I understand the user point of view, but some web UIs nowadays are so bad and the app so good that I'm not sure this always holds true.

I do agree that this seems to be exception rather than the rule - so having both is actually nice IMHO.

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microflash 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> some web UIs nowadays are so bad and the app so good that I'm not sure this always holds true.

This is by design to force you install the app. Most of these days, I just treat it as a signal to neither use the app nor the website.

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camdenreslink 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Reddit comes to mind. I have so many issues with their mobile website. The back button has been broken for years, comments will frequently just hang as loading indefinitely (only fixable with a hard refresh), videos will sometimes not be replayable, sometimes if you change the zoom on the page it will just hard refresh, etc.

I'm not sure if it is intentional to push you to the mobile app, but I have to imagine the mobile app doesn't have all these issues.

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jonathanlb 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Thankfully, old.reddit.com as a default option still works.

The kicker is that the text is so small and to make the site usable (and readable) you need to rotate your phone to landscape mode.

This works well enough that I haven't downloaded the reddit mobile app or used their mobile site ever since they killed Apollo.

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ragnese 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm especially angry that if you go to reddit.com in a mobile browser, it will sometimes fully block you from certain subreddits (not just NSFW ones) and tell you that you can only access it from the app. Meanwhile, you can easily visit the exact same subreddit by typing old.reddit.com/r/whatever. The outright lying bothers me so much. I refuse to be desensitized to lying just because everyone is lying all the time; it's still really wrong, and they really should be ashamed of themselves.

	▲	mixtureoftakes 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		reddit browser behavior got me into using frontends for various sites, such as redlib dot privacyredirect dot com there are surprisingly many of them for pretty much every social media website.

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duped 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Their mobile app sucks too. They just killed /r/all recently.

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mghackerlady 6 hours ago | parent [-]

you can launch it from a comment linking to r/All (with a as upper case) iirc. How long that'll still be available, I have no clue, but I like to imagine the devs who work on reddit realise how braindead of a decision removing it is but have to please the shareholders by removing any obvious access of it

	▲	duped 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think they took the wrong signal from the people avoiding the default feed since it's filled with days-old posts you've already seen from subs you haven't joined.

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Lihh27 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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KellyCriterion 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

you mean like in a way of "defending" the user from using the website and just go right away to the app?:)

	▲	denysvitali 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not really, more like "just pick whatever works, both usually suck"

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ryandrake 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If it's really "by design" then you are saying they have a staff of web developers who are told, "No, no, no... all that quality work you're capable of--don't do it. Here are some JIRA tickets to make the web site shitty and slow and eat the user's battery. Go implement them and make everything worse!"

What kind of sad, self-loathing software developer sits down and says "OK boss, whatever you say, boss, gonna go make it bad now..." I mean, I know to a lot of people, it's just a 9-5 and you do what your boss says, and "pride in your work" is not really a thing anymore, but come on. Who gets even a shred of satisfaction doing this?

I think a better explanation is just incompetence.

	▲	mghackerlady 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's usually done in such small portions the developers don't know exactly what they're doing. That, or they've become so numb to it to not really care

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owenpalmer 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Alternatively, they could just make the web UI good.

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happytoexplain 6 hours ago | parent [-]

This isn't an alternative for the user (the person you're replying to).

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denysvitali 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I can't think of a web app that really feels like a (good) native one. For example, I would never use Google Calendar as a web app / Google Maps as a web app as they're far inferior IMHO

	▲	jeroenhd 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I used Home Assistant as a web app for years before deciding to download the companion app instead to give it access to my phone's sensors. I used to care a lot about app designs feeling "native" but when I actually took inventory of the apps I use, I came to the conclusion that all app developers (including Apple and Google themselves) will force their own designs and theming into every app. The only exception seems to be coming from a bunch of open-source apps that don't have branding concerns to worry about. With the realisation that most apps look and navigate must as bad as their website equivalent, I found it much easier to use web apps.

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rpcope1 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

TurboTax, for all its faults is one of those where the desktop app is better than the webapp they keep pushing.

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skydhash 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Unless it’s required (Starlink) or something I check often (not much this day), I don’t use the app version. I prefer grabbing my laptop and use the web version. But best is when there’s an API available so I can write my own tools.