Source: @MrLovenstein@mastodon.social
App-less bitch has a nice ring to it, I might start using that lol
Ugh for the longest time the investment firm I use had one product locked away on their app. Thankfully I checked today and I can sign up and use it on the web!
I’m so sick and tired of every single website and service trying to push an app on me. No, I don’t want to download your stupid shitty app, I’ve got dozens and I don’t want another one that I don’t use that interrupts me to push stupid notifications. Now get off my lawn!
It’s so easy nowadays to slap some bootstrap and Angular together to build a web frontend. It will work on every device if you don’t do crazy cutting-edge shit. I cannot comprehend why companies dig native apps so much.
D A T A H A R V E S T I N G
^ this. your browser is a user agent, it’s working for you, to protect you from any schmuck who you have the misfortune of visiting. it has strict built-in privacy and security guarantees, which, while in no way interfere with the app’s primary functionality, do interfere in their marketing bullshit and other kinds of spying.
with apps, you have none of that protective layer, instead there is a certain degree of implied trust which these parties love to abuse.
With a native app, the only thing you really need to send back and forth is some JSON data and let the app do the formatting for you. It’s a much better arrangement when your target demographic includes those with bad internet.
How is that any different from a web site? There are multiple caches between the browser and the server. The initial load (assuming a prior visit and no updates since) may be smaller than 1kB.
you can do that with a browser too. with service workers, it can also run without an internet connection and/or indefinitely cache the ui part so that it’s also just a json api. most websites already work in a very similar way, and even if it’s not intentionally set up this way, your browser will do its best to make it like this to keep your user experience snappy.
your browser just also protects you from certain level of system access that shouldn’t be granted to any random website you visit, and that’s what these apps want.
Yeah, it sucks because you can do really cool stuff with web apps these days but no, instead I need 140 native apps for basically every mobile service because their mobile websites are abhorrently designed and basically only exist to point you towards the app.
Oh, don’t worry. All those “native” apps are just using chrome webview to display some webapp.
Oh, I’m fully aware. That’s honestly the kicker, they could host those apps on the web and have me be able to access everything through my browser, but no, instead I have to install their stupid apps just so they can harvest my data.
Try Sink It for Reddit, it’s a Safari extension that removes those nuisances
Do you really want to use the website, if you really need an extension because of that bullshit?
i wish apple could regulate this tighter to demolish the hundreds of shitty companies and practices that evolved post-iphone. notification ads, this garbage, any sort of app tracking, shitty subscriptions, shitty IAPs, etc etc etc
Regulate this tighter? Apple profits from this, if anything they’d prefer if websites died altogether. Apple wants you using an app downloaded from the App Store, using iOS APIs and their own guidelines, with iOS centric design, rather than the website where the webmaster can freely control your experience and monetize you using methods not profitable for Apple.
which is why ios on safari is the worst mainstream browser on the market since internet explorer died
