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Comment by ffritz | Hacker News Reader

Are App Clips Apples “answer” to PWAs?

Semi-installed Apps with more privileges than a website, requiring the usual iOS dev workflow with a paid plan of course (seems like App Clips are part of a regular App, so you have to write a regular app anyway). Oh and it supports Apple Pay and Login.

I’m convinced that this is another sign that PWAs are never going to be really capable on iOS.

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I'd say it's the answer to Google play Instant.

https://developer.android.com/topic/google-play-instant

This is used so rarely, in my experience, that it's jarring on first use but overall a good experience. Usually I find the web interface fine or good enough for how often I use it and move on.

Once I liked the Instant version so well I got the actual app. For things I do regularly and can be 100% via web, it is nice to see a better implementation via an app and install it.

I wouldn't say it's the answer - it's a different take, and I suspect it will be executed really well. The UI looks intuitive.

App Clips will potentially be revolutionary in terms of app adoption. It's hard enough to get people to install your apps.

Now if you have a real life item pushing you in that direction, offering you a light weight app to start off with, it's SO much easier. I'm super excited about App Clips.

It seems like a way to let people not install an app. If there's always an app clip available, why bother installing? Many apps don't need to keep the audience engaged all that time - that's what apps are good at - with annoying notifications and all. If you are a parking meter provider, you don't care about that. You just want people to be able to pay you quickly.

Actually might be closer to the The Google Pay Spot Platform instead, which supports PWA:

https://developers.google.com/pay/spot

https://youtu.be/-YAy4M8ZiR8

It's an answer to one of PWA's advantages, the install friction. It's also a feature thats existed on Android for a while, although I don't see much uptake.

Hopefully now that there's feature parity we'll see some increased support across all platforms.

Of all the things presented, I'm most excited by App Clips. Between Sign-In with Apple, Apple Pay, and this, I think it's going to take real world digital commerce to another level.

What's stopping me from putting a PWA in a webview and call it a app clip? Is that possible? From the app clip docs it seems like they didn't prohibit that.

PWAs are never going to be really capable anywhere.

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