Ask HN: Genuine alternatives to Google and Apple for releasing paid apps
18 points by asjdflakjsdf 3 days ago
Obviously they both offer an incredible service but competition is always good!
18 points by asjdflakjsdf 3 days ago
Obviously they both offer an incredible service but competition is always good!
It would be great to see an "app store" that drives discoverability of PWA apps.
Edit: googled and found this: https://store.app/
Handsome site, but doesn't seem very active sadly.
PWAs really struggle with distribution - it comes down to the PWA maker (or team) having enough charisma, alignment, and budget to get people to follow the kind of arcane instructions for installing each unique PWA.
Trying not to be sneering here; most consumers consider this to be offensively difficult compared to the traditional app store experience - I had to do a lot of guides and handholding to get my PWA installed. But, Yea, true for us computer expert guys.
In the EU, iPhone users can install from alternative sources:
>On iPhones, Apple forbids third party appstores. You cannot also sideload
Very sad state of affair considering we are progressing into the 2nd quarter of the 21st Century, and some people are not complaining but willingly embracing (paying) into this by design incapability in the name of security and convenience (read profit margins).
It's methaphorically like willingly living in a country with virtual great wall around with a benevelont dictator but it's one of the life choices that people voluntarily need to make nonetheless.
Most of these [0] started as desktop software but some have extended to mobile devices in ways that can interact via cloud with the version on your desktop, if I'm not mistaken.
Web Apps & PWAs :) There's a lot you can do to optimize offline PWA use.