

Why The Web Will Win - brandwinnie
http://brand.seshn.com/why-the-web-will-win/

======
grey-area
_The last several years have been about the disruptive transformation of
hardware devices that have changed the way people consume information and go
about their daily lives. This is all about to change. Why? Because in the next
decade these technologies, operating systems and hardware devices that are
currently being built by the aforementioned brands, will be so similar to each
other, the consumer will care less about the actual design of the hardware or
its brand. People will just demand a pane of glass, more or less. Glass will
just be glass. The ‘wow factor’ will wear off after awhile._

Having developed quite a few apps and websites I find myself agreeing with
this thesis - the web will win in the end, not because of any inherent
technical advantage (in some ways it's behind mobile apps in terms of
performance, look and feel etc), but because the open web has so many
advantages for developers and users that in the end it will overcome its
disadvantages, and it is of course improving all the time as browsers improve,
so the performance gap is narrowing constantly. At some point the performance
won't matter, and the advantages of the open web will come to the fore.

The contrast between deploying a few fixes a day to a website, and churning
out new app versions only to have them rejected by someone at Apple, often for
inscrutable and unjustified reasons, then waiting days or weeks for approval,
could not be more marked.

And as a user, the advantages of the open web (i.e. not walled gardens like
Facebook) will I think have an irresistible pull - advantages like linkable,
shareable content, content on any device even unforeseen ones, not having to
rebuy apps but just subscribing once and using anywhere. The fact that web dev
imposes so many limitations is actually a strength, as it means it can be
deployed almost anywhere, and give at least some value to users for decades
and over any new devices which come out, as opposed to the binaries being
created for current mobile platforms, which in a decade will be forgotten.

I almost wish Apple had stuck with their first solution of asking developers
to use a webkit API on iOS. It would be fascinating to know just exactly how
surprised Apple were by the reaction to their suggestion that app developers
develop using webkit, and whether they always planned to have a native SDK. At
first it certainly seemed like a rushed decision and something they had to
scramble to keep up with, and if they'd stuck to HTML it would be interesting
to see how the landscape would differ now - perhaps we'd have interoperable
apps between mobile devices, rather than the silos we have at present.

~~~
brandwinnie
Well said, thanks for your comment. The webkit API approach could have been
pretty interesting indeed. What'll even be more interesting IMO is Apple's
next move in this game of chess. Not sure if Timmy has the chops to pull this
one off.

