Comment by vivegi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vivegi | Hacker News Reader

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The web already cracked the distribution problem.

Javascript on the browser was the only choice for your frontend code, however, WASM is already shipping on all current browsers except IE and Opera Mini (which is a miniscule percentage of browsers in use today).

It is just a matter of time where WASM becomes the ABI of choice for crossplatform app development as the binary deployment vehicle where you can program in any language and have the app delivered as a WASM package via HTTP/HTTPS.

Apple's App Store moat will dry up when people (esp. devs) realize that they can get close to native performance for web apps delivered this way and the vanity of an icon on the phone/tablet screen isn't worth forking 30% to big apple.

It's not about the technologies of distribution.

Apple's moat is the 1B users who go to the app store to search for apps. No amount of WASM is going to get developers in front of a billion qualified purchasers.

I shipped an app in the App store. Over a few years, I made mid-six-figures from it. I never once begrudged Apple their 30% because without the app store I would have made next to nothing, certainly not enough to justify building and supporting the app. What was I going to do, set up a web page and hope my SEO skills were good enough to get a small trickle of users?

I often wonder if any of the people outraged at Apple's 30% (now often 15%) cut have actually tried to market an application. That is a tiny, tiny price to pay for the upside.

> the vanity of an icon on the phone/tablet screen isn't worth forking 30% to big apple.

I think the biggest problem here is that these icons on the home screen are great retention drivers and if you go through an app store the OS creates it for you while through the browser you have to actively decide to do it. Its also funny how the iPhone initially only had web shortcuts for the screen (and arguably invented the pwa) only to immediately change course once they noticed that Apps are their moat.

Surely, the concept of a web app icon on the desktop/tablet is not a new idea to anyone here.

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