Why Your App Could Have Been a Webpage: A Hacker's Fix
Your 'App' Could Have Been a Webpage (so I fixed it for you)
I was annoyed when forced to install the Travelbound app just to view a simple itinerary. After reverse-engineering its network traffic, I discovered it was just serving HTML and JSON. I built a lightweight, ad-free webpage that offers better accessibility and features, proving that many native apps are unnecessary bloat.
Software companies are happy to make their lives harder and more expensive in order to deliver HTML content to fewer people and with fewer features than if they just published directly to the Web.
- OkayPhysicist
Nobody here is talking about the fact that a significant number of users want apps, too.
I'm responsible for an internal tool at the company I work for, hosted as a website, that handles a bunch of miscellaneous tasks that other employees need. Think reimbursements, documentation and reporting, gathering and presenting business data. That sort of thing.
When I took it over, it was desktop only ( a lot of <table> formatted pages with fixed px sizes). I spruced it up, modernized it to work on screens of any size, and created a mobile version of any pages that just didn't translate well to small screens (think "large tables of information").
When I announced the update, the number of people who asked me variations of "how to get website on phone if website on computer" or requested I make the damn thing an app was outrageous.
We take tech literacy for granted, because it's like a dozen levels down fundamental to our entire field. But the tech illiterati exist, and they love apps.
- Grombobulous
I recently decided to publish an app on the App Store just so I could say I accomplished that, and maybe even make a little bit of beer money on the side.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my actual app is pretty much garbage. I don’t expect it to be popular. It’s basically a worse version of stuff that is already available.
I expected this to be a learning exercise about the process of getting stuff published.
Long story short, by the end of the ordeal I was somewhat surprised that anyone independent bothers to publish apps at all. The amount of red tape and nitpicking by the initial app review process is astounding. The business/legal side is also annoying. I might be misremembering or misinterpreting, but it seems like you really need an LLC with a mail forwarding service and a cheap second phone line just to avoid the App Store sending the whole internet to your personal phone and address.
On a website you can just not deal with any of that, and not give Apple $99/year just to keep your app on the store.
And we haven’t even gotten into the big royalties you’re paying for App Store purchases.
Still, I understand the appeal at some point, just not for an app like OP was forced to use. I certainly wouldn’t want to use something like Immich or Opencloud without an app: these apps need to deeply integrate with my phone to be truly useful.
- Zak
I once read that app users are seven times more profitable than web users. That easily answers the author's question about why a company would bother make an app when a web page is the natural fit for the use case.
I don't remember the source or methodology for that number, but I have no trouble believing it. An app gives the developer a foothold on the user's device. It can more easily send notifications, track the user's location, resist customization like ad blocking, and remain present on the user's device even when closed. It's easier to funnel users into profitable behavior with an app.
Companies wouldn't do this if a large fraction of users refused the app, but most users don't.
- billyp-rva
> I can’t understand how we got to this place with “app culture”!
The short version: ad blockers work on browsers but not apps[0].
- staticshock
Low-tech users don't give a damn if something has the guts of an "app" or not, they care about having a thing on the home screen they can click.
Businesses have the incentive to give their users that low friction experience (at the point of need) using already familiar rails (i.e. "install app from app store").
The makers of both iOS and Android treat the ability to "bookmark" a web URL onto your home screen as a power user feature that requires navigating through complex, technical-sounding menus. Does it have to be like that? Of course not. They just have a business interest in pushing users away from the open web and towards their walled gardens.
--
Mind you, I'm not saying, "advertising doesn't play a role in this". A clump of well aligned motivations is obviously going to be more powerful than a single isolated motivation. But let's not forget that apps built for non-technical users, which—I cannot stress this enough—IS MOST USERS, benefit greatly from lowest common denominator solutions where they never feel like they have to learn anything to get going.
- jcmontx
Something the author doesn't mention as a pro for the web is my favorite type of tech: browser extensions. I love web because I can basically customize pretty much everything to my needs.
I have published a few of them in the last few years, and I have tens of them which I haven't published. I use them for tons of different things:
* allowing only text tweets on X
* blocking photos and videos on all Meta products
* blocking explicit content
* customizing exchange rates for online shopping (Argentine peso, you wouldn't get it™)
* having reddit hot as default for the home and subreddits (they been pushing the "best" for a couple years and it's actually trash)
browser extensions have allowed me to regain some of my cognitive sovereignty while being a heavy internet user.
- datakan
We were supposed to be in the age of PWAs. That was the initial plan for iOS before the app store and 30% cuts on subscription apps.
Most web apps suck too though so I guess pick your poison. My strong belief is they want apps because they can spam you with notifications to get your attention.
- Doctor_Fegg
> There only seem to be two things that this “app” does, that a webpage might not have, and they’re both anti-features:
> It reports tracking data associated with your Google Account back to the developers.
Fortunately webpages never do any tracking whatsoever, let alone “Gobshite LLC and its 1131 partners need your permission for (contd. p94)”
- baud9600
I remember when Steve Jobs stood on stage and complained about Flash, how he hated its dominance of the free web, how it was a heavy and proprietary technology that prevented mobile devices from participating. His solution? To adopt the latest HTML standards… and also to build responsive apps. But now some apps have become heavy, advertising-bound, subscription nightmares. So it’s back to HTML, right?
- catuscubitus
My app already is a webpage. I made Android and iOS apps for years. Got fed up with the arbitrary roadblocks, erratic whims of store reviewers, and general bureaucracy involved.
Pushing a simple fix would sometimes be delayed for days and a couple of weeks in the worst case I experienced. Now I can deploy patches immediately and no one needs to download or update anything on their device. Abandoning those walled garden regimes was one of the best things I ever did.