alt Hacker NewsThe closing point is the one that should get more attention — every single one of these apps could be replaced by a web page. And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts: you want access to APIs the browser won't give you. Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser, and that's by, unfortunately, design.
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Exactly what big businesses do, and governments think what businesses do is good practice. Fore everyone to use an app.
The UK's Companies House (required for anyone who is a director or has a shareholding of more than 15% etc.) requires a Onegov ID now. They offer a web version with a scan of a photo ID (passport or driving license). I tried it. I thought one of those would work. Apparently the web version needs to ask security questions (reasonable, as the app used NFC to read your passport) but despite the vast amount of information the government has on me (to issue those IDs, to collect taxes, etc) it cannot do that, so i had to either use the app or go in person to a post office in a different town.
Similarly I got an email from Occado saying that if I used the app I could change orders without checking out again. If I do it on the website i have to checkout again. Why?
> there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts
The flip side is there are (presumably) real people downloading these apps. Maybe it’s a kid interested in a career in the FBI, or the family of someone who works there. Idk. (I thought it would contain a secure tip line or something, but the app seems to be a social-media front end first.)
I am willing to entertain that there is a legitimate reason for an app to exist without conceding that it should be a pile of trash.
Today morning, I was checking TSA wait times. Guess what, they want you to install their app to get the wait time. [1]
Can't trust the government to make a usable webpage [0].
Quoth the Doctorow: "An app is just a website wrapped up in enough IP to make it a felony to modify it."
Not sure if this is still a thing, but some apps used to embed libraries very much tracking everything you do on the phone, including your live location and that was then sold to third parties.
> access to APIs
It's mostly static data. Just publish it under a URL that won't change. Then we could actually cache and archive it.
> Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser
Most browsers do in fact offer that level of granularity, especially for PWA usecases [0].
And from an indicators perspective, having certain capabilities turned off can make it easier to identify and de-anonymize individuals.
[0] - https://pwascore.com/
> And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app
I have worked on several applications where the product managers wanted to make our web app something that could be installed through the app store, because that's how users expect to get apps.
I know people who don't even type search queries or URLs into a browser, they just tell the phone what they want to find and open whatever shows up in a search result.
I've tried pushing back against the native app argument and won once because customers actually reported liking that we had a website instead of an app, and other times because deploying an app through the stores was more work than anyone had time to take on. Otherwise, we would've been deploying through app stores for sure.
Marketing gets plenty of data from google analytics or whatever platform they're using anyway, so neither they nor product managers actually care about the data from native APIs.