It's Mostly Just Text and Media

Most apps are just that. Text and media in a never-ending, all-consuming feed or a multi-page form, cleverly disguised by the user interface.

Excluding heavy 3D gaming or utilities that genuinely require deep integration with your phone's hardware (like accessing the LiDAR scanner for AR), what are we actually left with? A thin client whose main job is to fetch data from an API and render it onto native views.

Why do I need to download a 100+ MB app, give it permission to track my location, and let it run background processes just to browse through a restaurant menu, buy a ticket, or scroll through a list of posts? At the end of the day, it is almost always just JSON being parsed and rendered. Yet, companies insist on rebuilding their basic content as native shells just to claim a permanent square of real estate on my home screen.

The Enshittification Loop

When that full-screen modal pops up demanding you download the app to read the rest of a thread, users choose the path of least resistance. They download and they move on.