[criddell]

I don't understand the love that PWAs get around here. All things being equal, as a user I'll chose a native app every time.

As a developer, I'd much rather be working in a native toolkit as well. There's less to learn to get going and the foundations are more stable than the browser and billion lines of javascript from 40 different parties.

I also think it's a lot harder to reason about security with a web app. I might be able to satisfy myself that the app I load today isn't doing anything nefarious, but you could sell your business and tomorrow I might be running a significantly different app.

[nicoburns]

> There's less to learn to get going

There are thousands of pre-existing web developers for whom this is not true because they've already put the effort in to learn the web platform. For these people, PWAs represent significant new functionality which they can now use without having to learn a whole new toolkit.

You may be dramatically underestimating just how many web developers there are.

> I also think it's a lot harder to reason about security with a web app.

I'm not sure that's true, because the web runtime itself tends to provide quite good security (partly because it doesn't allow access to a lot of device APIs in the first place). Native apps are often granted quite wide permissions, and auto-update by default too.

[gammateam]

> All things being equal, as a user I'll chose a native app every time.

The reality is that most potential users don't install native apps, and will use a PWA without knowing it. Its just a URL.

Numbers are still as high as 20% don't install due to lack of space. Thats a ridiculously dumb bounce rate.

"Solutions" were presented already 3-4 years ago, for android. Native apps that don't install! And hey look, nobody cares!

[ksec]

I don't like Web Apps, but there are a huge class of Apps that doesn't require a Native App to work. Services Sector which already has their Web Platform sorted out, and are only providing an "App" in the App Store. Paying for App Development is expensive, when majority of the functions in these Apps are exactly the same as online. Having PWA meant they could offer an "App" at a ( relatively speaking ) much lower cost.

Example, why would every Restaurant wants to have an Apps of its own?

That is of course assuming PWA for these kind of Apps work close to Native App in performance and usability. Time will tell.

[criddell]

> Example, why would every Restaurant wants to have an Apps of its own?

Why would any restaurant have an app?

> close to Native App in performance and usability

Javascript in the browser will never be close to a native app as far as CPU, battery, memory, and bandwidth utilization goes. I don't think they will ever work as well with assistive technologies either.

[arendtio]

Well, from a user perspective you might enjoy having an app on every platform. So no need to wait until the developer rebuilds some app on a new platform. No need to bother the dev to port his app to Mac/Linux/BSD/(other non-mainstream OS).

In my opinion, the single most reason not to use a PWA from a user perspective is the performance. But I still use my Samsung S3 and when I look at the current flagship smartphones... They have more RAM and CPU cores than many laptops nowadays.

So I think the performance issue is going to be much less relevant. Others might say that usability is an issue too, but with the upcoming component libraries, that is going away too. After all, projects like framework7 [1] support quite good components already.

[1]: https://framework7.io

[pier25]

> As a developer, I'd much rather be working in a native toolkit as well.

Across multiple OS?

[criddell]

Definitely. The last thing anybody wants is to run an application on a Mac that looks and acts like a Windows application. How could you be proud of that?

[pier25]

I don't think that's even remotely true.

For example: Photoshop, Autodesk Maya, Da Vinci Resolve, Premiere, Ableton Live, and a very long etc. Those are not your crappy Electron apps, but industry standards.

[osrec]

I find people generally overplay the "all apps must look native on my OS" card as an argument against PWAs. Yet they are often very happy using Google docs for most of their day to day work... I personally like the fact that a web app looks the same across all OSes. I find that is a better type of consistency to aim for, in that if someone changes their OS, they don't need to relearn your app's UI.

[la_fayette]

In terms of the web one could use different stylesheets for the different platforms... the business logic can stay the same. OnsenUI and ionic are providing just that.

[criddell]

So on Windows it feels like a Windows app and on Mac it feels like a macOS app? All of the widgets work the same as native controls with accessibility devices like screen readers?

[GrzegorzWidla]

It's only about expectations.

When you open your web browser you suddenly expect apps you access there to be the same across all OS, and you certainly don't mind them all being different from each other - it's actually a good thing.

So why shouldn't we expect the same of native OS? I know I care only about few details - like native notifications instead of custom ones, native close, minimize, maximize buttons etc.

[osrec]

I wrote an article on why I think PWAs are the future in my opinion: https://osrec.co.uk/publication/3/Why_PWAs_may_be_the_Future

Maybe it'll help you see things from another perspective :)

[criddell]

I've read this before and I get what you are saying. From a business point of view it makes a lot of sense. I'm saying from every other point of view, it doesn't.

> I'm sure you'll agree that having a standardised platform that runs on any machine, while being unlimited in the variety and nature of things it can conjure is the utopia we are all working towards.

Are you talking about Java + Swing? :)

I like that macOS feels different from Windows and that I can load up a Linux with many more variations that all have their own personality. I don't like how web apps use my bandwidth (I pay $10 / GB on Google Fi), how they use my battery, or my CPU.

[tluyben2]

> I pay $10 / GB on Google Fi

Wait, what? That is insanely expensive. I pay far less even on just 4g. Is that a normal price there?

[criddell]

I don't use a lot of data so my monthly phone bill is usually under $35. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

[tluyben2]

But is that something normal in the US? I live in a remote location in Europe, I pay 19 euros and download/upload well over 100gb per month.