I do agree that this seems to be exception rather than the rule - so having both is actually nice IMHO.
This is by design to force you install the app. Most of these days, I just treat it as a signal to neither use the app nor the website.
I'm not sure if it is intentional to push you to the mobile app, but I have to imagine the mobile app doesn't have all these issues.
The kicker is that the text is so small and to make the site usable (and readable) you need to rotate your phone to landscape mode.
This works well enough that I haven't downloaded the reddit mobile app or used their mobile site ever since they killed Apollo.
there are surprisingly many of them for pretty much every social media website.
What kind of sad, self-loathing software developer sits down and says "OK boss, whatever you say, boss, gonna go make it bad now..." I mean, I know to a lot of people, it's just a 9-5 and you do what your boss says, and "pride in your work" is not really a thing anymore, but come on. Who gets even a shred of satisfaction doing this?
I think a better explanation is just incompetence.
I'd rather see this framed as, "if you don't have a high functioning web version, I don't need to use your service." Gimping my preferred medium will lose me as a customer. If enough people draw that line, "enshittifying" your web app should hurt your metrics, not help. That way maintaining a good web version is looked at as a long-term necessity, not a top of funnel.
But at one club they wanted me to install another app just to check my coat. I elected to hide it under a some furniture instead lol
It's not like an app is getting those without your knowledge, and many times it's useful for an app to have your contacts or location...
That said only on some platforms is it possible to stop a native app from getting them.
Are there other platforms that can't even manage this basic level of user protection?
It used to frustrate me that people didn't care about their own privacy, because I genuinely didn't want evil people to hurt them. But, it's even more angering that people don't have the common decency to consider whether their friends and family would want them sharing their phone numbers, email addresses, photos of them, etc.
I think they're counting on these popups wearing people out.
After GDPR made these incessant annoying cookie popups mandatory, I just robotically click any button to dismiss it as fast as possible. Some website could probably write "Give root access" in that box and I'd probably click it without thinking.
i don’t get this take. “Web browser is sandbox by default”. sure, it has to do the rail grind with a rake to access system calls, but in a modern system apps are also sandboxed, especially on a smartphone or when downloaded with a managed app service. the OS gives you the ability to specify permissions, although to what degree depends on your provider. your browser _obviously_ also has the permissions you’re talking about. and now we have introduced yet more vectors in the form of cookies where web _applications_ can track activity _between applications_ with that just kinda being part of the spec, and it totally neuters the protections that the OS gives you because once you configure Firefox to get your location for Open Maps, now you’ve totally given control to your location permissions for _all web apps_ to yet another corporate driven point of failure.
don’t even get me started on the UI mess.
my tinfoil hat theory is that the browser is pushed by mostly bad actors trying to get data, while anyone providing a real user experience has a nice native app.
press F for my reputation.
With responsive design becoming mainstream I'm fine with using my browser for 90% of my internet work. In some cases like Google docs it's painful to use the web version so I just use the app.
EDIT: I wish they'd add a console to mobile web browsers though.
for me, this is signal that i wasn't supposed to be visiting that resource in the first place
There are several sites I use regularly for which I refuse to install the app. There are a lot more sites that I visit only occasionally because someone links to it, and that site immediately wants me to download the app and refuses to show me the content that was linked to. Fuck off with that.
Why would someone try to force me off of my browser (that has ad-blocking and tracker-blocking mitigations) and on to a locked-down app that may want permission to run in the background, display notifications, access my files or camera, etc?
Maybe it really is to "improve my experience"... yeah, right.
That's already the norm.
I default to building web applications. Actually getting people to install your special app is in any case a race to the bottom. Some will, most won't. It's onboarding friction. If you can shave a few steps of your onboarding process, the chance that somebody comes out the other end is simply higher.
As a user, I rarely install apps to begin with and frankly the appeal of "native" is limited to well guarded APIs into jealously magical device capabilities that phones have that most applications don't actually need. I know how the sausage is made and there just isn't that much there.
I also think app development requirements are too high. Just to compile your app and run the build process you need a very high end computer. I could never do it with my modest laptop and therefore gravitated towards web programming and more backend work. Thankfully I avoided all the pain of building apps and getting them approved by store owners. But I do have respect for people who have to deal with this bs.
It may sound too opinionated and may hurt some feeling but I don't like android at all. I think it sucks. But I have little choice. So I grin and bear.
Facebook seems to be in this game. Constant notifications to install the app, and as well increasingly degraded experience in the web version (both desktop and mobile).
Notifications is a big obvious one. Not sure if they've changed it since I last looked into it, but having an app installed was the only way to send a notification to someone for a long time.
Isnt there are similar feature in iOS browser as in Firefox these "desktop notifications" that some webpages request?
that used to be true, especially on ios. but web push has existed there for a while now for home screen web apps.
so that explains some of the history... doesn't really excuse today's habit of shipping the web as a second-class client.
Luckily there is choice :)
Sometimes the mobile app experience is better than the mobile browser for me, though. Examples are Twitter, Spotify, Upwork, Google Keep Notes.
If I'm on my computer I don't even download the apps, I just use the browser. It just feels more convenient.
I haven't thought much about why they all feel good on my laptop browser while some apps offer better experience on mobile.
Edit: It's also why I keep procrastinating on getting into mobile app development. I just generally prefer web experience. With some exceptions as already stated here.
But I'll also say some apps don't really need to be apps (like ordering food from one specific store) but I won't complain about having those apps if it is a convenience.
I think it's somewhat misguided, but companies gonna company.
Had this happen yesterday when someone sent me a link to something on AllTrails. If the service was good and the website was usable, I might have even considered getting the app for offline features. Not anymore - screw companies that do this.
If only 1% of your user base is accessing your maps through the website, you aren’t going to keep supporting it.
In this case, AllTrails has a perfectly functional website which they allow users to access from computer web browsers, but they force mobile phones (even when in "request desktop site" mode) to redirect to the app. If a site breaks in that mode it's on the user - I'm specifically requesting to get access to something they already provide and being denied.
This is especially egregious given how many "apps" are just websites in a wrapper anyway.
I think that sucks, and I'm entitled to my opinion. Now get off my lawn.
Also the fact that people here would rather have their info stored in the cloud vs local on device is interesting.
Then with ChatGPT he had to enshittify his website with all these cloudflare capture stuff, making the site leeesssssssss fun to use; when complaining he mailed me that AI scrapers are slashing his servers
I just randomly looked at Railway and for $20 a month you get a whole lot. I've hosted many a web project (successful personal projects and enterprise projects alike) and I don't see a large barrier to entry on "hosting a website" here.
Blocking AI scrapers and crawlers is not a huge ordeal. Planning for a unicorn before just putting a product up isn't the way to go.
If you have content they want, then it is a huge ordeal. You can pay some one like CloudFlare to take care of it for you, but if you can't or won't make a deal with those types of companies, it's going to take up a significant chunk of your time.
Made me realize that for a lot of people who get cheaper phones with less storage installing a new app is actually a pretty big decision.
Most of folks on HN here are much older than todays "first customers" of 16y/17/18
For them: The "Smartphone is the internet", while for most of us the "Smartphone is an extension of the internet from our desktops" that we were used to (remember the years before dot com bubble, saying: "I will be down in the basement at the computer to surf on the net little bit" ? :-)
But today, the very first touchpoint with "the internet" for younger folks is a smartphone display. The even do homework on this small screens!
Companies are seeing this switch, so they adapt.
Personally, a service which is "only an app" will be not used by me as I prefer to have a larger screen with more information (actually I use my mobile phone only when Im in public transport or similar, at home I have a notebook laying around if I need something)
There seems to be a disconnect between some developers and the younger folks.
Internet to my parents and other old folks is YouTube and WhatsApp
I am very frugal (to save money on webcam, in online classes, I had droidcam /wo-mic setup with one of my parents old phones that were so old that online classes couldn't work or were just too slow) but spending money on a decent personal computer is genuinely one of the best investments personally.
One thing my cousins did which I am sorta grateful in retrospect is they didn't buy me a gpu so my computer was really nice/smooth in everything but gaming, I still ran some games like portal series , inscryption and many other games like valorant and it was playing valorant when I started realizing its chinese company roots and kernel level access meaning that there was no proper way to guarantee to have piece of mind unless I reinstall it
So I felt like if I was reinstalling, I was watching some the linux experiments video anyway and was fascinated by linux, so I just decided to choose myself to use nobara-linux for the first time which was another one of the best decisions that I made as it opened me up to the terminal.
Great sentence! I will apply this to my kids as well, I guess.
I always tell them already: "In the future, you can game as much as you want, IF you learn a good programming language [which will be defined by me]" - let me see how this will work out in 1-2 years :-D
I read a UI book in the early 2000s that cited research showing that most users didn't understand filesystems. They would seem to, but then the idea that the same filename in two places was two unrelated files would just lead to a mental block. Those who got it, didn't find it hard. It's just that some people can't get it.
The disconnect is not between some developers, and the younger folks. It is between some developers, and most of the world.
It's natural that people who enjoy programming and hacking and related fields are very comfortable with such abstract types of thought. But I really think that isn't all that common amongst most people. I think the average person has to learn such thinking abilities with difficulty (though they can). I'm sure many people here got into programming precisely because abstract thinking came easily to them.
> the idea that the same filename in two places was two unrelated files would just lead to a mental block.
Which is actually why the "files and folders" metaphor is apt. In a filing cabinet in a school office (once upon a time) there were likely hundreds of documents labeled "Report Card" in many different folders, each labeled with a different name.
Counter here: When I wanted to switch from TurboPascal during school (14y/15y) to C++ (because it was "more cool" and that was the tool that the 'big boy' game-dev-pros were, we thought), it was so damn hard for me - really! I was struggling so massivly, I head massive problems with this pointer stuff - it took me years to fully understand it.
And I was hell-bad at math in school (or maybe just too lazy), the only thing to which I a relation was all this geometric stuff (because this was needed for .. game dev! :-D )
It's a starting point, but I certainly wouldn't say it's the best metaphor that there could be. The idea of subfolders just doesn't make sense in a filing cabinet analogy, because you have to consider paper size - any folder which could fit into another folder is not going to be able to contain your regularly sized documents.
That said, I can't think of a better metaphor.
Because in the analog world, each "document has usually a single/unique headline" and file names are often perceived as some type of unique identifier as well, Id guess?
> It is between some developers, and most of the world.
sigh
(1) or referencing them from the same directory, which was the earlier metaphor.
I've frequently saved on OneDrive instead of locally, by accident, and then been perplexed when I try to reopen the file later.
And I've been using filesystems for 35+ years, so I feel sympathy for those who don't understand the abstraction.
I think that the software industry, especially operating systems, have completely failed to provide a balanced product between the overly bloated and messed up (Windows), the overly complicated (Linux) and the overly simplified (Android/iOS).
Maybe some Linux distros are now at the right spot, I was positively surprised by PopOS to give an example, but it's too late. With AI this is only going to get worse.
That's becoming dangerously true of my wife and I as well, to be honest.
The friction is just so much lower than Google Drive or whatever. As long as I handle it right away. It's just finding something from more than an hour ago that's intolerable.
He showed me his WhatsApp: People are sending _ALL_ type of critical documents by WhatsApp to him. Everything. (and bank statements are among the class of "less critical" documents in his case)
My theory here is: "If you have any function in your product, people will use it for anything appropriate to them in a given minute"
Some insiders know about this disconnect and fewer still can bridge it easily.
Those that cannot even sense this disconnect, they're a bit of a pain in certain situations. You know, like talking to project stakeholders or customers.
17yo here, I know that I might be a bit of an exception here but atleast within my privacy conscious friend circle, I feel like they prefer websites more than apps and I feel like that plays an impact, (Obviously this might make a difference as well that for some of my generation, they only use phone so phone applications feel more intuitive to them)
I used to say to my elder brother that I wish to make websites not apps if I do because websites are more portable etc., but he said that websites are hard to monetize etc. rather than apps which are easier to monetize. I think that one of the reasons is also that app are easily monetized and this has become a norm to many people outside of HN/privacy-conscious sphere in general.
I really wanted to make f-droid applications sometime ago but I don't know Java and I really love how easy it is to make an applicaation in golang/python/any lang in desktops usually but I tried making an tauri android rust application from my desktop Linux and it was really frustrating, I feel like there are some very low hanging fruits privacy win where open source tools can be converted into just bare minimum-ly good UI/UX android/ios apps (which works) and be published to something like f-droid.
The fact that you are here on HN tells me: You and your friends are tech savy, most in your age are not :-)
Edit: Regarding monetization -> yes, either carrier billing (if available) or just by iTunes account is much much easier and higher conversion, just becaues of the fact that people do not have to remember their payment details :-D
I can only count two (one offline, my former classmate/friend who we studied together for 11 years from KG to 10th grande) and some other people
I have convinced my same offline friend I mentioned to use Linux, specifically hyprland so its a win :D
> most in your age are not :-)
So I agree in that sense. To be honest. I am saying out of all my friend/peer/former classmate circle, only 1-2 people are some that I consider to be privacy conscious.
There you go.
They were killed because app store operators realized they bypassed an ability to police payments that could not be monitored and (effectively) taxed.
This was a technology that could have been successful in any environment where a merchant's freedom-to-request-direct-payment was protected. In such an environment, it would have shifted incentives that apps now become a burden on developers as well as on Apple and Google's review processes, and PWAs would flourish.
But that's not the environment we were in! And arguably, even post Epic's litigation, we aren't fully.
I think, "I'm not downloading your app" is of course a perfectly fine perspective. I rarely do. And blogging about it is playing one's role in the techno-cultural tug-of-war. But I'm consciously aware that I'm in the dying minority and the world is changing regardless of how much I choose to yell at the clouds.
But its super uncomfortable! :-)
And: Typing - I learnt in school to type perfectly with 10 fingers, on a smartphone only using my thumb is just too slow
How can I cross reference things and check deals and copy paste to my spreadsheet on a phone!
I feel like you can do these things but I’m very skeptical that people aren’t worse off by doing it on a phone (when they have the choice)
I can tolerate chatting with a gateway agent, but that only last for maybe a single hour before I seriously need to vet all of the work that it and the underlying horde of agents has done.
There is still no better interface than the command line.
I find much of the HN community insightful and interesting, but in terms of consumer feedback (especially in a B2C environment) I wouldn't touch feedback here with a 10-foot pole.
I don't mean that to be an insult, quite the opposite. Most people here are power users. But that is a galaxy away from how the average user interacts with the internet.
Exactly! Esp if you just move away "one tile" from tech/IT or business-power-users, most people are more or less clueless what they are doing/have to do with a computer.
Yes, we are in a bubble here - as with every niche/special interest topic: It would be same for me if I would join a "car tuning event" or similar - Im just a car user, and I do not know of all these details and nuts & bolts
I don't think so. A majority don't want to. But they are forced by geeks/nerds. Geeks/nerds often show off especially in family/friends parties with older/common folk - telling - I can do this/that. Then average CEO or parent is forced to get a smartphone.
Next the geek/nerd - has no time to maintain the computer/laptop of the parent. Or loses patience explaining updates/double-click/avoid scammer installing software. Then - boom - geek son/daughter - if smart gets a decent pixel/iphone - otherwise gets a shitty Android device - installs everything there. Moves on.
And finally remember it is the young same geek/nerd that will eventually do programming for FAANG/palantir etc. which forces people to install apps, degrade privacy, worsen webapp/websites - all for money.
As an actual power user, I take exception to this comment.
Most people here are NOT power users. I've lost count of how many arguments I've seen for example where someone Just Can't Believe anyone would have a good reason to have more than 5-10 browser tabs open at a time. Meanwhile I've got a list of thousands and growing.
Or look at the dogged adherence to Windows even to this day after decades of Microsoft abuse, and long spiels about the difficulty and complexity of the Linux command line. Especially when it comes to systemd for example, where one of the most common complaints against sysv is "eww, shell scripts? yuck!"
I don't call these people power users, or recognize them as peers in the realm of technology. The difference between them and me is like the difference between them and the commoner who knows nothing at all about tech.
Maybe we need a geek ranking system or something.
I saw a tweet recently that perfectly encapsulates this: for most people over 30, certain things are "big screen tasks". I use my phone for a lot, but for some things I put the phone down and use my computer instead. I am most comfortable using a large screen and a keyboard for anything that requires writing more than a few words or using any interface for more than a few clicks.
For example, I read your comment on my phone and went to my computer to type this reply.
I personally find the idea of doing homework on my phone horrifying but I suppose kids today are either used to it and comfortable with it, or they've simply never used a computer and don't know what they're missing. Though I'd wager they probably aren't comfortable typing on a keyboard.
Honestly I think Apple perfectly captured it with their "what's a computer?" ad for the iPad. I seem to remember them getting some flak online for it but I think they were right on the money with regards to the younger generations.
Thanks for the honor! :)
Sometimes I even copy links from here and send them by mail to myself so I can reply later - maybe Im getting tooo old? :-D (on the iPhone I would store it in a simple textnote)
For college aged kids, most people are definitely not doing their homework on their phone. Many are still using paper and pencil. The one person I know who did do their homework on their phone tried to evangelize it to their friends and got ridiculed for it.
Companies however exploit that and instead of just putting the icon on the home screen provide an app which allows more tracking, preventing ad blockers, avoiding the user from browsing elsewhere.
For me apps are limiting (tabbed browsing, ad blocker, ... are essential for anything serious), but others don't have that experience.
Companies have for ages pushed apps due to more control and data. That’s why younger folk grew up with apps.
The push to apps was absolutely not due to companies responding to consumer sentiment. Yes now it has been ingrained so now there are expectations, but those are due to companies pushing people to apps for years and years
In my experience, apps can figure out a lot more about the user, than a Web site.
I just reported a game to Apple, that, after the app has been resident for 24 hours, pops up an unescapable modal to sign into their Web site. I am sure the 24-hour delay, is so they don't get caught by the App Store folks. I suspect that what happens, during this "daily checkin," is that the app sends a bunch of encrypted data that it got from your device, to the servers in China.
Basically, they can learn more about you from the app, than from the Web site.
I generally avoid apps, where the Web site will do. I won't install banking apps, at all.
The OP Blog post is comparing web versions vs applications. Both on the phone. And arguing that browser representation is often better than app functionality. Using desktop vs small screen phone is a different matter.
My big gorilla hands just shed a tear.
Even with mobile FF and adblock their mobile website is completely unusable. Now ask me if I'm happy to download ther app if their website is a complete POS like that
The desktop website works "fine" for the most part though
Something that has been happening for a long time on iOS Safari that I only recently realized: pinch to zoom on sites like Reddit, instagram, shopping sites, and many others cause what I’m calling “website seizures.” Where I try to zoom in and half the time the page reloads completely or triggers a reload but ends up throwing an error.
They didn't grow up with the world wide web. They only started using technology when Android and iPhone was popular. They only know Whatsapp, Youtube, TikTok. They're not used to using the browser.
There's a meme that "Gen Z Kids Don't Understand How File Systems Work" [0]
So, it'll depend on your target audiences.
Whether I prefer an app to be web or native is purely based on the use case (I probably would choose native for a dozen use cases and web for the remaining one million use cases), but that's orthogonal to the fact of which one is actually better.
Even native apps that were built with cross-platform frameworks feel a bit "off" sometimes.
Did you read the article? One of the author's main points is this is a deliberate result by vendors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzb355qT8RI
I honestly don't mind downloading apps for things I use all the time so long as the app isn't a nightmare. It's when I am having a single interaction with a brand (such as buying my wife a gift) and I'm bombarded with "it's better in the app" that drives me nuts.
I realize that I am perhaps not the target demographic of this app-centric culture; but, I cannot count the number of times in a week that I utter the phrase, "no, I don't want to download your app" as I try to accomplish what should be a simple task.
When Chrome started supporting PWAs you couldn't bookmark the content at all. They seem to have fixed that now.
WASM should be able to handle it now, I suppose.
At the end of the cycle I can barely run the base phone let alone the menagerie of apps the world would like me to run.
I have opted out of app only service such as a Loyalty programs that forced me to transfer point from a partner only if I installed an app on my phone. They have enough info on me from purchase, they don't need more. (I even offer my card to strangers in the grocery cash if they did not have the loyalty card so they would get a discount and I would get a list of products I never buy in my loyalty list. Its a small, willful act of rebellion )
Then, unfortunately, apps are a better choice for such phones (unless the app itself is just a thin webview wrapper). These days too many websites would fry a budget phone.
Obligatory: The Performance Inequality Gap https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-...
For companies these are all downsides but for me they are all upsides. It really is us vs them when it comes to apps vs browsers. The only reason they offer websites at all is out of fear of losing a big chunk of users.
It only needs to be "an app" if it is using hardware to do it's main job. There is never another reason to make it an app.
To share an egregious example, Mercury (which is a great bank) sent KYC notice literally saying "we noticed you use app outside of declared locations" for one of my friends companies. And yes they push their app hard.
The samsung fold7 in particular is the same thickness/weight as slab phones, but unfolds to become a tablet. Please don't vote if you haven't held one. The compromise is cost, durability (dust, water), some battery life & some camera. Huge gains in productivity and night-to-day difference consuming video and photos. Google Maps FTW.
I think we should call on Apple and Google to make web apps/sites a more first-class experience, rather than ask app developers to stop going where the people are.
But on the other hand, I’d love to pay you $0.99 if it meant I could get an ad free version of your little widget and I’m not sure how to do that easily with web
There are 2 things though that make me dislike mobile apps.
First, regularly logging me out. It's so frustrating, especially if the app does not support biometric login. I have a password manager, so I can log in rather quickly, but I just want to be logged in for months.
Second, webviews, I just can't understand mobile apps that render part of their content inside webviews. Like, either commit to having a proper native mobile experience or just let me use your website. One of the more annoying cases for me personally is NBA app. I'm searching for some stat, I open their website in a browser, it redirects me to the app, the app opens and then renders the same web page in a web view. What's even the point?!
I'm not going to download an app to order food from your restaurant. I'm not going to download an app to operate an appliance. I'm not going to download an app to get a discount on a beverage at your convenience store.
I don't care about your stupid rewards system for trying to get a reasonable price on overpriced items. I'm not downloading an app for it.
There are many people who download every app they do business with without hesitation. It's crazy. I can't imagine how many apps these people have on their phones.
And when I started reading I got bored after a few paragraphs since, again, I already got the idea.
Do we really need more than a title for these articles?
My take on it is that frequent users perceive apps as desktop launchers/shortcuts.
They don't care about the difference between app and web, per se, but the bookmarking situation in mobile browsers is awful (desktop too, honestly), and an app presents a convenient launcher for the service/site/data they want.
Adding a springboard launcher for a PWA is easy but still apparently more frictional than installing an app.
if you ever end up making one im very very curious about how much market share that would gain
apps function more so as a checkbox for investors to take an organization seriously, as well as for the founder to self aggrandize and feel like their own app store presence means something. for devs it is functionally a make-work program.
The worst offenders are services that literally work fine in mobile Safari but pop a banner saying 'for the best experience download our app' covering half the screen. The web version is already the app, you just painted a door on the wall.
Now you've triggered me lol. At that point I'll ask for a physical menu, and leave if they don't have one. And no, I'm not going to look at my friend's phone. It's ridiculous!
As for me, I would be mostly relying on PWAs.
Being a smaller company, try pushing an app to production on Android. Good luck with that.
I can just use the web version instead and skip all that, along with the memory usage (for the most part).
* Reddit won't let you read "unreviewed" content on mobile web (but will on desktop web)
* PayPal won't let you pick your 5% rewards category, or set up balance auto-replenish without their app
* Robinhood Banking won't let you see your credit card statement or pay your balance without their app
* Instagram won't let you share posts as stories without their app
* SeatGeek won't let you attend events without their app (no mailed tickets, will call, print at home, or mobile web)
everdrive•2h ago
Larrikin•1h ago
everdrive•1h ago
Larrikin•1h ago
functional_dev•10m ago
Mapped it out here if curious - https://vectree.io/c/enshittification-how-digital-platforms-...