

Why Mobile Apps Will Soon be Dead - jcr
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26778/?p1=blogs

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eykanal
This argument can be summed up by simply stating "huge installed userbase +
new technology == native app competition". In terms of new tech, he mentions
offline access to the application.

This argument has been made before - heck, as he says, the iPhone originally
ONLY accepted web apps - and has been demonstrated to be completely wrong
through user behavior. Native apps almost always have a better UI and better
user experience due to their access to the underlying system API. The API
access lets them make their interface components look right, lets them perform
tasks in the background, lets them send messages/alerts to the user, and
numerous other things that a web app simply cannot perform due to inadequate
access to the system API. Until the user experience with web apps is the same
as that with native apps, this argument will continue to be wrong.

On a related note, John Gruber has an excellent writeup on this topic here:
[http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/iphone_web_apps_alternativ...](http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/iphone_web_apps_alternative)

