For any platform, really, it’s just that mobile suffers from the “everything must be an app” problem the worst. Luckily, fast food hasn’t gotten bold enough to ask you to install a desktop app when opening their website.
99% of apps can just be websites, and probably 80%+ of them are just PWAs in a wrapper that can be published on an app store.
IIRC (from others, never installed it) McDonald’s app is also obnoxious, requiring permissions and refusing to run on custom ROMs and rooted devices. It was once used alongside some common banking apps as a metric of “how close to Google Android is this ROM”.
PWA isn’t as bad as electron but it’s similar. No local storage or offline capability - which is fine for a weather app, but not fine for something with persistent data like email or chat or a word processor. My computer has loaded up an entire GUI, with local storage and RAM, make use of it in an intelligent way instead of just loading a browser instance and assuming I don’t mind latency.
PWA is 100% better than an “App” that’s just a data collection unit showing the website. Which is all too common too.
PWAs can do both of these. In fact, the definition of a PWA includes that it has some functionality offline. (Though this criteria can be met by serving a simple “sorry, you’re offline right now” page. So long as it isn’t the browser’s default “no connection” error.)
For mobile
I initially thought this was an argument for electron/PWA bullshit. “Why is <app> eating 2GB of RAM and has no locally loaded content?”
When companies are pushing apps as hard as they usually are, I assume there’s a benefit to them and not to me.
For any platform, really, it’s just that mobile suffers from the “everything must be an app” problem the worst. Luckily, fast food hasn’t gotten bold enough to ask you to install a desktop app when opening their website.
99% of apps can just be websites, and probably 80%+ of them are just PWAs in a wrapper that can be published on an app store.
A lot of fast food places offer coupons only in the app.
I used to go in to pick up the coupon books or they’d get sent to my mailbox.
RIP “2 can dine for $6.99”
That’s fine, I don’t eat from fast food places. One less app to install.
IIRC (from others, never installed it) McDonald’s app is also obnoxious, requiring permissions and refusing to run on custom ROMs and rooted devices. It was once used alongside some common banking apps as a metric of “how close to Google Android is this ROM”.
I just realized it’s been months since I got the bundle of coupons in the mail.
PWA is where you save the website as an icon on your desktop right? I use several websites like that. What’s the drawback?
PWA isn’t as bad as electron but it’s similar. No local storage or offline capability - which is fine for a weather app, but not fine for something with persistent data like email or chat or a word processor. My computer has loaded up an entire GUI, with local storage and RAM, make use of it in an intelligent way instead of just loading a browser instance and assuming I don’t mind latency.
PWA is 100% better than an “App” that’s just a data collection unit showing the website. Which is all too common too.
PWAs can use local storage and they can have service workers, which allows them to run offline, at least in theory.
Yeah, this is 100% wrong. They definitely can use local storage and have offline capabilities.
They even have an object store: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/IndexedDB_API
PWAs can do both of these. In fact, the definition of a PWA includes that it has some functionality offline. (Though this criteria can be met by serving a simple “sorry, you’re offline right now” page. So long as it isn’t the browser’s default “no connection” error.)
Okay I think I get it. Yeah the PWA I save are usually websites I frequent but don’t want to install their app.