One thing that I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned are app updates. Updating apps is a pain for the user and a bottleneck for devs. This alone seems like a compelling reason to choose mobile web over native.
The Decline of the Mobile Web
81–90 of 209 posts
Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web
#82I'm of the view this is a lot of fuss about nothing. Big deal if people prefer apps over the "open" web. The reality is a large number of people use the likes of MSN and Yahoo as web home pages, and unless you were linked to from them they were unlikely to find you. The app launcher situation is an improvement over that. The big problem is that dipping your toes into something via a website (assuming you don't hit an…
It's not a scrapeability problem; it's a freedom problem. The article mentions this. Why should the app stores decide what can and cannot be on our phones, and why should they add a 30% tax on everything that is published on mobile? There are a lot of claims that the tech industry is disrupting the big music and books businesses, for the benefit of consumers, but these new players are acting like the middlemen they a…
Actually, it's more like a 43% tax (assuming a 30/70 split).
Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is the free market at work The free market sometimes leads to a not-so-free market, which is ultimately bad for consumers. This is the entire reason there is anti-trust law.
But there's not an anti-trust situation with app stores: Apple, Microsoft and Google all maintain their own app stores. No, they don't let anyone else operate an app store on their mobile platform, but other companies are free to create their own mobile platforms if they don't like that. Apple and Google aren't doing anything illegal to stop other mobile platforms from existing; it's just that users really don't want…
>But there's not an anti-trust situation with app stores
I am not saying that there are current or even future anti-trust issues with app stores. I was simply using that analogy to illustrate that the "free market" can move in a direction that is less free to an extent that is negative for consumers. This can happen because consumers are free to choose.
In other words, that anti-trust laws exist and have been employed to combat this is simply offered as evidence that the great-grandparent post above overlooks the fact that the free market can lead to reduced choice for consumers.
Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web
#84Reality is that the mobile web experience currently is worse than native mobile apps. No matter how much you want "open", or how much faster your latest web-mobile framework is, right now people still prefer the app experience. That might change, but i suspect it will take some time.
I sometimes wonder why is anyone surprised that a programmable hypertext medium has a worse UX than an OS-native general-purpose interactive UI stack when you try to implement general-purpose interactive apps?
The Web also bears the burden of having grown up in the desktop keyboard and mouse environment. It's going to be at least as hard to touchify the Web as it is to touchify Windows.
Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web
#85Cached URL: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.cdi...
(It's erroring out in production.)
Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web
#86The key issue is that mobile apps tend to be task oriented. A lot of web companies (like FB) are not transitioning into app studios by breaking down a monolithic site into set of mobile apps that deliver a single feature/accomplish a single task.
If the open web were to be redefined along those lines, I dont see why users wont use that.
Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web
#87Even if apps totally won, it wouldn't mean that the mobile web lost. 100% mobile app usage wouldn't imply 0% mobile web usage.
Someone might spend way more time in Facebook.app than Safari.app, but within that, they might spend most of their time on pages linked to from their Facebook feed.
Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is the free market at work The free market sometimes leads to a not-so-free market, which is ultimately bad for consumers. This is the entire reason there is anti-trust law.
But there's not an anti-trust situation with app stores: Apple, Microsoft and Google all maintain their own app stores. No, they don't let anyone else operate an app store on their mobile platform, but other companies are free to create their own mobile platforms if they don't like that. Apple and Google aren't doing anything illegal to stop other mobile platforms from existing; it's just that users really don't want…
Amazon operates a fork of android, not sure if you count that in.
Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web
#89Am I in the minority that I don't want an app for every. bloody. webpage. I visit?
Apps are usually better in every way than web sites (I'd love a good HN app for my iPhone). If I visit a site frequently, I'd want an app for it. But for infrequently used sites, the hassle isn't worth the benefit.
http://hn.premii.com/
great HN mobile webapp for phone, made with html5
Re: The Decline of the Mobile Web
#90So the Eternal September is going to end after all.