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The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history

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Re: The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history

#31

Post by commanda »

dmix wrote: post #7
codyrobbins wrote: post #5

No. Somebody please stop this guy. After reading this I feel about him like the machines must have when they sent the Terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor. Web apps are to native mobile apps as Java apps are to native desktop apps: ploddingly slow with clunky non-standard UIs—a degraded, lackluster experience. With some notable exceptions I think they can be a pragmatically motivated stopgap step (in regards…

> ploddingly slow with clunky non-standard UIs—a degraded, lackluster experience That sounds like the arguments I used to hear from desktop devs back when web apps start to appear. Sure web mobile apps kind of suck right now, but theres hardely any frameworks, established processes or documentation on how to build them properly. It's still in alpha stages. When building mobile apps has matured and if they still have…

>But right now thats like saying a kid won't have a good job because of his grade 5 scores.

Conversely, would you say that a kid in grade 5 who has bad scores is going to have a great job when he grows up, just you wait and see? We can only judge the mobile web as a platform (if one can even say that it is one platform and not many) by what it offers on mobile handsets today, not by what we hope it will one day become. Also, we can't judge it by hoping that one day, all the mobile browsers will conform to the WC3's standards, because we know how good a job today's desktop browsers do at quickly becoming standards-compliant.

Re: The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history

#32

Post by icebraining »

cageface wrote: post #29
simonw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web apps beat native apps because there's no install step, no upgrade step and hyperlinks provide the ultimate way for different apps to communicate with each other.

Web apps are fine for lightweight, data-driven tasks. For tasks that require richer interactions they are still decidedly inferior. This may change as HTML standards and compliance evolve but it's not crazy to suggest that a well-written native app will always be one or two steps ahead.

The question is: besides games, how many apps really use richer interactions than what's already possible using web technologies?

Re: The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history

#33

Post by icebraining »

cft wrote: post #28
simonw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web apps beat native apps because there's no install step, no upgrade step and hyperlinks provide the ultimate way for different apps to communicate with each other.

install once is often easier than navigating to a URL on a phone each time. Many users like apps due to one click launch

When you find a web app you like, you can put it front and center on your Home screen. Just open the web app on your iPhone or iPod touch, tap the plus sign, and then tap “Add to Home screen.” A Web Clip will be added to your Home screen automatically for easy, one-tap access.

http://www.apple.com/webapps/whatarewebapps.html

Re: The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history

#34

Post by icebraining »

johnrob wrote: post #15
cryptoz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are those 7 languages, anyway? The guy has a strong point he can make without exaggerating. If you want to capture > 90% of the mobile market, I think you only need Objective C and Java.

I can think of 6 frameworks: iOS, Android, WP7, Blackberry, Palm OS, Meego.

It pains me to say, but MeeGo is a dead OS, at least on phones. Nokia has already said they'll ditch it even if N9 sells well.

Palm OS is obsolete too, they now use a version of webOS.

Re: The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history

#35

Post by fpgeek »

codyrobbins wrote: post #5

No. Somebody please stop this guy. After reading this I feel about him like the machines must have when they sent the Terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor. Web apps are to native mobile apps as Java apps are to native desktop apps: ploddingly slow with clunky non-standard UIs—a degraded, lackluster experience. With some notable exceptions I think they can be a pragmatically motivated stopgap step (in regards…

One significant difference between Java apps and web apps is that, unlike Java, the platform vendor has huge incentives to keep improving your runtime (the browser).

Re: The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history

#36

Post by georgieporgie »

dmix wrote: post #7
codyrobbins wrote: post #5

No. Somebody please stop this guy. After reading this I feel about him like the machines must have when they sent the Terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor. Web apps are to native mobile apps as Java apps are to native desktop apps: ploddingly slow with clunky non-standard UIs—a degraded, lackluster experience. With some notable exceptions I think they can be a pragmatically motivated stopgap step (in regards…

> ploddingly slow with clunky non-standard UIs—a degraded, lackluster experience That sounds like the arguments I used to hear from desktop devs back when web apps start to appear. Sure web mobile apps kind of suck right now, but theres hardely any frameworks, established processes or documentation on how to build them properly. It's still in alpha stages. When building mobile apps has matured and if they still have…

That sounds like the arguments I used to hear from desktop devs back when web apps start to appear.

And it still holds true in many cases. Microsoft Outlook, in many ways an example of both great and horrible desktop software, still holds the email client majority: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/

Web apps are great when you get along with the designer's UI decisions. When you have a fast network connection (that's improved with specific web apps and offline modes, but it's by no means generally applied). When the servers are working well.

Mobile apps share the same advantages and disadvantages, but they're multiplied tremendously. I lose my mobile signal in most stores I go into, for example, and on an awful lot of secondary roads throughout the Northwest.

Re: The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history

#37

Post by cft »

icebraining wrote: post #33
cft wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

install once is often easier than navigating to a URL on a phone each time. Many users like apps due to one click launch

When you find a web app you like, you can put it front and center on your Home screen. Just open the web app on your iPhone or iPod touch, tap the plus sign, and then tap “Add to Home screen.” A Web Clip will be added to your Home screen automatically for easy, one-tap access. http://www.apple.com/webapps/whatarewebapps.html

not sure about android, and 80% of users will not do this (like they do not use bookmarklets). Also many web apps require you to re-login after a certain period, which adds even more pain compared to apps.

Re: The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history

#38

Post by politician »

sien wrote: post #27
v21 wrote: post #18

I'm sympathetic to what he's saying. It is painful to develop lots of separate platforms. But I work making games. And so this promised land is still way over the horizon. We're only just getting to the point where a HTML5 game can be notable as anything other than a tech demo on the desktop. It'll be another few years before we reach that point for mobile.

Indeed. But a lot of mobile apps are not like games. They are adaptations of web sites for a particular mobile device. This is where what he is saying surely makes a lot of sense. Really, apps like twitter should be able to be done with HTML5. But more involved applications like games make sense to be native applications.

But even games are written in standardized frameworks like OpenGL and DirectX, with DirectX being the winner at the moment. Unless you're talking about Flash games where, uh, Flash is the standardized framework.

It seems that standardized frameworks aren't the problem, performance is. So what's your take on hardware acceleration, canvas, and WebGL?

Re: The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history

#39

Post by krosaen »

Desktop apps eventually got replaced by web apps because it is more convenient to access the app from anywhere - from any computer, not necessarily because web apps were easier for developers. Now with mobile apps developers are hoping for the same thing to happen again but this time, users don't have the same pull - they always have their phones with them. I'm not going to log onto a mobile terminal at the library to check my email or run some app. To look at it from the other side, if omnigraffle was always available to you as a native app, as your app with your settings, with all of its slickness, would you want a web based alternative?

Re: The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history

#40

Post by cageface »

icebraining wrote: post #32
cageface wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web apps are fine for lightweight, data-driven tasks. For tasks that require richer interactions they are still decidedly inferior. This may change as HTML standards and compliance evolve but it's not crazy to suggest that a well-written native app will always be one or two steps ahead.

The question is: besides games, how many apps really use richer interactions than what's already possible using web technologies?

All multimedia content creation apps. Think DJ apps, music creation, audio editing, video editing, 3d modeling, image editing and illustration, etc. Basically everything that makes computers creative tools instead of information management devices. I don't see web versions of any of these seriously challenging native any time soon. Hell, even spreadsheets and word processors are still better in native.

I don't understand why this has to be an either-or thing. I know it's easier for us to think in black and white terms but I don't see why web and native can't coexist for a long time.

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