl;dr bookmarks are a mess, even for the tech-savvy
My rule for apps these days is that if it is not available through F-Droid, I won't be using it.
I usually don't attribute it to malice or incompetence from hypothetical devs, instead I blame malice or incompetence from hypothetical lawyers.
Sick burn.
I tend to prefer using the browser, where possible, eschewing bespoke apps, but I would expect an app to have more functionality than the browser.
It's sad, when it doesn't.
(If you didn't read the post, it doesn't work in the app either. It only works on "desktop.")
"Do you have the Delta app?"
"Nope."
Then he pressed a few keys on his keyboard and printed out a new boarding pass for me within five seconds. I couldn't believe he was trying to kick me over to the app if it was that easy.
Meanwhile non-app users are directed to the otherwise idle staff at the check-in desk. It's bliss.
Native is a much better experience than mobile websites when you actually use the features and power of these fairly advanced computers we carry around in our pockets.
Sometimes… well sometimes there’s no dev resources available to make an app work in a way you’d expect. Google is just a tiny startup, be reasonable in your expectations.
Point is: if you actually want to reach a large audience — you want both. Also, don’t expect good experience if you use Google’s products.
At least Google makes an attempt at usability. It’s not like the product team has a choice.
Obviously, the bulk of it is noticeable in notoriously crapware software like management systems, but it's increasingly emerging just about everywhere.
I wonder how long it will take to understand even just this small slice of the problem, without even getting into "anything apps" and the need to return to the OS as a single integrated application/framework with end-user programming—a trend of which we're only seeing a few hints.
Like, sure, there are login sessions that expire after five seconds of inactivity. Sometimes it even turns out that they don't support passkeys or TOTP, and you have to add a phone number for SMS authentication, which reduces account security by letting attackers prove your identity.
I want a browser extension that automatically clicks those "I'm still here" pop-ups on scummy websites like this...
But they have an app. And they don't even shove it in your face that the experience is better with the app or whatever. But it is for one and literally only ever one singular reason: it doesn't log you out every five seconds
Meanwhile, the people who stay behind and actually make these half-finished apps work properly, maintain them and deal with all the boring problems rarely get the same credit or benefits.