We’re calling buying a ticket or ordering something a “transient app” experience now?

Are we just done with the whole web site thing already? Because I kind of liked that bit where I just typed in an address and clicked a few buttons. Worked great, from what I recall.

Let’s not make everything an app of any sort, maybe.

Buying a flight or ordering food via a PWA would just be a web site. PWA doesn't necessarily imply that you "install" by adding it to your home page. It could just be a web site where you order something and permit push notifications.

That is fine, as long as you offer an alternative to push notifications. I have them permanently disabled in my browser so that each website I visit does not keep asking if I want them to spam me.

Notifications from browser... No thanks

That's what PWAs are is a website that allows users to install a WebView icon on their desktop if they choose to. I think this is the advantage of PWAs, they are merely websites with a manifest and install option for users that may want an offline experience, native notifications, or some other feature that would not generally be available within a browser-exclusive context.

"install" is kind of a misnomer, it's more like "put a shortcut on the desktop" which has been around forever, even for links to websites with their own icon

Once you've granted a website enough permissions to run in the background and notify you when a food delivery has arrived, it's safely crossed into the "app" sandbox.

The OPs point is we're now blinded to all these website popups asking for permission, that the web app potential can't truly breakthrough.

As a corollary to the site permissions making it effectively an app, I like web sites in a regular browser because it enforces more limitations than what an app may try to get away with.

It's still difficult because the Web experience also sucks. Sliding off-screen menus, maps navigation (this is very handy for finding Airbnbs/hotels closer to your activities), gestures, dynamic charts, etc, those are examples of features that are very poorly implemented with mainstream Web technologies, creating a frustrating experience for the end-user.

Even though I hate it, can see why those "simple" apps exists: the Web still feels somewhat hostile to phones. Unless we create an alternative for the scrolling-page-point-and-click DOM[1], mobile will continue to be a second-class citizen in the Web.

[1] There's WASM, but I'm not sure if the performance will ever match native UI rendering implementations. Or Google would had implemented Flutter in WASM from day one.

If Apple and especially Google really wanted to support PWAs, they'd add first-class support for them on their app stores, but they don't really want to do that, as it would weaken the walls around their garden.

More because web apps are awful. Even Gmail is awful and god knows how much money goes into developing that.

Gmail is awful compared to what? I'd estimate a majority of people disagree here unless you're more of an IMAP purist.

>Gmail is awful compared to what? I'd estimate a majority of people disagree here unless you're more of an IMAP purist.

GMail is bloody awful. I can hardly stand using it. Been using Thunderbird for a while now and have not many complaints.

The whole "IMAP" purist thing is unnecessary; there are plenty who prefer not using the GMail interface and have no idea what IMAP is.

What's "bloody awful" about Gmail? All the mail clients look the same to me, you got folders and sorting on the left, a list of mails, and when you click on a mail you can read it.

> What's "bloody awful" about Gmail?

Telemetry, activity tracking, etc.

NeoMutt doesn't send everything I do to a persistent log accessible to data broker parasites and NSA functionaries.

Not being turned into cattle watched over by an enormous Panopticon is a pretty major Killer App feature.

Outlook Web App has been pretty great IMO. Way better than desktop and way better than Gmail. Just my opinion.

Last I checked even their "smart" folders synchronization was broke. I've never had a good experience with OWA and find Microsoft constantly crippling or breaking products which somehow seems to also make their users some of the most Stockholm syndromed people I've ever dealt with.

It doesn’t randomly decide to hide email from me, that puts it leagues above Gmail by default.

I like that it has critical features like a sane approach to contact lists and “sweep”. I also like that I can send a message with priority - a feature mysteriously still missing from gmail.

Outlook 98.

Google already does this to a larger extent:

https://blog.pwabuilder.com/posts/publish-your-pwa-to-the-io...

It is Apple that has had issues with PWA support.

> While WebKit is making progress on PWA support, at the time of this writing, PWAs remain a second-class citizen on iOS. The iOS App Store’s support for PWAs is non-existent, requiring a web view-based solution like PWABuilder’s.

> Additionally, because iOS doesn’t allow 3rd party browser engines, your PWA is limited to WebKit’s PWA capabilities, which are currently lagging behind other browser engines.

Really? What's an app on the Google app store that is really a PWA? And I mean an actual PWA and not a PWA wrapped in an app.

They do need a showcase, but I believe there are several. bubblewrap is an official framework for publishing them but I don't know if you consider that wrapped in an app or not.

If you're on a Chromebook, the default Twitter and YouTube Music install is a PWA.

Chrome Extensions are a related Cousin, though.

I much prefer real apps for those, where the UI and code is already downloaded and installed, auth is saved reliably (not cookies), and the app can just fetch the latest map/data/notifications as needed.

Those apps are so much smoother to use than mobile webpages, even if the pages are AJAX. (And I say that as a web dev.) PWAs suck, they optimize for dev experience (same codebase) over user experience.

I agree, I was talking more about apps that you use regularly. Reddit clients are a good example; Apollo for iOS offers a way, way better UX than the official client which is essentially a wrapper around the mobile site with a few native flourishes.

For stuff like buying plane tickets or booking hotels, I much prefer to just use the website itself. I see no benefit to these things being made into PWAs or occupying any kind of permanent space on my device.

You still need to create an account, because reasons. Interacting with any such service is a pain either way for the first time.

I concur with this. I really thought Android's Instant apps would be a major boon because of this. If you're not aware, Instant apps are Android apps that download, and temporarily install, the most commonly used app components first so you could use them right away. This gives you the best of both worlds; the ability to use an app, without installing it, while also having a native experience. For some reason it never took off.

I think companies don't like these. Businesses prefer when users download their app. They now have some real-estate on the user's phone.

For instant-apps you invest all the effort but they don't remain on the device (and are limited in size to begin with)

Also - it doesn't take long to download apps today (games - now that's a different thing)

I think whoever came up with Android Instant Apps grossly overestimated the amount of friction imposed by users having to click the "Get App" button in the Play Store. It is a solution in search of a problem, which is why it never took off.

So Google reinvented Java applets?

It is not true if you use it frequently (every few months). I always use apps instead of websites for flight or hotel booking, and the experience is much better.

Huh. I try really hard to avoid installing software for especially those kinds of things.

Every few months is "frequently"?

That's just app hoarding.

Does that matter? The experience is still better.

To me downloading an app from the store, update it regularly, and keep it consuming storage forever doesn't count as a better experience. Specially for an app that I rarely use.

This is all zero effort. The app updates itself and consumes a minuscule amount of storage while most people have 100+gb of free space otherwise unused

How is booking a flight a transient app? The Delta app has my credit card information, my flight information, notifies me of the location of my check bags, tells me where I am on the list of free upgrades, etc.

If you have to ask, you probably are in the 1% by a large margin: Most people do not fly regularly. Some people have never flown at all. You would probably be surprised how often someone's flight with an airline is either their first or, in fact, only ever time they will do business with said airline.

If someone is flying occasionally, they probably don’t just have a carry on. They still will need to know where to pick up their bag.

They will still need to know if their gate has changed or whether their flight is delayed.

I wouldn't want a software install for a one-time business interaction. I'd expect maybe SMS updates for all of this anyways?

Unless you fly internationally. Text messaging is notoriously unreliable when roaming. Also if they send you a text, there is no guarantee that it isn’t dropped if it doesn’t reach you immediately. Push notifications are a lot more reliable over international data and wifi.

There have been numerous accounts where someone couldn’t use a credit card overseas because their bank tried to send them an SMS that they were suppose to reply to to verify a transaction.

Also, SMS cost a lot more at scale for the sender than mobile notifications.

SMS does not work so well inside planes...

In all the airports i was there were big screens telling you about arrivals and departures and where can you pick up your luggage.

So let’s say I fly out of a busy airport - I do I fly out of Atlanta the worlds busiest airport - you are really going to say that it’s more convenient to find your flight among all the ones that are landing than just looking at your phone?

But even then, you first need to know whether your bag is at Terminal South or Terminal North first.

I do that all fine with an Alaska web account and emailed boarding pass.

Does your boarding pass in your email automatically update with gate changes, boarding time changes, etc?

Is it really easier to dig through your email than just click on the app and your boarding pass show up? And since it knows that you’re going to probably scan it, the screen automatically lights up

Technically the "backend" has all that info. There's constant push and pull between apps and servers.

Delta will also notify travelers via SMS, Email... it's not app-only.

Are you really going to be constantly checking your email while you are at the airport when they are notifying you of delays and gate changes?

It’s a much better experience just to look at my boarding ticket in my Apple Wallet that is updated.

Even the Papa Johns and AirBnb apps are much more responsive than their web counterparts.

When I’m ordering food on Uber Eats, I can see where the driver is in real time.

Another feature of the Uber Eats app is chat and automatic translation. When I was in Florida, I discovered how many people who work for Uber don’t speak a word of English.

If I do something once then it's slightly annoying downloading the app from the app store, but I can live with it. It's not worse than opening browser and going to some URL.

The United web site experience is the biggest tire-fire I have ever seen from a F500 company. They literally ask you to use your credentials on multiple different domains, and every menu item seems to take you to a different domain where you are of course logged out.

United is a phisher’s dream target. No MFA possible, and they spam their customers with zillions of login links on dozens of different domains. I’ll bet you can register unitedcardawards.com and get thousands of credentials without even sending out phishing messages!

Android at least has the ability to "install" a PWA as an app on your home screen. They just need to allow devs to list them on their app store, and then it really wouldn't be any more inconvenient than a native app.

I didn't say that it was more inconvenient than installing a native app, but it's not more convenient either. I don't see any reason to switch to these PWAs when native apps are usually guaranteed to have better UX, features, Apple Pay, Face ID support etc.

iOS has this too (Share button -> Add to Home Screen) but I don’t know if it’s as easy as Android.

That is TWAs are for.

Absolutely not - the experience from the United and Marriott apps on iPhone are worlds better than their respective websites, and certainly better than their mobile websites.

Do you really even need an app to do that? Just use a web site

A standard website is also sufficient for this