
Browsers, not apps, are the future of mobile - hackyio
https://blog.intercom.com/browsers-not-apps-are-the-future-of-mobile/
======
uabstraction
This might not be a popular opinion on this site, but I'd actually rather see
things go the opposite way entirely. The reason I install such few apps isn't
because Google Play is inconvenient, it's because the vast majority of apps
are simply designed to data mine or pump advertisements. Most of the time,
they don't provide enough value to be worth using in the first place, while
websites at least supposedly are sandboxed so they can't be so obnoxious.

This is getting worse and worse though as browsers expose more and more of
their host operating system's functionality. The benefits of using a website
instead of a native app are quickly disappearing, while the drawbacks have
only been somewhat mitigated. We're getting to the point where browsers are
worthy of the decades old criticism Emacs has received. They have eventually
become an OS with many fine features - simply lacking a good web browser. For
the privacy conscious user, modern web technologies will undermine you every
step of the way, or simply break if you choose to stand your ground.

I personally would rather have a dozen well crafted battery sipping native C
apps than a million awful contraptions built in a script interpreter on to of
a VM by the lowest bidder on ODesk. Sure it's harder to do it right, but
that's the cost of quality. Maybe I'm stuck in the 80's, but to me, it seems
like a lot of wisdom has been shrugged off in the pursuit of expedience.

~~~
dhimes
I don't want to be locked in the ecosystem of the hardware vendor.

~~~
daptaq
Isn't that what C should have had solved by being "portable"? Or am I
misunderstanding your point?

~~~
nine_k
It's APIs that lock you down, not the language.

------
niftich
After the first few paragraphs of content, the segue about 'bots' is strange
-- unless it's not. Really this article is a thinly-veiled promotion of the
idea of chatbots, which isn't surprising given the publisher's primary
business is CRM and chat products and whatnot.

But it's also the Last New Frontier, because as the comScore charts show, most
people spend their time in the top 3 apps -- which are probably the same or
come out of the same pool of half a dozen. So the only way to push one's own
content is to participate in a popular app maker's content ecosystem (FB
Instant Articles, Snapchat Discover, myriad chatbot platforms for various
messengers), or participate in a "open web" 'discovery' ecosystem (Google
Search -> Google AMP).

So really the article's content seems to imply that the future isn't browsers
(in the traditional sense of 'here's a user agent you can navigate to
arbitrary URLs') after all, it's content aggregators who provide windows to --
and framing around -- content. This point has been made a few times before,
most notably by Paul Kinlan of Google [1], so it's a pretty safe bet it's
actually the case.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12206846](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12206846)

~~~
ge96
Wish you could favorite a post or soemthing. I feel that you pointed out some
good points for marketing.

~~~
spicytunacone
Click on the timestamp and you'll see a 'favorite' option.

~~~
ralfd
What does that function do? Does it only provide me a list of comments I
favored or can user niftich see "yay so many people favored me"?

------
Arainach
This comes up from time to time and I still don't see it. The idea of packaged
web apps and web sites is as old as the smartphone (and older on some
platforms). Even today, I can tell what experience on my devices are packaged
web apps and I don't enjoy them. UI elements don't look right, navigation
elements don't behave properly, keyboard shortcuts are wrong. Web apps can be
sufficient for some scenarios, but they don't lack the magical feeling of
native apps.

~~~
TuringTest
Wait until mobile OSes start building a native presentation layer built on
WebAssembly.

Apple already tried that approach with the iPhone one. It failed because the
technology wasn't mature, but there have been nothing but advances since then.

The web is a more flexible and portable platform, so the economic incentives
will always be there. And while native toolkits are still based on 1970's lab
research, the web as a platform benefits from mainstream usage by the whole
world. At some point, the new tech will overcome and replace the old approach.
The gap is getting smaller every day even if the old approach has decades of
advantage, and all major tech providers are pushing for it.

~~~
smacktoward
Even by 2009 it worked fine -- I had a Palm Pre, and the experience of using
webOS on that hardware was always responsive and pleasant. (Palm Inc. and the
Pre both had lots of problems, but webOS wasn't one of them.)

In fact if I had the opportunity to buy a webOS device today I would ditch
Android in a hot minute...

~~~
trynumber9
You can buy some webOS devices today: LG's "smart" televisions. It's actually
quite slick.

------
detaro
I don't agree with the premise in the article that we are at a point were "4G
everywhere" means you don't have to think about offline use. We don't have
reliable 4G or even 3G everywhere.

Service workers etc add a lot of features to the web platform in this regard,
but it doesn't seem fully solved yet.

How can I, as a user, ensure apps I use in the browser are available? If I
want to use an app, I'd hate if the browser had cleared it (or worse, content
edited offline that hasn't synced yet) from its caches since it decided it
needed space. I haven't seen a clear way to "pin" an app's data in a browser
UI yet.

(Of course there are tons of native apps that don't work offline as well, but
I believe I can more reliably test that.)

~~~
FussyZeus
"4G Everywhere" does not exist if you leave San Francisco.

You can smell the city on the authors of these thinkpieces.

~~~
mamon
It exists pretty much everywhere in more civilized countries, it is just US
lagging years behind.

~~~
oelmekki
French here, living in Dijon, a regional major city, 2 hours from Paris. I
live in city center, and I still only listen to downloaded content in my
spotify app, because if I listen to it online while on the move, there's
always a point when it will lag or just stop.

Providers tell the whole city is covered by 4g. In reality, as soon as you
move, sometime you'll have it, sometime you won't. Friends report the same
thing in other cities with other providers.

~~~
FussyZeus
That's a big factor too, as soon as you're in motion signal degrades
significantly.

Plus there are data caps on most people's plans IME.

------
blkhp19
This should never happen until the web radically changes. I'm fine with the
"web" being the future if it can provide truly native experiences. It simply
can't do that now.

1\. People aren't downloading apps because they have most of the core apps
they want/need currently, not because they're browsing the web instead. Look
around on any college or high school campus. Barely anyone has mobile safari
open. They have instagram, snapchat, a messaging app, and maybe Facebook open.

2\. Bots are the future? We'll see. Nobody besides tech people seem to care
about bots. I'm in tech and I don't even care about bots - yet. And again,
look at today's high schoolers and college students - they don't care about
bots.

~~~
amirmansour
> _Barely anyone has mobile safari open._

I believe you are misinformed about this one. Not only is mobile Safari open,
but it's open with a bunch of tabs.

~~~
wingerlang
Do you think I am correct in saying that Safari is used as a last resort?
That's it for me anyway for more "daily driver" apps.
FB/IM/Reddit/Translation/Maps/Etc I'd never want to use in Safari.

If I need to search some definition of a word, some image or whatever I'll use
Safari.

Not saying it isn't great, I love to have a browser on my phone - I just don't
actually like to use it. Just opening Safari now (it wasn't even in my app
switcher list) I see a few categories: image searches, movie searches,
definitions, "automatically opened via some app" and Facebook (that time when
I uninstalled the app for some dev-testing and forgot to install it again).

~~~
ska

       Do you think I am correct in saying that Safari is used as a last resort?
    

I suspect this is just not true.

------
rvanmil
So, the web is winning and native apps are going away, because the future is
native apps which also implement browser-like features to display web content.
Ok.

And I guess I'm weird because of my tech background, but I absolutely hate
apps which present web content in their own browsers instead of my browser of
choice.

~~~
rch
Likewise. Even the Google app on Android annoyingly uses a weird 'Powered by
Chrome' view.

------
CaptSpify
I never download apps anymore because they abused their privilege. No, I don't
want to download an app that's just a less-featureful front-end to your
webpage. Especially if you are going to need access to my contacts, location,
and have notifications pop-up just because you can. Obviously there are
exceptions that _do_ need this access, but they are the vast minority IME.

~~~
nostrademons
It's kinda ironic that this is how _every_ platform since Windows has died.

A major factor that pushed users away from Windows and towards webapps was the
constant onslaught of viruses and worms. It got so bad that when I was in
college (early 2000s), SQL Slammer would be _perpetually_ floating around the
college network (I noticed at least 4-5 computers infected in my dorm of 22
residents), and a significant portion of peoples' fileshares were infected
with Nimda. The assumption was that if you had _ever_ logged into a computer
in administrator mode (and oftentimes, even if you hadn't), it was
compromised.

And then desktop e-mail clients died under the onslaught of spam. GMail's spam
filters basically saved e-mail (temporarily at least; people hate it again),
and they could only be done on the server, with data from lots of people.

Then a major factor in the shift from web to mobile was the huge weight of
advertising, clickbait, phishing, and other abuse. Webpages got so heavy and
bloated that the clean, fast interface of a mobile app was a huge breath of
fresh air.

Now we've got mobile, dying under the weight of apps that request every
privilege under the sun so they can do things they shouldn't be able to. And
Google, dying under the weight of SEO & content farms.

It's like the tech industry periodically gets reborn because as soon as
something gets popular, people swoop in to abuse it, until it's easier to kill
the patient and start over with a new platform than to clean up the mess. Full
employment for entrepreneurs, I guess.

~~~
antocv
It is a social problem, there is a saying, "Humans are like pigeons, alone and
in small groups they are elegant and nice, together in large group they are
obnoxious and leave huge piles of corroding shit".

------
prophesi
Progressive web apps are seriously pretty darn awesome. It can work offline
after running it once. Supports push notifications. You can ask the user to
install the web shortcut to the homescreen. I remember being blown away by all
of this with pokedex.org a year ago.

I had a low-end smartphone for the longest time where I had to fight for every
byte on there. After installing Messenger & Instagram, I had less than 1gb
left thanks to uninstallable bloatware (there was no safe way to root it). And
the Play Store doesn't let you install apps/updates when you're near 300mb or
so. My friends with iPhones/Nexus devices that don't sport an SD slot have
also shared these sentiments, though most just need to learn how to offload
their photos/videos to the cloud. Regardless, not having to install anything
is a pretty shweet bonus.

~~~
rimantas
Native apps are awesome. They have 10x more than you mentione with 10x less
effort to develop.

~~~
prophesi
iOS only recently became a pleasure to develop in with Swift, though the
language is still in rapid development (read: constant updates with breaking
changes). Android has and still is an absolute pain; I still don't think I've
been able to successfully write an app that looks OK across device screens.
Plus the whole fragment vs activity debacle. The whole process feels like a
hack. Windows has always been a pleasure to develop in, but that's not where
the users are at.

If you already do web dev, then learning service workers + local storage won't
add much difficulty. Plus, they're excellent tools to add to your toolbelt
that your future projects could benefit from. And you'd be encouraging Apple
to step up the game with their IE- I mean Safari.

~~~
rimantas
I've been doing iOS development for 7 years now it has always been a pleasure
compared to web dev (which I have been doing for close to 20 years now).
What's more important native development gets more and more pleasurable while
I cannot say the same about web stack. It is close to jumping the shark if it
hadn't yet.

------
intrasight
The UK government apparently has mandated that all its apps be browser-based.
They did this because their analysis found that browser-based apps cost
considerably less to develop and to maintain. My own experience also bears
this out.

------
nodamage
People said this in 2008 when the first iOS and Android SDKs were released.
They've been saying it every year since. It's now 8 years later and doesn't
seem like it's coming true anytime soon.

~~~
drdaeman
Exactly what I wanted to say.

There is always someone bragging how some recent development made webapps even
slickier and better performing than native ones, and every time I try it out,
I'm hugely disappointed by a sluggish mess that barely manages to get most
portions of native look-and-feel right.

Same applies when a "native" app uses an HTML/CSS renderer for its UI. For
some reason I usually notice it. Well, at least it has some OS integration
that way...

Not to say about the value of having an old version (does not apply to apps
that are mere remote API adapters, but it's not like every app is like that).

So, I believe it's highly unlikely, no matter how many times this "webapp is
the future" mantra is repeated.

------
pyrophane
There is a lot of focus being put on the fact that the mobile web can't
provide a "native" experience, and I think that missed the point a little bit.
In many cases, a "native" experience isn't needed, and a lot of things are
being packaged into apps that can be served just as well over the mobile web.

Since users aren't always extremely excited to install an app for your new
product or service unless it is going to be something they use every day, it
makes sense to consider carefully whether everyone might be better served with
a mobile website.

------
wccrawford
As a web developer, I've tried to make some simple game-ish apps in the web
browser, and it doesn't go well. I'm not talking 30fps action titles. I'm
talking board games.

One of the first problems I encountered was keeping the screen on. It's not
possible in the browser. (Well, there's a workaround with a looping hidden
video, but that's crazy.) Which means that people need to keep tapping the
screen to keep it awake while playing. Super lame.

And of course, offline is possible in the browser, but clearing your cache for
some reason, or just having it get stale, is brutal on that.

I tend to want to make browser-based apps, but it doesn't work out for
anything that isn't always-online and pretty simple.

------
ysavir
A "browser" is now just a medium for exploration? Not necessarily webpages,
but whatever type of content the particular "browser" happens to revolve
around?

That's not a legitimate redefining of the term "browser", just a convenient
(and poor) definition that makes the author's argument (falsely) appear more
sound.

~~~
fourthark
Yeah, the author says "we don't use apps. Any apps you are using are actually
browsers. We only use browsers."

------
guhcampos
"Browsers, not apps, are the future of mobile"

Yeah, you guys (who, exactly?) keep saying that, and it keeps walking further
away from the truth, no matter the pressure (from whom, exactly?) to make the
World swallow it.

Everytime this subject comes to light I can only picture one technology in my
mind: Java Applets.

------
georgeecollins
Mobile websites are fine for reading text. I find that with any website I
visit repeatedly-- say IMDB-- I download the app.

People who talk down app always site that most people regularly use 3-4 apps.
But then most people (not the ones on this site) probably regularly only visit
3-4 web pages.

------
lacampbell
Is there any useful data on web vs mobile app usage? I remember reading
[http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/think-the-web-vs-mobile-
ap...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/think-the-web-vs-mobile-app-battle-
is-over-only-in-the-usa/) (it might have been posted here), that suggested
only in the USA was the mobile app king, and the much larger markets of East
Asia preferred to browse the web. But not sure how representative their data
source is.

------
a3n
I'm 59. Can someone post a link to a non-marketing explanation of bots as used
in this article?

~~~
mixedCase
Chat bots. As in virtual assistants. Ask them in natural language for
something they're built to provide and they'll try to get it to you (and
mostly fail).

~~~
a3n
Well, something a little more meaty. How do they get on a consumer's phone. Is
that "OK Google" thing a chatbot? How do other bots get there. Is there a
network protocol particularly associated with bots, or is most of it done on
the device.

Link?

~~~
mixedCase
No specific network protocol, no standards. They can be plugged into networks
like FB Messenger, Telegram, Slack and so on. Some are straight-up independent
apps. In Telegram for example all you have to do is to add the chatbot like
another contact.

Conceptually they're not very different from IRC bots except for having
natural language processing rather than simple regex/command capabilities.

Chat bots are associated with text, but Google Assistant and Siri are
basically chat bots plugged into voice recognition and text-to-speech
interfaces.

------
rimantas
Ah, the good old "installs zero apps" statistics. Would you mind telling how
much new web pages does average American open in a month? Let me guess: the
same zero.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Given that the article considers viewing pages through Facebook embeds to be
browsing, quite a large number.

~~~
rimantas
They should count the same for the apps then too.

------
komali2
It's a balance, yea? On the one hand, apps that I use rarely that are totally
functional via a mobile browser, such as Facebook or Google News, take up
space on my phone and potentially Do Bad Things in the background. On the
other hand, there's potentially more of my monthly data used when I visit the
sites vs using the app.

I remember hearing about / reading about (here? on reddit? at a meetup? who
knows) that the Chrome browser on android is going to begin implementing
features that allow "psuedo-apps" to be developed. A browser favorite exists
on the homepage and has a fat cache to save bandwidth, but isn't an app in the
sense it can run in the background. I don't know too much about that, but what
I DO know about are cool firefox and chrome Javascript methods like
window.getDeviceOrientation or sendVibration or getLightLevel and other
experimental features obviously focused on mobile devices.

------
ilaksh
At this point people have been talking about 'the future of mobile' for many
years and most of the predictions haven't come true.

Just for fun I am going to say by 'the future' I mean fully 10-20 years from
now.

The Google Assistant or intelligent/connected chatbot/agent will be in your
brain (or maybe somehow just spying on subvocalization nerves/muscle
twitches). You will have a brain computer interface (or something) that you
use as naturally as breathing or thinking. This will also effectively give
everyone telepathic and telekinetic powers.

Installing an app will be like with Amazon Alexa, giving you additional
commands/AI capabilities.

Glasses and maybe contact lenses will use eye tracking and transparent OLED
microdisplays to augment reality. The phone/BCI is tiny or mainly just a fast
wireless transceiver to nearby distributed localized computing clouds.

Smart phones and apps will be for poor people.

------
norea-armozel
I wish I could use mostly mobile sites instead of apps but the biggest thing
that hurts the experience is the fact that ad networks still allow for ads on
mobile which hijack the browser to open up the app store (at least this has
what I've seen myself). So it's why I try to avoid most sites unless I use an
ad blocker but even that doesn't guarantee some sleazy browser hijacking ad
won't appear. If that issue gets fixed I can see more people using mobile
sites over apps.

------
zzleczz
The problem with web applications is that in reality you have no chance to
verify what you are running. You are entirely dependent on the website
provider that the app you are running is not malicious. Thus you have no
change to control your own privacy and security. For native apps you can
somewhat control what you are running, e.g. by using open source software. Web
apps are great for many things but I would hate to depend on them.

------
dagiuth
"web apps" in web browser is fine with me and what i do now mostly. the future
of it could be that they are still advertised in the store but just add on
favorites and the OS could implement a web shortcut that starts in a new tab
perhaps. the web has come a long way for viewing and interacting in mobile.

------
jaakl
Time machine to 1999 with my first smartphone Ericsson R380. Then to first
iPhone. All had browser only apps with the story like this. All not good
enough for really useful things. Yes, for web browsing browser is good enough,
but not for more.

------
kerbs
Using Patagonia as the harbinger for the downfall of apps is really poor.
Patagonia's website is horrible on a mobile device - especially for a "premium
brand".

Contrast with Lululemon's mobile app, which is an absolute delight to use. I
don't buy the authors thesis at all.

~~~
b2600
Patagonia on mobile web works fine for me. Everything functions properly and
is easy to use. I don't know what device you use. Never used the other site
you mentioned.

------
therealdrag0
I wish it was more common for apps to release a free version and a pro
version. I'd love to spend more money to get high quality apps, but I'm not
comfortable paying for an app without trying it first.

------
dingo_bat
It's logical. As mobiles become more powerful, and efficient, and batteries
become better, we should see the ecosystem move to where laptops/desktops are
today. Chrome is the most used app on my laptop.

------
nickthemagicman
Try: web is the future of ALL apps. Its hilarious in a roundabout way, weve
finally solved the problem of software on incompatible OS's...through a
browser.

------
coldcode
Tweets, not blogs, are the future of writing. Online food delivery, not
groceries, are the future of eating. Virtual reality, not real reality, is the
future of life.

Opinions we will have always.

------
_pferreir_
I want to believe this is the case, but the article doesn't manage to convince
me. It doesn't provide a single valid argument that can substantiate its
claim.

------
aligajani
The browser, arguably, is the greatest app of all time.

~~~
dredmorbius
And that's a shame.

------
known
I really like [https://web.whatsapp.com/](https://web.whatsapp.com/)

------
gliechtenstein
I agree with native apps not being useful for many cases. However I don't
think that means the old web is the future.

It is true that companies like Patagonia don't need a native app. In fact,
most native apps from large media companies and brands are unnecessary.

However, I also think the "native app" form factor has not been explored to
its full potential. There are definitely a lot of benefits to apps being
native, and they're not what most people think.

One of the most under-appreciated reason is that you have a dedicated icon you
can press to enter a new world. This works both ways, because in the current
world we live in, people don't want a "dedicated icon" for every single brand
they engage with. But this is where my point starts:

People use bookmarks because they want to easily access things they frequently
use. The problem is, the appstore is filled with apps that people don't use
frequently enough and don't care enough about. We are forced to "bookmark"
every single app we download. That's why people don't like clogging up their
"bookmark screen" and end up deleting apps.

On the other hand, I think there are tons of potential apps that are NOT being
built, that I would be happy to keep on my home screen if they existed. For
example, let's say I visit a certain indie coffee shop every day. I would
download their app if they had an app that makes my life easier. For example
they could have a Starbucks-like app where I can order stuff easily without
staying lining up. Also, I would download an app that's super customized for a
community I am very attached to.

Then why don't we have these apps in real life? The problem is these
organizations and small coffee shops and our small interest groups don't have
time and money to build these apps. And not even considering time and money,
they just don't want to bother since they have a lot on their hands already.

I think, once we make it extremely easy to build an app (and I'm not even
talking about all the "app builders" out there. It should be as easy as copy
and pasting MySpace scripts), we will have more useful and personal apps that
people would actually want to keep on their screen, just like a bookmark. We
are just not there yet.

I've been working on a project that's along this line of thought. It's
basically a native app meets browser, where you can send an entire app over
HTTP (just like websites), but it translates into 100% native components and
native function calls. If you're interested check it out here:
[https://github.com/Jasonette/JASONETTE-
iOS](https://github.com/Jasonette/JASONETTE-iOS) Would love to hear thoughts
in the current thread context.

~~~
aligajani
Nice idea with Jasonette, but it only works for UI rendering, nothing more
complex beyond that, right?

------
iLoch
How about a web spec for creating sandboxed native UI? Would go nicely with
WASM.

~~~
themihai
There is already one(i.e. HTML5 input types) but it's quite incomplete and
poorly supported so we have to reinvent the wheel with CSS and JS which makes
the web apps inconsistent and slow. The main issue is that the internet must
be backwards compatible and browser vendors are reluctant to provide shiny
features due the maintenance costs.

Hopefully WASM will fix the performance issue and the internet speed will get
fast enough to compile and serve mature frameworks such Cocoa.

~~~
duaneb
Is there a way to bypass HTML completely?

~~~
pjmlp
Yes, you have poor souls re-inventing desktop UI toolkits by making the web
page a gigantic canvas or webgl content.

~~~
duaneb
Yea, but that still involves calling through HTML/DOM to access basic graphics
contexts.

------
shuntress
[https://xkcd.com/1367/](https://xkcd.com/1367/)

