[scarface74]

Do they have to be? Who knows? But since 2007, Apple, Palm, Blackberry and Microsoft have all at one point or the other have said you don’t need native mobile apps and the web was good enough. It never was.

Facebook tried the whole cross platform web app in a wrapper and decided it wasn’t good enough. Even while Google is extolling then virtues of its own cross platform tooling, it’s moving toward apps that use native frameworks.

https://9to5google.com/2021/10/10/google-ios-apps-native/

[randomtwiddler]

Ahh yes, the infamous Facebook failure. Anyone can write a bad app. That's not necessarily a technology failure. But it's easier to blame the tech than to admit they did something badly.

Everyone wants web apps to help sell hardware, right up until your app store grows into a money maker. Then the incentives are different.

Regardless, today's mobile systems are much better, web browsers are much better. It is much easier to write a web app that is functionally identical to native than it used to be.

Modern reality. Conversation rates for PWAs are higher than mobile apps because there is less friction in the installation process. Load times are often lower, which can be an overall superior experience. If I'm a small shop, trying to get on someone's mobile device, these items matter a lot. Also development costs are much lower when you can share code for your mobile app and your website.

The value add of being in the mobile stores is pretty minimal. Discovery is poor, search is poor, then there is constant churn in policies, submission process, APIs, development environments/languages, fees, etc. In contrast to this, the browsers hold very very high backwards compatibility. Churn will be in the support libraries or framework you adopt and not fundamental to the platform.

[scarface74]

Well let’s see.

1. Mobile apps convert higher than the web.

https://buildfire.com/mobile-apps-convert-higher/

2. Developers were clamoring for native apps each time. Not the mobile platforms. You act as if the modern web development environment isn’t a clusterfuck of complexity compared to modern IDEs for native apps.

3. Both Apple and Google have initiatives where you can have small instantly installable “applet” equivalents that make downloads fast and the apps are more responsive.

4. Cost is lower for the developer. But at the cost of a much worse user experience.

5. Browsers might have “higher backwards compatibility”. But the dependency hell and ever changing landscape of the front end framework of the week is real.

[randomtwiddler]

1) That's a totally different number... Apples and oranges. Conversation in this case is getting an icon on the users phone as opposed to sale. Mobile stores have really really low conversion rates.

2) Assumes facts not in evidence. This is not a universal opinion.

3) Still has the gate keepers, yet another platform to write for, etc etc. Lower friction might help vs PWAs, that's something at least.

4) Assumes facts not in evidence.

5) Showing your ignorance here. Front end has been stable for a while. Old stuff still works if you prefer it. Lots and lots of sites still do.

The mobile shill is real... There are reasons to pick mobile over something else. But just shilling the tool and showing your tech bigotry isn't a good way to pick solutions. I'm out.

[scarface74]

1. Do you have any other numbers?

2. Really? Were you not around when they called Steve Jobs “pretty sweet solution” of web apps a “shit sandwich” in 2007, or when developers complained about non native SDKs on both WebOS and RIMs newer platforms? Are you really claiming that native apps are not more performant than web apps?

3. And those “gatekeepers” allow more monetization than the web ever has.

4. Are you saying that I’m not constantly getting GitHub messages about a security vulnerability somewhere deep down in a dependency chain for an open source project that I contribute to? It’s a popular company sponsored open source project.