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Comment by beeboobaa3 | Hacker News Reader

> Why does patreon need its own app? Why can't it just be web based?

because apple gimps their web browser capabilities & performance to incentivize developers to enter the walled garden

Apple's mobile Safari has enough capabilities to serve a mobile-like simple app for managing a subscription service.

If that were true, we'd see great amazing native-like web apps on Android where none of this perceived gimping is happening.

I use the web version on my phone instead of most apps, and they work fine.

That's because it's just like IE was back in the day. No web dev is going to build a web app that doesn't work on it, no matter what a turd it is.

Then we should all be thankfull for Safari restraining web "devs".

While true in most cases (for anyone who disagrees look at PWAs being restricted in EU), Patreon’s app sucks butt and is honestly a worst experience in most ways than their mobile website anyway.

That bullshit to be honest. Not the lack of features in Safari, that's very real, but you don't need most of it. There is nothing that Patreon needs to do that could not be done by a 15 year old browser, let alone the newest version of Safari on iOS.

I can understand that developers would like to use certain feature, or that they'd make the job easier, but they are not required. Patreon isn't cutting edge web development, you could make it work on an IE8 if you cared enough. There it absolutely no features currently lacking in Safari that would prevent Patreon in moving to website only.

It needs:

* An easy way to "install" the app. People want an icon on their home screen.

* To work offline and have a decent amount of storage for images and such.

* To start in a reasonable amount of time, even if the network is flaky.

And a bunch more of requirements. But just these three are hard to accomplish as a PWA. It should be possible, sure, but you'll be investing a lot of development time in what eventually amounts to an inferior experience when compared with a native app.

Exactly, it doesn't need native access to every bit of hardware to fulfill the needs of a simple app. If needed, Mobile Safari can do push notifications.[0]

0. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...

Source?

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