More and more, services which used to be web-based are doing everything they can to get you to use their app instead. This is sensible from a business perspective, of course, because it puts them in complete control over how you view and use their content.
By default, I don’t use them. To me, they’re the equivalent of buying a unitasker for a kitchen: a waste of space and resources unless there’s an excellent justification for keeping them around. Plus I’m still irritated at the way Facebook’s app murdered my battery life six or seven years ago.
So I’m specifically asking about services which are available and functional via your mobile browser, but you’ve downloaded the app because of added value, convenience, whatever.
Looking at my phone, I have:
YouTube - the mobile interface is barely functional.
Amazon - one of the few occasions that push notifications are actually helpful
MyChart - an app for tracking healthcare information and appointments, very helpful
A few streaming media apps which I suppose I could use their respective websites for, but if I’m paying for the content I don’t mind having the app on my phone.
I must be an even bigger Luddite than Johnny_Bravo because I don’t even understand the idea of an app.
Can someone splain this to me? Why do smart phones rely so heavily on apps that you download and install into your phone as opposed to just using web sites like we use with desktop computers? Or maybe the converse: Why don’t we download and install apps for everything on our desktop computers instead of using conventional web sites?
I don’t own a smart phone but I use a real email client on my computer, not web mail. Same idea, I guess.
I’ve wondered this same question myself. Especially given the really limited and cumbersome way that cellphones handle app launching (like, they couldn’t consider a text-based menu with user-created folders and subfolders, so you could set up a hierarchical menu of apps arranged by type?), I’d think it would be annoying as all get-out to have 500-some-odd apps and scroll to the 19th screen to launch Uber or whatever. And meanwhile all the businesses and other web sites seem bound & determined to reformat their web sites to look good on a cell and look like shit on a computer.
Although both have websites, I use an app for my bank (Key Bank) and my primary airline (Alaska Air). [When I’m using my phone] I don’t use apps on my computer.
Other apps I use despite a website option: WSDOT (for ferry schedules and a few other things), AmEx, Hilton and Marriott hotels,
It’s usually a far better experience. Mobile sites are not exactly the best for functionality or speed - and you have to put in your password instead of a face or fingerprint unlock. Oh, and a lot of apps have a ‘dark mode’ as opposed to websites. Not to mention better push notifications. I do everything on my smartphone on the basis of apps… so per the OP’s question, all of them ;).
I do the opposite. I brutally purge my home screen and only keeps apps I use at least weekly. Everything else, I go into the library and search. I hate folders.
Pretty much all of them, I guess. Everything is faster than going to my browser on my phone. I use Firefox on my phone so maybe it’s slow. But I like the MLB app, IMDB, Reddit, AccuWeather, Twitter, Facebook, Cinemark, eBay… if I don’t like how the app works, I’m more inclined to go to the site on my desktop than to go to the site on mobile.
I even downloaded the Discourse app for the SDMB (previously I used Tapatalk). Word is that it’s just showing me the site in Safari, but it works fine and I can place it on my home screen.
I use apps for the majority of Google functions - mail, sheets, docs, drive, photos. All of those are available through the browser, but they’re just a lot cleaner and easier to use.
Social media apps are also far more functional. Twitter and Facebook apps get plenty of use. So do sports apps - fantasy and scores are better integrated in app form than iOS form.
I have a news aggregator Feedly that I’m sure is available on a browser, but I use more as an app.
Mostly, I find toggling between tabs on a mobile browser far more awkward than toggling between apps. Add in push notifications, and it makes more sense.
I have an iPad I play with now and then. Where do I create these folders and, once created, how do I put individual apps into them? Is it obvious how to name a folder once created?
I never even figured out how to get apps I don’t like off the front screen. So I always had to swipe to the next to get to the ones I’d installed.
Just hold your finger on the app until it jiggles.
Then you can drag it either off the screen onto another page, or onto another app to create a folder with both apps in it.
Don’t you? I do. I read and write emails in a native mail client. I write and run software using a native IDE. I play games installed on my computer.
To the extent that people do everything in a web browser it’s largely due to the economics of providing that. You can develop a web app and it’s available on every OS that can run a web browser, and lots of companies offer freemium web apps where most users can use them for free, where fewer offer native desktop applications for free.
That’s generally not the reason that native apps are developed. Web browsers give you plenty of control over how people use and view content. Native apps are developed because the experience is better (more responsive, lower resource requirements) and to hook into built-in OS apis and data. A web app probably can’t ask for access to your user’s address book or camera, but a native app can.
My financial and travel apps have functionality not available on available on the mobile web versions. Check deposits as mentioned above and boarding passes for American Airlines. I still do my flight/hotel/vehicle reservations from the computer just because it’s much easier with more screen real estate and a real keyboard.
Sure, they’re “kitchen monotaskers”, but the kitchen is 64,000 sq/ft. Or is it 128,000? I really don’t remember.
I’m not sure I understand the “monotasker” argument. It’s not like you run out of counter space. Like, if there’s a web app you use a lot, you save it to your home screen to launch it easily, right? So it takes up the same amount of space as the native app would.
If, if you don’t want it to do that, just hide them all in one giant folder on the last page and launch them via OS-search?
Any web app, to be reasonably responsive, is going to cache itself on your phone, so it’s not like the native app takes up more storage (it probably takes less for the same amount of usefulness, since it can more intelligently cache things).
And native apps are going to be aware of OS memory management directives to save state and die, so if they’re well-written, they’re going to come back up just as they were, while a webpage is going to have to reload because the OS doesn’t tell web pages when they’re going to die and there aren’t handlers for that.
Apps can get out of control with running in the background, push notifications, and being general resource hogs. I know that they can be managed but I just don’t care to deal with it.
For what it’s worth, I’m not making an argument so much as I’m describing one of my own idiosyncrasies. No preaching here.
This is how I feel about airline apps. It’s nice to get a push notification informing me what gate my flight is departing from, or that’s it’s delayed, etc. Although notifying me that my flight has landed, when I’m on the plane, might be unnecessary.