The Web is for Apps
From time to time there’s a discussion about what the web is for, it’s an absolutely ridiculous debate.
The core of the argument goes something like this: “The web is for documents, everything else should be an app” where “documents” means non-interactive multimedia, and apps are downloaded and installed applications.
Right out of the gate that argument is demonstrably false, there are plenty of apps that are web first. I’m currently writing this in a Google Document, using my browser. Once I’m happy with it I’ll use the same browser to log in to our WordPress set-up where I’ll do the layout and publish it. Just for the sake of driving home the ridiculousness of the claim that the web can’t be for apps, I’ll download a high res image from UnSplash, then I’ll do some edits in Photopea and cap it off by reducing the file size in Squoosh. What I’m saying is that the web is already used for professional applications, and has been for many, many years.
It’s impossible to even estimate how many millions of people that use browser based apps every day for their work. I can’t even begin to guess at how many tools there are. Jira, Google Meet, basically all seo tools, most cms, time reporting, analytics tools, AWS dashboards, Microsoft 360, and so on, and so forth. To claim that the web can’t be used for apps is to be wilfully ignorant.
Yeah, but I ment phone-apps.
Is the standard counter argument to that. To which I say, if a tired PC from twenty years ago could handle professional apps in a browser, trust me, so can a modern phone.
But they look like janky garbage.
Some do, few get the tlc and/or budget of a native app though. Plus there’s a weird corrupted mindset with regards to some websites. Imagine if the first thing an app did was open a banner saying “Hey, go to our website instead!” you’d hate that too. The problem is in the execution, not the platform… or well. See next argument
But I can’t get push - notification - badges - longpress- menu - background - update - system -share!
On android you can. On ios you can’t. Because Apple are holding back the mobile web, because they can’t compete on a level playing field. Not when it comes to payments, not when it comes to streaming music, and not when it comes to browser engines. If they could, they wouldn’t have to rely on the fact that they own the platform all the time.
I’m not saying that Apple are holding the web back because of the 30% tax they can extract from developers, although I do think that is a part of the reason. I believe they truly think themselves to be the arbiters of what is a good user experience, and what isn’t. I think they feel entitled to setting rules, and punishing those that don’t behave.