# It Works Better in the App (Terence Eden)

Terence Eden wanted to subscribe to an events calendar from a URL on a Pixel phone running Android 17 with an up-to-date Calendar app [[it-works-better-in-the-app]]. Google's own help page says it can't be done: subscribing to a calendar needs a desktop web browser, and the Google Calendar apps for Android, iPhone and iPad don't offer it. His workaround was to open calendar.google.com on the phone in desktop mode and add the calendar there, after which it showed up in the app. The capability exists on the account and syncs to the phone; the app just has no button for it. The missing feature is a plus button, a text field and a validation step.

From there he generalizes. Companies push people into apps because an icon on the home screen helps engagement numbers, then build the app only as far as the common paths, so "it's easier in our app" ends with the user sent back to the website for anything outside them. Having built for Symbian, BlackBerry and the Palm Pilot, he names the old problem with apps: every change has to be tested on a thousand devices and then waits on distribution. The way around that is for the app to pull its functionality from a server at runtime, and at that point the app has reinvented the web browser. The list of things only an app can do keeps shrinking: browsers are gaining hardware APIs such as serial over Bluetooth, sites can put an icon on the home screen, and service workers give them offline use.

He doesn't argue against apps as such. His request is narrower: if you build one, finish it.