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Comment by Brajeshwar | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me that I like websites with URLs on the browser while trying to avoid Apps wherever possible, especially on the desktop? Please don’t take me the wrong way; I was the one developing apps for Pocket PC devices in the early 2000s.

For instance, “Twitter” is the first featured “app” I see here at Store.App. However, when I use Twitter, I tend to click away on links and read/browse them. How are people using websites these days?

I may be missing something, and I’m eager to be enlightened.

P.S. Best wishes to Store.App and hope it succeeds for those who need it.

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Yeah Twitter is an awful use case. Any app that has lots of external links or that you want to spawn new tabs is better just staying in the browser.

The ones that work better as installed apps are things that you kinda just leave open in their own window: instant messaging apps, email, music streaming, etc.

There's no reason for these to have a URL bar at the top, and "installing" the things often unlocks global hotkeys and other bits.

You definitely are not alone. Even on mobile, not only desktop, if I can do away without an app I'd really do that. We have a movie booking app in our country BookMyShow (the less said about this company and practices is better) and I just book it on its mobile website mostly (though I try to book in the theatre and almost always I have to make a scene to get a print ticket when I refuse to share my number fearing certain spamming).

Twitter, Reddit - as you might know there are no non-official apps and their mobile websites, which are bad, are much better than the apps.

A lot of services are unfortunately forcing you to use the app instead of the web. And a lot of the apps in your country are available in the AppStore India only which is extremely annoying for me as a German in India who has to switch between local and foreign Apple IDs frequently.

Depends on how you organise things. I generally DON'T close most tabs I open individually. I tend to open more and more tabs until I'm forced to close them all or most of them to keep things organised and then I start again. With habits such as mine, opening a webapp as an application rather than a tab will make it persist longer and be easier to find.

Additionally, while 99.9% of users won't take advantage of this, your operating system has all sorts of features to manipulate the window of individual GUI applications which it can't use in the context of tabs. Unattended automation of the GUI has all sorts of interesting applications.

You can also get rid of some of the wasted space at the top of the screen.

You can create separate windows instead of tabs.

Given how toxic many mobile apps are and how a pretty significant amount of time they’re still just a web app under the hood, I think native apps have already lost the war.

So like yourself, I very rarely install apps these days.

Most quality apps are native apps, they are not just web app under the hood. Then you are either using uncommon or niche apps, or you perhaps you are on Android (Play Store is a nightmare these days).

The App Store (iOS) may not be perfect but there are truly quality apps and the developers have a real incentive to maintain these, seeing that the willingness to pay for apps is high in the Apple ecosystem.

But outside of messaging, music and browsing the web. how many native apps do you/people actually use?

Because I'm personally under the impression that this is what most people use their phone for (maybe play a game or two as well). tough this might also depend on the countries where I lived (and when).

And some people also take pictures of course

Some people are big app users, but very few have a variety of niche apps installed. Those same people probably don't use computers for more than the 1% they are capable of doing.

I think a vast majority still uses apps outside of messaging and music though, because social media exists. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, TikTok, SnapChat are all apps and it's absolutely the case that they are better off being true native apps, which they are.

> If you’re wondering “Is Instagram a native app?” or “Is Facebook a native app?”, the answer to both is no. They are both hybrid apps with numerous “native” features.

https://www.mobileapps.com/blog/what-is-a-native-app

iOS and while I don’t go round decompiling packages all that often, from what I’ve seen most companies write a custom UI online and use iOSs additional web features to mimic a native experience. To the end user it doesn’t look any different, but to the developers it is quicker to build and easier to update (ie every UI tweak doesn’t require going through Apples approval process).

This obviously doesn’t apply to games. But even there, there’s a surprising amount you can do with HTML5 et al on iOS if you wanted.

When you also factor in Electron on the desktop, a surprise number of “native” applications these days are really just websites in a container.

> or you perhaps you are on Android

This is a ridiculous thing to say. there are plenty of wonderful native apps on Android

This is the opposite for me. I used to use Twitter and Reddit constantly through 3rd party iOS apps. Both platforms banned 3rd party apps and I simply don’t use the platforms anymore.

They added enough friction through ads, cookie banners, forced login to view content and more ads that I don’t care to use them anymore.

I’m using a 3rd party app to view HN and I probably visit 3-4 times a day.

Are you not concerned by how much data those apps could be harvesting? There is a reason Reddit et al push you towards their app and it isn’t because they make money from selling it on the App Store ;)

There is zero chance that Apollo was harvesting more data than the official Reddit app.

I was talking clearly about the official apps. Apollo charges for their app so it’s pretty clear where their monetisation comes from.

I use web apps as a cheap and simple way of making my own apps for my phone. I've also used them for making info displays on ipads (guided access on iPad can lock down the iPad to just that one app).

Recently I've made a web app for controlling my lights at home and a web app for tracking when my infant eats.

I don't tend to install anyone else's web apps though. I typically just used their website or if need be install their native app.

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