Hacker News Reader

I never understood why anyone would want to download an application to do something as simple as checking email.

To have a copy of your emails on your device, for backup, and offline use.

A web UI can do that

A web UI cannot do that. It is simply not possible.

Websites can work offline

The comment I was replying to was wondering why people installed apps to read email instead of using the browser based clients. So I don't understand your point ...?

You can have a copy of your emails for offline use in your browser.

Less so as a reliable backup.

To be clear, a "Web UI" usually refers to a desktop or mobile application whose user-interface is built with web technology (HTML, CSS, JS etc.) that is rendered using a webview component in the application. You don't refer to a website (even if it is a web-based application like GMail) as "Web UI". It is still called a website. And while you are right that browsers today can store data for offline use, nobody considers it good enough for a backup.

Because native apps are faster, work when you aren't online, and are all around more pleasant to use.

> work when you aren't online,

...but why do you need that?

Why does it need to be that fast too?

I guess many more people here are real power-users of email than I would expect for a forum full of engineers lol

Reply on news.ycombinator.com