From a developer's point of view, I can see the value in PWAs (for them), but as an end user, I really don't see the benefit of PWAs over native apps. The UX is almost always severely degraded when compared to their native counterparts (even if the feature set is ostensibly identical). Why would I use a Twitter PWA, when the native app provides a much better UX?
Why would I use the Twitter app, when I can get the same out of the PWA and not have to download a hundred meg update every week for "bug fixes and improvements"?
Maybe in the case of Twitter it makes sense (I'm not using Twitter myself), but in general, as the OP notes, the UX is worse with PWAs than it is with native apps. So, to rephrase your comment to reflect this
> Why would I use the app, when I can get /something worse but workable/ out of the PWA and not have to download a hundred meg update every week
And then the answer might be --- because your phone has 128 gigs of memory, your home wi-fi has unlimited bandwidth, and the updates all get downloaded automatically while you're sleeping, you might decide to go for the better UX in exchange for nothing at all.
Every time I load the page for a tweet in their PWA on iOS it gives me an error, and then I reload the page and it works fine.
Why would I use the Twitter website, when I can get the same out of the app, it loads faster, and it actually works consistently? Plus I don't have to log in in app webviews all the time.
As a developer who has tried to love PWAs a number of times I don't see the value. Users simply do not like them and for good reason.
Just this last month I have been building an app to manage my pantry (keep track of expiration dates) using QR codes I stick on everything. I built the "app" in VueJS (wanted to sharpen those skills) and did the whole thing in the browser. Scanning QR's and scanning UPCs (to track items) was all done using browser apis. I then tried to use it on my phone and hated dealing with the loss of space to the browser UI and it hiding/showing as I scrolled. It was a terrible experience.
So I migrated all my code over into Quasar (a VueJS framework that will let you build for PWA, SSR, regular web, and Cordova/Capacitor. I told myself I wasn't going to use cordova for this, I was going to stick to the browser and try to make it a homescreen icon. It was still shit. It was a pain to get the app to go fullscreen and not pop webkit views on top of my "app". The nail in the coffin was Apple doesn't let you have camera access when the app is running in that mode (it's really just unacceptable IMHO). I spent <10min getting the cordova app running and it's been smooth sailing ever since.
I still do some development on my laptop in the browsers but I would never run a PWA if I had the option of an app (even a cross-platform web app in a cordova wrapper).
>The nail in the coffin was Apple doesn't let you have camera access when the app is running in that mode (it's really just unacceptable IMHO)
So, who's the culprit here? You were able to create an app which can perfectly run in browser but now apple forces you invest in hundreds if not thousands of dollars in equipment, effort in learning a new programming language(although it's open-source), $99 every year for license and give it 30% cut of your revenue when you earn it just to preserve its monopoly in Appstore?
That's my argument, issue is never been the PWAs it's Apple's support for it. So, is the reason it doesn't allow any other browser engines on iOS as well. Apple has branded 'Privacy' and uses it for weaponising marketing.
That's a completely fair point and you are 100% right. Apple is the culprit. Unfortunately me making PWA's won't fix that problem and while I agree they are in the wrong here I'm not going to switch to Android or expect my users to do so. I do wish Apple would change but this isn't enough of a thorn in my side to force me switch OS's.
Thankfully I already have another reason for paying for the app store dev program so I am able to leverage that for my own personal apps or ones I might publish.
I would never use a social network native app, ever, as the category has a history of abusing privacy, poorly utilizing resources or any number of other things.
For business, it's a much easier decision. If I can do what I need to do in a PWA, why futz around with iOS, Windows variants, and multiple versions of Android apps? App Stores are a much bigger PITA than shipping web code, and I don't have the time, budget or care to make a polished user experience for employees.
Native apps are hard to develop and publish through app stores compared to PWAs, and many users don't have access to Play store.
Web apps are also more strongly sandboxed which is important considering how much of Android install base is running on devices without security updates. (Android devices notoriously stop getting them after only couple of years after device launch, or even sooner)
> From a developer's point of view, I can see the value in PWAs (for them), but as an end user, I really don't see the benefit of PWAs over native apps.
I suspect the bigger demand for PWAs is for non-consumer apps. If you are selling to businesses or building internal apps for a business, often delivering a multi-platform + web app with decent performance/ UX, often a PWA or PWA + Web platform is the way to go.
> Why would I use a Twitter PWA, when the native app provides a much better UX?
This is why I think vertical/ internal apps make a lot more sense for PWAs. If consumers have a choice on what they use, they are going to opt for the faster/ better integrated app and PWAs can't compete. For a purchasing manager, the difference between a cross platform PWA and delivering 2 native mobile apps plus a web app can easily be tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in development costs.
(FWIW, I work on a large SAAS web app/ PWA which obviously colors my perceptions)
Mobile apps are designed to be used on mobiles. But what about web apps? You need many versions of the app, from smart-watches to desktop monitors and smart TV's. And then they will be crippled by the web chrome/shell, so we are stuck with Electron/NW.js apps if you want it to blend in to the OS.
What's nice with web apps though is that they are sand-boxed, compared to Electron/NW.js apps that get full system access.
What needs to be done is to give better design/layout possibilities for web apps once they are installed on the "shelf/desktop", for example transparency, able to design the top bar, able to have a window menu.
Or maybe the future is UI toolkits like Flutter and React Native ?
This is a perfect example of a HN reader being out of touch with what the vast majority of users actually want. There are plenty of reasons people want a native twitter app: state restoration, integration with system services, push notifications, better user experience, better accessibility, fewer ways to track the user, better permission model, ...
You think native apps have fewer ways to track the user? Then why does every social site push users to their native app? Just so they can get less info? Seems unlikely to me.
What is state restoration? All I want is to go back to where I was, a normal website does that ( e.g. HN). Integration with what? I literally just wanna browse twitter, like, retweet, and occasionally compose one. Push notifications, they work on every system except iOS. Better UX is using URLs that I can open and share. Better accessibility is HTML that blind users can use. Native apps track you much, much more than websites and can't be uBlocked. Permission model is as good as native, if not better because users blindly give native apps all permissions (see Instagram).
You haven't made a single point, on the contrary, web wins on ALL of them.
The one single point you can make but you didn't, is that native apps often (but not always) feel smoother or more responsive. Which shouldn't be an issue on browsing static content.
"Out of touch" is an unfair characterization. Not everyone wants what you think they want.
I specifically do not want push notifications from Twitter or almost any other app aside from calendars and alarms. Having Twitter notify me about every stupid online interaction was causing my life to be buried in constant distraction. Without a doubt, my life is better without it, and I don't think that's an unusual perspective.
Also, I would be curious about your reasoning that running an app gives fewer ways to track the user. I would tend to believe the opposite.
Vast majority of users go back home and browse on their laptops because a big screen is better than a credit card
Vast majority of users will use whatever you throw at them, especially if they're friction free (no account needed, no credit card, no updates, no space occupied, immediately available, even on slow networks, etc. etc.)
> Vast majority of users go back home and browse on their laptops because a big screen is better than a credit card
I used to think this, because I am like this, but living with my wife made me realize that for a lot of people, the phone is the primary internet device. Probably one factor is that she is a nurse, so she works on her feet. Also, she generally does not have a deep relationship with her machines, computers to her are strictly tools, so laptop is basically for word processing and storing photos when the phone gets full.
Another way to look at it is that it's not that browsing the internet is better for her on the phone, it's that sitting down with a laptop is a disruption in her routine that needs to be justified.
Sure, in theory Twitter’s website could be very simple and straightforward, built on tried and true web technologies. In practice, they wrote an entirely bespoke web app that is every bit as complex as a native app but shittily executed and with a terrible UX.
It is decidedly not "static content browsing." It's aggressively loading and unloading content as you scroll. This in turn breaks basic interactions like Find.
Frankly Twitter is borderline unusable except for "see what's new," which is by design. A native app designed to empower users is a threat, which is why Twitter decided to kill them.
