If only the web made it easier to completely revamp someone else's pages... Reddit is a great example - on mobile, I still use the "reddit is fun" application, which is a solid piece of work. It's lighter than the old Reddit, not to mention the shitshow the new Reddit is. It has much better UX than the webpage. I'd use it on my PC if I could. All this is possible, because right now, APIs change slower than webpages, so if a service is publishing a functional enough API, there is a way to fix problems with the official interface.

Good point. I miss Twitter's API.

>Nobody needs a reddit app

Here it's true if you talk about official app, which you seem to be doing, but there's a couple of other options - apps made by community, which can be way better than official anything. I guess that Reddit doesn't want to fall behind and that's it.

Relay is awesome on android. Way better than the official.

Sync Pro Master Race.

Nobody needs an app for anything, but the Reddit app is far superior for me vs. their mobile experience. So much so that I refuse to install it because it makes Reddit far more addictive. Same for Facebook. A huge percentage of their usage is the mobile app vs. mobile web. Like Reddit, part of that is due to them making the mobile web experience crappier to drive app adoption, but that's not the only thing going on. The web just for UX in many ways, and will never beat a well-built app for anything other than ease of initial installation.

Good point. Another reason not to do business with a company is if they remove information from their mobile website that's available on their app. Looking at you here, Yelp.

> But I won't clutter up my phone with things that work just fine in a browser

That's the window for apps to compete. If "just fine" works for you, cool, but it's possible for apps to make the experience better in meaningful ways. A web page can't notify of you a new message, but an app can, for example. Look at all the Twitter apps that came up, and they've had to start to systematically kill over time because the experiences are _so much_ better than Twitter in the app. "Just fine" doesn't push us forward.

> it's possible for apps to make the experience better in meaningful ways.

Now if we could just get app designers to realize that!

IME, apps are usually just poor front-ends for the website, where companies think it's OK to shove stupid things like unblockable ads, notifications, data-harvesting, etc.

I see notifications as a downside as a user, not an upside.

Well I'm not going to tell you that the way you use a mobile device is wrong, but it is not the way I use my devices. I guess we'll have to see which one of us most people agree with. If people stop downloading apps, we'll stop seeing companies put effort in to them.

I don't give a rat's ass what makes the most money. You're shitty app needs to earn my attention, rather than annoy me into giving it attention.

Yet another problem with apps. Every time I download a new one I start getting pointless notifications and I have to go to the Apps Manager (which on Android is O[n] slow) to turn them off.

> Nobody needs a reddit app

Oh, reddit on mobile without an app is a displeasing experience. The official app though, isn't much better.

It’s only a displeasing experience because Reddit is doing everything they can to make the mobile web experience miserable so you use their app.

Yeah, same for me. The only apps I have are the ones where the web experience is either non existent (Camscanner) or extremely sub par (Spotify/Google Music)

I do have apps for all the shoppibg platforms I use, even though the performance isn't substantially better