Comment by chme
2 months ago
I get your point partially. All these apps that companies put out in order to collect and manage shopping tokens or to contact their customer service would have been much better as a website.
However I still do like to have apps on my devices that just work offline, without distributing my data across services I do not control. And I also do not want to depend on a internet connection, when I am anywhere.
I like my offline Osmand/Organic Maps app to show me the trails when I am somewhere in the woods or mountains. I like my apps that instead on using some third party server, connect directly to my other local devices to share data.
IMO all (where possible) apps should be developed offline first, and only require internet when necessary, and those apps that cannot work without internet should be web apps, they do not need to be on my devices.
It’s totally possible to distribute a webapp that works offline and stores all your data offline too.
Platform owners introduce a bunch of restrictions that create reliability and usability concerns, but the standards already exist to enable a website operator to create a webapp that, after the initial ‘install’, runs entirely offline on the user’s device, and has no need to communicate with the website.
It’s not really possible in practice, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43522667.