> can't even show a add to home screen native banner.
That sounds like a feature.
That sounds like a feature.
There’s enough advantage from being accessible via URL, usable on any device, live updating, etc. to compensate that for many uses. But using web apps daily for any serious work is a huge loss in resource use, usability, polish, ...
The one that makes me saddest though is that web apps seem to be getting worse over time. For example most of Google’s suite of web apps were dramatically better a decade ago.
Sure, you can get to the same result eventually. But the tools to do so are better and more intuitive for making Android or iOS apps.
Of course the modern Javascript web stack isn’t pretty either, so I guess what I’m saying is everything sucks a bit.
I’ve seen nice results and crappy results regardless of what particular stack it’s made in. IMO the biggest difference shows up in integration with the rest of the system. If you want to hook into the Files app or Siri Shortcuts, native apps certainly have a leg up.
All this stuff is just done now regardless of what tech you choose. The arguments against web tech are old. The platform has caught up.
It has not. There are no tools for the web approaching even a Delphi RAD or a Qt Creator ca 2001.
CSS layouts are a joke, and trying to create anything as complex as a modern app with CSS is a road of blood and tears (go ahead and use CSS to implement something like Sencha. Hell, start with any constrained layout available for most native frameworks and toolsets out of the box).
By "most native APIs" you mean a very small subset deemed more-or-less safe to execute in the browser (you won't ever have full access to, let's say, UIKit, or AVFoundation).
And even if animation is rendered on GPU, 1) if you have a lot of them, the browser will struggle, and 2) web animations are extremely limited, primitive, and extremely constrained by layout. Good luck not running into reflow issues for animations which are a breeze on the native platforms. And good luck working around these issues using only animations which won't trigger them.
> All this stuff is just done now regardless of what tech you choose.
There are people who build OSes using only assembly. It doesn't mean that tools or capabilities of assembly are anywhere near available for other tech.
Where can I find this mythical mindblowing app?
It's not like these things are cheap, and plenty of developers wouldn't have a shot of successfully delivering an app without the infrastructure in place to support them.
It should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that the vendor wants their cut.
If we are having an honest conversation about who gets a cut of what, we have to realise that web apps still have bills to pay and people getting their cut of something — credit card handlers, payments systems, web hosting (and that ain't cheap, especially when demand rises) on top of the cost of hosting an API and databases, and plenty of other costs.
That's what people are asking for. If you want to provide services, sure, charge for them, but also allow developers to not use your services in this case.
Apples monopoly enforcement in both this and in html rendering is one of the biggest causes of stagnation in tech right now.
When I run a web app, sure, I need to pay lots of different middle men. But I get to choose which ones I use.
Nobody thinks it cost nothing, it's the draconian 30% they object to. Other app stores are offering similar services, with a much lower cut:
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-epic-...
There are ~1400 app releases in App Store per day (all of them need to be reviewed, checked for compatibility etc. etc.).
There are ~2 million apps which have to be hosted, checked, delivered etc.
Then there are push notifications. During WWDC'12 (yes, 7 years ago) Apple was pushing 7 billion notifications daily.
In comparison: Epic store has 4 apps.
I have seen the add to home screen banner dozens of times and clicked it never. It would quite obviously be better for me if the banner didnt exist.
The banner being a factor… how? iOS has let users add web applications to their home screen for over a decade.
> We've all become very used to the App Store but honestly the experience is pretty crappy.
As opposed to every fucking site spamming you to install on your home screen being a stellar experience.
https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/app-install-b...
Further bonus: no unstable proprietary API to reverse-engineer and implement and it teaches the user that there's nothing specific to it, they can pin any site they commonly use to their home page whether that site provides specific PWA support or not, such that they can perform the action at any point they want.
The browser is simpler, the method is less scammy and the user is empowered.
That's all assuming you trust the efficacy of the app store scanners of course, and my trust in google on that is pretty low.
Microsoft already does this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-...