Comment by resonious | Hacker News Reader

Comment by resonious | Hacker News Reader

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I gotta say, I'm not super convinced by a lot of the points on here.

> Native notifications

Web browsers already let you create these.

> Auto updates

Browsers usually already do this too! And also they will fetch your app fresh on each visit by default... So I'm not sure why this is a problem we need to solve for web apps.

> Native installers

So, more friction? Just visiting the webpage was too simple?

Anyway some of the other stuff like messing with the dock icon and badge is unique and maybe good. But I genuinely do not understand the appeal of shipping new copies of Chrome for each web service. The browser lets you do everything you need, 99% of the time. The install friction and increased trust burden of native apps is actually a downside that normally would be justified by something like "the app is faster and leaner than a browser". But when you're just shipping a browser that fetches JS and HTML from your server, what's the justification?

Strictly fwiw - There is a subset of people, myself included, who have old fashioned preference for native apps. In particular, a few likely obsolete perspectives :

1. I can have more ownership of the native app. I can make a copy on my NAS and install as needed

2. I can have more control over what it does. I can deny the firewall and whatever it does it'll do only locally.

3. Native app feels more "once and done". Web app feels more SaaSy. And many of us are getting allergic to everything under the sun wanting five bucks a months for 2 min of use.

For such people as myself, native installer isn't a point of friction, it's an inherent advantage.

Of course there are counterarguments! Native app can have a activation requirement or internet requirement and can do horrible things directly on my file system. Just offering a glimpse of alternate perspectives fwiw :-)

This is totally good. But I do wonder how much these points apply to a native app generated from a website using the tool in the link. I get the feeling it will still be very SaaSy (a la Slack's "native app").

I'm curious, what native apps that are also available a web app do you store an offline copy of on your NAS? And which do you deny access to in your firewall?

>> Native installers

>So, more friction? Just visiting the webpage was too simple?

I've been asked several times by the sales team to add an installer to our web app. They think this adds a feeling of ownership to the user.

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