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Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

> ... Consumers are another problem. ...

You blame Apple, Google and your consumers, instead of just making native apps. Why?

As an iOS and Android developer myself, this doesn't effect me but I still think Apple and Google making things harder for PWA is bad because Apple and Google are the gate keepers for what goes on their native app stores. I can cut some slack for Google as they at least allow third party app stores but Apple doesn't.

Either Apple should stop being the gate keeper or stop making life harder for web devs.

Maybe Apple could offer a compromise and allow users to sideload apps, but restrict non-App Store apps from accessing the file system or any kind of personal identification (like location etc.)

And improve their documentation to lower the barriers to native development.

Yep. Just because "PWA"-geek niche at HN wants to go back to shitty UX from 2004 it doesn't mean all tech companies or consumers want to.

I hope Apple keeps restricting this in the future too so that iOS app ecosystem won't turn in to a turkish fruit market full of crap like Android.

You’re getting downvoted, but I agree. Enough with shitty UX’s already!

So, make 3 apps instead of 1? This was the whole idea behind PWA.

Yes, that's the whole idea behind having different devices and operating systems with different capabilities.

Why should users suffer the lowest common denominator because of lazy developers?

The lowest common denominator is not having the application available on your platform at all.

I'd rather them not have the resources to get an app working on my platform, then have enough resources to _barely_ get an app working on my platform.

I wouldn't attribute it to laziness. Quality can really suffer when you need to maintain so many code bases. Not all teams have those kinds of resources.

Perhaps Electron/PWA should be seen as a last resort, not the norm, reserved for exactly such a situation: when you don’t have the resources to build native for all platforms.

It makes it a lot harder for solo developers or small companies to develop apps that work on all platforms

Why should customers pay for the development and maintenance of three apps when one is entirely sufficient for their needs?

"just making native apps"

Hiring aside, it’s probably simpler than attempting to reconcile souped up document viewers with contemporary expectations of “apps”, iOS and Android being purposefully built for the task and all.

Having done native Android/iOS and web dev, web dev is much easier than Android and at least on par/if not easier than iOS.

There's a bunch of very complex web/electron apps that disprove the idea that the web is only for static documentation and web-inspired ideas are coming to mobile (React --> Jetpack Compose/Swift UI).

More importantly, hiring can't be put aside, and it's much easier to adapt your web app to work for mobile (since websites should be screen size agnostic anyway) than it is to build a fully native app from scratch.

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