Imo all apps like facebook, twitter, Instagram, reddit, imdb, or anything else that requires network and gives almost no benefits are pointless (and always were).
I see most people are finally getting it and there are less useless rest clients nowadays.
There few use cases for such apps - if you are bad at webdesign and have lots of free time. And second thing - theoretically app requires less bandwidth for requesting only JSON.
I’m interested in hearing a source for this. Not saying I think you’re lying, it’s just still what I see a lot of devs are into. A lot our software engineering courses are tailored specifically to making cool android website frontends.
It’s not difficult to see why they’re developed though, while mobile sites are definitely feasible, browsing the web on mobile can be a cumbersome experience because we are trying to shove many features onto a device with no external input devices and a small screen real-estate. In a dedicated app we have a more granular control over UI that would be difficult to pull off in a browser. Also, apps do actually require less bandwidth for only requesting JSON.
Nearly 5 years ago I’ve seen almost hundred tmdb client apps, now - 10-20.
Yeah, that was mostly just a trend thing that died down. In recent years the web experience has developed a lot. Also, I think people just realized having that many clients for a single service is a bit redundant and nonsensical.