Comment by scarface74
9 years ago
Apple supporting PWA (Progressive Web Apps) is hugely important because it enables a future where web apps can natively support browser, Mac/Windows/Linux desktop, and mobile iPhone/Android/Windows native mobile with a single codebase of open technologies.
Why after over 30 years of experiencing cross platform "write once run anywhere* technologies do developers still think that's the best user experience? Yes it makes life easier for the developer but it's rarely best for the user.
I think this is the crux of the matter. Apple supporting PWA means lower quality apps for its users, and Apple has the market share to demand apps be native code.
I'm not trying to argue that it is the BEST user experience. I'm trying to say that it is hurting small dev shops and startups because they are being forced to learn a completely new tech stack in order to play ball. I could have spent that time implementing new features that users would actually use and in turn improve their business, or in this case, reach and help more people with valuable medical advice.
In the end, Apple got what they wanted. I needed a feature that PWA's can give me - but Apple hasn't added support for them in mobile safari, so I paid the $100 to get access to the app store, and was forced to learn a completely different language.
Yes, the end product has an arguably better and 'native-like' experience, but it took me longer to do and it is lacking some of the features that I could have rolled out if I was able to use PWA's. And it would have worked on Android out of the box as well.
I don't regret learning React Native. It was actually really, really fun. The community is great, and being able to write native apps now feels really good.
But its the principal of the matter. Holding back innovation for your company's own selfish reasons is a shitty thing to do.
Yes, the end product has an arguably better and 'native-like' experience, but it took me longer to do and it is lacking some of the features that I could have rolled out if I was able to use PWA's. And it would have worked on Android out of the box as well.
So am I as an end user suppose to be upset that you were forced to make a better product.
Holding back innovation for the company's selfish reasons?
Back in 2008 they said the same thing about Apple not supporting Flash and Java.
If anyone is being selfish to try foist cross platform apps that you admitted weren't as good, it isn't Apple.
GMail was (and maybe keeps being) a much better user experience than native email clients for desktop PCs.
I can’t disagree more. I find gmail to be a perfect example of why web apps are playing to the lowest common denominator and result in poor user experiences everywhere. Just my opinion though, I realise most people love it.
What feature of native apps do you wish web-GMail had?
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It's better in that it required no configuration. But from a UI perspective it feels inferior. For example, native clients can just show you a list of all your messages, but GMail still paginates like a late-90s PHP site.
That view is hugely annoying, even when you group unread and read, both are paginated separately. Perhaps there's some configuration I need to set..
I think PC clients back then paginated too. They didn't group emails by thread either, and at least Outlook still doesn't by default.
Believe it or not, in my experience, Exchange + Outlook 2016 stomps all over GMail. I find that its faster, searches quicker, and takes up _WAY_ less memory. I don't do any fancy things other than basic email, scheduling meetings, etc so YMMV.
Completly disagree.
I only use GMail as gateway to aggregate my email accounts and synchronize with my Android devices, native mail client.
On Windows and GNU/Linux systems at home, I happily keep using Thunderbird.
Without specifics there's not much to discuss.
E.g. Thunderbird apparently only introduced threaded conversations 7 years after GMail did.
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