

Despite the Hype, Native Apps Aren't Beating The Web - mgl
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26927/?p1=blogs

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GHFigs
There may be a decent argument to this effect, but the one presented is
extremely weak. I don't understand why you get to ignore all[1] mobile native
gaming because of an unsupported assertion that "most people" don't play web
games. Firstly because it's not clear why you would ignore something people do
on one platform because it's (allegedly) not done on another. Secondly because
it's not at all clear that it's true.

FarmVille _alone_ has in excess of 80 million users, some 20% or more of which
play _every day_. Even the original Flurry post that the author links to
points out that "Games, _which typify the most popular kind of app played on
the Facebook platform itself_ , are also the top categories on both Android
and iOS platforms." (emphasis mine) How, then, does it make any sense to
completely ignore native gaming without cutting a single minute off of web
apps?

[1]:Oddly, the author cites web-capable portable devices used for gaming (like
the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP) as something _other_ than native mobile gaming. I
can understand not including them at all, as they weren't part of the original
comparison, but citing them as a reason to ignore gaming on iOS and Android is
_convenient_.

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saurik
I think your comments just help the argument: directly comparing mobile app
usage to web apps is like comparing apples to oranges unless you figure out
what to do about games. The fact that I now spend 10 hours a day playing
tetris on my iPhone instead of my GameBoy, my Super Nintendo, or even my
desktop PC (whether native, JavaScript+Canvas, or Flash), says very little
about the argument most people are having when trying to compare "mobile vs
the web".

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jonkelly
Decent article. The amount of mis-information on mobile app usage is
staggering. The point the article makes about mobile-as-game-platform is
really solid. But, I have to question the pie chart about "time spent per
category." I would classify "camera, calculator, calendar, mail, maps, phone,
messages, notes, and weather" as all "other" on that pie chart and those make
up 95+% of my usage. Similar to DHH's point from a few days ago.

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sliverstorm
There seem to be a lot of inferences made here. Do we know, for example, that
the time discrepancy has nothing to do with time efficiency (speed of task) of
the app? A poor/slow interface can double, triple...

