Progressive Web Apps Are Competing with the Apple App Store | Hacker News Reader

Progressive Web Apps Are Competing with the Apple App Store

fastcompany.com

38 pointsfeross22 comments

I'm quoted in the linked article, and I wanted to add just a bit more here:

It's hard to overstate how entrenched the app store paradigm has become. When you tell people "Hey, I released a new web app" the first thing they do is go to the App Store and type in the name. If the app doesn't show up there, they get confused and don't know where else to look.

Really, the only benefit of the App Store model is discovery – much more so than the claimed benefits of curation or security. The web offers an equal, if not better, security model – all web apps are sandboxed and must ask for permission to do anything. The browser sandbox is the most secure and well-tested sandbox in existence today. It has to be much better than native OS sandboxes alone since it can't lean on "curation" to keep outright malware off people's devices. The web sandbox keeps you safe even when you click a link to totally random website that hasn't been pre-checked by anyone.

The main issue is web apps just aren't discoverable right now. When you search Google, you get a lot of random stuff mixed in with web apps. I don't think consumers care what the underlying tech is – they just want solutions to their problems whether from a "PWA app" or a "native app". It's indistinguishable to consumers, except in discovery.

Sadly I ran into this exact problem. We did a small PWA as a trial to see how our customers would respond. The number of "I can't find it in the App Store" emails we got was massive. No matter how many tutorials we put together showing that you can turn the web app into a home screen icon we sent out, we could not dig users out of the App Store mentality.

You can tell them it requires an invite then link them to your page.

Did you end up being forced to make a mobile app?

Yes, we ended up doing both native Android and iOS, which has been manageable but we're looking to try and push PWA again for the next project to reduce the overhead of dual platform support.

How about putting a small app in the store that just installs the web app and then uninstalls itself ( don't know if that's possible)?

I doubt apple let you do it

Or is just a web-wrapper?

This is a solved problem.

I built a mobile PWA app, with functionality equivalent to a native app in look and feel. I put a lot of work in pre-rendering the next views in the background to get it where it’s at.

However, users don’t understand that it’s a platform simply because it’s a website. The marketing around web technology is just that it’s a completely impersonal experience.

Then the first statement out of users is “This is great! When’s the app coming out?”

Thirdly, when users want to go to the PWA, they look around their home screens forgetting that it wasn’t an app.

Fourthly, users don’t know how to add it to their Home Screen, so they invariably type it in their browser everytime they’d like to access it, adding lots of friction.

This has been such an eye opening experience beyond anything I expected, I knew about marketing as UX but I had no idea this is the marketing users are familiar with. So for that simple reason I’m working on the app.

But then of course there is the case of OnlyFans which isn’t an app but has found success. I think this works because its ingress exists on apps, so its discovery can co-opt the origin app e.g Twitter

> when users want to go to the PWA, they look around their home screens forgetting that it wasn’t an app.

> users don’t know how to add it to their Home Screen, so they invariably type it in their browser everytime they’d like to access it, adding lots of friction.

Microsoft is fighting this. Google, too, to some extent. Change is coming.

The other benefit is e-commerce IT infrastructure and hosting - that's not free if you DIY so it can be worth it to pay someone else (i.e. Apple).

The apps my company have are on the App Store because of that. It's the same reason we outsource payroll and have Office 365. It's cheaper and outside our core competency so we pay to have someone else handle that.

Would something like Capacitorjs or bubblewrap not solve this?

It'd solve things from the technology side, but you'd still need to pay for a developer license, wait to pass the review process, and most importantly, let them take 30% of your revenue.

Yup, completely agree with this!! (I was also quoted in the article)

One thing I do see having the potential to change things is https://appsco.pe, it's a really nicely designed 'PWA store'. If it (and PWAs) became more mainstream, I can see that being another place that people would go to search your thing.

However, it looks like it hasn't been actively developed for a while. I wish they would add a reviews feature, as that would make them a well known 'brand' (think about all the PWA developers asking people for a review on Appscope like native devs do with the App Store)

Why did you call it a web app? Why not 'i made a website'?

The mentality is primarily entrenched in developers, not on users

>The main issue is web apps just aren't discoverable right now.

I dont think that is true.

The biggest problem is there is no single one button solution to add ( install ) a Web App to your Home Screen. Clicking on Add to Home Screen is not the solution. For example, if you read about an HTML Games on the Web. You dont want user to click on the Game right now and Add to Home Screen. You want them to install to their homescreen with a single button.

I am not the usual supporter of PWA Apps because they dont offer the experience a Native Apps offer, even in their best form. ( Things are improving but still not quite there, the last 10% is always going to be very hard ) But that is a small price to pay. The problem is Apple is stopping PWA support at all cost.

Another thing to mention regarding the web is that most people can easily install an ad blocker extension or install something like Brave browser to block ads on the web. Apps on the other hand are much harder to block ads in possibly using Pi-Hole or something more involved.

Regarding the “Hey, I released a new web app”, I have legit never used the word “web app”. Just call it a website instead and you will have a lot more interest without weird stares. “Web app” is a more techy term imo.

Apple is scared shitless of PWA's, they know it will eat a chunk of their precious App Store revenue were they to be fully capable on iOS and not crippled... they need to allow push notifications, ship full support for WebGL2 without having to toggle it on manually, I could go on and on...

The first iPhone didn't have an App Store. Any 'apps' were websites and in fact, apple had a website that listed various 'apps' the user could 'install' to their phone. I don't remember if these were PWA's or traditional websites, but it was the original model.

This is why IMO, web is the platform that will always win. There are (nearly) no rules around it. I can spin up a server, by a domain name, and host a site in an hour without having to pay anyone to review anything and receive anyone's approval. Monthly cost can be as low as a few dollars.

I fully believe most native apps could easily be built as web apps with the same performance, animations, and polish.

I have been hearing this talk for more than ten years now. As someone with 23 years experience with the web and more than ten with iOS all I can say: spend some tine learning native technologies. Then you will know better.

What can I pay you to help me fully understand if your perspective I'd relevant to my industry?

Web is the posix of this generation.

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