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Comment by spacebacon | Hacker News Reader

Build for the web. App stores are overrated. They will continue to make the same mistakes until they are irrelevant. Eventually.

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It is a social problem which is hard to reverse.

People use app stores because they are used for artificially worsened web pages. They are used to find apps with similar properties from app store.

And Google search is artificially so bad that they won’t even try it to find some apps. And most won’t use other search engines.

It’s not purely social. A lot of web apps are legitimately poor, probably because the web has become the go-to platform for those looking to cut costs, who aren’t willing to pay for quality talent. This why there’s such a gulf between VS Code (not technically a web app, but built with web tech) and MS Teams for example: the former has had no expenses spared to woo devs and give MS legitimacy in software dev while the latter only needs to technically function since its audience is captive, so quality can be an afterthought.

So really, people need to start rejecting poor quality or poorly performing web apps. The collective bar for “good enough” is far too low, and so cheapskates will continue to churn out garbage.

Whether web or native is better is hardly relevant to the core of this issue IMO, which is about fundamental rights to admin our own devices. Having to make a network request to fetch an external resource every time you want to run code on your own device is sort of a non-solution to this problem.

For a while, I had stopped flashing custom ROMs because the default Android experience was good enough for me, but it looks like this is now necessary again.

And then you cannot use your phone for payments.

> And then you cannot use your phone for payments.

That's why you have a debit card. And if your bank won't give you a debit card, you find a better bank.

one of my banks requires an app on my phone or desktop. the android app does not work on /e/OS, it needs an original google android system. the desktop app runs only on original windows (tested wine, it doesn't work) for any payment i make. only withdrawing cash from an ATM doesn't need 2FA.

You clearly need to switch to a bank that isn't user hostile.

Also we are obviously in dire need of legislation preventing such behavior.

the android app used to work until a few months ago, but they updated their system and forced everyone to switch.

Have you tried calling your bank advisor to see what they can recommend? (You do have a phone number to call, right?)

do you mean ask my bank what they recommend? other than getting a new phone or a windows computer, what exactly should they tell me?

Yes, I mean explaining to your bank advisor that you cannot run their app, and asking whether they can recommend any solutions other than switching banks. They must have a number of elderly customers, and they most certainly have something to propose to them.

It worked for me, in a European country with very high smartphone usage (you can pay on the bus by scanning a QR code). Twice.

It's super convenient storing your payment card in your phone securely though and not having to carry around another card which can be stolen or lost at any time, it's nice simply taking your phone out and holding it to a reader than taking out an entire card, yet again another useful device functionality purposefully neutered under the guise of security.

How would this work with say my syncthing fork or DJI fly? Web doesn't really work here.

Re DJI Fly: a combination of WebBluetooth, WebRTC, the normal location API, offline web pages (through managed caches), regular browser video features, and a bunch of other web technologies.

Re SyncThing: there's the File System Access API. You can ask the user for a folder and then operate on the files and directories inside it. Also from a locally cached offline copy, of course. Serviceworkers are there to run in the background, though I'm not 100% sure if the FS API and service workers can be combined to be honest.

It'll need as much effort or maybe even more to port it to the web as it has taken to develop the Android app, but it's almost definitely possible, at least on Chrome.

As part of Google's attempt to break free from the iOS app store, they accidentally invented an alternative to their own draconic measures.

FS API is Chrome only though, and a lot of people use Firefox for Android for access to real uBO since Chrome for Android conveniently never gained support for extensions.

With apps on the web you are inherently dependent on the respective web site operating. Local software provides more independence for users (in addition to certain UX benefits).

The same web we can then only access via approved browsers?

Then is now. Projects like Anubis and OpenStreetMap explicitly don't support uncommon setups, you just don't get to use those parts of the internet. When talking to e.g. OpenStreetMap sysadmins, the reason given was that they see no other way to keep the site online and available for anyone

The web is dying at the same time as mobile OS freedoms, while important organisations such as governments and banks are moving away from browser access and towards doing everything (including 2FA in one device) on a phone

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