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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

(peabee.substack.com)
1192 points gniting | 4 comments | 29 Mar 25 21:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.682s | source
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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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rzz3 ◴[30 Mar 25 07:13 UTC] No.43522043[source]▶
Im sorry. I really just can’t understand or relate to this at all. Mobile web still feels like such a terrible experience, and apps generally don’t. When’s the last time you tried booking a flight on mobile web? And how do you deal with all of the real estate the browser steals? Having to log in every time when the app can just cache my authentication and FaceID me?
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1. whstl ◴[30 Mar 25 10:14 UTC] No.43522947[source]▶
> Having to log in every time

Sounds like a broken web app.

You are currently using a webapp that doesn't do this. It's called Hacker News, and it never asks me to login every time on my phone.

> when the app can just cache my authentication and FaceID me

Sounds like a broken login form.

Hacker News also allows me to login with Face ID on my phone, thanks to my password manager.

Optionally webapps can also provide Passkeys.

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2. terinjokes ◴[30 Mar 25 12:52 UTC] No.43523777[source]▶
> Sounds like a broken web app.

>

> You are currently using a webapp that doesn't do this. It's called Hacker News, and it never asks me to login every time on my phone.

Every time I visit Hacker News on my iPad I'm logged out. Apple has decided that if you don't visit a website often enough it will expire all your cookies for the site.

In practice that means I can log in to HN while I'm at the cafe one weekend and be logged out by the time I visit the next weekend.

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3. rzz3 ◴[31 Mar 25 17:06 UTC] No.43537258[source]▶
Passkeys do definitely make the mobile web experience better, but unfortunately they’re still not widely supported. I’m not saying mobile web apps can’t be good, but a native app allows for a lot of UX optimization.
4. whstl ◴[31 Mar 25 20:44 UTC] No.43539759[source]▶
Are you sure? My iPad has been logged on for months... the only that make it log off on the iPad is when I log off on the desktop.

Apparently HN does it on purpose and kills alls sessions on all devices when you log off.