this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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This is why everything apps are so popular in many parts of the world. Using a mini-app from the internet running within another app is far preferable to downloading a whole app you may never need to use again. The way they do it in China is so seamless even if you've never visited the business before. There's never any special account creation or entering of payment information.
Obviously it's pretty terrible in terms of user privacy since the everything app has basically unchecked access to all of your personal information and habits, but the convenience is incredible and feels decades ahead of how apps work in the US.
How is that better than a web browser? Web browsers were supposed to be the "everything app".
Web browsers don't integrate to a single account and payment system, nor do they preemptively load entire websites before you start browsing. So you're always waiting for actions to complete or for images to load which feels slower. Mobile websites also tend to be very bloated slowing things down further than if the same functions were done natively in an app. There's also no consistency between websites so you never know when something will/won't work nor how far away you are from checkout. And then to top it all off there's browser compatibility, which is typically pretty poor for anything that isn't Chrome/Safari.
If a web browsers could really do the same thing all these companies wouldn't feel the need to make their own device specific apps.