
The mobile app is going the way of the CD-ROM: To the dustbin of history - evo_9
http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/09/mobile-web/
======
codyrobbins
No. Somebody please stop this guy. After reading this I feel about him like
the machines must have when they sent the Terminator back in time to kill
Sarah Connor.

Web apps are to native mobile apps as Java apps are to native desktop apps:
ploddingly slow with clunky non-standard UIs—a degraded, lackluster
experience.

With some notable exceptions I think they can be a pragmatically motivated
stopgap step (in regards to either bottlenecks in time or money) on the road
to building a full native app. But saying simply that because they cost less
time or money to produce as a sole justification for creating them, and
ignoring all their shortcomings, is like suggesting everyone buy a circa-1998
Samsung flip phone instead of an iPhone simply because you can get one on eBay
for $5. It doesn’t matter, because the flip phone sucks and the iPhone
doesn’t—economics aren’t the only factor to consider.

If you need any more proof, remember what happened when the iPhone originally
launched and there was no support for building native apps. Apple’s professed
solution was for app functionality to be provided by mobile-optimized web
apps. There was literally a sustained caterwaul by developers and users alike
for the ability to create native apps on the platform, so much so that Apple
did a complete 180 on their original stance.

~~~
dmix
> ploddingly slow with clunky non-standard UIs—a degraded, lackluster
> experience

That sounds like the arguments I used to hear from desktop devs back when web
apps start to appear.

Sure web mobile apps kind of suck right now, but theres hardely any
frameworks, established processes or documentation on how to build them
properly. It's still in alpha stages.

When building mobile apps has matured and if they still have the performance
and UI issues, then I might agree. But right now thats like saying a kid won't
have a good job because of his grade 5 scores.

~~~
georgieporgie
_That sounds like the arguments I used to hear from desktop devs back when web
apps start to appear._

And it still holds true in many cases. Microsoft Outlook, in many ways an
example of both great and horrible desktop software, still holds the email
client majority: <http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/>

Web apps are great when you get along with the designer's UI decisions. When
you have a fast network connection (that's improved with _specific_ web apps
and offline modes, but it's by no means generally applied). When the servers
are working well.

Mobile apps share the same advantages and disadvantages, but they're
multiplied tremendously. I lose my mobile signal in most stores I go into, for
example, and on an awful lot of secondary roads throughout the Northwest.

~~~
curveship
Outlook? The "majority" email client? Really? From your source:

"The fine print

The email client a person is using can only be detected if images are
displayed. This can give an inflated weighting to email clients that display
images by default, such as Outlook 2000 and the iPhone. It will also provide a
lesser weighting to those that block images by default such as Gmail and
Outlook 2007. Those email clients that aren't capable of displaying images,
such as older Blackberry models and other mobile devices cannot be included in
this study."

Outlook isn't nearly the majority email client, it's just the one most likely
to not block img bugs.

~~~
georgieporgie
_Outlook isn't nearly the majority email client, it's just the one most likely
to not block img bugs._

Do you have anything to support that claim?

------
extension
_Yahoo has just announced Yahoo Cocktails, a set of tools for developers to
use that make web apps look and behave more like native apps. Mozilla is
working on tools to help developers sell web-based apps to mobile device
users, enabling them to make profits just as developers in the iTunes App
Store or Android Market can now do._

Yes, we can finally relegate this obsolete dinosaur to the dustbin of history
once we faithfully replicate every aspect of it.

~~~
tikhonj
Just like how DVDs fundamentally do exactly the same thing as VHS tapes, with
a couple of minor differences?

~~~
extension
DVDs didn't have to struggle to become as good as VHS. They started out
better.

------
v21
I'm sympathetic to what he's saying. It is painful to develop lots of separate
platforms.

But I work making games. And so this promised land is still way over the
horizon. We're only just getting to the point where a HTML5 game can be
notable as anything other than a tech demo on the desktop. It'll be another
few years before we reach that point for mobile.

~~~
sien
Indeed.

But a lot of mobile apps are not like games. They are adaptations of web sites
for a particular mobile device. This is where what he is saying surely makes a
lot of sense. Really, apps like twitter should be able to be done with HTML5.

But more involved applications like games make sense to be native
applications.

~~~
politician
But even games are written in standardized frameworks like OpenGL and DirectX,
with DirectX being the winner at the moment. Unless you're talking about Flash
games where, uh, Flash is the standardized framework.

It seems that standardized frameworks aren't the problem, performance is. So
what's your take on hardware acceleration, canvas, and WebGL?

------
stevenwei
_Everything_ will be relegated to the 'dustbin of history' given a long enough
time period, it's a completely meaningless statement.

CDs were quite useful for many years, before they were replaced by newer,
superior technologies. Mobile apps are currently the best way to deliver the
best user experience on mobile devices.

In the future this may change, but that should not be particularly surprising
to anybody given how quickly technology improves.

------
lukasb
“There’s always some stuff around the edges that won’t work perfectly, but
compared to writing in seven different languages, it works.”

Write once, run anywhere. Why didn't anyone think of this before?

~~~
cryptoz
What are those 7 languages, anyway? The guy has a strong point he can make
without exaggerating. If you want to capture > 90% of the mobile market, I
think you only need Objective C and Java.

~~~
johnrob
I can think of 6 frameworks: iOS, Android, WP7, Blackberry, Palm OS, Meego.

~~~
icebraining
It pains me to say, but MeeGo is a dead OS, at least on phones. Nokia has
already said they'll ditch it even if N9 sells well.

Palm OS is obsolete too, they now use a version of webOS.

------
phatbyte
Wasn't someone from Wired who said that mobile apps were going to replace web
apps, and so the web as dead ??

And now, we have Yahoo saying "no no no, web is the way to go, look at us !!".

Quite frankly, this type of discussions sucks and are totally irrelevant. Let
the market decide, don't be a palm reader, as you might end up with your palm
in your face.

------
slipperyp
I think a couple interesting things are happening.

It's becoming more obvious to everybody that good mobile applications are not
cheap. This isn't news, but I think the fact that it's widely understood is
new within the past year or so.

Also, supporting multiple platforms tends to linearly multiply costs.

Also, good web based mobile apps are getting "more possible" with new
technologies so there are reactions kind of like what this author seems to be
saying is a done deal. The idea that mobile apps are dead is totally absurd. I
mean, ask anyone on Android who's used maps.google.com on their phone (which
is totally amazing) whether they have uninstalled the Google Maps app - it's
just not happening.

There are two things that are important that the author seems to be ignoring -
first is the fact that developing a good mobile web based app isn't easy or
cheap either. The costs of supporting a gajillion mobile device web browsers
and form factors won't multiply directly with the number of platforms out
there, but there will be many, many platform/browser/form-factor specific bugs
and annoyances to deal with. Second is the fact that regardless of how awesome
canvas / mojito / etc. all get, afaik there is no model in the future where
mobile web-based apps have an ability to do something like interact with the
local data sitting on the device in other formats (like people / calendar) or
with other devices that the mobile app developer can take advantage of (bump /
beam). Rich interactions like that can let the mobile app developer build a
much cooler experience.

------
jamesu
Sometimes i wish more people would care more about making good products rather
than the next buzzword middleware stack which solves everything.

~~~
tikhonj
Calling the internet a "buzzword middleware stack" is underplaying the
fundamental differences between the web and native apps.

Even now making a web app as opposed to a native app does not necessarily
preclude quality; as mobile web browsers and technologies mature, web apps are
going to afford developers more and more quality.

If I wanted to make a quality app to reach even just both Android and iPhones,
I would effectively have to implement it twice--first in Java and then in
Objective-C, using different libraries throughout. With a web app, I could
write it once. Of course, maintaining browser compatibility and overcoming
potential shortcomings of current browsers probably means it would take me
longer to write the web app to a similar level of quality than either the
Android or iPhone app; however, it would almost definitely not take longer
than both put together. Thus, I would have more time to add quality to my web
app--and less maintenance headaches--than I would just supporting both Android
and iPhone natively (not to mention other platforms like Blackberry or Windows
Phone).

Ultimately, I think it's the people who just want to make quality products
that can reach a large audience who should care about web apps.

------
krosaen
Desktop apps eventually got replaced by web apps because it is more convenient
to access the app from anywhere - from any computer, not necessarily because
web apps were easier for developers. Now with mobile apps developers are
hoping for the same thing to happen again but this time, users don't have the
same pull - they always have their phones with them. I'm not going to log onto
a mobile terminal at the library to check my email or run some app. To look at
it from the other side, if omnigraffle was _always_ available to you as a
native app, as _your_ app with your settings, with all of its slickness, would
you want a web based alternative?

------
lordmatty
The guy talks about tired analogies, whilst making one that looks positively
sleep deprived in his headline and conclusion!

------
NHQ
I would love to see browser become the primary interface for everything
interweb (speaking as a web app developer). But this article would be more
believable and reassuring if native mobile browser makers would make with
filling the native functionality gap already. I mean access to contacts,
cameras, mic, phone, bluetooth, file system, everything. They don't even offer
all those yet on the desktop. The browser vendors are so far behind their own
potential.

But: I think ChromeOS will be a big deal some day.

------
seclorum
As a recent convert to moai (<http://getmoai.com>), which is a Lua-based
cross-platform environment for game development, I have to say this: hogwash.

Cross-platform, easy to use, deliverable as a download for offline use,
publishable on the web: a moai project already delivers what this guy is
blowing hard about. Its not going away just because he says so. In fact, the
future is here already - put your app on the cloud, let users decide if they
want to install it locally or not.

------
azov
_> tools that make web apps look and behave more like native apps [will
somehow help web apps kill native apps]_

You can't kill anything by trying to imitate it.

Especially when you have constraints that ensure that your imitation will
always be lagging behind in terms of features and performance.

Web and mobile apps simply offer different tradeoffs between reach, features,
and development costs and, as such, have every reason to coexist.

------
bphogan
The motivating factor I've seen is the fact that somehow, people got it in
their head that in order to be legitimate, the "app" has to be in the App
Store. This is one reason why we have a mobile app, which offers nothing we
couldn't already do with jQuery Mobile. We're not using the accelerometer.
We're displaying data.

But "being in the app store" is more important to our users right now.

------
michaelpinto
You can knock apps all you like but what Jay Sullivan hasn't done is to give
us a clear reason why we need Firefox as a mobile browser, or even why it's so
much better than Chrome. Firefox was a breath of fresh air in a world that was
owned by IE, but it seems to have lost a core focus. And ironically the one
browser my friends keep talking about on mobile platforms is Opera...

------
grudolf
It's easy when you split the app in frontend and backend, but how to tackle an
app that has to run disconnected and survive phone reboots?

------
peterwwillis
I feel like anyone who makes an argument that Node.js is "the future" is
making the same case that a polluted natural environment is "the future". A
horrifying vision of what _could_ be reality unless we make it better.

Friends don't let friends make a career out of programming in JavaScript.

~~~
phatbyte
Really ? JS is an amazing language, much better then say PHP. And trust me,
there are people building careers out of PHP. JS correctly used can do amazing
things.

------
bobwaycott
This article lacks anything serious to consider, and strikes me as far too
close to being link-bait. Judging by the contents, its title is, at best, an
ignoratio elenchi. It should have been entitled, "Mobile Web Apps Will Save
Developers Time Compared to Native Apps".

The article espouses little more beyond the offerings and appeals of companies
making yet-to-be-proven predictions about what the future of mobile apps will
be, in an effort to secure and advance their business's goals and existence.
These goals are not the goals of the users, who will ultimately decide what
the best platform for mobile apps is--not on its technical merits, but on its
ease of giving them the shortest and most pain-free path from want/need to
procurement. The only mention of the users is in saying they can hardly tell
the difference between a native or web app--and that _completely_ depends on
what type of app they are comparing.

Smartphone popularity among the general public skyrocketed as a result of the
App Store. The mobile app didn't rise to such sexy heights because we
developers were out there salivating over creating HTML apps for smartphones.
It rose because consumers finally had a good way to find a fun or useful app
with a simple search of a (usually) simple app name. No more remembering URLs.
No more bookmarks. No more, "Was it .com or .net?" Just a simple tap-to-
install process resulting in a recognizable icon they could flick to and
launch with their thumb. The App Store and the mobile app model gave consumers
a very easy to understand and re-use paradigm for finding and using apps.

I've enjoyed the development and rise of the web since I was a kid. I've been
excited by web application development, watching web apps get ever closer to
offering what can be done in a native desktop application in both features and
usability. Plenty of web apps are better than their desktop alternatives (or
don't have any).

However, the web still has not solved the biggest problems the App Store model
solved for both developers and users--and users are what matters when it comes
to keeping developers building and making money.

I doubt I'm the only user who frequently forgets the URL of a site, product,
web app, or what-have-you that I want to find/use when I want to find/use it,
and I've got a pretty good memory (though I suppose I'm not entirely
objective). Users don't have to worry about that on their phones--where they
more-often-than-not remember an app by not just its name, but its name in
association with its icon. Problem solved.

Moreover, and more importantly, the web (in its desktop-based incarnation) has
struggled in so many visible, obvious, and personal ways (for devs/companies)
when it comes to the one thing that matters most--getting users to pay to use
your shit. Users on the web have an implicit expectation that websites are
_free_ (hello newspapers?). And I think that's what made the web what it is
today. With mobile apps, there is, imho, a much lower implicit barrier to
payment than the web has ever been able to obtain for itself. Problem solved.

What's the web platform for making money? Oh, right ... we already know ...
advertising. Everywhere. Yuck.

------
joejohnson
I bet that mobile apps will be overtaken by web apps in about 5 years.

------
jasongullickson
If you want to make this true, go out and actually _build_ a web app so bad-
ass that what it does can't be outdone by a native application.

Until then, stfu.

