However, what problems do mobile apps solve? Why are they needed and are they needed really?
The only idea I came up with: speed. The apps are indeed faster and provide better user experience. However, the state of web development can provide almost the same experience.
Mobile phones are like a Tesla Model S, and you don’t want to tie it to a bullock and use it as a ox-cart.
For example, with iOS UISlider, you can make fine or coarse adjustments by moving your thumb perpendicular to the slider direction. This works across all native apps. Users who learn about this feature become more capable in every native app.
There's no mechanism to create this sort of shared knowledge on the web. The web developer culture emphasizes customization, and so no two web apps work consistently.
There's also battery life and suspend. I expect a native app to minimize, close and kill, resume, and background when needed.
For users of the app - As you mentioned, speed is an important factor. But we can also trust that the distributor has reviewed the app and confirmed that it's safe to use (theoretically at least).
One more point I would add - app stores provide a singular place for me to search, compare, and discover new apps that might be valuable to me.
However I have saved endless amounts of time by watching youtube videos to learn a new cooking skill, or another physical skill - videos are so much better than text when it comes to that.
A video will take more time to get through compared to just reading through a tutorial.
But for a young human, maybe a greater proportion of the content is unknown. In such a case, it becomes reading the whole page vs viewing a whole video and probably the video wins?
I am not sure if this is the true reason. It was merely a thought exercise.
Or maybe the transition from watching tv to using youtube for info was a more enjoyable one than moving from books to webpages?
Also, how much money is there in targeting kids as an audience? Mobile eyeballs are rare, 97% of the time is spent on the top 10 apps
I have been using GitHub on mobile via its web application for years. It worked fine for the most part though some feature (such as pull requests) weren't as easily accessible on mobile as they are on desktop machines.
However, with the advent of their new mobile app, not only is its UX better when compared with the web app (e.g. when reviewing pull requests) but due to the banner notification reminding you to use the mobile app when accessing GitHub via the web app on mobile devices the UX of the web app to some extent even has decreased.
The thing is, there are no features within the GitHub mobile app that actually warrant having such an app. Everything the app does would have been possible on the web and with mobile browser APIs, too.
So, in that specific case the purpose of a mobile application perhaps mostly comes down to having such a mobile application, i.e. it's more about marketing and distribution channels than it is about technology or design requirements.
This is a major reason. Another is access to the features of your mobile device, such as location, AR Engine, camera, push notifications, etc.
- Privacy. A good intention mobile app, can be designed to work without Internet.
- Internet. User doesn't have access to Internet all-the-time, but you still need certain app to work.
- Fast. Web app can never be as fast as native app. It is not realistic to expect code which runs under an JavaScript interpreter layer, can be as fast as native (or almost native) code which is nearer to CPU layer.
- They want native notifications, not email or SMS.
- They perceive that web will be more difficult to log into.
- The don’t know how to install a website onto their phone like an app.
(For context, we are Bottomless.com, YC W19.)
Revenue, monetization of PII and other user data is the primary purpose. That's why some sites are so aggressive about pushing them on you, to the point of making the web app substantially worse than it should be. Yelp and reddit, from the top of my mind.
Sure, there are apps that benefit from more direct hardware access (games, art?) but they are often able to charge a fee.
Please, show me a complex web application that performs well (little perceptible UI latency) on a mid-range phone.
Edit: Or a fast SPA - I've never seen one.
We tried very hard to make it a fast SPA.
Seems to me the biggest draw one would be see how you can retain the people that are willing to go the extra mile to download your app. You must be solving a problem for them in a significant way. A web app is a quickie, it's useful or isn't. And besides the reasons why they are useful above, it helps you to fail /or/ scale faster.