Personally, I've never understood it, since nearly every mobile website is terrible. I prefer installing the app.
Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve.
If you don't like it, why not?
Mobile websites are easier to install, fine to use for anything that doesn't require specific hardware permissions, and then when the user stops using them they stay gone. Not to mention they work on my Linux machine and my Windows machine and my iPad and my Galaxy. Forget apps.
I'm rarely looking at 1 restaurant at a time, I'm trying to compare 5, or 6 or 10.
The Yelp app has no means of doing that.
Also, I can't easily select some text in the app, like the name of a dish I'm not familiar with, and quickly trigger a web search in another tab to do some quick side reading.
I have the Yelp app installed, but 9 times out of 10 the browser is how I prefer to use search for restaurants.
Because of Yelp's frustrating site restrictions, I find myself often using Google instead, even though I prefer Yelp!!!!!!
How ridiculous is that!!
Browsers also seem to have better low bandwidth performance than most apps. Probably because doing constrained network communications is hard and only browsers have the billions of reps needed to practice getting it right. With most apps I find that network handling in poor network situations (like is all too common when traveling and looking for a restaurant) is inferior to most browsers.
So yeah, Yelp would definitely win me over if they kept their site browser and low-bandwidth friendly.
Yeah, you're right. Yelp sucks. But ya have to believe, in time, someone will put the user first and get the experience correct.
I'm sure the interface for advertisers must be pleasant, though.
It's akin to having to install a program on your laptop to view a website instead of using the browser.
I am not saying most users think like that, providing anecdotal feedback here.
So it's not exactly that Sony wants or is even asking for your location, it's Google telling you that if you give the sony app the BLE or wifi scanning functionality it wants, it would be possible for them to figure out where you're at.
That warning means they could, and so google is telling you, not that they are.
Downloading an app can take an unpredictable amount of time and bandwidth, and once you download it you may have to log in, remember or set a password, deal with 2FA, click a verification email, etc. .
like you don't have to do those on a website?
The only sites that need this are those where users are adding content and the site is moderated, and then login should only be required for moderated actions.
So Yelp should require a login to leave a review, but not to read one.
They're working on it but it's a hard problem because too many app developers, especially at household-name companies, have a history of acting in bad faith. When you're prompted to install an app you're really having to guess whether it'll chew batter or metered data, or attempt to exploit your personal data.
The OS vendors are offering better controls but it takes time to rebuild trust, especially when they're not sure whether the OS vendor quietly makes exceptions for major companies. Remember when Uber was violating Apple's policies and had no punishment for it? People will remember that for years even if they've had strict compliance ever since.
And if you can structure a restaurant review site for mobile, you have no business building anything.
And that's besides the other objections that I've seen others write here.
Some are more affected of the issues, some less.
> Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve.
No.
Speaking from the experience of my spouse (fancy iPhone user) and I (low-end Android user) -- both our phones are normally out of memory. We take lots of family photos and videos, which fill up our phones and are tedious to delete or back up. So downloading a new app means first we have to delete something else.
A secondary but lesser reason is notifications. I know that every app will require a minute or two of effort to locate the notification settings and switch them all off.
Because it means I'll be prompted for the App Store password, which I probably won't remember (or will get wrong 3 times) and so will need to change it, but the process won't let me change the password to anything I've used in the past 12 months (so I cannot change it to whatever I though the password was). So I need to make up a whole new password, and that means my mail and everything else linked to the account will stop working on all my other devices and I'll need to update the account passwords on those too.
On-page search, copy-and-paste, and bookmarking deep in the content come for free.
The back button will behave predictably.
The browser engine has had a lot of bulletproofing on it; by comparison a lot of apps are unstable.
Updates are completely automatic- no "here's a 500mb update you won't get until weeks from now when you get to a Wifi hotspot."