- So, have you heard a lot
about progressive web apps and Microsoft?
What's the deal with it?
Well, today we'll do a deep dive and answer a lot of
questions submitted by a user.
Stay tuned.
(rock music)
Alright, so what is exactly a PWA?
Well, the idea goes back to 2015 in an article written
by Alex Russell who is a Google engineer.
In there, he outlined the requirements for
progressive web applications.
Since then, the whole industry has been working
towards PWAs by integrating this into their browsers.
So, Google Chrome supports it know and Edge will be
supporting it in Redstone4 and, yes, even Safari is
getting a version of it in 11.3, later on this year.
Now, what makes a progressive web app unique is its ability.
So, for the first time, these web applications can work
offline and in the background, and that's done through
a thing called service workers.
And, you'll hear a lot of these.
You can think of them as little guys
that work in the background.
They pull in notifications.
It also caches material, and that's how it works offline.
There is also no Chrome here,
meaning not the Chrome browser, but when you launch a PWA,
it doesn't look like you're in the browser.
It looks like it's an application.
It's actually kinda eery how it works,
but you don't get the browser controls,
it's just standard web application stuff.
That's what makes these things really compelling
is when you're using 'em,
it's really hard to tell the difference.
For instance, Instagram have a PWA.
So, if you go to instagram.com on your Android phone,
assuming it's a modern one, and you log in,
you'll be asked if you want to pin this
to your start screen or your application screen
and would you like to receive notifications.
Once you do that and then you open that app, it looks
just like the regular Instagram application.
In fact, the scrolling is better then a native app of
Android which tells you a lot.
Why does Google and Microsoft see this
as the future of app development?
Alright, I've talked about this more in the past before,
but let's rehash some of these ideas.
Microsoft, back in build 2015, talked about this idea
too that applications don't have much longevity.
That is, what are called long-tail applications.
Things you launch on occasion.
So, I'm not talking about your email app, necessarily,
or things you launch everyday or heavy things like games.
What I mean is, say you wanna order flowers or you wanna
call up an Uber, these are nice to have as applications,
but you're not using them all the time.
It gets real expensive to maintain these apps.
Now, a company like Uber is really not starved for cash,
so let's put them aside.
But let's talk about maybe your local diner
or your local car shop.
Now, on average, it probably takes around $45,000 to $50,000
if you wanna hire a dedicated app developer.
Now, some work on a partial fee, per month,
to maintain the app,
while others just require a flat out salary.
$50,000 a year is not cheap, at all, especially
if you're a local diner.
In fact, that's kinda cost prohibitive,
so it's very expensive for small organizations
to make an application, especially if they want
to put it on iOS and Android.
Remember, most devs still target iOS first,
with Android coming second, despite the fact
that Android is the larger market share.
So, this really comes down to an issue of cost.
But, there's actually a little bit more going on here.
For instance, why is Google pushing this?
They have a pretty awesome store the last time I checked.
Well, it's actually a really good point.
Google's business model, though, is actually on the web.
It's not really an app store,
nor is it selling Android devices.
Android is worried about you getting to use
Google services, than going on the web.
If every company created their own native application,
and it pulls data direct from the site without going
through the Web, well that actually hurts
Google's bottom line.
Don't forget apps really don't count against web traffic.
So, Google actually wants this to happen because,
in using a progressive web application,
you're using the web, you're using analytics,
you're using their ad stuff.
You're getting everything that counts against SEO,
as well, so it shows up in search.
So, this all benefits Google.
They don't really care about the app store, in that sense.
What they want are people back on the Web.
So, not only does this extend the life of the
World Wide Web, if you wanna use a data term,
but it actually gives it more life.
It gives it actually a new lease going into 2018-2019.
Now, as to why Microsoft wants it,
I think it should be pretty obvious.
They have the app gap problem
and this potentially solves that.
How will PWAs affect the Microsoft Store?
Alright, so Microsoft recently talked about this,
and it's really interesting.
And, this is the difference with PWAs.
Right now, if you're, say, on an Android device
and you open your Chrome browser or even Edge browser
and you go to twitter.com, like I said,
log in, it will ask you pin it to the app screen.
The problem there is you can still have the Instagram app
installed and then have a PWA installed, as well,
living side by side,
and there's sort of a discoverability issue.
Now, I'm not really sure here what Google's gonna do,
or even Apple's gonna do regarding PWAs in their stores,
what I can tell you is what Microsoft is going to do.
They're gonna put PWAs directly
into the store and how they do this is
through the universal Windows platform.
They basically have a bridge that supports this.
So, they're taking PWA, wrapping in the appx wrapper,
putting into the store,
but they also get other features there.
For instance, you get live tiles, you can get Cortana,
you can get in-app purchases, if there were those there.
You also get deeper analytics.
You get discoverability because the consumer is gonna
basically launch the app store or the Microsoft store.
They're gonna search for, say, Uber or Twitter,
and guess what's gonna be there?
An application.
Now, it's gonna be technically PWA,
but will the consumer know?
No, cause there's no Chrome.
They're not launching it,
so it doesn't look like a web browser,
it looks like an application.
But, there's more to this.
So, how are you gonna get PWAs in the store?
Do they have to go to each company and go, can we do this?
No, they don't.
Since these are just websites,
all they're doing is putting websites in the store,
they don't need their permission.
And Microsoft has already said
they're gonna use a thing called Bing Crawler.
They've been looking at PWA sites that are live right now
and if they meet certain standards,
they're going to be putting these
in the store automatically.
So, we can expect probably a couple hundred,
I don't know, maybe even a thousand of these things
to all of a sudden show up in the store.
And, then once it gets even more advanced,
that is the quality is there, and they get user feedback,
and this is working well,
Bing Crawler will be able to package these things up
and put it into the store, automatically with no one there.
Now since no money is being transpired here,
Microsoft is not making money on ads
through these things,
it's all just pulling in a website from a company,
there's no reason there that a company needs its permission.
Twitter is Twitter.
If Twitter wanted to deny a PWA on Windows10,
they would be effectively saying,
you can't go to twitter.com on your web browser,
which would be insane.
And, so this is the big difference here,
Microsoft is treating PWAs as first-class citizens,
as they say.
They're putting them right in the store
and it's going to be there for users but without the
discoverability problem of having to go to the website,
log in and then pin it to your start screen.
It's a very unique thing and it should be happening
for Redstone4 in the coming weeks.
Are there any big name-brand apps
out there that are PWAs
and are developers embracing this?
So, the answer here will surprise you.
Maybe not. I don't know.
But there are a lot of PWAs already
out there, including Google Maps.
Yes, this already works in Edge on Android.
You can pin it to your start screen and
have a PWA of Google Maps that uses your location
and works just like the app itself.
That means, in theory, yes,
Project Andromeda will have Google Maps,
which is really enticing.
But, there are other ones out there.
Starbucks has a preview version.
If you go to preview.starbucks.com on your phone,
you can see it there and log in and pin
that to your start screen and that is a PWA, as well.
You also have Twitter, you have Instagram,
you have Tinder, you have Uber, you have Lyft.
You have a bunch of services already out there,
even Pinterest has a PWA.
So, yes, all the major companies are embracing this,
because again, companies hate paying developers.
Sorry.
They would rather just have a web developer,
basically make a PWA website and call it a day.
I also expect a lot of banks to jump on this.
Because maintaining a banking app is super expensive.
There's a lot of security involved.
There's a lot of laws, in effect,
that they need to be compliant with.
That's one reason why Windows10 always had
an issue with banking apps.
They're very expensive to maintain.
But, what is always maintained?
A banking website.
In fact, that gets updated even before
any iOS and Android apps.
So, if a bank can maintain a PWA website,
well that's a win-win for everybody,
including them and their consumers, and yes,
eventually Windows10 users.
Does Microsoft have any plans to release
any of its apps in PWA form?
And so that question's a little confusing,
and I'll tell you why.
A PWA has to be thought of as, first, living on the Web.
But, I can tell you of one instance, as an example.
outlook.com.
So, outlook.com is both an email service that's
on the Web, but, of course, there are apps for it.
Now, is Microsoft gonna take its app
and convert it to PWA? No.
What they did do though was convert outlook.com
into supporting PWA.
So, again, launch your Android phone up,
use Chrome, use Edge or go to outlook.com
and now add that to your home screen
and re-launch it and you're going to quickly see
it looks just like an Outlook app.
It's very impressive.
It is full PWA-compliant.
So, Microsoft will take any of their services,
that live on the Web and convert those to PWA.
So, I imagine OneDrive is there, as well,
and their other services.
I haven't tried 'em all, but, yes,
Microsoft is definitely on board, here,
with making its websites PWA-compliant.
Does Microsoft Edge even support PWAs yet?
Alright, so if you're running Windows10
fall creators update, the answer is no,
but don't worry, Redstone4, which is slated
for Spring 2018 or actually, in a couple of weeks,
will be supporting PWA right out the door.
That's also when Microsoft is going to start putting
some of these PWA websites into the store, as a test.
As they get feedback, will roll out more,
using that Bing Crawler.
So, yeah, look for it very soon.
Now, PWAs, I should explain, is still very new.
That's why, for instance, Starbucks has a preview
of it and Twitter has Twitter Lite,
so a lot of this stuff is basically in development.
Google, themselves, aren't really launching their
PWAs until around mid-2018.
So, look for this technology to ramp up.
And don't forget, it's 1.0.
So, for instance, the Instagram app does a lot
of cool stuff already.
You can double-tap to like something.
It has very good scrolling.
But, it doesn't do all the things necessarily.
You can access even the camera, which is kind of unique.
These things are very powerful,
but they're not necessarily as powerful as app,
but that will change as PWAs progress
and improve over time.
And, finally I know one question I know
you will be hearing a lot about is
will Windows Phone support Edge with PWAs?
I don't believe so.
I don't know what Microsoft's plans are here.
I am doubtful that they are going to actually
update Edge on the phone to support PWAs,
which is a bit of a shame, but we don't know.
They could do it if they want to,
but they really are kind of done with Phone, at this time.
Since PWAs are web apps, do developers even need
an app store taking a 30% cut?
So, I touched upon this a little bit earlier.
If your website if free to access; it's outlook.com,
it's Uber, it's Twitter, it's Lyft, LinkedIn,
there is no cut, right?
I mean if your app is free on the store,
Microsoft's not really taking a cut
and I already described earlier how Microsoft is
gonna put these websites on their store, automatically,
without necessarily asking those companies to do so,
because all they're doing is linking
to that website, after all.
So, there's no changing of money here,
which is why legally they can even do this,
so, what stores are really good for is
what we all know is discoverability.
The idea is you want to open up say Windows10
for the first time, out of your out of box experience,
you wanna hit that store and be like,
I want Uber or I want my banking app.
You type it in and it shows up, you hit install
and it downloads.
Sure, everybody knows you can just launch the browser
and do that, but this is going to be
a containerized version of that.
And, what's really neat about the PWA stuff in the store
is technically the app never needs to be updated,
since it's pulling down live data from the store
and it can live in a cache offline,
all it depends on is that website being updated.
So, the consumer really wins out here, as well, too.
Finally, how long do you think it will be until PWAs are
the standard and not the exception?
Making predictions about new technologies is always
difficult, especially standards
and this is a 1.0 after all, but I expect PWAs
to check on pretty fast.
Like I said, I already listed to a bunch of major
sites that already supporting it,
and technically it hasn't launched, yet.
At least not in an official capacity.
So, we are seeing a lot of uptake
from developers with this.
In fact, I get asked a lot of questions from devs
about this topic all the time.
I do expect, going into 2019 you're gonna
see a lot of this.
Now, what really matters is how the stores
bascially adopt PWAs.
So, we know Microsoft is going full blast with it,
and that's going to be very good for the technology.
I'm not sure what Google's policy is gonna be here.
I wouldn't be surprised if we hear more about a
Google I/O coming up in May and I wouldn't be surprised
if they decide to put PWAs in their store, as well.
Moreover, I can see Twitter or Instagram,
for instance, basically saying we're going to
put our PWAs in the store and replace their
current apps with it.
In fact, Twitter just announced that they're
deprecating their app for a Mac OS.
Why is that?
It's PWA, folks.
There is just no point in Twitter making apps
for all these platforms and if you've used a
Windows10 Twitter app you can probably see
where this is going, as well.
I can also imagine that app being deprecated
and replaced instead with Twitter PWA.
I think this technology is gonna come very quickly,
and there's one reason. It's money.
Companies just don't want to pay developers to make
and maintain these applications.
It's also a platform-neutral system.
It's a win-win for almost everyone involved,
except maybe app developers on iOS and Android.
In fact, I think this will probably hurt
Apple devs the most, because if PWA
actually goes into the store for iOS,
those devs get paid a lot of money
and they're in high demand and they won't
necessarily have as much work.
Moreover, Apple would lose a lot of revenue,
potentially, as they don't necessarily get a cut
of a lot of those apps, either.
So, we'll just have to wait and see what happens there.
But, yeah, expect PWA to be a big deal in 2018.
Alright, so I hope you enjoyed
that deep dive into PWAs.
If you have more questions,
leave them in comments and we'll try to answer them.
I'd like to thank Rance P. for submitting
all those questions to me.
It really helped me give a structure to this talk.
If you like this video, give it a thumbs up
and don't forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching. Take care everybody.