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Comment by ben174 | Hacker News Reader

You mean not installing yet another application and having another icon on my homescreen for every freaking website I visit? And these apps almost have no need to run any native code or do anything a website can't handle in modern day. Yes. I'm all for it. Let's make browsers more capable.

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Even simple apps like banking apps, AirBnB, and even Papa Johns are more responsive than their websites

That's because they're bad devs, not because webapps are inferior.

The “No True Scotsman” Defense.

Or maybe it’s because either cross platform web apps are never as good as mobile apps or that the entire web development ecosystem is a clusterfuck of dependency hell, security vulnerabilities in dependencies, complexity, and “ooh shiny” new framework of the week?

Have you thought about not installing the apps and just using the website? I have yet to see a website where I wanted to install the app to view it, and have no idea what features would make me want to do that.

Have you not enountered sites that app-wall you? Sites with useful content, such as Reddit - not allowing you to view the user-generated content unless you install their app? It sucks - but it exists.

No, I haven't noticed that. Sometimes websites ask, but I don't even see those "would you like to install our app" popups that often.

Reddit has certainly asked me to download the app, but never forced me.

It does this under the guise of protecting you from certain content, like an nsfw post will require you to download the app, although I think you can get round that using the old. prefix rather than www

...which is why they're in favor of web push, which you're arguing against.

You just made their point for them.

Sorry, I must have miscommunication. I said "I have no idea what features would make me want to do that." And I don't. I've never wanted push notifications from any website, I'm happy that those that do are segregated to the app and that the website works fine without them. Unlike, say cookies or tracking or ads, where I have to modify the code of the website to block them.

My point was maybe they should try just not installing the apps and not getting push notifications, etc.

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