20240711-native_apps_suck.txt
I'm only half serious about this title, or rather I'm serious about
half of native apps sucking and being nearly useless.
If your app requires an internet connection to function, it should NOT
be a native app. I'm talking mailers, food delivery, food ordering,
video conferencing, streaming audio or video, etc.
If the web app devs are doing their job, there should be no difference
between the web app and he native app. Of course that's rarely the
case, but then again, I don't have faith in a lot of so-called web
developers.
I must admit I'm being a hypocrite here, but only in a strict
interpretation... or a loose one. I use mutt as my email client. And
while I could and sometimes do use webmail at home, I often use mutt.
The difference is mutt delivers a fundamentally different experience
and is way, way faster. The applications I'm mainly talking about are
things like freaking Pandora (is that the audio one?), Owtluk,
Nertflerx, any random fast food or delivery app that is barely
distinguishable regardless of whether you're on the site or app.
The only difference between a website and native app in those cases
should, at most, be snappier push notifications on native apps. I'll
admit I have no experience building PWAs, although I looked into it.
Supposedly push should work the same negardless of native or web.
The thing that I kind of like and kind of don't is that M$oft is
making a "new" Owtluk native app... that looks exactly like the
website. I think it's a PWA, but it doesn't ACT as one: you don't
really "Open in browser" nor, AFAIK, is it attached to a browser. Most
PWAs I've seen, as installed from a browser, are running a
sandboxed(?) instance of the browser with little ability to move to a
different site.
I don't hate native apps. In fact, I love a lot of them. The thing I
hate is unnecessary waste of disk space and vastly different UI/UX
between web and native "equivalents." So I guess I'm basically saying
stop duplicating work and just have one or the other.
