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Comment by havblue | Hacker News Reader

Convenience side, driving people back to web browsers that are platform independent and away from apps is good though right?

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Honestly, what's the difference between a web app on mobile and a native app?

Web browser tech has gotten so advanced that it seems more like just a difference in frameworks between the two.

  > Web browser tech has gotten so advanced that it seems more like just a difference in frameworks between the two.

on older or lower end devices, or slower networks the difference can be pretty dramatic

just as an example, youtube on web vs app on a 5 year old ipad (that otherwise would be totally usable) is pretty huge, same with even banking sites like chase or amex is light and day in app vs web ui performance*

*please note i'm not advocating for closed technologies as much as pointing out that web and native still have differences that matter to a lot of customers

Even on the fastest mobile phone on the planet, apps like AirBnB, Papa Johns, and banking apps are much faster than their web equivalents.

For a lot of apps, the website is better. But there are still some things that an app does better. Mainly either apps that require a lot of data to download once, or apps that require sensors that don't work as well or at all in the browser.

Apps working off-line is much less of an issue now, but still an issue. E.g. one app I wrote to let kayakers check the water levels updates in the background, so the data is available when they get out in the hills with no service. Similarly with some of my astronomy apps, by the time you think to use the app, you might be well out of a service area, so a background data update is very useful.

I feel the same way and tend to default to using the browser for things that have app alternatives. There are likely some devices where this will be a problem, but for the overwhelming majority of device users - where there's a Kindle app there's a browser.

From the consumer perspective perhaps this isn't a big deal? Are we missing something?

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