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Comment by Nekorosu | Hacker News Reader

Heh. I didn't even know there was a Patreon app. There is an issue though. A lot of people (not me) use phone as their main computing device. And Apple is well known for keeping web app experience subpar compared to native app experience. Safari is lagging behind all the other browsers regarding modern APIs support. Bugs are not getting patched for years. At the same time other web rendering engines are not allowed on the main official app store. The other app stores are hard to get to and I consider them non-existent for regular users.

So, platform developers have to take iOS support very seriously or miss a lot of profit.

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Heh, Safari may lack some APIs, but it’s irrelevant for 95% of apps including Patreon.

It’s not like Patreon would be unusable on iOS without an app.

The problem is cultural: a growing population do not know what the Web is.

When they are asked to search for a website, they open the app store and search there. If there is no result, they give up.

"The problem is cultural: a growing population do not know what the Web is."

I'd love to know where this idea started, because I'm not convinced it's actually based on any kind of real data. If it is, I don't think it's accurate for the past 5+ years.

Knowledge of the web is probably flat. And apps and smartphones have peaked in the West. Those are my anecdotes to add, since that seems to be what we're doing.

This line of thinking could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy the more it's spread, too.

Do people search for applications in the App Store or on the Web?

This 2023 study[0] indicates 48% of people discover apps by browsing through the App Stores, compared to 21% that discover them through Web search engines.

Is this a trend?

This 2015 study[1] indicates 40% of people browse for apps in the App Stores, compared to 25% (“1 in 4”) that discover them through Web search engines.

Does this apply to Patreon?

The CEO of Patreon had this to say:[2]

> iOS is actually now the most used platform for communities on Patreon.

[0]: https://www.semrush.com/blog/app-store-optimization/

[1]: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and...

[2]: https://youtu.be/L-LoTH3PzgM?si=F1xraTOFxx8SJN0C&t=61

We're talking about "knowledge of the web." As in, the ability to recognize what a URL is and use a browser to access it.

I posit this segment of the overall population in non-developing countries is flat for the last 5+ years. Apps surged for a decade and caused a lot of handwringing about the web's future, but it's clear the web is here to stay. The new AI craze wouldn't have even gotten off the ground without the web's corpus of recent and relevant data.

The web is just too frictionless. It's old and crufty and for old fuddy duddies (I don't know how Gens Z/Alpha view the web vs. apps, but that's not this conversation -- they know it exists and they're savvy enough to use it when necessary). It's like email. Will it ever be sexy "again"? No. But I think it'll always be there.

Kids don't use email... until they need to for their job or college, etc. Email will never die. The web will follow a similar trajectory.

If the money flees the consumer side of the web (more focus on paid native apps, the death of third-party cookies and possibly the ad ecosystem, etc.), that inches the content back to the 90s/early 00s ideal, which I'm all for. But that might be overly optimistic.

The idea that Safari is lagging behind is nonsense too. People live in their own fantasies. Press someone to explain what bugs or missing features they're specifically saying are holding the web back and you will probably get a very short list of nonstandard or experimental APIs like WebUSB.

Here's a site that lists a few [0].

I will say that if you've spent any time trying to develop a web-based app it becomes painfully obvious that Apple is doing the absolute bare minimum to support the browser on iOS. PWAs are barely functional.

[0] https://ios404.com

Played your role, as expected. No actual problems described and a link to a list of mostly "draft" and "candidate" items. Every fucking time.

My daughter’s boyfriend just bought a MacBook for college- his first Mac. He was immediately flummoxed going to the app store looking for apps that on a Mac are just websites.

He was somewhat appeased when I helped him find the Spotify Mac app though. Just going to their website just presented the music interface, with no links to the app download (which isn’t available in the Mac app store I would guess, since the BF hadn’t found it.)

Developers not allowing iPad apps to run on M-Series Mac’s are really hurting themselves with the younger set.

Then make an app whose sole purpose is to open a website in the browser

That is disallowed by section 4.2 of the App Review Guidelines[0]:

> Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website.

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

The irony of so many apps being electron wrappers is apparently lost on Apple. I'll just be happy if Teams could stop eating battery for once.

Though honestly jokes aside, this rule still doesn't make a lot of sense (to me). Webapps are capable enough. What does Uber's app, or the Google app do, that's different from their websites? Heck, even Apple's own notes app is simple enough that I'm fairly sure you could make a webapp out of it. I think tasks.org already has such a webapp/website.

Few iOS apps are based on electron, I would think.

Discord joins the conversation.

Then make an app whose sole purpose is to display bookmarks as icons on a scrollable and searchable canvas.

It wouldnt matter that your app is just a web view of your website, as accepting payments that bypass the ios payment system gets your app banned.

... Thus the conversation in the first place.

But browsers, which are apps, can accept payments that bypass the ios payment system, no?

Won't be surprised if Apple blocks this too or redirects URLs to open the app in the app store.

For good reason. The web is a cess pit which people will avoid if they can.

A term which in no way also applies to apps, that have vastly more ability to spy on you, and DMCA protections against interop and modification. /s

At least the spying is efficient, I guess.

The app store is also ridden with scams and crap. But the web is a horrible experience for normal people compared to apps, which the down voters here don't seem to understand, because they have adblockers etc.

Normal people need ad blockers about the same way they need clean water. I wish advertising was a viable revenue model for publishers, but it has been abused by large actors for so many years that large US government entities like the FBI recommend an ad blocker[1], and even the FTC lightly suggests it [2].

[1] https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221

[2] https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-websites-and-apps-coll...

The advertising industry is a malware services market.

Many apps are also ridden with ads, can collect way more personal info than a web site, and unlike sites, it's way harder to block their ads. (E.g., installing a PiHole on your network vs installing a browser extension.) Altering an app is a DMCA violation of whatever cryptography they use; altering a web site is your legal right via extensions/userscripts.

I still remember when they refused to support forms constraints (there was the JS API, but not the UI designed to show users what they got wrong with their form, so you had to polyfill that specifically for Safari).

Forms are pretty darn important to 99.9% of web apps, this felt like active sabotage.

It is baffling how some random people will come to Apple's defense from the most unimaginable angles. "Safari is lacking but should be enough for 95% of the apps". Why do we even have the App Store then? For the rest 5%?

> Why do we even have the App Store then? For the rest 5%?

No. We have AppStore for the hundreds of thousands of apps that cannot be implemented using web tech. And for hundreds of thousands of apps that people could implement using web tech, but don't want to for various reasons, both big (too many workarounds) to small (abysmal performance for the simplest tasks)

> We have AppStore for the hundreds of thousands of apps that cannot be implemented using web tech.

These are not disconnected, though. The web COULD be made to support more of these use cases, but Apple wouldn't be able to collect 30% of the profits. Safari was a laggard for many years while the App Store was being entrenched.

> The web COULD be made to support more of these use cases

No, it couldn't

> but Apple

Apple has nothing to do with the fact that the web can barely render a page of static text and images without stutter. Almost every single app made with web technologies is a slow bloated abomination barely capable of doing a few primitive things right. And those that aren't have insane amounts of effort poured into them.

If you believe that Apple has something to do with it, why isn't there a flood of amazing smooth native-like apps on Android where none of the real or perceived limitations exist? Why is there a Google Play store with hundreds of thousands of apps?

There are a truck load of crappy SwiftUI apps that make your average bloated web app look like lean, FTL starships. They stutter so much with broken animations that you are afraid that your phone had a stroke.

And crappy Swift apps invalidate my point how exactly?

Note how you addressed nothing I wrote.

> Note how you addressed nothing I wrote.

Not sure what to address in your post since only your contempt against the web was of especial note. There are more apps in the Android Play Store than the iOS App Store. There are also third party app stores offered by Amazon, Samsung, including OSS ones like F-Droid. So..I am not sure what point you were trying to make, sorry.

Your argument that almost every web app is bloated is dumb. Where did you get that data from? Based on what you say the native apps aren't as bloated? You are talking out of your A.

Thank you for confirming that there's no point in engaging in a conversation with you.

Adieu.

oh you think your shitty swift app is any better?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41239006

I’m really not defending Apple here. I’ve always been pretty vocal against Apple practices, especially with the App Store policies.

But I do think that the situation we are in where any company have to develop an application when the web does it nice enough (and it’s especially true for products such as Patreon) is pretty ridiculous.

Of all the companies around, Patreon is one who could easily avoid this in app fee nonsense just by avoiding having an app in the first place (or at least having an app for subscribers, maybe the app is useful for content creators).

I’d totally prefer a situation where Apple wouldn’t act like dicks but by accepting this situation, Patreon is just legitimizing Apple behavior.

How can you be vocal against App Store and in favor of Web and Apple's effort on that front while Apple/Safari blocks multiple attempts of making the Web a good platform for web Apps.

That's the biggest complain of every web app developer but you are saying that Safari is already great for that while excusing Apple's behavior. Wow.

Please quote where I excused Apple’s behavior and where I said that safari didn’t lag behind other browsers. I just said that Patreon ran fine on Safari and so that Safari had enough features / API to do the job for Patreon. I didn’t say anything about safari being a good platform for web apps in general and I don’t understand where you read that in my comment.

So let me repeat my opinion : yes Safari lacks a lot of features and APIs to be a good application platform. Yes, Apple is a shitty company especially when it comes to app policies. But, in the current state of affairs, Safari is enough for simple applications/websites such as Patreon.

They can take their time, although they seem to implement the worst parts of it. Remote attestation and manifest v3. Who else could ever live without these features?

> Apple is well known for keeping web app experience subpar compared to native app experience.

Web apps are subpar compared to native apps.

I'm not surprised Apple is in no hurry to further enable lowest-common-denominator shovelware.

Electron is a plague on macOS.

Is Chrome on Android complete in terms of modern APIs? If so, do people use it instead of apps on Android?

In this context, Chrome is just a browser, just like Safari is on iOS. The "problem" is less-technically-savvy folks (especially -- and ironically -- tech native youth) don't understand/care about the distinction between Apps vs a Website Bookmark/Shortcut.

That Patreon is even considering keeping the app is proof of this.

Depending on how overt Patreon's app is about ringing the alarm bells (imagine a "JUST MAKE A SHORTCUT and save 30% on everything!!!" popup) would just get them banned too, no doubt. Presumably criticizing Apple is a bannable offense.

>That Patreon is even considering keeping the app is proof of this.

No, that Patreon is "even considering" keeping the app is evidence that they get more valuable information about users and their habits from the app than they could from a website.

That's not disagreeing with me, but instead adding yet another argument for users to avoid as many Apps as they can.

If the experience in an app is form, graphs, and payments... use the website. It apparently saves that company 30% and, to your point, keeps your computing habits yours.

I doubt it. What evidence supports your claim? I took a look at the Patreon app permissions in Android, and it doesn't even ask for location which is probably the most valuable thing about users they could ask for.

The broad argument holds, regardless of what Patreon itself does right now.

Facts are simple here: Apps grant easier access your habits and identity as compared to a relatively-sandboxed browser.

I use Firefox on Android (which I can't on iOS) and I use it instead of apps wherever I can. Why should I install an app for every single thing?

That’s fine as an anecdata of n=1. But it doesn’t seem that apps are unpopular on Android, where as the GP seemed to suggest that Safari was the reason for app popularity. That just doesn’t seem to be true, given on Android we don’t see a large inversion.

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