Ask HN: Can the ARM Macs/PCs end the web as we know it? It seems that the new macs are able to run mobile apps, and it won't take long until android does the same on windows pcs. Is there a chance that in 10 years everybody is using native mobile apps on desktops? Chuckling... |
I do agree, however, with the idea that some things ought _not_ be apps, especially things that are dead simple, for which it _truly is_ easier to develop a web application.
SwiftUI is nice, but needs a lot more years until it reaches the level of React.
Android libs are a joke.
(I write enterprise React applications last 6 years, and used to work with WinForms before that.)
IMO the biggest driver already is and will be app store/platform policies. Fundamental hardware constraints are secondary.
PWA trumps mobile apps — until or unless it can be articulated why a PWA/hybrid app won’t work, but that is the small minority of app cases.
In what sense? Most people use mobile apps than browse the web through mobile -- and most surf from mobile vs PC.
(The fact that said mobile apps might be web-based is an implementation detail).
ARM has a huge problem with compatibility and secrecy.
Buy a random intel machine .... will it run Windows and Linux? YES.
Buy a random ARM device..,, will it run Linux? Maybe, probably not, even if it does, probably there’s problems and issues caused by the CPU vendor keeping aspects of its design secret.
ARM is a very very long way from replacing Intel.
Chromebooks run android apps today.
Windows computers will run android apps with BlueStacks or a similar emulator.
Until mobile apps can do EVERYTHING that desktops apps do, desktop apps are here to stay.
This is totally untrue!
I am open to the possibility, however, that I have been working with a challenging front-end codebase and that, on that basis, I may not have seen the best that JS has to offer. But in my experience — intermittently building toy iOS apps the last few years and having also built some production react apps in a large codebase (perhaps not a fair apples-to-apples comparison) — iOS has felt much more straightforward for creating apps with idiomatic UI/UX.
Forgive me if I came off as a bit glib. But I do tentatively, at least, still hold my original position; though am open to the possibility of being wrong!
Personally:
- I find it odd to need an app for a service entirely reliant on off-phone data.
- I like my phone battery life. I avoid apps if I can help it. Web page links all over my home screen.
Well, a browser is an app for services entirely reliant on off-phone data :-)
Just a generic one, slower, more battery hungry, with less platform conveniences and access to native APIs.
My mum wont install an app unless she has to. In my eyes this has failed the grandmother test.
https://www.mobiloud.com/blog/mobile-apps-vs-the-mobile-web#....
Not to mention there's no "grandmother test" as some kind of ultimate marketing gatekeeper, unless you market adult pads or something. I'm pretty sure lots of billion dollar industries fail the "grandmother test" too (youth-oriented ones, self-selectively so).
Which is what I was trying to say though I did it poorly I guess. :-) Why do I need an app when the website will do just fine?
"slower, more battery hungry, with less platform conveniences and access to native APIs"
I think the efficiency loss is traded for the lack of always on services and privacy invasion common in native apps these days.
The important function of the web browser is the sandbox effect.