
Ask HN: What is the purpose of mobile applications? - keaq
 Websites already provide a pretty good experience by advancements such as SPA, which is fast with smooth transitions between pages.<p>However, what problems do mobile apps solve? Why are they needed and are they needed really?<p>The only idea I came up with: speed. The apps are indeed faster and provide better user experience. However, the state of web development can provide almost the same experience.
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FlyingSnake
Looks like OP has drank the koolaid of the JS bootcamps. Mobile apps can
outshine an SPA, and then there are things that JS webapps can only dream of.
Want to interface with a IoT device over BTLE? Sorry native’s the only way.
Wanna do immersive AR experience in your app? Ditto, JS won’t cut it. How
about writing an simple app while following a11y guidelines? Even for simple
list based apps, native can run circles around JS apps while using less power,
and conserving battery without breaking sweat.

Mobile phones are like a Tesla Model S, and you don’t want to tie it to a
bullock and use it as a ox-cart.

~~~
nodelessness
No need to be condescending about it.

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ridiculous_fish
Mobile apps can use native controls. When there is an ecosystem of apps that
use the same controls, it enables users to do more, because they can bring
their knowledge from one app to another.

For example, with iOS UISlider, you can make fine or coarse adjustments by
moving your thumb perpendicular to the slider direction. This works across all
native apps. Users who learn about this feature become more capable in _every_
native app.

There's no mechanism to create this sort of shared knowledge on the web. The
web developer culture emphasizes customization, and so no two web apps work
consistently.

~~~
basch
The other thing about native controls, is that as the UI toolkit evolves over
time, your app stays up to date, without looking old and dated, stuck in an
old paradigm of skeuomorphism or flat or material or metro or aqua or luna or
etc.

There's also battery life and suspend. I expect a native app to minimize,
close and kill, resume, and background when needed.

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musha68k
I also prefer mobile web apps in general (as did Steve Jobs originally:
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-
ori...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-
vision-for-the-iphone-no-third-party-native-apps/amp/)) that said it's often
much easier to create an app with good, consistent UX with the help of UIKit
for example. I'm mostly doing backend work these days but whatever happened to
"progressive web apps" by the way? Is the (react?) ecosystem still too
fractured? Is it just too hard or is it everywhere and I just don't know about
it? ;D

~~~
agustif
Expo.io is great for building webapps

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cattlemansgold
For distributor of the app (app stores) - they can take a percentage of sales
if the app is monetized.

For users of the app - As you mentioned, speed is an important factor. But we
can also trust that the distributor has reviewed the app and confirmed that
it's safe to use (theoretically at least).

One more point I would add - app stores provide a singular place for me to
search, compare, and discover new apps that might be valuable to me.

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BjoernKW
While some of the arguments in favour of mobile applications apply in many
cases, I'd like to consider a specific recent example: The GitHub mobile app.

I have been using GitHub on mobile via its web application for years. It
worked fine for the most part though some feature (such as pull requests)
weren't as easily accessible on mobile as they are on desktop machines.

However, with the advent of their new mobile app, not only is its UX better
when compared with the web app (e.g. when reviewing pull requests) but due to
the banner notification reminding you to use the mobile app when accessing
GitHub via the web app on mobile devices the UX of the web app to some extent
even has decreased.

The thing is, there are no features within the GitHub mobile app that actually
warrant having such an app. Everything the app does would have been possible
on the web and with mobile browser APIs, too.

So, in that specific case the purpose of a mobile application perhaps mostly
comes down to having such a mobile application, i.e. it's more about marketing
and distribution channels than it is about technology or design requirements.

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bdangubic
You need to have a kid to get the answer to this question. My kid doesn't use
browser ever - if there isn't an app it doesn't exist. What we "google" she
"youtube's" \- who has time to read when you can watch a demo or a
presentation...

~~~
c22
It's funny because I often shirk video content under the assumption that I can
skim for and find the information I'm looking for much faster in text and who
has time to watch a whole video?

~~~
tomjen3
I scrup youtube videos, because in the wast majority of cases I only need to
see a tiny bit of the content.

However I have saved endless amounts of time by watching youtube videos to
learn a new cooking skill, or another physical skill - videos are so much
better than text when it comes to that.

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fatnoah
>The apps are indeed faster and provide better user experience

This is a major reason. Another is access to the features of your mobile
device, such as location, AR Engine, camera, push notifications, etc.

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pmiller2
One problem they solve quite well is being able to show ads while making it
hard for end users to block them.

~~~
guessbest
They are also good at getting clipboard data.

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yccheok
No. Website doesn't provide experience as good as native app. Many ordinary
users can tell you this.

\- Privacy. A good intention mobile app, can be designed to work without
Internet.

\- Internet. User doesn't have access to Internet all-the-time, but you still
need certain app to work.

\- Fast. Web app can never be as fast as native app. It is not realistic to
expect code which runs under an JavaScript interpreter layer, can be as fast
as native (or almost native) code which is nearer to CPU layer.

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patrick5151
You get more access to the hardware. It appears that auto-focus isn't
available via a webAPI for example.

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schwartzworld
there are APIs available in native apps that you cannot access in an SPA. For
example, jogging apps continue to track your run while running in the
background, but this is impossible in a web browser.

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mixmastamyk
Speed yes, although much is thru the convenience of bypassing browser
sandboxing/restrictions rather than reduced CPU utilization.

Revenue, monetization of PII and other user data is the primary purpose.
That's why some sites are so aggressive about pushing them on you, to the
point of making the web app substantially worse than it should be. Yelp and
reddit, from the top of my mind.

Sure, there are apps that benefit from more direct hardware access (games,
art?) but they are often able to charge a fee.

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fouric
> can provide almost the same experience.

Please, show me a complex web application that performs well (little
perceptible UI latency) on a mid-range phone.

Edit: Or a fast SPA - I've never seen one.

~~~
julianlam
[https://community.nodebb.org](https://community.nodebb.org)

We tried very hard to make it a fast SPA.

~~~
fouric
Counterexample acknowledged! This is indeed very fast.

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jamil7
Mobile platforms are moving targets, the landscape changes constantly and the
goal posts of what a SPA needs to acheive to compete with native apps keeps
shifting. Raw performance is not the only metric. I think this discussion is
also stale, despite 10 years of people telling us that web would kill mobile
it hasn't happened yet, I don't see a reason one stack has to replace the
other really, they can co-exist and compliment each other nicely.

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workingname
I would think web apps have the major advantages, and have for some time.

Seems to me the biggest draw one would be see how you can retain the people
that are willing to go the extra mile to download your app. You must be
solving a problem for them in a significant way. A web app is a quickie, it's
useful or isn't. And besides the reasons why they are useful above, it helps
you to fail /or/ scale faster.

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quickthrower2
The major headache with web spas is the little things like scrolling showing
the address bar then hiding a button slightly. I treat some sites as apps by
using one icons, and that’s ok but something that needs to behave like a fixed
screen size kind of app doesn’t work well. Why? Apple doesn’t want it to? Why?
30% take on the AppStore is at stake!

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seizethecheese
I’m sure part of this is consumer preference. We are 100% web at the moment
and customers ask for an app all the time. Reasons they give:

\- They want native notifications, not email or SMS.

\- They perceive that web will be more difficult to log into.

\- The don’t know how to install a website onto their phone like an app.

(For context, we are Bottomless.com, YC W19.)

~~~
rickbhardwaj
Hey, I actually just founded a startup (still in stealth mode) that's trying
to build better notifications and authentication for the mobile web. Our
thesis is that this the primary gap between websites and apps, so we're trying
to close it. I'd love to chat with you about this. If you have some time,
shoot me an email at rick@chatos.io.

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aripickar
Sometimes you want apps that are silo'd off and are not connected to the
entire web. Mobile apps can provide users with a better experience since they
are more locked down in terms of permissions

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dakiol
Mobile apps are great, the only problem is: app stores. For this only reason,
I will never write a mobile app again.

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tomjen3
Speed, better integration with the OS, less wasteage of RAM, native look and
feel of the components.

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toomuchtodo
Apps are almost always a better experience.

