Itās about integration, the amount of actions it takes to do something in a single app is vastly reduced compared to having to juggle multiple apps. For example, you want to go out for food with your friends. With WeChat, you can message your friends, find a restaurant on the map, book it, etc. all completely seamlessly. This is a really good video explaining the benefits www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSMFnJnY7EA
Arlodottxt@fosstodon.org
on 22 Jan 15:54
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@yogthos I'll give it a watch. Regardless, a good operating system should be capable of such seamless integration. That's why "Super apps" are an operating system in a trenchcoat.
An operating system doesnāt solve the problem because itās fundamentally a UX problem. You can look at a super app as an OS that also handles the UI layer and apps are just APIs below that layer. This is not how the OS works on Android or iOS however where each app couples its API with its own UI.
@yogthos You misunderstand. If you make a "Super App", you ARE making an operating system. Yes most OS's have UX problems that prevent this level of integration, but the critical difference is that you're giving complete control to a single entity.
The client-server pattern perpetuates power imbalances, and "Super apps" make that problem much much worse.
No, I donāt misunderstand. Iām explaining to you that the nature of this operating system is different because thereās a single unified UI backed by a bunch of APIs. The critical difference is that you have a unified UX that results in better user experience. It has fuck all to do with giving up control to anything. You donāt seem to understand the subject youāre attempting to debate here.
@yogthos No need to use strong language, I understand what you're trying to say.
As a UX dev of over 10 years, UX is important but secondary to safeguards against being toyed with by power-tripping tech bros. That's why I use fedi, that's why I build with ipfs instead of http.
There's nothing I need so bad that I would give up my digital freedoms.
I completely agree with you. This could be done at the OS level if everybody would agree on a common API. This what Iām trying to explain here, the concept of a unified UX experience is a net positive for the users, and it doesnāt need to be implemented as an app. Letās not throw the baby out with the bath water.
@yogthos Windows 8 made a legitimate effort to provide unified OS-level APIs that apps could hook into and deeply integrate with. The "People Hub" was easily the best example of this, plus Charms, Settings integration, etc.
Everyone hated it because they didn't understand it.
@yogthos Building walled gardens apps where you control everything is easier than building a walled garden OS where you control everything.
One is an App and the other is an OS, but both can be turned into a "walled garden trap" for consumers.
"But they did it" isn't an excuse to do it more. We have enough of this going around already with Apple and X and WeChat, governments and tech bros trying to maintain control over the masses. Nah.
I donāt see the OS providing a unified UI that allows people to write apps as services as a problem. Iām likewise confused about what youāre actually try to say here. Youāre conflating your ideological stance with technical functionality as far as I can tell. Itās perfectly possible for an open platform to do the same things WeChat does, and that would result in a much better user experience than the current approach. I donāt know why itās so hard for you to grasp this.
@yogthos They literally JUST banned and unbanned Tiktok at the whim of an annoying orange, and Twitter as we knew it is dead because of a rich billionaire.
You're glossing over real problems in the name of good ux.
The client-server pattern perpetuates power imbalances, and āSuper appsā make that problem much much worse.
Itās just something you keep repeating, but thatās just not true. Coupling the UI with the business logic of the application is a fundamentally wrong approach. It makes it effectively impossible to compose apps the way you can compose command line utils with piping. Apps should be designed as client/server by default, and then you could always leverage the service API for the app any way you want, slap a custom UI, use it in automation scripts, etc. Itās just way more flexible that way.
@yogthos Nobody in their right mind couples UI to business logic, we have MVVM for that and it enables some very impressive integration and UI switching in apps.
However, thinking at the application level is ignoring everything I just said about the ways that apps communicate.
@yogthos MVVM stands for Model-View-ViewModel, and is a pattern commonly used in dotnet and winui apps for decoupling backend business logic from frontend UI.
What on earth do you mean by "no app provides APIs to access the business logic layer outside the UI?" These apps are using APIs to begin with, the app doesn't NEED to provide them. The devs provides them to the app, the other way around.
I understand how MVC works perfectly fine. This is not what the discussion is about. What youāre being told is that apps youāll find in the wild typically DO NOT provide APIs that can be leveraged in the way I described. You completely ignored that.
Show me what Android or iOS apps can be used at API level to create a custom UI on top of them using a third party app.
1. This isn't MVC 2. I directly addressed that-- APIs exist independent of any one app. 3. This question about using an App as an API doesn't make sense. Apps use APIs, they do not provide them.
Also--- nobody is telling me. I've been doing this for over a decade.
@yogthos You're describing a Platform, but we have an actual oligarchy of tech platforms now. When they get too big, they just become power grabs, hence why Mastodon and Lemmy and fedi in general started picking up recently.
It's not worth even a scrap of good UX if these platforms can take away our voices on a whim. Fedi is on the right track.
Again, there is absolutely nothing that prevents this from being implemented in open source fashion. And this is a completely different use case from Fedi. This is basically extending the Unix philosophy to applications and it would put control in the hands of the user in how they want to interact with the app. For example, you could take a bunch of apps and make your own custom UI that leverages their functionality to solve a specific workflow you have. Try stepping out of your demagogy for a minute and actually think about this.
"Demagogy is the action or fact of winning support by exciting the emotions of ordinary people rather than by having good or morally right ideas."
Are you saying that fedi isn't a morally good idea?
I agree that morals should fuel our discussion and not emotion, but I'm sensing strong emotions from you.
Regardless, I see what you're saying because I've built things like this. I specialize in abstractions in my work-- Strix Music is a prime example of that.
@yogthos I've enjoyed our discussion, but I don't appreciate the strong language, the projections, or the claims of others projecting in order to defend your own projections. Thank you for engaging with me, see you around.
No, Iām describing user experience here. Apps with APIs donāt solve this problem unless thereās a UI on top of these APIs that makes the experience seamless to the users.
Yes, and then somebody has to build an app that uses these APIs to provide a unified UI to the user. That is precisely the missing piece. Hope that clears things up for you man.
Yeah, and thatās not the model of a super app. A super app provides APIs that it forces itās sub apps to use, as opposed to building an app that unifies a given appās published APIs.
Itās literally just a āplatformā under a different name, meaning that itās a tech company trying to build a closed layer that they control that everything is forced through so that they can eventuallg put up a tollbooth and commit highway robbery.
Itās what Apple tried to turn iOS into before the EU slapped the fuck out of them.
Yes, it is a platform that provides a common set of APIs that allow different apps to be unified within a single UI. This has nothing to do with closed layers, itās not different from the APIs app devs have to use on Android or iOS.
Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux, et al provide you APIs for interacting with the operating system, for instance if I want to send a request over the network, I tell the operating system to send this request through the network card.
But they do not dictate what I draw for my app on the screen, how I send messages between apps, or really anything at the application later. The OS APIs are there as an interface between the hardware and the application layer and thatās it.
Like I said, iOS tries to dips itās finger far into the application layer and make itself a platform to have more control, not let apps compete with Appleās apps, and so that they can charge you at every application interaction.
It is a story as old as tech. We build a wonderful open internet based on open standards, so social media companies come in and built a closed network on top of that so that they can control everything. Operating systems have historically been designed by big nerds as relatively open platforms, so what happens? Apple comes along and tries to turn iOS into a closed platform and everyone else comes along and tries to build a closed OS platform (a āsuper appā), on top of the existing open platforms.
Super apps and their design is 100% about enriching the controlling company and nothing else.
And Iām explaining to you that having a unified interface is a benefit from user perspective because now each app is basically a service behind a single consistent UI layer. Perhaps thinking of how a browser works might help you understand this. Itās pretty clear youāre just doing demagogy here instead of actually trying to understand the tradeoffs.
So youāre saying that we already have super apps, theyāre called the internet, and that the entire concept of an OS level super app is unnecessary and a clear attempt at a company to exert control and extract more money from consumers?
Like I said, we already have that unified interface, itās called an OS and a web browser. A super app is just a closed off version of that.
Again, youāre defending close platforms run by giant corporations to extra money from you.
Elon isnāt interested in super apps because he cares about the common person, he cares about them because he can build a platform to extract your money with.
No, thatās not what Iām saying at all. Iāve explained myself very clearly, but itās clear that you donāt intend to engage with what Iām actually saying.
I am engaging with what youāre saying, and Iām explaining why what youāre saying is wrong.
Iām literally a professional software developer who writes applications. I know the difference between a traditional set of OS apis like you see with Linux, the platformized nonsense iOS apis, the concept of applications using other applications to create a new unified experience using their own published APIs, and apps that publish APIs to try and be platforms.
I have literally used and build software under all of those models and have very clearly engaged with this conversation, so maybe you should be doing some self reflection instead.
Except nowhere have you explained anything about me being wrong. You ignore the obvious and tangible UX benefits that come with a unified UI platform. Maybe once you get a bit more development experience under your belt youāll be able to understand what Iām trying to explain to you.
a) donāt need a super app to do that, you can build applications with interfaces that unify other applications in whatever way you want, as long as those applications have published APIs, and
b) why we already have unified UI platforms (operating systems & web browsers)
All you have done is blindly defend super apps, while ignoring the point that they are fundamentally closed platforms designed to extract money from consumers.
And Iāve explained to you repeatedly that nobody cares about what you personally want. Whatās being discussed is whatās a better UX, which is obviously having a single unified UI backed by APIs. Iāve also explained to you deficiencies in the current UI platforms, but you evidently are unable to grasp these problems.
All you have done is blindly defend super apps, while ignoring the point that they are fundamentally closed platforms designed to extract money from consumers.
Nope, but keep repeating that since you donāt actually have a sound argument to make.
And Iāve explained to you repeatedly that nobody cares about what you personally want. Whatās being discussed is whatās a better UX, which is obviously having a single unified UI backed by APIs. Iāve also explained to you deficiencies in the current UI platforms, but you evidently are unable to grasp these problems.
Bruh, youāve explained jack shit beyond saying ābut itās obviously nicer when apps integrate with each otherā, and you havenāt once approached explaining why a super app is the architecture necessary to achieve that when we used to have it all the time before walled gardens.
Keep promoting one corporation having control over all application interactions. Such a glorious future we can all look forward to under the watchful gaze of the CCP / corporate America.
Indeed, youāre utterly unable to engage with whatās being said and bleat about see see pee being the dimwit that you are. You canāt even comprehend the fact that if apps were designed as API first then it could be done using open source model because you lack cognitive capacity to carry this discussion.
ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com
on 23 Jan 12:01
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Youāre trying too hard man, after about 2 rounds it became obvious that China way =good, 'Murica way=bad and thatās the bottom line.
Incredible how somebody could have such low intellect to utterly lack the capacity to separate the architecture from a specific app. I guess some people just lack the cognitive capacity needed to generalize concepts.
Lmao, rich coming from you after I already explained why the architecture is inherently, and fundamentally about controlling all interactions, not about seamless UX which can be achieved with other architectures.
Lmao, rich coming from you after I repeatedly explained to you that itās absolutely not the case. In fact, this architecture can be implemented within a UI toolkit provided by the OS. The apps have to use the toolkit API to make a GUI, and the toolkit can expose this API as JSON for anyone to interact with. Your utter lack of understanding of the subject youāre attempting to debate is showing. Maybe once you get a bit of programming experience under your belt, then youāll be able to talk about these things in a meaningful fashion.
Android provides an API to present your app in the system and launcher, and UI toolkits to present a consistent UI and UX. Apple does too, more forcefully. A āsuper appā is just inserting another layer.
Great, but that has nothing to do with software architecture. Rolling everything into one app instead of using the OS platform is not good software architecture.
It has everything to do with software architecture. Youāre not seeing the bigger picture here. The architecture is that you have a common UI layer with apps acting as services that plug into it. This doesnāt have to be done via an app like WeChat, it could be provided as part of the OS itself. The advantage is that you can mix and match functionality from different apps trivially to create custom UX workflows, and this approach facilitates things like automation where you can make scripts to chain apps together the same way you can do with shell commands.
Oh linked it a little while back, she does a great job explaining UX in general I find. And itās always interesting how the social and material conditions drive these things. For example, this video on how web design in India tends to be very spartan is interesting too. She explains how a lot of the population doesnāt have fast mobile phones, and so sites have to be snappy on older hardware which means have much leaner and more functional designs.
Nice, Iām gonna subscribe to her channel. Iāve had to think about UX design since Iāve been making a lot of android apps recently, so this could help a lot.
Oh yeah, she has some great insights that might spark new ideas for you. :)
ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com
on 22 Jan 16:17
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Same thing you can do in the Google app ecosystem, but in that case we say āhey maybe I donāt want this company to know everything about me, my plans, and what I likeā.
Except you canāt. The scenario I outlined requires juggling a bunch of apps and itās way more effort in practice. Try doing that sometime and youāll see how clunky it feels.
ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com
on 22 Jan 16:43
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I can literally go on the calendar, add a location which will interface with the maps app, which can give me reviews, menus, directions, etc. Add people from my contacts, who use any type of email and cal they like (not limited to WhatsApp users) and have an email sent off with an ICS file to add to their calendar of choice. Provide a drive attachment in the same calendar invite if there was something to discuss with this meetupā¦
Feeding all my info to a Chinese app isnāt going to somehow improve that. My larger interest is in breaking up the aggregation of data by a single entity.
And thatās precisely what makes it so much more clunky than just being able to do all of that right within the chat youāre having with your friends. Iām glad youāre so much happier feeding all your info into Google though, because itās totally not facilitating aggregation of data by a single entity. š¤£
ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com
on 22 Jan 16:58
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Said I can, not that I do. Not that I should expect the .ml CCP shills to understand anything outside of the tankie sphere.
Have you ever tried to use one of those superapps? Itās still a clunky experience overburdened with dozens of useless UI elements eating up screen estate of what I actually care about, and then whenever I wanted to do something for which thereās no sub-app in the super-app it would be difficult due to lack of integrations with āthe outsideā. Thatās even before we question the idea of putting all the eggs functionality in one basket centralized app with one developer entity, allowing them to ultimately control all aspects of oneās online life.
And more philosophically, Iām surprised that as a functional dev you prefer one big tightly coupled combine to a collection of small but useful on their own utilities lightly coupled to produce more than the sum of their parts.
There are trade offs to each approach. However, itās clear that super app approach has won in China, and the video I linked explains why.
And more philosophically, Iām surprised that as a functional dev you prefer one big tightly coupled combine to a collection of small but useful on their own utilities lightly coupled to produce more than the sum of their parts.
Because itās the opposite of that in practice. This approach decouples the UI functionality from the functionality of each individual app which becomes a plugable service. This way you can trivially build workflows that involve multiple apps and chain their functionality any way you like. Coupling the UI to the business logic of an application is a fundamentally wrong design decision in my opinion.
Also, this doesnāt have to be done as an app. It can be done at OS level. This way apps can work following Unix philosophy where you can create pipelines involving different apps and do scripting using them the same way you can do with command line utils. Iām surprised that a dev would have trouble understanding the benefits of doing this.
What people care about China stealing is stuff like a companyās internal research documents describing how to engineer high strength low, weight steel that took a team of PhD researchers in multiple high tech labs ten years and millions of dollars to research and develop.
Much better for those researchers to barely receive a cent of the money from the companyās profits while the result of their hard work can only be used by the corporation that hired them. \s
In my opinion the whole notion of coupling the UI to the API was a step in the wrong direction. It makes it effectively impossible to compose apps the way you can compose command line utils with piping. Apps should be designed as client/server by default, and then you could always leverage the service API for the app any way you want, slap a custom UI, use it in automation scripts, etc. Itās just way more flexible that way.
Some apps are still done this way, e.g. transmission the BitTorrent client, but also ALL self-hosted Web apps. Sure it might feel a bit much to install containers on your phone ājustā for that, or having to go through REST API despite being on the same actual device, but still it provides a TON of app.
Anyway, yes I agree that it is often a better model. Still a lot of apps, e.g. Blender, Inkscape, etc do provide a CLI interface. So one can both use them with a GUI or without. Itās not decoupled like transmission but arguably it covers most needs.
yeah there are a handful of apps that follow this model, it would be nice if it was the standard way to do things. In fact, this could even be handled by the GUI toolkit itself since native apps have to rely on it to build the user interface. The toolkit could just automatically generate a JSON API based on that for example.
HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
on 22 Jan 19:58
nextcollapse
Hot take: Even if China did āstealā technology from the US, who cares? Why are we defending US corporations all of a sudden? You donāt think they havenāt done their fair share of stealing? In fact, I donāt care if US companies stole tech from China or any country stealing tech from any other country. All competition benefits us peasants in the end, and you, fellow nobody whoās probably not a Fortune 500 CEO, are not the one being stolen from. China making something with alleged US technology will not deprive US citizens of said technology. And get this, if China āstealsā your tech to build something better than you have now, you can then āstealā their improvements right back, because āstealingā or more formally, copying of technology is an ancient phenomenon that only started being vilified with the copyright and patent era. People have openly copied each otherās innovations for the vast majority of human history, and the most important inventions of the human race have arisen from people copying other peopleās ideas and building on them. Imagine how ridiculous it would be if China was able to patent their invention of paper, or the compass, or gunpowder, and prevented Europe from āstealingā those technologies. Imagine if Ancient Greece patented bronze and successfully prevented the technology from proliferating into a brand new era of humanity. The second person to figure out fire probably watched the first person behind their back.
threaded - newest
@yogthos "Super App" never made sense to me either. It's just an operating system and a dozen apps in a trenchcoat.
Itās about integration, the amount of actions it takes to do something in a single app is vastly reduced compared to having to juggle multiple apps. For example, you want to go out for food with your friends. With WeChat, you can message your friends, find a restaurant on the map, book it, etc. all completely seamlessly. This is a really good video explaining the benefits www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSMFnJnY7EA
@yogthos I'll give it a watch. Regardless, a good operating system should be capable of such seamless integration. That's why "Super apps" are an operating system in a trenchcoat.
An operating system doesnāt solve the problem because itās fundamentally a UX problem. You can look at a super app as an OS that also handles the UI layer and apps are just APIs below that layer. This is not how the OS works on Android or iOS however where each app couples its API with its own UI.
@yogthos You misunderstand. If you make a "Super App", you ARE making an operating system. Yes most OS's have UX problems that prevent this level of integration, but the critical difference is that you're giving complete control to a single entity.
The client-server pattern perpetuates power imbalances, and "Super apps" make that problem much much worse.
No, I donāt misunderstand. Iām explaining to you that the nature of this operating system is different because thereās a single unified UI backed by a bunch of APIs. The critical difference is that you have a unified UX that results in better user experience. It has fuck all to do with giving up control to anything. You donāt seem to understand the subject youāre attempting to debate here.
@yogthos No need to use strong language, I understand what you're trying to say.
As a UX dev of over 10 years, UX is important but secondary to safeguards against being toyed with by power-tripping tech bros. That's why I use fedi, that's why I build with ipfs instead of http.
There's nothing I need so bad that I would give up my digital freedoms.
The is a non nonsequitor, because having a single UI framework has little to do with power tripping tech bros.
@yogthos I'm not even talking about UI frameworks anymore, but the UX and client-server or distributed models that you'd build with them.
You can't build a super-app without also creating a massive power imbalance.
I completely agree with you. This could be done at the OS level if everybody would agree on a common API. This what Iām trying to explain here, the concept of a unified UX experience is a net positive for the users, and it doesnāt need to be implemented as an app. Letās not throw the baby out with the bath water.
@yogthos Windows 8 made a legitimate effort to provide unified OS-level APIs that apps could hook into and deeply integrate with. The "People Hub" was easily the best example of this, plus Charms, Settings integration, etc.
Everyone hated it because they didn't understand it.
Meanwhile, WeChat managed to do it in a way that everybody loves.
@yogthos Doing inside an app is easier and significantly more of a power-grab.
Iām not sure why its easier, and donāt see how itās more of a power grab than what Google and Apple already do with their platforms.
@yogthos Building walled gardens apps where you control everything is easier than building a walled garden OS where you control everything.
One is an App and the other is an OS, but both can be turned into a "walled garden trap" for consumers.
"But they did it" isn't an excuse to do it more. We have enough of this going around already with Apple and X and WeChat, governments and tech bros trying to maintain control over the masses. Nah.
Both Android and iOS are very much a walled gardens last I checked.
@yogthos Right so are you saying we should make the problem bigger?? I'm confused what you're trying to say here
I donāt see the OS providing a unified UI that allows people to write apps as services as a problem. Iām likewise confused about what youāre actually try to say here. Youāre conflating your ideological stance with technical functionality as far as I can tell. Itās perfectly possible for an open platform to do the same things WeChat does, and that would result in a much better user experience than the current approach. I donāt know why itās so hard for you to grasp this.
@yogthos They literally JUST banned and unbanned Tiktok at the whim of an annoying orange, and Twitter as we knew it is dead because of a rich billionaire.
You're glossing over real problems in the name of good ux.
What does this have to do with anything being discussed here.
@yogthos Everything, this entire thread and several others that people have started with you.
It's worth saying twice:
The client-server pattern perpetuates power imbalances, and "Super apps" make that problem much much worse.
Itās just something you keep repeating, but thatās just not true. Coupling the UI with the business logic of the application is a fundamentally wrong approach. It makes it effectively impossible to compose apps the way you can compose command line utils with piping. Apps should be designed as client/server by default, and then you could always leverage the service API for the app any way you want, slap a custom UI, use it in automation scripts, etc. Itās just way more flexible that way.
@yogthos Nobody in their right mind couples UI to business logic, we have MVVM for that and it enables some very impressive integration and UI switching in apps.
However, thinking at the application level is ignoring everything I just said about the ways that apps communicate.
Pretty much no app provides APIs to access the business logic layer outside the UI. Youāre just trolling at this point.
@yogthos MVVM stands for Model-View-ViewModel, and is a pattern commonly used in dotnet and winui apps for decoupling backend business logic from frontend UI.
For example, this: https://youtu.be/Nb6fEeYfDAU
I feel like I'm the one being trolled here.
What on earth do you mean by "no app provides APIs to access the business logic layer outside the UI?" These apps are using APIs to begin with, the app doesn't NEED to provide them. The devs provides them to the app, the other way around.
I understand how MVC works perfectly fine. This is not what the discussion is about. What youāre being told is that apps youāll find in the wild typically DO NOT provide APIs that can be leveraged in the way I described. You completely ignored that.
Show me what Android or iOS apps can be used at API level to create a custom UI on top of them using a third party app.
@yogthos
1. This isn't MVC
2. I directly addressed that-- APIs exist independent of any one app.
3. This question about using an App as an API doesn't make sense. Apps use APIs, they do not provide them.
Also--- nobody is telling me. I've been doing this for over a decade.
Show me what Android or iOS apps can be used at API level to create a custom UI on top of them using a third party app.
@yogthos Bro that's not how apps work. What you're describing is a platform.
Thatās my whole point bro. This is how apps should work, but they donāt work this way.
@yogthos You're describing a Platform, but we have an actual oligarchy of tech platforms now. When they get too big, they just become power grabs, hence why Mastodon and Lemmy and fedi in general started picking up recently.
It's not worth even a scrap of good UX if these platforms can take away our voices on a whim. Fedi is on the right track.
Again, there is absolutely nothing that prevents this from being implemented in open source fashion. And this is a completely different use case from Fedi. This is basically extending the Unix philosophy to applications and it would put control in the hands of the user in how they want to interact with the app. For example, you could take a bunch of apps and make your own custom UI that leverages their functionality to solve a specific workflow you have. Try stepping out of your demagogy for a minute and actually think about this.
@yogthos
Huh?
"Demagogy is the action or fact of winning support by exciting the emotions of ordinary people rather than by having good or morally right ideas."
Are you saying that fedi isn't a morally good idea?
I agree that morals should fuel our discussion and not emotion, but I'm sensing strong emotions from you.
Regardless, I see what you're saying because I've built things like this. I specialize in abstractions in my work-- Strix Music is a prime example of that.
Iām saying this is a completely different use case from fedi. Perhaps you might be having strong emotions that youāre projecting onto me here?
Iāve also built this type of software and the benefits are very clear to me.
@yogthos I've enjoyed our discussion, but I don't appreciate the strong language, the projections, or the claims of others projecting in order to defend your own projections. Thank you for engaging with me, see you around.
Weird thing to say after trying to psychoanalyzing me. See you around I guess.
So, similar to Emacs?
lol sure
Youāre literally just describing apps that have open APIs and can integrate with each other.
That used to be the norm here too. The problem is entirely one of capitalism encouraging anti-competitive walled gardens.
No, Iām describing user experience here. Apps with APIs donāt solve this problem unless thereās a UI on top of these APIs that makes the experience seamless to the users.
Yeah man, thatās called an application.
MSN Messenger had an application, ICQ had an application, both had APIs though, so you then had third party apps that integrated and unified them.
Yes, and then somebody has to build an app that uses these APIs to provide a unified UI to the user. That is precisely the missing piece. Hope that clears things up for you man.
Yeah, and thatās not the model of a super app. A super app provides APIs that it forces itās sub apps to use, as opposed to building an app that unifies a given appās published APIs.
Itās literally just a āplatformā under a different name, meaning that itās a tech company trying to build a closed layer that they control that everything is forced through so that they can eventuallg put up a tollbooth and commit highway robbery.
Itās what Apple tried to turn iOS into before the EU slapped the fuck out of them.
Yes, it is a platform that provides a common set of APIs that allow different apps to be unified within a single UI. This has nothing to do with closed layers, itās not different from the APIs app devs have to use on Android or iOS.
Yes it absolutely is different.
Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux, et al provide you APIs for interacting with the operating system, for instance if I want to send a request over the network, I tell the operating system to send this request through the network card.
But they do not dictate what I draw for my app on the screen, how I send messages between apps, or really anything at the application later. The OS APIs are there as an interface between the hardware and the application layer and thatās it.
Like I said, iOS tries to dips itās finger far into the application layer and make itself a platform to have more control, not let apps compete with Appleās apps, and so that they can charge you at every application interaction.
It is a story as old as tech. We build a wonderful open internet based on open standards, so social media companies come in and built a closed network on top of that so that they can control everything. Operating systems have historically been designed by big nerds as relatively open platforms, so what happens? Apple comes along and tries to turn iOS into a closed platform and everyone else comes along and tries to build a closed OS platform (a āsuper appā), on top of the existing open platforms.
Super apps and their design is 100% about enriching the controlling company and nothing else.
And Iām explaining to you that having a unified interface is a benefit from user perspective because now each app is basically a service behind a single consistent UI layer. Perhaps thinking of how a browser works might help you understand this. Itās pretty clear youāre just doing demagogy here instead of actually trying to understand the tradeoffs.
So youāre saying that we already have super apps, theyāre called the internet, and that the entire concept of an OS level super app is unnecessary and a clear attempt at a company to exert control and extract more money from consumers?
Like I said, we already have that unified interface, itās called an OS and a web browser. A super app is just a closed off version of that.
Again, youāre defending close platforms run by giant corporations to extra money from you.
Elon isnāt interested in super apps because he cares about the common person, he cares about them because he can build a platform to extract your money with.
No, thatās not what Iām saying at all. Iāve explained myself very clearly, but itās clear that you donāt intend to engage with what Iām actually saying.
I am engaging with what youāre saying, and Iām explaining why what youāre saying is wrong.
Iām literally a professional software developer who writes applications. I know the difference between a traditional set of OS apis like you see with Linux, the platformized nonsense iOS apis, the concept of applications using other applications to create a new unified experience using their own published APIs, and apps that publish APIs to try and be platforms.
I have literally used and build software under all of those models and have very clearly engaged with this conversation, so maybe you should be doing some self reflection instead.
Except nowhere have you explained anything about me being wrong. You ignore the obvious and tangible UX benefits that come with a unified UI platform. Maybe once you get a bit more development experience under your belt youāll be able to understand what Iām trying to explain to you.
Iāve explained repeatedly why you
a) donāt need a super app to do that, you can build applications with interfaces that unify other applications in whatever way you want, as long as those applications have published APIs, and
b) why we already have unified UI platforms (operating systems & web browsers)
All you have done is blindly defend super apps, while ignoring the point that they are fundamentally closed platforms designed to extract money from consumers.
And Iāve explained to you repeatedly that nobody cares about what you personally want. Whatās being discussed is whatās a better UX, which is obviously having a single unified UI backed by APIs. Iāve also explained to you deficiencies in the current UI platforms, but you evidently are unable to grasp these problems.
Nope, but keep repeating that since you donāt actually have a sound argument to make.
Bruh, youāve explained jack shit beyond saying ābut itās obviously nicer when apps integrate with each otherā, and you havenāt once approached explaining why a super app is the architecture necessary to achieve that when we used to have it all the time before walled gardens.
Perhaps work on your reading comprehension if you have trouble understanding whatās being said to you.
LMFAO, such engagement, such explanation.
Youāre really living up to the .ml domain.
Thank you for taking your valuable time away from sniffing glue to write this insightful comment.
Keep promoting one corporation having control over all application interactions. Such a glorious future we can all look forward to under the watchful gaze of the CCP / corporate America.
Literally has nothing to do with anything I said. Gotta put more effort into your trolling kiddo. š¤£
Whoosh.
Indeed, youāre utterly unable to engage with whatās being said and bleat about see see pee being the dimwit that you are. You canāt even comprehend the fact that if apps were designed as API first then it could be done using open source model because you lack cognitive capacity to carry this discussion.
Youāre trying too hard man, after about 2 rounds it became obvious that China way =good, 'Murica way=bad and thatās the bottom line.
thank you for providing peak liberal analysis
Quite welcome, Iām sure the great workerās uprising will come one day and we shall all be forced to use the glorious app known as WeChat.
Incredible how somebody could have such low intellect to utterly lack the capacity to separate the architecture from a specific app. I guess some people just lack the cognitive capacity needed to generalize concepts.
Lmao, rich coming from you after I already explained why the architecture is inherently, and fundamentally about controlling all interactions, not about seamless UX which can be achieved with other architectures.
Lmao, rich coming from you after I repeatedly explained to you that itās absolutely not the case. In fact, this architecture can be implemented within a UI toolkit provided by the OS. The apps have to use the toolkit API to make a GUI, and the toolkit can expose this API as JSON for anyone to interact with. Your utter lack of understanding of the subject youāre attempting to debate is showing. Maybe once you get a bit of programming experience under your belt, then youāll be able to talk about these things in a meaningful fashion.
I think thatās called an operating system
This functionality certainly can be provided by an operating system, but thatās not how it works on Android or iOS currently.
Android provides an API to present your app in the system and launcher, and UI toolkits to present a consistent UI and UX. Apple does too, more forcefully. A āsuper appā is just inserting another layer.
This video explains the actual tangible differences in US from user perspective www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSMFnJnY7EA
Great, but that has nothing to do with software architecture. Rolling everything into one app instead of using the OS platform is not good software architecture.
It has everything to do with software architecture. Youāre not seeing the bigger picture here. The architecture is that you have a common UI layer with apps acting as services that plug into it. This doesnāt have to be done via an app like WeChat, it could be provided as part of the OS itself. The advantage is that you can mix and match functionality from different apps trivially to create custom UX workflows, and this approach facilitates things like automation where you can make scripts to chain apps together the same way you can do with shell commands.
You are literally describing an operating system environment
No, Iām describing application architecture that can be facilitated by the operating system environment.
Neat video, you should make that a post to !technology@lemmy.ml if you havenāt already.
Oh linked it a little while back, she does a great job explaining UX in general I find. And itās always interesting how the social and material conditions drive these things. For example, this video on how web design in India tends to be very spartan is interesting too. She explains how a lot of the population doesnāt have fast mobile phones, and so sites have to be snappy on older hardware which means have much leaner and more functional designs.
Nice, Iām gonna subscribe to her channel. Iāve had to think about UX design since Iāve been making a lot of android apps recently, so this could help a lot.
Oh yeah, she has some great insights that might spark new ideas for you. :)
Same thing you can do in the Google app ecosystem, but in that case we say āhey maybe I donāt want this company to know everything about me, my plans, and what I likeā.
Except you canāt. The scenario I outlined requires juggling a bunch of apps and itās way more effort in practice. Try doing that sometime and youāll see how clunky it feels.
I can literally go on the calendar, add a location which will interface with the maps app, which can give me reviews, menus, directions, etc. Add people from my contacts, who use any type of email and cal they like (not limited to WhatsApp users) and have an email sent off with an ICS file to add to their calendar of choice. Provide a drive attachment in the same calendar invite if there was something to discuss with this meetupā¦
Feeding all my info to a Chinese app isnāt going to somehow improve that. My larger interest is in breaking up the aggregation of data by a single entity.
And thatās precisely what makes it so much more clunky than just being able to do all of that right within the chat youāre having with your friends. Iām glad youāre so much happier feeding all your info into Google though, because itās totally not facilitating aggregation of data by a single entity. š¤£
Said I can, not that I do. Not that I should expect the .ml CCP shills to understand anything outside of the tankie sphere.
Dronies try not to act like clowns challenge impossible.
Have you ever tried to use one of those superapps? Itās still a clunky experience overburdened with dozens of useless UI elements eating up screen estate of what I actually care about, and then whenever I wanted to do something for which thereās no sub-app in the super-app it would be difficult due to lack of integrations with āthe outsideā. Thatās even before we question the idea of putting all the
eggsfunctionality in onebasketcentralized app with one developer entity, allowing them to ultimately control all aspects of oneās online life.And more philosophically, Iām surprised that as a functional dev you prefer one big tightly coupled combine to a collection of small but useful on their own utilities lightly coupled to produce more than the sum of their parts.
There are trade offs to each approach. However, itās clear that super app approach has won in China, and the video I linked explains why.
Because itās the opposite of that in practice. This approach decouples the UI functionality from the functionality of each individual app which becomes a plugable service. This way you can trivially build workflows that involve multiple apps and chain their functionality any way you like. Coupling the UI to the business logic of an application is a fundamentally wrong design decision in my opinion.
Also, this doesnāt have to be done as an app. It can be done at OS level. This way apps can work following Unix philosophy where you can create pipelines involving different apps and do scripting using them the same way you can do with command line utils. Iām surprised that a dev would have trouble understanding the benefits of doing this.
I have been working in tech since 1995. The one constant in the industry is that everyone is stealing everything all the time.
Well, thatās the magic of open source š¤·
That day when I realised Iām not part of āwe allā.
Do I really need my calculator to have maps function?
Yeah, also, how does that make any sense? How is it better to have dozens of apps but inside a super app instead of directly in your app drawer?
Yeah, thatās like app drawer inside an app drawer lol.
Because the owner of the overarching app will make more money and have more control. Donāt you want that for them? /s
Might wanna check where you got that app, then
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What is this? Nuance? Not allowed bro
Much better for those researchers to barely receive a cent of the money from the companyās profits while the result of their hard work can only be used by the corporation that hired them. \s
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The āstruggleā is because Apple and Google refuse to do so as they built the platform to give themselves priority.
One can trivially do so on a Linux phone, e.g. PinePhone with PostMarketOS.
Source: I did it. Plenty of others do through the usual ways, e.g. pipe in the console but also with things like sxmo.org/docs/user/sxmo.7.html#HOOKS
In my opinion the whole notion of coupling the UI to the API was a step in the wrong direction. It makes it effectively impossible to compose apps the way you can compose command line utils with piping. Apps should be designed as client/server by default, and then you could always leverage the service API for the app any way you want, slap a custom UI, use it in automation scripts, etc. Itās just way more flexible that way.
Some apps are still done this way, e.g. transmission the BitTorrent client, but also ALL self-hosted Web apps. Sure it might feel a bit much to install containers on your phone ājustā for that, or having to go through REST API despite being on the same actual device, but still it provides a TON of app.
Anyway, yes I agree that it is often a better model. Still a lot of apps, e.g. Blender, Inkscape, etc do provide a CLI interface. So one can both use them with a GUI or without. Itās not decoupled like transmission but arguably it covers most needs.
yeah there are a handful of apps that follow this model, it would be nice if it was the standard way to do things. In fact, this could even be handled by the GUI toolkit itself since native apps have to rely on it to build the user interface. The toolkit could just automatically generate a JSON API based on that for example.
Hot take: Even if China did āstealā technology from the US, who cares? Why are we defending US corporations all of a sudden? You donāt think they havenāt done their fair share of stealing? In fact, I donāt care if US companies stole tech from China or any country stealing tech from any other country. All competition benefits us peasants in the end, and you, fellow nobody whoās probably not a Fortune 500 CEO, are not the one being stolen from. China making something with alleged US technology will not deprive US citizens of said technology. And get this, if China āstealsā your tech to build something better than you have now, you can then āstealā their improvements right back, because āstealingā or more formally, copying of technology is an ancient phenomenon that only started being vilified with the copyright and patent era. People have openly copied each otherās innovations for the vast majority of human history, and the most important inventions of the human race have arisen from people copying other peopleās ideas and building on them. Imagine how ridiculous it would be if China was able to patent their invention of paper, or the compass, or gunpowder, and prevented Europe from āstealingā those technologies. Imagine if Ancient Greece patented bronze and successfully prevented the technology from proliferating into a brand new era of humanity. The second person to figure out fire probably watched the first person behind their back.
Indeed, the whole narrative of China stealing is rooted in a racist narrative that aims to dismiss the technological progress that China is making.
The fact they even try is beyond meā¦
Because itās not an intellectual property problem, itās a behavioral economics problem. And also, itās not a problem. š¤·