I know the meme in the tech circles but I disagree. Apps are fast and pleasant to use, unlike websites. On the web you never know what you are getting into when you click on the link, you go through all that installation process and if you still remember why you clicked the link most of the time it's a disappointment because the content is usually quite low quality created to generate eyeballs.
Sometimes I wonder if techies are so detached that don't notice the horrible state of web. My guess is that in the tech communities apps are hated ideologically due to the narrative of walled gardens. Also probably the devs with investment into HTML+JS world might feel like outsiders. I am speculating of course but I don't see why a person would like to load 5 to 20MB of data per click to see an image or a text once completes the accept the cookies, deny notifications, dismiss the mailing list popups ritual.
The web has become complete BS, some people say that Google no longer returns good results but I've come to the realisation that there are no good website for Google to return any longer.
I'm also puzzled why would you think that I'm being sarcastic, isn't the point of the Website in question to illustrate the horrible state of the Web today? My comment is just an explanation about why we have what we have.
You never know which domains an app connects to. They could collect even more info about you and send it to thousands of websites. In a browser, it is easy to see for somewhat technical people. To detect app tracking, you need more sophisticated setups. A proxy with an MITM certificate or a router which logs all domains or something like that.
> but I've come to the realisation that there are no good website for Google to return any longer
I guess this is just you. There are still plenty of good websites, depending on what you’re looking for.
It's unimportant to know to which domain an app or website connects because once your data has left your device you can't know what it happens. It's technically trivial to send the data to 3rd parties over the same server that processes legitimate requests. In fact, that's how 3rd parties match and aggregate user data through cookies(one of the ways).
Besides, I'm not even talking about privacy but the overall user experience.
I think most people here are actually aware of something called 'desktop applications' which were generally nicer experiences than Html+JS web apps. And apparently predated everything else, too. Possibly some people here have even written them, but maybe they were just a myth. Saying 'apps are better' is probably still too general though, I've used a lot of truly terrible native apps that I'd just as happily condemn just as harshly as a bad website. Even worse, in mobile apps you're much less able to block ads (they were always less common in desktop ones).
Technically, the browser is an App that happens to run Apps written in HTML+JS+CSS. There can be good and bad apps of each kind, for example Figma has very good UX despite being a web app.
However that's not the point, what we call Apps and what we call websites or Web apps are programs with different discovery and retention mechanisms and that is exactly the reason why Apps are better than Websites or Web Apps.
A Website has one chance to establish a relationship to you and to monetise you. That's why we see all those tracking, mailing list, notification and ad banners. The moment you finish "installing" the website you will get your content and you probably wont come back unless once again you are not redirected from reddit or something. You also don't get to see what this website is all about before actually going through the trouble of installing it.
On the other hand, Apps need to sell themselves to you. They need to be good towards their users so that they receive stars and positive reviews. They need to have a presentation explaining what this app is all about and even provide you with screenshots. Once you install an app, you are giving it a proper chance to impress you so that you keep coming back.
And that difference between Apps and Websites is the prime reason for the quality difference. Websites need to be clickbitey and they need extract the value out of you right away. The competition is firece as the entry barrier is low. Apps on the other hand need to be good and make their users happy so that they can convince others to install the app too. Since they are going to be within the site of their user, they don't need to extract the value right away, they can build healthy relationship.
