I don't even get "The Unseen Cost of Convenience" as frequently the app is not "convenient", it's just worse -- especially on tablet platforms where a desktop site is just fine, and a desktop site at AAA accessibility is perfect.
I have started to think this is the real reason why so many apps have a messaging and voice chat features, not so they can orifice this services to you, but so you'll grant the access so they can spy on you and sell it to advertisers.
I randomly decided to try my hand at pottery using clay I've dug up from my yard. Talked about this in person with a few people, but hadn't posted anywhere online about it. Suddenly, Amazon is suggesting pottery equipment and supplies to me.
I 100% agree with this, but a significant way that mobile websites often decay the experience compared to the app is with very short-lived login sessions.
Even when the experience is otherwise basically identical, I've found that login sessions in a browser are sometimes measured in days, where in the app sessions never expire.
Which feels like app install metric juicing to me.
I don't know if they're affiliated but I recently came across one after already knowing of the other. The name means something like "app compulsion" in both languages, as in being forced to use apps. Very much in line with the submitted article above
Is there such a resource for English already? A place or movement we can link to
Don’t agree, but to each their own. The native app experience for every app noted in the article is better and smoother than the mobile web version, in my opinion. Lots of people hate Electron apps, which suggests to me that my preference for native apps isn’t unique.
Web apps can ask for your location or microphone the same way native apps can. Just reject it, there’s nothing that says you have to accept on either platform, so to say that’s a negative for native apps is odd.
The biggest downside of native apps is you can’t customize them with extensions or user styles like you can with websites.
But I think a lot of the frustration comes from how aggressively companies push the app, even when the web version is perfectly serviceable for casual use
Don’t forget the ability to send push notifications. I think that’s one of the main reasons — it turns your whole relationship with a product on its head: you lose control over when you’re engaging, instead they can literally push their services and ads on you.
> If you've ever opened Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest
And Facebook. I swear they intentionally make the website as bad as possible for mobile browsers. Explicitly disabled sending messages a few years ago. Do they really think someone who resisted their push to apps for 10+ years would submit one day?
Most of websites I use regularly are simply not "optimized" for mobile: broken features, display errors, inadequate UI, just unusable on the phone. And it's intentional: they're sabotaging the mobile experience just to push you into downloading their app.
The Discord web app is nearly identical to the desktop app. The main things you are missing are global push-to-talk and rich presence (i.e. dicord spies on your process list and tells other people what games you are playing). I'm always surprised more people don't use it.
I dream of developing mobile sites that can play audio with the screen off and use the same media controls as apps (think: music player apps while driving). A lot of the things that make mobile sites second class is the lack of screen-off functionality.
You already can do that with Firefox. When you start playing something, lock the device and turn on the screen it shows media controls and you can listen to the audio. It works for youtube, for example.
Meaning the Web App experience is actually better than the native app
I installed the GitHub app and immediately all the links on Google search to GitHub projects turned to "open in app". Absolutely toxic degradation of experience, taking meaningful data about where I was going to navigate and turning into useless dumb ignorant OS level garbage.
I uninstalled the app, almost immediately. Because it poisoned my web experience, destroyed my ability to see where I was navigating on the web.
But still Chrome shows GitHub links as "open I'm app". Even though the app is uninstalled, even though Chrome will open them, even though all I want and all that would be meaningful would be to show me a URL.
It's beyond my imagining how toxically bad apps are. How the OS would prefer to poison us with a zero dimensional facimile of useful information, to shunt us away from useful experiences to route us into the awful bad no good low information indistinct app world. Apps suck so bad. The OS does nothing to make apps any good. There's no principles, no backbone, no nothing outside the web: just co-opting and exploiting users, offering low power low information experiences to people who know no power, have no agency, on and on.
Unless your FB/Google etc. no this isn’t why companies want a mobile app. They want the infinitely better experience and functionality it brings to their users to keep them as customers.
What are good examples of apps that have managed to monetize the precise location of millions of users in a way that isn't obvious (e.g. location-based advertising, or location-based filtering of social media content)?
Collecting that data sounds creepy and nefarious, but if i think about what Experian and everyone else already knows about me, I don't know what information my phone's location would actually add that has enough value to build a massive telemetry engine.
I wish Apple and Google would make rules to the effect of "if your app's entire functionality could be done in a regular website or PWA, then you can't put a native app on our stores".
Apple almost sort of do. If you have a website and put an app on the App Store, it must have functionality that beyond what the website already offers.
I just despise the constant popups "The experience is better on the app, click here to download!"
I read news sites I pay for by scrolling through the home page and opening stories I want to read in new tabs, and then slowly reading and closing them throughout the day. Your app can't do that. Your app doesn't support tabs. It also doesn't support basic things like letting me zoom in on an image. And sometimes it crashes when I try to load comments.
I'm a paid subscriber, and I still get constant nagging every single day to use the app instead that is worse in every way.
And I don't even know why. They're just news sites. They don't ask for any permissions to slurp up my data. I honestly don't have the slightest idea why they keep pushing the app.
I’ve added pages to my ios home screen which almost appears as a native app with some success. The thing is when the app doesn’t implicitly show a back button either via bread crumbs, a ‘cancel’ button or similar, navigation becomes more tricky. It beats installing random things on my phone though.
I understand but it’s not always with bad intentions.
In the Netherlands we have a system called DigiD to login into to most government websites like your taxes and city, etc.
When I contracted for the city of Amsterdam I learned they’ve been pushing hard for the DigiD app to two factor authenticate instead of text message, because of contracts Digid charges a lot per text message validation and none for app.
I think that while data is a major point here, in my opinion, these are the reasons apps are preferred by developers:
1. Persistence: while websites are very easy to close, deleting an app is much more difficult and usually requires pressing on some “red buttons” and scary dialogs. It also makes sure the user now has a button for your app on their Home Screen which makes it a lot more accessible.
2. Notifications: while they exist for websites too, they are much less popular and turned off by default. Notifications are maybe the best way to get the user to use your app.
And while I hate the dark patterns some companies use (Meta, AliExpress, etc), I do understand why installing the app worth so much to them.
There is only 1 reason for encouraging customers or users to use the app, and that is RRR (Retention, Retargeting & Re-engagement), which is very high in mobile.
as an individual more on the unconventional side I've gotten so dissatisfied with this that I have a donki nanote next just for viewing websites on-the-go. I really wish that people made a mobile device that could do the job of a phone and laptop. We have the technology.
Not mentioned in this article, but an installed app also makes it much easier for the vendor to maintain shadow profiles to identify unique users with multiple logins.
I do the exact opposite. I’ll use the app even if accessing the website is more convenient. Usually the app experience is more polished, and denying any permission is trivial. Also, I have a system-wide app/tracking blocker.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 99.7 ms ] threadI have started to think this is the real reason why so many apps have a messaging and voice chat features, not so they can orifice this services to you, but so you'll grant the access so they can spy on you and sell it to advertisers.
I randomly decided to try my hand at pottery using clay I've dug up from my yard. Talked about this in person with a few people, but hadn't posted anywhere online about it. Suddenly, Amazon is suggesting pottery equipment and supplies to me.
Even when the experience is otherwise basically identical, I've found that login sessions in a browser are sometimes measured in days, where in the app sessions never expire.
Which feels like app install metric juicing to me.
German: https://appzwang.de
I don't know if they're affiliated but I recently came across one after already knowing of the other. The name means something like "app compulsion" in both languages, as in being forced to use apps. Very much in line with the submitted article above
Is there such a resource for English already? A place or movement we can link to
It's a good initiative, and I hope (non-tech) people realize more about this.
Web apps can ask for your location or microphone the same way native apps can. Just reject it, there’s nothing that says you have to accept on either platform, so to say that’s a negative for native apps is odd.
The biggest downside of native apps is you can’t customize them with extensions or user styles like you can with websites.
On the other hand, for mobile apps, there is still a device-specific mentality.
Imagine web apps being built with a different flavor for all the major browsers...
I hope that the same level of standardization comes to mobile apps too with the option to use more device-specific features on top of the generic UI.
And Facebook. I swear they intentionally make the website as bad as possible for mobile browsers. Explicitly disabled sending messages a few years ago. Do they really think someone who resisted their push to apps for 10+ years would submit one day?
Most of websites I use regularly are simply not "optimized" for mobile: broken features, display errors, inadequate UI, just unusable on the phone. And it's intentional: they're sabotaging the mobile experience just to push you into downloading their app.
I have no option than using their f..g app.
[ DOWNLOAD APP NOW ]
[continue with chrome like a scrub]
Meaning the Web App experience is actually better than the native app
I uninstalled the app, almost immediately. Because it poisoned my web experience, destroyed my ability to see where I was navigating on the web.
But still Chrome shows GitHub links as "open I'm app". Even though the app is uninstalled, even though Chrome will open them, even though all I want and all that would be meaningful would be to show me a URL.
It's beyond my imagining how toxically bad apps are. How the OS would prefer to poison us with a zero dimensional facimile of useful information, to shunt us away from useful experiences to route us into the awful bad no good low information indistinct app world. Apps suck so bad. The OS does nothing to make apps any good. There's no principles, no backbone, no nothing outside the web: just co-opting and exploiting users, offering low power low information experiences to people who know no power, have no agency, on and on.
lol downvoted but undisputed.
Collecting that data sounds creepy and nefarious, but if i think about what Experian and everyone else already knows about me, I don't know what information my phone's location would actually add that has enough value to build a massive telemetry engine.
But perhaps I am insufficiently paranoid.
Works like a charm.
I read news sites I pay for by scrolling through the home page and opening stories I want to read in new tabs, and then slowly reading and closing them throughout the day. Your app can't do that. Your app doesn't support tabs. It also doesn't support basic things like letting me zoom in on an image. And sometimes it crashes when I try to load comments.
I'm a paid subscriber, and I still get constant nagging every single day to use the app instead that is worse in every way.
And I don't even know why. They're just news sites. They don't ask for any permissions to slurp up my data. I honestly don't have the slightest idea why they keep pushing the app.
In the Netherlands we have a system called DigiD to login into to most government websites like your taxes and city, etc.
When I contracted for the city of Amsterdam I learned they’ve been pushing hard for the DigiD app to two factor authenticate instead of text message, because of contracts Digid charges a lot per text message validation and none for app.
1. Persistence: while websites are very easy to close, deleting an app is much more difficult and usually requires pressing on some “red buttons” and scary dialogs. It also makes sure the user now has a button for your app on their Home Screen which makes it a lot more accessible.
2. Notifications: while they exist for websites too, they are much less popular and turned off by default. Notifications are maybe the best way to get the user to use your app.
And while I hate the dark patterns some companies use (Meta, AliExpress, etc), I do understand why installing the app worth so much to them.