Those are valid arguments but I like apps better, for other reasons. Mostly security.

When I use, say, the Signal app:

- I can audit it, download it or even compile it myself from sources

- Once I have installed it, Signal doesn't get to change it "in my back"

- As a result, I don't need to trust Signal for the end-to-end encryption, which is the whole point of end-to-end encryption.

When I use a webapp, say ProtonMail:

- Every time I load the webapp, it is downloaded from the Proton servers. Even if I once stop to audit it, next time I load it, it may totally be a different codebase (that e.g. adds a backdoor, potentially just for me, and just this one time).

- I need to trust that Proton doesn't inject a backdoor to extract my key, then end-to-end encryption is useless. I could also trust Proton to not read my emails, right?

- If a webapp is served by a CDN, I have to trust that the CDN doesn't tamper with it. Actually Meta has an extension made for verifying that for WhatsApp Web. The extension is a bulky way to make sure that you loaded what Meta wanted you to load (i.e. that Cloudflare did not tamper with it), but it DOES NOT ensure that Meta did not inject a backdoor just for you, just this time.

Though I agree with the author & use the web version of various applications, there is another side to this. The author says s/he uses plugins to disable ads and so on. If its an ad supported site for which one does not pay, this is tantamount to expecting the provider to run the service for no compensation/revenue at all.

Furthermore, to say platform owners don't care about offending such users would be an understatement: platform owners likely want to actively repel such users. Why serve someone who neither pays a fee nor agrees to be shown ads?

The web version would be a-ok if it wasn't artificially blocking me from consuming it when on mobile, like Yelp.

Or it's full of annoying popups to use the app, looking at you, Google.

I've been running a video game collection site for years. The number one request I get from people is to build an app. I've worked so hard on making the mobile version of the site to be just as functional as the desktop version, and I don't really understand why people want an app over just using the web version. I sometimes wonder if I should just do it to see if I'm missing out on market share, but I don't really want to have to maintain two different user interfaces.

The restaurant QR menu situation is peak 'we installed an app for the app' energy. I scanned a code expecting a menu and instead got a Play Store redirect. Just let me see the food.

The worst offenders are services that literally work fine in mobile Safari but pop a banner saying 'for the best experience download our app' covering half the screen. The web version is already the app, you just painted a door on the wall.

I've more than once had a company reply to a bug report about their website, "did you try using the app instead." To which I usually reply, "why would I trust your site with direct access to my phone when you can't make a website that works correctly?"

That's just my thinking... I try not to install apps most of the time, I don't want them to have access or even the greater chance at breaking security/isolation. On a similar vein, I still can't believe that LinkedIn didn't get permanently banned from Apple and Google stores when they broke security to spy on emails.

Folding phones are the big/small screen compromise. One you fold, nobody goes back.

The samsung fold7 in particular is the same thickness/weight as slab phones, but unfolds to become a tablet. Please don't vote if you haven't held one. The compromise is cost, durability (dust, water), some battery life & some camera. Huge gains in productivity and night-to-day difference consuming video and photos. Google Maps FTW.

I can't type on a smartphone. Even as I wrote this, c became a space, the word space started each time with an a, etc.

But on a keyboard I type hella fast.

Now, I also hate creating account after account, having all these applications needing to be installed with ads in them that I can't block or some permissions that I don't think it needs. F that.

Agree with the article. I’m increasingly jaded by the state of the web.

Something that has been happening for a long time on iOS Safari that I only recently realized: pinch to zoom on sites like Reddit, instagram, shopping sites, and many others cause what I’m calling “website seizures.” Where I try to zoom in and half the time the page reloads completely or triggers a reload but ends up throwing an error.

On one hand, I don’t know why startups make apps. It requires more devs and keeping everything at parity is tough with desktop, iOS, android, mobile web. Seems pragmatic to just simplify and use web.

But on the other hand, I’d love to pay you $0.99 if it meant I could get an ad free version of your little widget and I’m not sure how to do that easily with web