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Comment by tammer | Hacker News Reader

I’ve come full circle on this but I now think native applications on smartphones was a mistake.

There is no technological reason why applications can’t be distributed as PWA packages similar to the days prior to the App Store.

This would serve two important functions:

1. Remove most if not all distribution monopoly concerns

2. Create application standards that function nearly identically across the myriad of screen sizes and input types that are now available.

The current status quo of some service that makes my life easier or better only being available in a browser or only available on one or two of my devices (or, most often, available in a few ways but only bug-free or full-featured in only one method of access) isn’t the future I want.

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> but I now think native applications on smartphones was a mistake.

That seems a bit like rose-colored glasses. PWAs only really became viable in the past couple years (especially on iPhones when push notifications only were made available to PWAs in the last year), and even if you ignore Apple dragging it's feet, it's hard for me to imagine another scenario where all the hardware-based APIs (e.g. access to camera, media streaming, various sensors, in addition to push) didn't come out in native apps first before they were made available in the browser.

my half-hearted counterpoints:

1. what about something like a usb flir heat camera? yes i know webusb exists, but having to go to a website to use a peripheral (and give it permissions to that peripheral) is not ideal

2. apps can change on you at any point, potentially maliciously. I'm not naive enough to think the app store will catch this kind of thing every time, but at least you have control over updating apps, and some guarantees that everyone gets the same binary

3. you can kiss any sort of ui-cohesion goodbye

PWAs can also just disappear if devs get tired of running them or become incapable of maintaining them. In similar situations with native local-first apps, the binary will at least remain on your phone and continue to work for several years, offering better a better opportunity to find and transition to alternatives.

Native apps can also be archived for use with emulators at some point down the road, as we’re now seeing with efforts to emulate iOS 2/3 and some of the earliest iOS apps. Had those apps been PWAs they’d all be gone for good outside of the tiny handful where the dev decided to open source them.

This is when you implement signed local web app components that cannot change unless authorized.

OS cohesion/themes are already kind of a dead idea. These days the priority is cohesion within the app and platform. When I open Discord, it looks basically the same on Android, iOS, Mac, Linux, Windows, and web. If I know where something is on one platform, I can find it on all the others. I don't care that Discord on Mac doesn't look like Spotify on Mac.

The others are also kind of mute points, No one is auditing app updates, and I'm not sure how an app can be more trusted with access to a usb/bluetooth device than a website. they are both 3rd party programs doing the same thing.

One of the plus of platform cohesion is that you don’t have to learn the same thing twice while you’re on the same platform. I know that as soon as I press CMD+<Comma>, I get in the settings of the app. Option+CMD+T, will toggle the toolbar if they have any, and you can customize it to your liking. But today, applications wants you to live in their space, so they make things harder to switch from it. No one cares that Discord on Windows looks the same as on macOS, as most people only use one platform, if you have to hunt for everything as it doesn’t want to use the menubar.

And for app updates, people do. I can hold on on updates until I’m sure it’s good to use. You spend a month not using a web app, and it’s become something alien.

on item 1 the peripheral itself can be the webserver (although that does come at a hardware price)

There are quite few technical reasons people pony up the app store overhead instead of make a PWA. Performance, UX, lack of standards. PWAs are popular but how often do you see comments bemoaning the use of web stacks and pining for native apps?

> but how often do you see comments bemoaning the use of web stacks and pining for native apps

On HN, all the time, but it's not something that regular users notice or care about. It's not that native apps can't be on some level superior, but most people can't tell the difference and frankly, most native apps I've had to use are just as bad on all performance metrics as Slack and company.

What people are really complaining about is that most apps are made as quickly and cheaply as possible, and those lazy apps are disproportionately web apps because web is cheap and easy.

Steve Jobs would have agreed with you at one point.

I'm not sure what changed his mind (or if he ever even really did), but he also thought that aside from the native apps that came with the iPhone, everything else should just be a web app.

Or the app store and libs (and apps) weren't ready yet and they wanted to get the iPhone out the door to enjoy being first mover.

Battery life?

PWAs are crap, almost as bad as "native" applications that secretly bundle an entire browser.

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