

How HTML5 will kill the native app - brianl
http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/07/how-html5-will-kill-the-native-app/

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cpr
Their discussion of how Apple is trying to cripple HTML5 is rather laughable.
Apple's the main driver, along with Google now, behind WebKit, the main mobile
HTML5 browser technology.

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jbermudes
Not to mention how the iphone originally only offered webapps.

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alanh
Oh, come on. There is no need for inflammatory crap like this. We all know web
and native apps will _both_ continue to be important.
<http://globalmoxie.com/blog/mobile-web-vs-native.shtml>

HN is better than this. Flagged.

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avdempsey
First sentence: "Over the past two decades, the mobile industry has become
increasingly stunted by fragmented protocols, standards, and regional
differences."

If the last few years have seen a stunting of the mobile industry, I'm very
excited to see what HTML 5 is going to do :P

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joejohnson
What was the mobile industry two decades ago (in 1991)? I'm pretty sure that
the mobile industry has converged heavily on ~3 major platforms. I remember
many closed, underdeveloped mobile platforms in the 90's.

This whole article seems uninformed.

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gue5t
"Native apps are faster for some operations"

s/some/all/

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kovar
s/all/some/

If you need significant CPU cycles or access to non-local resources, the web
apps will probably be faster.

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wmf
Any XHR that a Web app can do, a native app can do as fast or faster.

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michaelpinto
The problem w this article: The killer app for any computing platform from the
dawn of time has been games -- now try making a full featured video game with
HTML5. I'm sure you can do something, but to really tap the potential of the
platform you have to native.

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wlievens
I built an isometric strategy game in HTML5 and had to give up because of
lousy performance in most browsers (barring Chrome).

Maybe my code sucked, but I'm not a complete amateur either...

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michaelpinto
Well you can build a strategy game now with old fashioned HTML - in fact I use
to play Space Empire as a door and that was all done with text!

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wlievens
I know that - I did just that in 2005 and it still runs, albeit with a tiny
(~200) community.

What I meant was a game with fancy pixel graphics.

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yojimbo311
My feeling is that these fantastic assumptions of HTML5 being the best thing
since sliced bread and trumping all the benefits of native support assume a
vacuum and lack of innovation in the native client space. Even in this vacuum,
HTML5 browsers and embedded views have a long ways to go before they can
compete with current native feature support, performance, etc. from a
consumer's perspective as far as I am concerned.

I have a strong desire to see more HTML5 based applications going forward, but
I do not see them overtaking or marginalizing native applications in any
substantial way within 2-5 years. I also feel we can obviously expect many
developments, improvements, and features to evolve in the native application
space that will create further incentives to produce native implementations
and that we can not assume that HTML5 implementations will be able to keep
pace with them.

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geoffw8
I used to work with a guy who is now the CEO of one of those "we can make your
app work on any platform" (...because we use Javascript/HTML/CSS etc)
companies.

They are making a very successful business out of selling this product to big,
very well known brands and businesses through their ad agencies. These are the
guys who control the cash, and these are the guys who are still getting high
off of native apps.

This kind of shift has got to filter through so many layers of people -
although I agree, I just think its going to take a while.

I guess the (other) important thing is to remember is that the best
approach/product doesn't always win.

(I'm going to read the article now, FYI)

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marcusbooster
If the evangelists from the article say html5 will overtake native in 2 years,
then is the likelihood more along 5 years? And who's to say it'll use the web
for distribution? Consumers aren't using Google to find apps, they're using
the App Store.

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WiseWeasel
"Native" software is not going to be killed by hosted web apps, as it still
offers users one thing 3rd-party-hosted SaaS never will, full control of the
data it generates and manipulates, an empowerment that hosted services are
unable to match due to financial and political pressures.

That said, it is rather obvious that the use of software which offers the
option to store its data exclusively on equipment owned by the user (software
which may increasingly be based on HTML5 languages and frameworks as well),
will certainly be much more limited as bandwidth becomes more available,
simply thanks to the convenience of not having to manage storage.

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ikono
The running motif of Apple = Joker, Google = Batman is hardly a good way to
get an intelligent conversation going...

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Ruudjah
I tend to agree on this. However, I'm curious how some hardware specific stuff
will be abstracted. Will html5 support sensors, cams, mics, et cetera?
Currently, only the GPS sensor is supported. I have not yet seen any proposed
features heading into this direction.

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patrickaljord
<http://www.w3.org/TR/dap-api-reqs/>

[http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-
work/multipage/...](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-
work/multipage/dnd.html#peer-to-peer-connections)

[https://labs.ericsson.com/developer-community/blog/beyond-
ht...](https://labs.ericsson.com/developer-community/blog/beyond-html5-peer-
peer-conversational-video)

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tomkarlo
This article is in dire need of editing. It's too long, and the metaphor is
too stretched (and dated) and the author goes off on a tangent to rag on Apple
when that's really not core to the subject.

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Scramblejams
This is the kind of analysis you end up with when you assume an exponential
change will continue essentially unbounded.

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mikecuesta
Does anyone believe this stuff?

