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Comment by dns_snek | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that's fair, the concept of a "store" with user reviews, changelogs, detailed app information (e.g. permissions) is great. It only becomes a problem when a platform decides to act as a gatekeeper for the entire platform with insane rules & fees.

Furthermore, social media is a really poor way to discover anything unless it happens to go viral. A general-purpose search engine such as Google is entirely suboptimal, as it can only match on keywords on the page. It doesn't address reviews or provide convenient (but optional) payment processing either.

You shouldn't be forced to use one specific store, but their role is nonetheless valuable. Whether it's for apps, books, appliances, or food.

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> changelogs

I haven’t used a platform with these for a while, but my recollection of the Google Play Store was that the changelog was completely useless for almost all apps I ever used.

> detailed app information (e.g. permissions)

… which has historically been “it takes all these permissions and there’s nothing you can do about it”, though I gather this has been changing on at least Android, whereas on the web almost none of the equivalents are enabled by default (“connect to the internet” being the most obvious counterexample) and all beyond that must be granted explicitly at time of use.

> It only becomes a problem when a platform decides to act as a gatekeeper for the entire platform with insane rules & fees.

… which happens approximately every single time.

> I haven’t used a platform with these for a while, but my recollection of the Google Play Store was that the changelog was completely useless for almost all apps I ever used.

That is correct, and exactly the same on iOS. The average changelog says "bug fixes and improvements". Might as well be a giant middle finger.

> … which has historically been “it takes all these permissions and there’s nothing you can do about it”, though I gather this has been changing on at least Android

IME iOS does not have this issue because it never shoved all the permissions in a "permissions" tab granting all of them to the application at install. Instead permissions are usually opt-in when requested by the application. So applications have always been incentivised to limit their requirements (you can reject any request, and you can toggle them off afterwards through the setting, all the application can tell you is "I can't work without that dave"). Apple has also increased the number / scope of opt-in permissions over time, increasing the scope of that effect.

What's your point, exactly? All I'm saying is that places which aggregate and curate stuff can be a valuable, depending on the features and experience they provide.

I mentioned a few features I would personally find valuable, you might be interested in a store that only offers content suitable for kids, or some other niche. That's the beauty of open ecosystems.

> … which happens approximately every single time.

You seem confused. I think you need to read this thread again. The discussion was about alternatives to this exact problem. tldr; This can't happen on the web because a PWA store is just another website, much like HN or Reddit.

I read (and still read) that part of your comment as saying “app stores can be fine”, and am responding with “maybe in theory, but they never are”.

I dunno, try looking for “qr code reader” on the play store and you will find the same spammy product listings that AMZN is choked with,

Android's app store may suck, but at least it's possible to start a competing store which sucks less.

It's technically possible, but will force your users to go through additional configuration steps, decreasing your audience ten-fold.

You have something like user reviews with comments on HN or reddit.

Changelogs and permissions are more difficult as they require the app store to control hosting. I don't think any developer would accept that unless there's no other choice, and on the web there is.

Google doesn't have reviews (why not?) but it can crawl every website that links to a web app, like an HN comment page, and use that to figure out what the web app is about.

Okay, so you don't like stores, but I don't understand why you're ridiculing the author for suggesting what is an obviously valuable idea to many, if not most people?

You can distribute EXEs for Windows, but virtually all game developers use stores such as Steam for their value-add features. Customers don't only prefer this option, they often demand it.

You can distribute binaries for Linux, yet millions of people and servers use Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, etc. repositories.

It's a bit like making the infamous Dropbox comment, except doing it in 2024 with benefit of hindsight, the idea itself has already been validated by billions of users.

A web app could provide an RSS feed of updates for scraping by app aggregators. This sounds like a great candidate for addition to the web app manifest format.

But such a store doesn't need to be a dedicated app on the device. It can be a third-party website—indeed; that is how it would make the most sense.

If this were something people were clamoring for, it is likely it would already exist, because the barrier to creating a website for linking, aggregating and reviewing PWAs should be quite low, with the only real challenge being the accumulation of a critical mass of users.

Accumulating a critical mass of users is nigh-insurmountable when you don’t own the platform. But also it’s not the only challenge: sustenance is. Google and Apple operate their app stores because they get a lot of value out of them—both because they make their platforms more useful, and because of their absurdly high taxes. But a third-party website that’s essentially just a link aggregator, how is it going to make money? The only realistic ways (advertising/sponsored listings, or charging subscriptions to either side of the marketplace) increase the critical mass required drastically, far beyond what’s realistic.

And indeed, there have been multiple attempts at something like this, because it is something people want—but there’s just no money in it, and so they’ve all failed.

One major caveat is that PWAs don't have all the capabilities of a native app. I think that's the biggest issue people have with this -- if PWAs had full feature parity with native apps, I'd agree Apple's app store monopoly wouldn't be a big deal.

I think there are many reasons why something that people do want might not (yet) exist. For example, a monopolized market where customers don't have many choices. Or like you mentioned, difficulty in competing with incumbent advantage. Or maybe people just don't know what they want (e.g. "faster horses")

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