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Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

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Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#81

Post by [deleted] »

_delirium wrote: post #25
mark_l_watson wrote: post #7

+1 for the article As a web vs. app proponent I love this. I do have a few apps installed on my Note 4 but I prefer getting Twitter, FB, etc. as a web site. Web standards like HTML5 are wonderful so let's use them and make the web awesome. My brother and one friend each have a few hundred apps installed on their phones. I am sometimes surprised that their phones still function with so much cruft installed, never mind…

Websites also can't spam you with push notifications the way installed apps can, so I strongly prefer them as a user. But I suspect this is one reason companies like apps. I'm not sure whether it's my imagination, but this seems to have gotten a lot worse in the past year or two, and is no longer limited to apps from shady no-name companies. Apps from reputable companies used to try to have some plausible reason rela…

[deleted]

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#82

Post by ousta »

the article does not mention this but publishing an app for iOS is drastically more costly in time and efforts than publishing for android.

It is the worst publishing process I have ever seen. sluggish certificates, keys, provisionning profiles, iOS lack of retro-compatibility, apple lack of communication on what the major versions are changing and apple lack of judgement when reviewing apps with guidelines that are changing every day.

Frankly I don't even understand how can developers enjoy working on developing apps for iOS it is lackluster in every part.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#83

Post by radio4fan »

jlarocco wrote: post #37

It's sad it's taken people so long to realize it, but at least they're starting to get a clue. Who'd have thought that an app that's essentially a web browser tied to a single site was a bad idea that nobody would want to use? If desktop and laptop users access your content/game/social network/whatever from a web page, it's probably best to have mobile users access it that way, too.

I absolutely agree.

And I don't buy their justification for going down the app route in the first place: "But by the middle of 2011, six months after we launched in our app, more than half of installed web browsers were still not HTML5 compliant."

Who cares? The app only targets iOS, so as long as mobile Safari rendered it, they were fine. And most of us here know that the app would be a pretty thin wrapper round a webview.

I suspect the real reason for going down the app route is because back in 2011 all the marketing types were screaming "WE MUST HAVE AN APP!!!1!!"

News International made the same mistake with "The Daily", which (probably) cost them over $60M.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#84

Post by andreamazz »

ousta wrote: post #82

the article does not mention this but publishing an app for iOS is drastically more costly in time and efforts than publishing for android. It is the worst publishing process I have ever seen. sluggish certificates, keys, provisionning profiles, iOS lack of retro-compatibility, apple lack of communication on what the major versions are changing and apple lack of judgement when reviewing apps with guidelines that are…

What do you mean by lack of retro compatibility? You can still ship apps that target ios6, you have runtime checks for APIs that are missing in one version, the IDE suggests what is available or not.

The major versions (and minors) are thoroughly documented in API diffs, the IDE suggests what to modify according to your platform target.

The review guidelines are basically changing for the major versions, accordingly to the new tech introduced, and most of them are dictated by common sense. If something goes awry the review team is available to discuss with you. Good luck getting an Android app reinstated if it is taken down.

The certificates are a pain in the ass, no way around that, but the rest of the platform makes up for this, the tools and language(s) are way easier to use.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#85

Post by brusch64 »

But isn't this an "App" which shouldn't have been an App in the first place (I think they write something like this in the article).

That's really one of my pet peeves. I don't like installing apps just to read an article. A good mobile site is much preferable in my opinion. But I've started a little bit later than most to the smart phone game and I'm a little bit quirky - so that may be just me.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#86

Post by eloisant »

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'm not sure about that.

1. You can have an icon for web apps

2. That's only true if the web version is crappy and overloaded with ads and trackers. A decently designed

I prefer mobile web for publications, because it's just a link that doesn't impact my phone. The native integration usually only brings annoyances, like unwanted notifications or sucking the battery to fetch articles I may not read.

Apps are for applications. For content, nothing beats the web.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#87

Post by vetinari »

andreamazz wrote: post #84
ousta wrote: post #82

the article does not mention this but publishing an app for iOS is drastically more costly in time and efforts than publishing for android. It is the worst publishing process I have ever seen. sluggish certificates, keys, provisionning profiles, iOS lack of retro-compatibility, apple lack of communication on what the major versions are changing and apple lack of judgement when reviewing apps with guidelines that are…

What do you mean by lack of retro compatibility? You can still ship apps that target ios6, you have runtime checks for APIs that are missing in one version, the IDE suggests what is available or not. The major versions (and minors) are thoroughly documented in API diffs, the IDE suggests what to modify according to your platform target. The review guidelines are basically changing for the major versions, accordingly…

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 phone was supported.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#88

Post by simonh »

brusch64 wrote: post #85

But isn't this an "App" which shouldn't have been an App in the first place (I think they write something like this in the article). That's really one of my pet peeves. I don't like installing apps just to read an article. A good mobile site is much preferable in my opinion. But I've started a little bit later than most to the smart phone game and I'm a little bit quirky - so that may be just me.

If only there was a single native app, preferably pre-installed on the phone, that was specifically designed to download content from publishers around the world and render it dynamically on a range of device screen sizes. It could be publisher neutral and allow bookmarking, and maybe let you have multiple pages open at a time. Nah, it'd never catch on. Native apps for publishing are dead ;)

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#89

Post by zhte415 »

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…

> Personally I see the article mostly complain about the Distribution and Discovery Problem. And some App Store Approval process.

That was there, certainly, but what I read most was the resource cost of covering many platforms, something I completely empathise with.

Re: Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

#90

Post by iridium127 »

kllrnohj wrote: post #32
tootie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While apps have more capability, the web can do pretty much anything you need with content and data. The only time you really need an app is for CPU-intensive work or accessing hardware.

If you want to do any sort of custom drawing or animation you basically can't do it with the web, the performance just isn't there. You must stay on the specific fast paths offered by the browser or you're screwed. So no, the web cannot do pretty much anything with content and data. The web can do very, very little with content & data, it is just often enough coverage for passive things like articles.

There is a bunch of HTML5 drawing apps... what type of animation are you talking about?

Also, The web is far from being only passive...

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