simple - performance is often garbage. web apps use more cpu and memory than a native app. people should not need an M1 MacBook or better just to edit a document. (see top comment)
The only reason people build “apps” in the browser to begin with is because it simplifies the development for the engineering team. Easier to ship, easier to update, write once, etc. Sometimes the user benefits, but rarely.
The other problem I have is it blurs the lines between data on your machine (private) and data that is in the cloud. not everybody wants all their data in the cloud. When you’re working with a “app” in the web browser it’s not always clear.
> The only reason people build “apps” in the browser to begin with is because it simplifies the development for the engineering team. Easier to ship, easier to update, write once, etc. Sometimes the user benefits, but rarely.
Interesting take. Usually web apps lower friction for users.
- no installations
- no large binaries
- collaborative
- easy to adopt
I can't think of any (desktop) app that came out in recent years that specifically pitched "because native, we are better" and won. Sketch is a glaring example of a web app (figma) killing native (sketch)
searching on the ios or mac app store, or sharing a link to the app download page, is not exactly hard to adopt most of the time.
Gen Z might think so but that’s because we’ve conditioned them to expect everything in a browser IMO, not because it’s actually complicated.
“no large binaries”, i agree browsers have an advantage here - somewhat. Most apps have large binaries because software development today is lazy. Companies typically use huge libraries for EVERYTHING and then their final binary gets bloated. For example 90% of apps (excluding games) could be 30mb or less. Stuff like analytics and user tracking, advertising libs, the list goes on.
Who says a native app can’t be collaborative? You can use http or websockets in a native app to push/pull data. That’s like saying social media apps aren’t collaborative.
I do agree some web apps are well executed. Figma is pretty good. Google docs and google maps are excellent. I have a few more that i genuinely enjoy using. That’s the _exception_ though.
The browser is for browsing the Internet, it is a tool specialized for that, it has nothing to do with being an operating system. Being able to boot an OS within it does not make it an OS either. It just adds an unnecessary and potentially detrimental (to both performance and security) layer: OS -> browser -> OS, which is just silly. If you do not see the absurdity, let us consider this: OS -> browser -> OS -> browser -> OS, ad infinitum. :P
