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Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

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Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#101

Post by dr_zoidberg »

pc86 wrote: post #99
pornel wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Both iOS Safari and Android Chrome have "Add to Home screen" feature. Is that not enough?

The vast majority of non-technical users have no idea you can do this, and I've even heard many say that didn't know you could do it with any site - e.g. they thought they could only do it if the site had a popup that said they could do it.

My mother is 70 and did it on her own once her facebook app killed itself in a botched update (bad install or something). And then she complained that she was using the web version and couldn't find how to do some stuff hehe.

Edit: btw, she's a school/music/languages teacher, so she has very little technical background. In her own words, she "touch[es] everything until it works".

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#102

Post by baldfat »

chayesfss wrote: post #100

Sencha does this for enterprise apps too. For publishing, I wish RSS feeds had taken off. Would be great to visit a site and see that I could just subscribe to their RSS feed and see it in my own reader app.

The loss of RSS just still blows my mind. I still get my podcast with it but sad to see RSS to be relegated to obscurity when it started out so strong. The issue was the implementing it was "too much trouble" with the public.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#103

Post by Angostura »

ksec wrote: post #69

As a user, I dont really care about it being an App or Mobile Web. It needs two things, 1. An Icon on my Springbroad, so i can easily view it whenever I want to. 2. It should be butter smooth and dont warm my pants after reading. ( i.e lots of CPU cycle. ) Native Apps does better in both department. And whenever users gets a choice most would likely prefer the App version. HTML5 or Web has definitely improve, and it…

Let's add in

3. It should working without a network connection, unless there's an over-riding need

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#104

Post by vetinari »

qq66 wrote: post #93
vetinari wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an iPhone 3G in the drawer, as an emergency phone. The amount of apps, that this phone can download from App Store, whether running iOS 3 or 4, is exactly zero (yes, even those that were available in the past, cannot be downloaded). My brother has for exact the same purpose the original HTC G1, running Android 1.6. That phone can download every single app from the Play Store, that was made available when the p…

If you're using it as an emergency phone, do you really need to install apps? Apple has taken the position that the older phones are not worth the trouble it takes to support them. The numbers seem to bear out this decision -- most in-market iPhones seem to be 4S and newer, and people upgrade their iPhones almost immediately when the new OS is released (this I can't understand at all, the new OSes frequently break th…

Background: I needed to sync the contacts with Google. Meanwhile, Google disabled the ActiveSync support, the phone was reset, and I was looking for some app to do that. In the past, there were apps capable of doing so, but now, they were unavailable. Add to that inability to side-load the apps..

Regarding the retro-compatibility:

Nobody supports Android 1.x either. However, in the past, developers did upload their apps that did work on these devices. So why the users shouldn't be able to download these old versions?

And that's the difference. Apple actively removed old packages from the store, while Google just left them there. Just this alone makes the old android devices more useful.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#105

Post by vetinari »

ianlevesque wrote: post #94
vetinari wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an iPhone 3G in the drawer, as an emergency phone. The amount of apps, that this phone can download from App Store, whether running iOS 3 or 4, is exactly zero (yes, even those that were available in the past, cannot be downloaded). My brother has for exact the same purpose the original HTC G1, running Android 1.6. That phone can download every single app from the Play Store, that was made available when the p…

You are comparing two phones that combined have less than a fraction of one percent of the installed base.

So what? Is it ok to just trow them into garbage then?

You can still use them for calls and messages. You can still use one of them for apps, that were developed for this device.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#106

Post by saint_fiasco »

st3fan wrote: post #38

How do you deal with offline support? If I'm not connected and I want to read an article, where do I go? Can't open the website. Did you run metrics to find out how many people are going to miss offline?

All desktop browsers have a "save page" feature.

Surely the mobile browsers can do that too?

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#107

Post by DanBC »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #106
st3fan wrote: post #38

How do you deal with offline support? If I'm not connected and I want to read an article, where do I go? Can't open the website. Did you run metrics to find out how many people are going to miss offline?

All desktop browsers have a "save page" feature. Surely the mobile browsers can do that too?

Chrome on iOS doesn't seem to be able to.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#109

Post by cmod »

amirmansour wrote: post #76
ksec wrote: post #69

As a user, I dont really care about it being an App or Mobile Web. It needs two things, 1. An Icon on my Springbroad, so i can easily view it whenever I want to. 2. It should be butter smooth and dont warm my pants after reading. ( i.e lots of CPU cycle. ) Native Apps does better in both department. And whenever users gets a choice most would likely prefer the App version. HTML5 or Web has definitely improve, and it…

I agree with you, but I must also add that not every site needs to have an app. Mobile web is plenty appropriate and sufficient for many types of apps. Many news and blog sites are a great example of this. In their case, an installable app would make sense if they are offering a feature or experience that requires the privileges of an app. Lets not unnecessarily crowd up our phones and app stores. The World Wide Web…

Techmeme is a prime example of this — bookmark it on your homescreen and it's as good as an app. Their mobile design is, IMO, easier to parse than the web, too.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#110

Post by marrs »

Angostura wrote: post #103
ksec wrote: post #69

As a user, I dont really care about it being an App or Mobile Web. It needs two things, 1. An Icon on my Springbroad, so i can easily view it whenever I want to. 2. It should be butter smooth and dont warm my pants after reading. ( i.e lots of CPU cycle. ) Native Apps does better in both department. And whenever users gets a choice most would likely prefer the App version. HTML5 or Web has definitely improve, and it…

Let's add in 3. It should working without a network connection, unless there's an over-riding need

That's probably the only good reason to have a native app. It amazes me how many app developers just don't even think about doing this
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