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Why the lack of love for mobile apps?
I am personally a strong proponent/user of mobile apps, there probably aren't any websites that I frequent on a regular basis that I don't use an app for (other than tildes for now), plus there are some pretty strong advantages to mobile apps.
With that said, I'm just wondering why the official standing is against having a mobile app. Is it a resource thing (non-profit donation supported), small footprint thing (only 350 lines of JS), ideological thing (apps are counter intuitive)? Any ideas?
Building and maintaining a good mobile app is difficult. Reddit's putting millions of dollars a year into their mobile apps right now and still they're full of bugs, constantly break functions that were working before, and don't even support everything that the site does.
Mobile apps definitely have some advantages, but it's very unlikely that Tildes will have the resources to dedicate to building a good one any time soon. If the site can be 90% as good with a (relatively) small amount of extra work to keep it mobile-friendly, I think that's the best approach.
I think that this is a totally valid response, but as a counterpoint the most popular iOS reddit client is Apollo, with a dev team of 1, and not the official reddit app AFAIK.
I also think that a tip jar or option to donate through a mobile app would be extremely convenient and increase donations significantly over current offerings. The ability to tap a $5 donation button from settings and authenticate with touchID/faceID or an Android IAP would be a welcome addition to the current donation options in my opinion.
I don't think Apollo is even close in terms of popularity. The official app is ranked #2 in the News category, Apollo is #36.
And while it's true that it's by a single developer, he's been working on it full-time (I think?) since 2014. So that's 4 years of a developer's time to get an app to that state.
Yeah I wasn’t sure the best metric to track downloads/users but if you look at ratings (which I believe is a better proxy than [short term?] category rankings), then Apollo has 43k reviews and the official Reddit app only has 16k. Neither is perfect but I do think that they’re both used by hundreds of thousands.
The 4 years of development time is a good measure of time required to create such a solid app though.
You’re right about Apollo being a 1 man operation, but that guy spent almost 3 years developing it according to the initial announcement post. I think a ~ mobile app should be left up to a 3rd party developer since (IMO) it’s not the best use of Deimos’ time right now given that many key features haven’t even been implemented yet.
I appreciate the response, and it's nice to know that you don't have anything directly against apps.
It's probably been suggested, but a hugely helpful ux change for mobile would be to shift the collapse button on comments to the right hand side. Perhaps make it a setting?
It would make it easier to tap for right handed people, but also it would be in a consistent location for every comment. Plus since it's far away from the username, there would be no accidental tapping.
Alternatively, make tapping anywhere on the gray bar be a collapse.
I have had so much luck with RedditIsFun. I've been using it for probably 6 years. It's the bombdiggi.
The first thing I did was bookmark to my homescreen on IOS, and I have to say that the mobile experience is far better than I expected. With some minor tweaks it would be perfect as is.
HN has always let the community build mobile apps, and I don't think that would be a bad route to go down with this community -- especially since tildes is non-profit.
Personally I don’t care too much either way as long as the experience is good.
Right now there are a lot of times on mobile/iPad right now where navigation for ~ is tough. (Those little collapsing +/- buttons are tiny)
How about something simple like notifications?
Oh yeah! I forgot about that. Even when I'm at a computer, it's usually my phone that lets me know someone replied.
And I'm sure it's not the only case we could come up with for mobile apps.
personally not a huge deal for me- don’t even use em on Reddit. Though I could see how for some that is not the case. Perhaps if PWAs come to Android and iOS this/next year it’ll be possible to make it happen.
I thought is was simply that there is a lot to do to advance this website's progress, and they simply haven't gotten around to an app yet? At the very least they said there was going to be an API eventually, so you could easily make an app if you wanted too. But before we do that I think it makes sense to focus on the core features and functionality of the website (which everyone can use) and then consider platform specific clients later.
https://docs.tildes.net/technical-goals#the-site-is-the-main-mobile-interface-not-an-app
The question is inspired by the implications of the above.
Honestly I feel like "Your phone already has an app for using it—it's your browser." comes across sorta unnecessarily smug. Its very... purist.
That's kinda how I felt when I noticed it. Was slightly disappointing.
Probably this part then. Especially while the site is still young, having a consistent experience for everyone makes things much easier, and it avoids diverting time and money into maintaining a bunch of different apps and duplicating the effort. But with an API there will be apps coming someday, so yeah :D
I can't argue with that.
I really enjoy using the website on my phone. Sure, it could use a little bit more optimization (looking at you, collapse buttons), but we don't really need a full app for this yet. As more features come along, I'm down for having an app if it makes things easier for the users, but we're good right now with the website.
I would love to have a full-screen webapp for mobile at least, though. Not sure if this is a thing on Android, but you can add websites to your homescreen, and if coded correctly, they can run in full-screen mode for full immersion- just like an app.
I don't currently have much of an issue with the mobile site, I'm just trying to figure out why the sentiment seems to be against mobile apps.
Full-screen web apps are a thing for android as well. Good idea.
It's mostly the storage/cache implication for me. I don't like having an app that could easily be a website, in fact I'd much rather have a well-thought out mobile website that I could attach to my homescreen.
It's also probably because of the
DOWNLOAD OUR APP PLEASE TO GET ALL OF THE FEATURES NOW BECAUSE WE SAID SO AND YOU CAN'T USE OUR WEBSITE NOW HAHApopups everyone sees, reddit and yelp being the biggest culprits, imo.I immensely dislike reddit's mobile app and website (especially the notice). I mostly use Sync for Reddit.
I use Hermit to force many websites to act more like PWAs on Android. Give it a try :)
I am in the same boat as rather having an app than mobile browser, but at the same time using the mobile browser with tildes at work today felt really good to me.
I agree that it's probably the simplest, most functional mobile site I've used, but simply put an app would make things better, so I'm just wondering why not.
I want to be able to read the site in an app that's already logged in, optimized for readability, and navigation, and performance, etc. I often read Reddit on the phone, and having a good app makes it much nicer.
I also like that apps on a phone can be the link handler for the site, can make shortcuts to posts, etc., so when in the future I do a search and there are Tildes posts in the results, I'd like to be able to open them in a better experience.
Edit: Forgot notifications! Sure, the site could e-mail me, but that gets lost in the pile, and I really like having dedicated notifications through a phone app even when I Am sitting at a computer.
The we appear to be on the same page.
This is actually a really interesting article that I read on the future of native mobile apps vs browser based apps.
https://medium.com/swlh/browsers-not-apps-are-the-future-of-mobile-c552752ff75
I for one think that a mobile browser is perfect for content, especially a content site that links to other places in the web. Web linking from within a native app gets really clunky and slow.
Personally there's very little that can't wait for me to get to a laptop to post or read. Mobile apps distract from actually looking up from your phone and enjoying life.
Yes I am an older man, yes get off my lawn young whipersnappers.
But there was an article the other day that went into the thought that if you take a picture of a moment, you have less memory of that moment than if you just experienced it live.
This is the way that I look at the mobile and having it full up on apps whose purpose is to constantly engage me. I'd rather my phone go back to being a phone 80% of the time and I'll experience the world around me instead (unless I'm in the WC, that's Bloons time!)
I think because there is no need. After switching to Firefox for Android, everything has been so smooth. It's the same as the desktop site.
A mobile app for Tildes would probably be nice, given that the whole point of Tildes is to be trustworthy. But in general, I think apps are a force for evil, and that opinion is likely to be shared by many of the people who choose to come here over other venues.
Apps run on users' hardware, but generally they put the interests of their authors squarely ahead of the interests of their users. It's not a front-page scandal and massive violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act when apps track and report on their users' locations without users wanting them to, it's business as usual. Plus, the notification-centric design of app platforms means the apps are deciding when they want to be used, rather than users deciding when to use them. Most apps are fundamentally exploitative of their users; they exist to get something out of the users, like money or advertising impressions, and solve users' problems, if at all, only incidentally.
On the web, there's a user agent, the browser, between whatever crap comes in over the network and the user's device, data, and attention. There's still the potential for exploitation, but the user has their own development team, in the form of the browser authors, working to limit and control what web sites can do, for the user's benefit. When so many mobile web sites (LinkedIn, Facebook Messenger, Reddit) are trying to push people off the web, out of the protection of the browser, and into apps that they control, offering a service explicitly and exclusively on the web is a powerful political statement.
I think as with most things in life it's a two way street, apps are useful to the creators as you said, but they are useful to the user as well.
In this case Tildes is being pretty awesome by not even putting it's own interest first on the web, so why would we think that an app coming out would change that?
I don't think it would; a Tildes app would be a good one, because it would stick to its principles. And maybe making a political statement isn't worth annoying the people who just want a native app with big idiomatic buttons. Moreover, with an API set up, anyone would be able to make an app interface, so it'd be hard to not have one.
I don't like using phones. They get warm in a sickly sort of way and the effort required to manage their softwares is never worth it to me.
There's nothing any of you could say or do in the context of this website that would make me want to take it with me, I don't think.