
The End of App Stores Is Rapidly Approaching - xTWOz
https://onezero.medium.com/the-end-of-app-stores-is-rapidly-approaching-b972da395097
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coldtea
> Progressive web apps may soon free you from Google Play and the iOS App
> Store

We went to Google Play and the iOS App Store because we don't like web apps,
progressive or not.

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m463
You had a choice?

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coldtea
Yes. In fact at first we had only the one choice of web apps -- e.g. we were
asked to use "web apps" on iOS before the SDK came out, and people demanded a
proper native SDK for native apps.

Or look how e.g. Facebook initially made their app a web app inside a web
view, and then switched to native (and React Native nowadays).

Plus, nobody stopped developers and users from creating and opting for web
apps (SPA or not) instead of native ones all those years.

If you want the mobile browser apps to also have full access to touch sensors,
and orientation APIs, and AR, and payment processing with stored cards across
apps, and background tasks, and local file access, and notifications, and
whatever -- then you don't simply want mobile web apps, you want mobile OS
makers to port their native APIs (many of which you already have got).

It's kind of disingenuous to say "web apps are all people need" implying "as
soon as all the tons of native APIS are ported and accessible to the web
apps".

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musicale
"Progressive web apps may soon free you from Google Play and the iOS App
Store"

How soon?

"Web technology already ate desktop apps alive"

I miss real desktop apps.

~~~
cotelletta
\- Documents are self contained, standardized and shareable (i.e. load and
save) instead of locked in to a single cloud app.

\- See more than 20-30 items at a time, just scroll through. Reorder every
table and list at will.

\- Customize toolbars, inspector windows, layouts and sizes.

\- Drag and drop files, snippets, images from one app to another.

...

Browser APIs are third rate knock offs of native ones, sandboxed in so you
can't do anything interesting. Browser UIs often lack all the basic
affordances that used to be the norm. Instead developers now design the UI to
support their business model first, putting permanent upsell ads and other
visual cancer in there.

Nobody really believes progressive web apps can replace the desktop or the app
store. Web developers just want you to think so, because that's how they get
paid. To make it actually possible they'd have to undo all the lockdowns and
background restrictions that were necessarily to make it safe for boomers and
normies.

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scarface74
The types of apps that are appropriate for PWAs are not the kind of apps that
make money _on_ the App Store. Most of the revenue generated on the App Store
(as opposed to services that have an app front end) are games.

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menckenjr
This article appears regularly, like oak pollen.

