Theyāre basically multiple apps built in to one. I donāt see how there would be an experience difference between going to your homeās phone screen to open a different app vs going to the super-appās home screen to open a different sub-app.
Like itās literally just replicating the functionality of the phoneās OS but in a single app. The only possible difference I can see is that the sub-apps are more tightly integrated with one another, but the same is basically true for apps from the phone/OS maker (Iām mainly thinking Apple here since thatās what I have, but Iām sure Android has similar with its built-in apps).
The ā4 appsā example is pretty wrong. You can pay someone directly in the iMessage app with Apple Pay, then order from whatever other app (also paying using Apple Pay). They included āyour mobile wallet needs to be updatedā as if thatās something you have to do every day just to pad the number of apps. In reality itās two apps, iMessage and the food ordering app. In WeChat itās probably the same, the messaging sub-app which probably also has the ability to pay someone directly, and the food ordering sub-app. (Although in both situations it would be more efficient for the boss to make the order and just have you pick it up.)
Apple Maps (and Iām sure Google Maps too) also has the ability to compare prices among ride share apps and go directly to the book screen of those apps like she said for Gaode Maps. It can also take you to a restaurantās page on a food delivery app.
Also, what she says at 3:03 is a pretty bad thing. In the US in most places you can pay with cash, card, and your phoneās built in tap to pay. Everywhere else is just cash and card because they havenāt modernized (or just cash because theyāre stingy about paying card processing fees). Being able to pay with cash anywhere is pretty important imo for multiple reasons, privacy being a big one.
On standard Android:
Iām chatting with my wife on FB messager. She sends a link to a restaurant I should check out. It opens in FB messenger html wrap-around thingy. I click the 3 dots. Tell it to open in the normal browser because it sucks in the FB messenger thing. It goes to the webpage and I can see the menu. I want to know where it is. I click the link for the map, then click the map to open in Google Maps so I can see where it is. I agree to new user Terms of Service. Now I can see the location. Cool, I can look at reviews, too. Nice. I go to book a reservation which means I need to open back the webpage. It tells me I have to download an app for that so I do that and set up an account and do that to book at this one restaurant because there are about 6 of these kinds of services and there is no telling which restaurant uses which one. Nice, itās all set. Then I open yet another app to get a ride-share and agree to their new terms of service (love how this seems to happen once a month in each app in the west). Now I can go eat at the restaurant. They take cash or credit but no apple pay/ samsung pay / google pay. Awesome.
So yeah, pretty much the same experience you get in China, I can see where they are 1:1.
EDIT: I have 3 different parking apps on my phone because there is no single one in my city. Depending on where you park itās a different fucking app. I got to the next city over for something? Cool, download a new fucking parking app.
> Using Facebook
Well thereās your problem.
Instead, your wife can send you the Google Maps link that automatically opens the Google Maps app where you can see reviews, reserve the table and find a convenient shortcut to the ridesharing app. I rarely see terms of service updates.
because there are about 6 of these kinds of services and there is no telling which restaurant uses which one
The same could easily apply in China. Does this restaurant have reservations set up with WeChat? Or do you have to switch to AliPay or something else for it? Thatās not a problem solved by super-apps, itās a problem solved by the maps app (or maps sub-app in the super-app) working with more restaurants. Also, for both reservations and parking, weāre basically talking about which country has a larger monopoly on those services. The fact that you need 3 different parking apps means your city doesnāt having a single parking monopoly.
āWell you are using westernapp, thereās your problem!ā
Big brained reply moment.
Look, the point is Google reservation donāt work at all these restaurants. It depends on the restaurant and which of the 6 different app/services they use. You say the same could apply to China and yet your solution is the same for the Chinese apps. Additionally, China could regulate it so all vendors have to be able to use any of these 2 or three apps and could force them all to API integrate with each other. In fact, I would not be surprised to see such a thing in coming years there. Will never happen here.
But keep coping, brother.
The key difference is in the architecture. With the traditional approach, each app is a self contained unit of functionality that slaps its own UI on top. You interact with one app to do one thing, then you have to switch to another to do another, and so on. Crucially, they donāt have any shared context and itās not possible to compose functionality from different apps together in a meaningful way.
With the WeChat approach, you have a single UI framework, and apps are effectively services that plug into it. Now itās possible to have a shared context that spans multiple apps, and to pull their functionality into it. It basically facilitates creating workflows that involve multiple apps where each app is a component of the workflow. Itās a similar idea to the way Unix philosophy works where you have a bunch of command line utils and you can pipe data through them in a script composing their individual functionality.
This doesnāt have to be done using a mega app like WeChat, you could bake that into the OS itself, and I think it would actually be a very good architecture to do that. I think that the approach of coupling the UI to the business logic is the wrong way to go. Itās much better to decouple these things, and allow the user to create whatever workflow they want that fits their particular use case leveraging functionality provided by different apps.
Crucially, they donāt have any shared context
you could bake that into the OS itself, and I think it would actually be a very good architecture to do that
Right, I mentioned that you can do this at the OS level in my comment. However, the way iOS does it is not general, itās something devs have to do on case by case basis. What Iām talking about is the decoupling of the UI from the logic being the default. The OS can present a single unified UI to the user, and the apps just provide service functionality. The app can then add a default view for itself, but the user could adapt it any way they wanted.
