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Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: why PWAs? As a user it's a lose/lose situation for me. I don't get a nice solid/stable native up and it will use up resources wastefully because of blink/webkit/gecko running nth process on the device and draining battery, the app's data is intertwined with web stuff which inclues a lot if anti-privacy and dynamic content not reviewed by the app store but like normal apps now has access to sensors, files,etc...

My opinion is that it makes life easier for devs and surveillance capitalists but not users. Am I incorrect? If so, why? For privacy, security and performance wouldn't native apps beat PWAs? Aside from the whole anti-apple bandwagon, why is the EU invested in enforcing this?

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What's in it for you as a user is that the app exists at all. A lot of apps either aren't meant to be profitable (government services apps, ngos etc) or won't be profitable enough after paying for developing the app 3x. Building them as a PWA is what makes them viable at all.

If users are willing to pay the extra cost for a carefully handcrafted native app for any particular use case the market will step up and provide it.

What stops devs from making PWAs anyways even when people want to pay for a native app? Cheaper that way.

You get to run an app without worrying its tracking your location, contacts, who knows what else.

Mostly this. Sandboxing on basically every single modern browser is better than sandboxing on mobile devices. Nearly any app that's delivered as a PWA is going to have better privacy guarantees than an equivalent native app.

The difficulty of course being that PWA limitations make many offline-only or account-free apps nearly impossible to build as PWAs.

It's mainly dev experience.

Making a native app that's as cross platform as an Electron app is much more difficult than making an Electron app, from objective burden of work to finding the required talent.

We only have Discord and Slack on Linux (as an installable application out of the browser) because it's Electron-based.

It's an excellent distribution mechanism for apps that you don't want listed on the app store, or ones that won't be approved, or can't be distributed eg. Company/Internal apps (that are installed on employee's personal devices)

tracking can be done in either platform. but if there is tracking in an app you have no way to block it. in webapps you can block tracking with the browser. I am not sure if pwa's are so bad on ressources. i haven't used pwa's or just to try it out. I don't like to have too many apps on my phone anymore, so i like webapps. i'd rather use a webapp. it doesn't use space on the phone and does not clutter. I think in that way i am old fashioned.

When I already have a PS4, why would I want a Steamdeck. Because it opens up more opportunity, more things to do.

Agreed. Any time there's an option for something that could be native to instead be web-based, it's a loss for users.

And as far as cross platform stuff goes, may as well just keep it in a browser. Would rather have eight web apps and two native desktop programs than ten electron apps.

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