Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

Apple's 30% app cut is why we don't have the ability to make websites and web apps appear and operate like an app. Pinning a website onto your home screen to make it seem like an app is a cumbersome process which can't be automated into some "install" button. This is probably intentional to force people to make wrapper apps and thus subject something to the Apple platform fee.

They're also worrying about declining revenues in hardware so they are aggressively shifting to subscription and service fees, to the point of destroying the user experience of the Apple ecosystem. I am almost forced to use iCloud backups because of decades of neglect with offline syncing. Why must I pay monthly for gigabytes of storage to backup my iphone when a single $30 hard drive could do it?

I understand and see the value apple provides in a walled garden. It's not totally useless. It's one of the reasons apps tend to be higher quality in the App Store and the platform is basically free of viruses unlike an "open" platform like Windows. But I also welcome the changes that might make it easier for web based technologies to run freely on iOS.

I logged into my wife’s iPad and somehow all of our photos got merged. I have no idea how it happened or how to undo it, but now we both have to upgrade our iCloud tier to cover the extra storage. We will both be stuck on tat plan in perpetuity because it is such a mess trying to separate out the photos.

It’s three taps to make a website appear as a bookmark. Redirecting the user to the app store is as many taps.

Consider why more companies haven’t gone the way of PWAs – there are a lot more reasons higher than installation ux.

It’s 3 taps that require specific instructions that no one knows how to do. An app store may require taps but you can link to a page that has an Install button.

These small ux decisions make of break a feature or pattern. For example we had QR code readers but it didn’t become a thing to have QR codes until Apple baked it into the photos app. Meanwhile QR codes in China proliferated almost a decade earlier because it was baked into the defacto standard do-everything app WeChat.

> Why must I pay monthly for gigabytes of storage to backup my iphone when a single $30 hard drive could do it?

This is “I could build that in a weekend” mentality. Your data on iCloud is replicated, available via the internet, available 99.99% of the time, etc. If your $30 hard drive fails you lose everything.

The price and being able to use other services is worth debating, but comparing it to “a single $30 hard drive” is disingenuous.

two $30 hard drives. many of us handle this sort of thing as a matter of course in our daily lives, and the walled ecosystem chases us out.

My backup is also replicated. Once on my hard drive and once on my phone. Secondly, it’s apple’s job to build this feature. I’m not talking about why I do or do not do it myself. I’m talking about why apple doesn’t make it, which is because they want me to pay monthly to hold data that I may never actually access.

Third, apple did build this feature, but it has become a neglected second class citizen. You can do backups to a mac, but the experience is clearly neglected.

> why we don't have the ability to make websites and web apps appear and operate like an app

The more we get this, the more dystopian thing will be.

Make the web more powerful is negative.

Is replace a 'wallen garden' with the most lock-down/monopolistic form of computing (the browser).

Is NOT possible to make your own browser. You can't. Make your own APP (from TUI and UP) is doable.

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