Comment by SquareWheel
9 years ago
That exact argument can be applied to native apps. Should native apps have push notifications removed?
Why not? Because they can actually be extremely useful. Such as for receiving emails, Facebook messages, Slack pings, or news updates you've subscribed to. Maybe somebody tweeted you. Any of these apps could work as progressive webapps.
Regardless if the platform is native or web-based, the feature remains opt-in. If you don't want them, then don't subscribe to them.
Yes but supporting the feature encourages developers to make web apps. Why would you want to encourage that?
Why wouldn't you want that? PWAs are seamless (no downloading/installing), allow native features, can be saved offline for later, run in a secure sandbox, and are completely open and cross-platform.
I don't really value cross-platform in the sense that the code I write for platform A can run on platform B. At least for applications.
I think it's valuable for games. Unity and Unreal engine have demonstrated that.
Applications necessarily intersect with the underlying platform in a way which games do not. Accessibility, system-wide services (e.g., dictionary), system-wide interactions (e.g., drag and drop). There are reasons I choose macOS, and when applications embrace the design philosophy and features of the platform they become great applications. PWAs will not do this to the same extent (and if they try to, the effort would be so significant they might as well go native).
I feel strongly that the platforms you develop for should be the platforms you love using. And so the things you develop should bring out the best and most valuable features of those platforms.
I would rather encourage developers to embrace each platform's strengths. I understand that many companies might not care — they want as many users as possible as cheaply as possible. But I do not appreciate that attitude at all.
And that was such a great experience with Java applets....
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I'm pretty sure it boils down to "we're fancy iOS users who want nothing to do with those peasants over in the Android world". It seems like the majority of the comments opposing web apps oppose them because they're cross-platform and not written specifically for their chosen platform, which is a very silly stance to have.
There are some more coherent arguments in play, don't get me wrong (in particular, the argument that web apps are a bastardization of what the World Wide Web was intended to be for; I agree with that wholeheartedly), but a lot of the rhetoric around here really reeks of elitism.
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