Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

andjosh.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 135 posts

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#71

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

CmonDev wrote: post #48
engendered wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they're still native. Most users find it a much better experience, and the general experience with the wrapped browser Facebook app was horrendous. I'm not quite sure what your point is. http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/facebook-android-faster/ After Facebook went native, LinkedIn did some "why we went with HTML5" thing...and then not long after they went native. You mentioned in another comment that you need to…

As an added bonus you get a real choice of languages and frameworks once you depart from "open" web that practically only runs on JS, HTML, CSS. Transpilation is a hack.

Transpilation isn't a hack, all compilation is "transpilation".

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#72

Post by gambiting »

astazangasta wrote: post #44
Retric wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as the tech world loves to hate Apple, walled gardens are a huge part of why their stuff 'just works'. Suppose you want an app to play videos. If your app uses a custom format no problem. If you support an open standard, the file might not, it might require more processing power than you have, it's probably for a different screen resolution, it... In the end tech people are willing to trade stuff breaking occ…

Nonsense. Why does Apple have their own plug format instead of supporting USB? Is it somehow better? Easier? Blatantly not. This is just vendor lock in, the opposite of the fundamental ethic of the Internet.

Apple's 30 pin connector was pretty much always superior - it could do Audio/Video output natively, and also had pins for media control,so other manufacturers could add media support according to one established standard. As for the Lightning connector - it's reversible. That's "better" enough for me.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#73

Post by jackmaney »

amelius wrote: post #17
mangecoeur wrote: post #6

Perhaps a bit naive - these companies that start by embracing open standards then pull back from them are just pulling a classic bait-and-switch, with a bit of freeriding off open-source efforts thrown in. They bootstrap their user base and arrive to market quickly by using tools built by others. Then once they grow and gain market and mind share, they can start closing themselves off, walling the garden. And it's ju…

Here's an idea: there should be a maximum number N of employees a company can have. This enforces companies to think about the greater good, because if you're in a company that is split because of size, you might end up in a different company. Also, a maximum on the number of employees stimulates the "modularity" of the market: large conglomerates with internal markets will not be possible anymore. I'm not sure of al…

An interesting idea, but it would likely result in the creation of a crap ton of (what in effect would be) umbrella companies.

"Google? No, I technically work for Search Ad Services by Google."

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#74

Post by sosborn »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #60
rmc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DVDs have been region locked for a long time, and yet still took off.

I wonder how much of that we owe to the fact that people were finding ways around region locking, and that DVDs were also used for software distributions.

I'm willing to bet that the number of people working around region locking was so small (in a financial sense) that it didn't matter.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#75

Post by CmonDev »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #71
CmonDev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an added bonus you get a real choice of languages and frameworks once you depart from "open" web that practically only runs on JS, HTML, CSS. Transpilation is a hack.

Transpilation isn't a hack, all compilation is "transpilation".

Not if some people are choosing to build apps and libraries in assembly. Websites using manually written JavaScript and HTML should be disabled to run on modern browsers.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#76

Post by jowiar »

I don't like the shot at Flipboard here. HTML was designed for marking up (hypertext) documents. It's a perfectly fine language for marking up documents. It's a terrible kludge for defining application user interfaces, as anyone who has ever built such an application can attest.

What we're seeing now is a shift to JSON-over-HTTP from HTML-over-HTTP as the protocol of choice for connecting the internet, along with a whole pile of different tools for defining application user interfaces (partially because, up to now, no decent standard exists).

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#78

Post by mangecoeur »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #23
mangecoeur wrote: post #6

Perhaps a bit naive - these companies that start by embracing open standards then pull back from them are just pulling a classic bait-and-switch, with a bit of freeriding off open-source efforts thrown in. They bootstrap their user base and arrive to market quickly by using tools built by others. Then once they grow and gain market and mind share, they can start closing themselves off, walling the garden. And it's ju…

The moment such business stops being "idealistic" and makes that "logical step" is the moment it stops caring about providing value for customer - it reduces the value provided to monetize them better.

Well the saying goes - if you aren't paying for it, then you are the product, not the consumer.

People using twitter or google or facebook are not clients because they aren't paying. The clients are the people who pay those companies for valuable information and advertising space.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#79

Post by amelius »

jackmaney wrote: post #73
amelius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an idea: there should be a maximum number N of employees a company can have. This enforces companies to think about the greater good, because if you're in a company that is split because of size, you might end up in a different company. Also, a maximum on the number of employees stimulates the "modularity" of the market: large conglomerates with internal markets will not be possible anymore. I'm not sure of al…

An interesting idea, but it would likely result in the creation of a crap ton of (what in effect would be) umbrella companies. "Google? No, I technically work for Search Ad Services by Google."

But think about it... Suddenly every company can have Search Ad Services as good as Google's.

Also, if you don't like what company X is doing, you just need to find N qualified people, and you can start your own X.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#80

Post by amelius »

rmc wrote: post #55
amelius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an idea: there should be a maximum number N of employees a company can have. This enforces companies to think about the greater good, because if you're in a company that is split because of size, you might end up in a different company. Also, a maximum on the number of employees stimulates the "modularity" of the market: large conglomerates with internal markets will not be possible anymore. I'm not sure of al…

Technology companies may be able to run with ~100 people. But how are you going to run a large hospital? The NHS in the UK employs more than a million people.

Every department could be run by a separate company. This also ensures quality at the department level.

These companies could then be hired by the hospital itself.

Post reply on HN