Do I still need to make an app? - Thinking of writing some software, looking at what skills I'll need.

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Well this sucks, basically. There's very little technical reason I need to build this as an app. In fact, I'm not sure there's any. But if the bar for "competent people" is now so low that bookmarking a webpage counts, I have a problem. How did we end up with people being so consumerist and led that if something isn't in an app store it's almost invisible to people. I'm starting to realise for some people they don't even use "the Web", per se. It's all just consoomed via apps. At this rate, the Web of tomorrow is going to end up like the Usenet of today - there, still exists, but largely obscure and ignored by the masses.

This is a very real problem. The really unfortunate problem is that it's very, very, very difficult to avoid sucking the sav that Apple or Google put in front of your face, because they control the app stores, which offer the only practical way to get most regular users onto your service and even provide a little bit of free advertising.

It's different if you're providing an expensive B2B service as opposed to something an individual consumer would use. In those cases, it's more practical to force an Android user to install a random APK or get Android/iPhone users to use a PWA or just straight website. But for something that's meant to be direct to consumer, it just won't work out. This isn't how it should be, but it is how it is.

Also... in regards avoiding paying Apple or Google their 3 shekels in 20 for instore purchases for being on their app store (assuming you don't cross over the $1 mill revenue threshold and pay them 3 in 10)? That is very difficult. You won't even be allowed just link to a website where the user can pay you directly from Safari/Chrome. If you try to do that you will be locked out of the app store.

The only company I know that has taken the risk of forgoing in-app payments is Amazon, with their Kindle app on the Android and iOS app stores.

That wasn't because of principle. They took the choice to lose a bunch of impulse book buys where they'd pay that 30% tax to Google or Apple, because they were confident that very few users would solely use the Kindle app without a desktop, that very few users would abandon using the Kindle app because they couldn't directly buy books on there, and that most of those users would just start buying books in advance on their desktop if they couldn't buy them straight from the app. They had the statistics, they probably A-B tested things and found that the money they lost from not having quick impulse buys available, was made up because most users just went to the desktop and bought books there ahead of time instead, and Amazon netted more revenue because they no longer were paying the the app store tax on those transactions that moved from in-app to by desktop.

You are not Amazon, you do not have an app that is effectively universally installed for 99% of people who read books on their phones. You need to bake app store usury into your business calculations. You could avoid the app stores and seriously restrict your market, but that would be even worse for your bottom line than paying the evil thieving cunts at Apple or Google 15 or even 30% of your revenues.

It's bullshit, but unless you want to follow Nasim Aghdam, there isn't much you can do about it.

 

[Overly Serious]

You can look into using Expo to create cross-platform apps on android, ios, and desktop.

See https://youtu.be/vFW_TxKLyrE .

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Thanks. I'll take a look.

There's Apache Cordova which basically just wraps your web app in a native WebView component and provides a JS library that provides access to device-level APIs if you need them. You can write your app logic in whatever framework you want.

Edit: There's also Ionic which supports Vue.

Ionic looks viable at a cursory check.

It's bullshit, but unless you want to follow Nasim Aghdam, there isn't much you can do about it.

I couldn't bring myself to click Like for such bad news so I went with Informative. I appreciate the response and you get where I'm coming from. I did a little independent research and found there is something called a "Reader" app which I guess is what the Kindle app counts as but it's too limited for what I need.

it were possible to have multiple "windows" so that someone could just save my page as an icon and its own browser instance, kind of, then I'd be a step closer. But everything just goes to the browser as one more tab so it's clunky. Frankly, my hatred for Apple has grown two sizes today.

It really looks like for no technical reason at all (or barely), I would have to be paying Apple to have an App when that's not what I even want to write. Looks like Apple take a 30% cut of all sales. Presuming that's gross that could kill my idea in the cradle. Can be dropped to 15% for certain conditions with annual subscriptions. Wont really work for me. What's the situation with people willing to install APKs on Android? I presume that's regarded as a pretty out there thing to do by most people.

These companies are killing the Web.

(2024 figures apparently)

 

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What's the situation with people willing to install APKs on Android? I presume that's regarded as a pretty out there thing to do by most people.

I think some people download dodgy cracked versions of games that are 'pay to purchase' on the Google app store as APKs.

Other than that, I am aware of a couple logistics companies which have custom apps that they install on their company drivers work phones, and which they force their contractors to install on theirs.

There are alternative app stores. But Huawei AppGallery and whatever Samsung's is called take similar cuts, while being smaller, so there isn't really any advantage. Open source app stores like F-Droid have even smaller userbases, and discourage paid services from publishing apps there (even if the 'app' is just a web view that shows your website). And if you somehow aquire a customer outside of the app store environment, then having to download the app store APK before downloading the app itself is an even higher threshold to pass than getting them to download an APK.

Unfortunately, none of those are really a viable model for a B2C service.

Still, as evil as the app store lockin is, it isn't really avoidable, unless you can find your customers outside of an app store, and get them to use a website as a tab in their browser.

Ionic looks viable at a cursory check.

I've fiddled with Cordova, Ionic/Capacitor seems like it might be a bit more streamlined. Definitely more practical to do with less resources than going native, especially if you want to support both Android and iOS.