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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

(peabee.substack.com)
1192 points gniting | 6 comments | 29 Mar 25 21:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.975s | source | bottom
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turblety ◴[30 Mar 25 05:53 UTC] No.43521702[source]▶
I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp.

The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need.

Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept introduced by Apple/Google so they could scrape a huge percentage in sales.

Web browsers have good (not perfect) sandboxing, costs no fees to "submit" and are accessible to everyone on every phone.

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1. jb1991 ◴[30 Mar 25 09:13 UTC] No.43522683[source]▶
This is a bizarre take. Are you also suggesting there’s no reason to have a native app on a laptop? Because it’s essentially the same question. There are many things which a native app can do that a browser just cannot do well, or at all. I don’t know what your needs are, but for example if you’re doing heavy video or audio editing, accessing heavy amounts of RAM or utilizing GPU compute or doing other things on the bare hardware, doing that all from a browser is definitely not there yet.
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2. nsonha ◴[31 Mar 25 16:16 UTC] No.43536710[source]▶
On desktop you do productive work, your apps need native capabilities. On mobile, apps are primarily consumption, displaying, browsing... no complex interactions.
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3. jb1991 ◴[31 Mar 25 17:05 UTC] No.43537252[source]▶
Lots of people use iPads for content creation. I think your worldview on this topic is a bit narrow. There have also been multiple feature length movies shot on an iPhone, at least two of them by Oscar winning directors! Those weren’t done on a mobile browser.
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4. autoexec ◴[31 Mar 25 17:55 UTC] No.43537781{3}[source]▶
ipads are designed primarily for consumption not creation. I'm sure lots of people manage create something on an ipad anyway but that doesn't mean it's a good tool for the job. Filming a movie on an iphone is just using the camera. I'd be very surprised if anybody making a full length movie with their iphone edited that film on their phone or an ipad.
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5. jb1991 ◴[31 Mar 25 20:18 UTC] No.43539431{4}[source]▶
> Filming a movie on an iphone is just using the camera.

Not really. And this is why native apps are necessary. You can't use the built-in camera on an iphone successfully in this way, and I don't know any director who has. They use specialized third-party apps which give them the appropriate control.

6. nsonha ◴[31 Mar 25 23:36 UTC] No.43541218{3}[source]▶
> Lots of people use iPads for content creation. I think your worldview on this topic is a bit narrow

Can we stick to "by and large"? Every year many youtubers make that video of trying to use ipad/samsung dex as the productive computer for a day. Last I checked they always end the same way.