

Is the app-only economy going to kill the Internet ? - piyushpr134
http://pranjan.blogspot.com/2015/04/is-app-only-economy-going-to-kill.html

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i-was-a-penguin
We already had native applications. C64 applications. MS-DOS applications.
Windows applications. Mac OS applications. Linux applications. Java
applications.

Slow to deploy. Insecure. Hard to tinker with. Not standardized. Tied to one
OS.

Then came the web and won.

Why should apps suddenly come back and take over?

My bet is on the web.

~~~
i-was-a-penguin
There currently are 2 issues the web has to overcome:

1) Via a manifest file, websites can be available offline. But currently, if
people want a tool they "download an app". They don't add a website to their
homescreen.

2) People can easily pay for an app. But not for a website.

~~~
clusterfoo
Problem is phone manufacturers have a vested interest in making the web
experience sub-optimal (and even limit developers' means of building a proper
mobile browser, like Apple).

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shanemhansen
The internet != hypertext/www.

Title of this should have been: "Is the app-only economy going to kill the
web?".

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MichaelCrawford
If I ship an iOS or Android App, then my website will feature prominent
graphical links to the app store and google play. I'll be passing on some of
my pagerank to them. How much will the app store and google play pass back to
me?

I don't see either the app store or google play as being in my long-term
interest. It is very nearly impossible for app publishers to use alternative
distribution channels such as direct mail.

I'm toying with the idea of rewriting my native Objective-C iOS App entirely
in javascript, so it won't need to be in the app store. That would be a lot of
work but I really do feel that, in the long run, Apple and Google are
destroying the independent developers.

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clusterfoo
Only one point to nitpick: let's stop spreading the "RSS is dead" meme. It's
not. RSS/Atom are alive and well.

Google reader != RSS.

These standards are open and simple enough for everyone to implement on their
site/blog, and they'll only die if we all start acting like they're dead
because _one_ company decided to phase out a product that was not even living
up to its full potential. I use
[https://www.newsblur.com/](https://www.newsblur.com/) on a daily basis and
it's a far superior piece of software.

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VOYD
um, how will these apps work, without the internet?

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BerislavLopac
To me, this is like asking is replacing the hand-cranks with electric starters
going to kill the car engine.

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volent
I think the title is wrong, apps cannot kill the Internet but they can kill
the Web.

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tylermac1
Apps are essentially a new form of the website as we know it now.

~~~
piyushpr134
They are not. Apps are not like websites. Thats what I am trying to say here.

~~~
tylermac1
Yes they are. Your complaints in your article hardly signal the "end of the
Internet".

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umangd
interesting read. The app-only model is indeed locking users into a den from
where they is no escaping.

~~~
cwyers
I think a lot of us thought the same thing when AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy
brought us into their walled gardens. Things are cyclical. If you're on the
upswing of the cycle, it can look like you're going to go up forever. If you
step back and watch the ebb and flow of the cycle, though, you get a much
clearer picture of where things are headed in the long run.

