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Comment by ctippett | Hacker News Reader

I sympathise, but talking to my sister I've come to appreciate a different point of view. I have an "app", a PWA, that she says she cannot find because it's not in the App Store. Despite telling her it's available as a website, this seems too much... she just doesn't use — or is comfortable using — Safari.

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This was because every ad agency on the planet wanted to be in apps when the App Store took off, so they rebranded websites to apps to confuse people.

Chrome, being a division of a huge ad company that makes money from these agencies, not merely played along but took a leading role in sowing the confusion.

I dislike apps and avoid installing them in general terms. They're bloated and frankly I have better things to store on my phone (mostly music, but also photos, conversation histories etc). I do not need an "app" for submitting a form. Looking at a website. etc etc

My favourite thing about using a website? It can't send me attention grabbing notifications. It can't harass me for perms.

I'm 100% an outlier. My friends don't blink twice to install all manor of loyalty, news, social media, lifestyle, games etc etc and rarely clean up. It's all just choices and preferences - the world does not suit me.

The world seems to be reversed in my mind. On my phone everything wants to be an app, and everything on my computer wants to be a webapp. I want the opposite. Native apps on the computer and the phone can just be webapps, because I don't really care, nor do I need to repeatably use the same app on my phone.

On my computer I have a few programs installed, which I just constantly. On the phone I need each app only a few times a month, if that, yet they all insist on being actual apps.

I'm right there with you. There are probably dozens of us!

Same. I have only a few apps installed that my phone didn't come with. No games. No social media apps. Even email I access via Safari. If I absolutely must use an app for something, I typically install it, do what I need, and then delete it.

If you're on Android, you may enjoy the new "Archive" functionality, which uninstalls the app but retains its local data directory so when you tap the icon it re-downloads the apk on top of its existing data directory, so no more first-user experience https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/15523443?hl=en

I believe it's primary use case is storage efficiency but it works perfectly fine in your use case of preventing the code from running while you're not actively using it

> My favourite thing about using a website? It can't send me attention grabbing notifications. It can't harass me for perms.

But it works the same as for apps. You get prompted once on iOS at least. You either opt in for notifications or you don’t. There’s no difference.

Never call a PWA an app, people will get confused.

But the "A" stands for "app"! Is there anything you could call it that would be less confusing (because "PWA" or "Progressive Web App" sure ain't it)?

Until some massive marketing campaign explains to all users of the internet what PWA's are (which is never going to happen), there's nothing wrong with calling your PWA a website if it prevents a lot of confusion.

Sure, but I also think there's nothing wrong with calling it an "app" if that's the buzzword that will tip some people from dismissing it towards trying it out.

If it's clear that people expect 'apps' to be in the app store, how can you think "there's nothing wrong" with calling PWA's 'apps'?

OK, "there's nothing wrong with calling a PWA an 'app' in most contexts, unless the person listening to you is likely to try to search for the PWA in an app store".

Ask any random person where they would go to install an app and you'll stop belittling this problem.

I don't know why you wouldn't just call them "web apps". Why the P and why the acronym.

If you define a web app as ‘an app that is actually a website’, just call it a website.

Further to that, there are plenty of people who can't really articulate what a web browser actually is or how a website differs from an app. It's not clear to me whether these users would be more accepting of a PWA or if they would be even further confused by them, particularly if they have to be left to find the app on the web first in order to "install" it, even more so if they've never bothered to look at what all those buttons in their web browser actually do.

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