I dunno, a number of apps I use on the subway are designed for such uses, including audiobook apps, podcast apps and many news apps (e.g. The Economist). But yes, other apps that could be designed that way may not work as well as they should. But even Netflix and YouTube can suggest downloads in advance now. Some apps will never be fully updated - for example, while the standard Mail app works great offline (it's getting it to connect sometimes that seems to take forever), the Gmail app always wants to upload a photo fully to the cloud before sending an email and this trips me up every time, because it never shows a progress indicator and it doesn't allow the email to be sent in the background before attachments upload. It's amazing how in 2023, we have all these engineering resources and lessons that can be learned from apps like WhatsApp, but we still build apps that assume always-on connectivity. It makes sense - even my local subway system is getting cellular service these days - but it's still doubly irritating if in an area with poor signal. (The signals poor, plus the app doesn't work or requires a re-launch, or... etc. etc.)
I'm with you - a lot of them are, but too many are not. I personally use the NYT and FT news apps in the subway quite a bit.
In terms of pain points, the biggest is Safari. It gets rid of website state pretty quickly. I have tons of disk storage on my phone, why not serialize to disk? It could even be a "frozen" mode that still lets you scroll saved articles. It wouldn't be so useful for web apps, of course.'
Love The Economist. They silently download the newest edition in the background, even when the app isn't open. I think a year ago the download was only triggered once you opened the page and went to "Weekly." Possible, but easy to forget.
