
Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps - johnzimmerman
http://atavistinsider.atavist.com/goodbye-native-mobile-apps/
======
mark_l_watson
+1 for the article

As a web vs. app proponent I love this. I do have a few apps installed on my
Note 4 but I prefer getting Twitter, FB, etc. as a web site.

Web standards like HTML5 are wonderful so let's use them and make the web
awesome.

My brother and one friend each have a few hundred apps installed on their
phones. I am sometimes surprised that their phones still function with so much
cruft installed, never mind the privacy considerations.

~~~
_delirium
Websites also can't spam you with push notifications the way installed apps
can, so I strongly prefer them as a user. But I suspect this is one reason
companies like apps.

I'm not sure whether it's my imagination, but this seems to have gotten a lot
worse in the past year or two, and is no longer limited to apps from shady no-
name companies. Apps from reputable companies used to try to have some
plausible reason related to your actual use of the app for a notification, but
lately Yelp and Hotwire have just started brazenly spamming ads unrelated to
any activity. So I uninstalled those two, and am now much more resistant to
installing new ones.

~~~
mintplant
>Websites also can't spam you with push notifications the way installed apps
can, so I strongly prefer them as a user.

On Android, at least, you can disable notifications on a per-app basis. Press
and hold on a notification, touch the icon that appears, and uncheck the
notifications checkbox on the next screen.

~~~
izym
I'm not sure it can be done directly from the notification, but on iOS you can
also disable notifications per app and specify how it should be displayed (pop
up vs at the top etc.)

I've also noticed an increasing amount of apps that now also use the
notifications for ads. Definitely not what I like to see on my lock screen.

~~~
zyx321
>I've also noticed an increasing amount of apps that now also use the
notifications for ads. Definitely not what I like to see on my lock screen.

Once again, Apple is lagging behind by several years ;) This kind of Ad used
to be incredibly common on Android for a while, but Google eventually stepped
in and banned these sort of apps from the store. Honestly, I'm a little
surprised that Apple allows them.

[http://phandroid.com/2013/09/30/google-play-notification-
ads...](http://phandroid.com/2013/09/30/google-play-notification-ads-policy/)

~~~
_delirium
While it's gotten rid of the worst spam (apps sending totally unrelated ads as
notifications), unfortunately there are holes in that policy big enough to
still drive a busload of junk notifications through, as long as they're
somehow related to the app:

> _Apps and their ads must not display advertisements through system level
> notifications on the user’s device, unless the notifications derive from an
> integral feature provided by the installed app. (e.g., an airline app that
> notifies users of special deals, or a game that notifies users of in-game
> promotions)._

To me those are still pretty spammy. An airline app notifying me that a flight
I have a ticket for is delayed would be one thing; that's a legitimate use of
system-level notifications. But an airline app vibrating my phone, just to
announce that AirlineName Has Great Deals To The Caribbean In Our End Of
Summer Sale? That is not ok, but Google allows it. I assume this is also how
Yelp is able to send that kind of junk notification without getting banned.

------
ksec
As a user, I dont really care about it being an App or Mobile Web. It needs
two things,

1\. An Icon on my Springbroad, so i can easily view it whenever I want to.

2\. It should be butter smooth and dont warm my pants after reading. ( i.e
lots of CPU cycle. )

Native Apps does better in both department. And whenever users gets a choice
most would likely prefer the App version. HTML5 or Web has definitely improve,
and it could or will do better then the web if we dont have the Ads constantly
loading in the background. ( Ad blocker is another topic )

I guess atavist already have their group of loyal customers it makes sense for
them to change.

Personally I see the article mostly complain about the Distribution and
Discovery Problem. And some App Store Approval process.

~~~
eloisant
I'm not sure about that.

1\. You can have an icon for web apps

2\. That's only true if the web version is crappy and overloaded with ads and
trackers. A decently designed

I prefer mobile web for publications, because it's just a link that doesn't
impact my phone. The native integration usually only brings annoyances, like
unwanted notifications or sucking the battery to fetch articles I may not
read.

Apps are for applications. For content, nothing beats the web.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Apps are for applications. For content, nothing beats the web._

Exactly. I don't want to read your article over your own dedicated app, I
already have a perfectly good browser...

...BUT! I also hate _applications_ made as webpages, because no one can
perfectly hide the fact it's not native. In webapps, UI pretty much always
lags somewhere, breaks down completely under spotty Internet connection, or
does something weird because there's no way for webapp to replicate _every_
aspect of expected UI functionality of user's phone.

------
idibidiart
The web is a great publishing medium for magazines and news outlets. Apps are
for doing stuff beyond passive browsing.

~~~
stephengillie
Choosing the mobile website over the app is one way of keeping the
relationship from going any further. A website can't ask you for your contact
list like an app can.

~~~
voltagex_
[http://www.w3.org/TR/contacts-api/](http://www.w3.org/TR/contacts-api/) \-
but I get your point.

~~~
owencm
That feature was designed but never built, so his point still stands. In my
ideal world sites can do that stuff, they just have to ask, and users can
always say no.

~~~
ianlevesque
So the way iOS apps already do this...

------
tootie
I'd add that if you intend to maintain a web site then adding support for apps
(presumably multiple since cross-platform is still hard) then you are
throttling your bandwidth to actually improve features and stability. I'm
thinking of certain food delivery app that had enough bugs on their Android
app, then I fell back to their mobile site and haven't looked back. They could
have saved themselves probably a few million bucks and just kept their mobile
site looking spiffy.

~~~
praneshp
Eat24?

------
rebootthesystem
Well, the most important thing you gain from moving your apps to the web is
owning the relationship with your users. And that is HUGE.

With the Apple iOS App Store you are isolated from your users, it is very
difficult and nearly impossible to build a list and keep in touch with them in
a meaningful way. I am sure there are cases where this isn't true, but I think
I can say this is probably the case for the vast majority of apps out there.

By being on the web it is your business, your platform and your users. Not
Apple's (or whoever).

And, yes, depending on your niche, building an audience could be very
difficult. Guess what? The vast majority of apps on the app store fail. I
think we might actually be able to say success on the web might actually be
easier.

------
kin
As a consumer I can relate to this. I subscribe to many monthly magazines
including GQ and Esquire. I enjoy the publication as it is meant to be viewed,
ads and all. Of course, now they're piled up and so I want to switch to
digital. Sounds like a great solution.

GQ has a digital app or I can use iOS news stand. This was not a great
experience as each issue took at least 20 minutes to download a gig of
content. Of course, once the content is there the experience is rich and
fantastic.

Based off my experiences, I really think a mobile web experience is best for
reading magazines. Only the page I'm interested in would load and I shouldn't
have to take up a whole gig of precious space to read an issue.

Just my two cents.

------
georgemcbay
As an Android user I'm very fond of native apps as long as they integrate into
the OS well via activities, intents, content provider interfaces etc, all
stuff you can't really do with web apps (though I know someone is going to
want to chime and and talk about WebIntents or whatever other thing nobody
actually uses because it just doesn't deliver the same sort of flexibility as
what I'm talking about).

So I'm sticking with native apps where it makes sense.

Having said that, for the type of site this actual post is discussing, eh...
web is probably just fine. Go ahead and use it... I have no issue with the
linked article, but some of the people discussing this here and other places
seem to be nudging this into a discussion about "mobile web is ready to
replace all native apps", which IMO is a ridiculous statement.

------
brusch64
But isn't this an "App" which shouldn't have been an App in the first place (I
think they write something like this in the article).

That's really one of my pet peeves. I don't like installing apps just to read
an article. A good mobile site is much preferable in my opinion. But I've
started a little bit later than most to the smart phone game and I'm a little
bit quirky - so that may be just me.

~~~
simonh
If only there was a single native app, preferably pre-installed on the phone,
that was specifically designed to download content from publishers around the
world and render it dynamically on a range of device screen sizes. It could be
publisher neutral and allow bookmarking, and maybe let you have multiple pages
open at a time. Nah, it'd never catch on. Native apps for publishing are dead
;)

------
rokhayakebe
I suspect the reason many think they prefer apps is the one-click launch and
the automated bookmark created on your screen.

If a mobile browser behaved like an appstore (Search for website, See results,
Click to Install, i.e. bookmark), you would have the same behavior, downloads,
and most people would not be able to tell whether they are using an app, web
app, or website.

~~~
lewisl9029
This is exactly what the Hosted Web App and Web App Manifest Specs are meant
to address:

[http://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/](http://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/)

Unfortunately, the two largest mobile platforms (iOS and Android) don't have
native support for these specs yet. And I'm not sure if they ever will
properly support them since they'd probably prefer to keep the free developer
lock-in they get with their native app platforms.

In the mean time though, you can use projects like Manifold JS to create
Cordova-based polyfills for those platforms:

[http://manifoldjs.com/](http://manifoldjs.com/)

~~~
sehr
I don't use android, but I remember hearing about it trying to blur the lines
between apps & browser tabs. They might be more amenable to the idea of
browser apps considering web advertising is their cash cow too IIRC

------
thewhitetulip
This is great! Mobile apps have taken our age back to the age where everything
is platform dependent, the Internet was invented so that devices from multiple
manufacturers could communicate with each other, but with Android and iOS we
have created a new niche of platforms, now it is devices with specific
Operating Systems, and they are pushing our age back!

There is a trend in Indian startups to abandon the web altogether and go "app
only", among other reasons it defeats the entire purpose of the Internet as we
know it, kudos Atavist!

------
declan
It looks like the folks at Atavist did the right thing. As far as I can tell
they created a publishing platform that lets folks format thousands of words
of text and photos and videos, which is a very good use case for a web
browser. Plus, contributors can add links, italics, subheds, captions, etc.
This is not the best use case for mobile apps.

They have a beautiful digital magazine that doesn't need to live in a native
app -- and had no compelling reason to.

When we started building our smart news app ( more info at
[https://recent.io/](https://recent.io/) ) we considered creating a non-native
web app and took a few steps in that direction. But we rely on touch gestures
a lot, require no keyboard input except for searching, update news
recommendations minute-by-minute, and wanted to appear in the app stores, so
we went down the iOS and Android paths instead.

------
ousta
the article does not mention this but publishing an app for iOS is drastically
more costly in time and efforts than publishing for android.

It is the worst publishing process I have ever seen. sluggish certificates,
keys, provisionning profiles, iOS lack of retro-compatibility, apple lack of
communication on what the major versions are changing and apple lack of
judgement when reviewing apps with guidelines that are changing every day.

Frankly I don't even understand how can developers enjoy working on developing
apps for iOS it is lackluster in every part.

~~~
andreamazz
What do you mean by lack of retro compatibility? You can still ship apps that
target ios6, you have runtime checks for APIs that are missing in one version,
the IDE suggests what is available or not.

The major versions (and minors) are thoroughly documented in API diffs, the
IDE suggests what to modify according to your platform target.

The review guidelines are basically changing for the major versions,
accordingly to the new tech introduced, and most of them are dictated by
common sense. If something goes awry the review team is available to discuss
with you. Good luck getting an Android app reinstated if it is taken down.

The certificates are a pain in the ass, no way around that, but the rest of
the platform makes up for this, the tools and language(s) are way easier to
use.

~~~
vetinari
I have an iPhone 3G in the drawer, as an emergency phone.

The amount of apps, that this phone can download from App Store, whether
running iOS 3 or 4, is exactly zero (yes, even those that were available in
the past, cannot be downloaded).

My brother has for exact the same purpose the original HTC G1, running Android
1.6. That phone can download every single app from the Play Store, that was
made available when the phone was supported.

~~~
qq66
If you're using it as an emergency phone, do you really need to install apps?
Apple has taken the position that the older phones are not worth the trouble
it takes to support them. The numbers seem to bear out this decision -- most
in-market iPhones seem to be 4S and newer, and people upgrade their iPhones
almost immediately when the new OS is released (this I can't understand at
all, the new OSes frequently break things, and I always wait a few months to
update).

~~~
vetinari
Background: I needed to sync the contacts with Google. Meanwhile, Google
disabled the ActiveSync support, the phone was reset, and I was looking for
some app to do that. In the past, there were apps capable of doing so, but
now, they were unavailable. Add to that inability to side-load the apps..

Regarding the retro-compatibility:

Nobody supports Android 1.x either. However, in the past, developers did
upload their apps that did work on these devices. So why the users shouldn't
be able to download these old versions?

And that's the difference. Apple actively removed old packages from the store,
while Google just left them there. Just this alone makes the old android
devices more useful.

------
halosghost
First of all, good for atavist. They recognize their market, and are following
the path of greatest efficiency and effectiveness. Sounds like great business
sense to me.

Now, on the other hand, I have to say, this kind of thing always bums me out.
For a news distribution service, it does not matter so much I suspect, but in-
general, the trend of putting more and more of the functionality I rely on
daily into a web browser is distressing. Web browsers, despite all the
innovation and work that has gone on lately, are still an enormous attack
surface with the most significant likelihood of security breach (especially
given that the rise of javascript has led us all to the point where we are
almost allowing arbitrary code execution from untrusted sources on every page
visit). Not to mention that web browsers were founded on the notion of
conveying content, not functionality; HTML is a markup language (with <canvas>
and JS and HTML frameworks, that's not so concrete anymore), it was not meant
to host alternatives to the power of native applications.

I often find myself wishing for the ability to use a text-based web browser
and have "The Web" still work, but those days are mostly long-gone[1] till I
finally get around to writing my own browser[2] (which seems like it should
not be a necessary step just to be able to interact with a simpler Web).

I suppose I am just tilting at windmills at this point (and, as I said, this
post is not really aimed at atavist since I think content-delivery is a
perfect niche for being web-only). Ah well, a user can dream, I suppose…

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38al1w-h4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38al1w-h4k)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072796)

------
st3fan
How do you deal with offline support? If I'm not connected and I want to read
an article, where do I go? Can't open the website.

Did you run metrics to find out how many people are going to miss offline?

~~~
owencm
Actually, sites in Chrome can work fully offline today using Service Worker
([http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/service-
worker/introd...](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/service-
worker/introduction/)). And they can get users to add the site to their
homescreen, so they have the full icon+offline experience
([https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/increasing...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/increasing-
engagement-with-app-install-banners-in-chrome-for-android)).

~~~
mintplant
Service Workers are also in Firefox Nightly right now, but are hidden behind
an about:config flag until the feature is fully baked.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Service_Wor...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Service_Worker_API#Browser_compatibility)

[http://caniuse.com/serviceworkers](http://caniuse.com/serviceworkers)

There's also the Application Cache, which has been fully supported in the
stable versions for a while now.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTML/Using_the_...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTML/Using_the_application_cache)

[http://caniuse.com/offline-apps](http://caniuse.com/offline-apps)

And of course, FF for Android has an "Add to Homescreen" button too.

~~~
hackcasual
Application cache is a fucking nightmare. Service Worker's can't come soon
enough.

------
swah
This will happen naturally once we don't have a word for apps and another for
websites.

Icon on the home screen and finding the "app" on the store is what most users
need (basically bookmarks).

------
applecore
It's becoming increasingly clear that the future of publishing—for content
providers—will be to relinquish control and publish their content directly to
third-party distribution and engagement platforms.

See: Snapchat Discover & Facebook Instant Articles.

------
a3n
The thing about potentially having to wait two weeks to make an updated app
available, and the control over your business that implies, makes my testicles
suck up into my torso.

------
jlarocco
It's sad it's taken people so long to realize it, but at least they're
starting to get a clue. Who'd have thought that an app that's essentially a
web browser tied to a single site was a bad idea that nobody would want to
use?

If desktop and laptop users access your content/game/social network/whatever
from a web page, it's probably best to have mobile users access it that way,
too.

~~~
radio4fan
I absolutely agree.

And I don't buy their justification for going down the app route in the first
place: "But by the middle of 2011, six months after we launched in our app,
more than half of installed web browsers were still not HTML5 compliant."

Who cares? The app only targets iOS, so as long as mobile Safari rendered it,
they were fine. And most of us here know that the app would be a pretty thin
wrapper round a webview.

I suspect the _real_ reason for going down the app route is because back in
2011 all the marketing types were screaming "WE MUST HAVE AN APP!!!1!!"

News International made the same mistake with "The Daily", which (probably)
cost them over $60M.

------
seivan
Could have used React and tried to share component source between iOS, Android
and Web.

I mean since you're going to fully go web, I don't see the problem in this.
It's all JavaScript anyway, unless you want to start playing with the hardware
APIs.

Yeah you would have to write some of the UI layer differently, but I think it
isn't that much. You can wrap your own UI components to use Android/iOS/Web
internally.

~~~
marknutter
That doesn't solve any of the problems they listed in the article.

~~~
Flenser
> as we pushed the design envelope further on our stories, we were constantly
> running into the technical limitations of the app approval process. While we
> could develop, deploy, and—if necessary—repair new code instantly on the
> web, any change to our apps required re-submitting it to the app store in
> question.

It's possilbe that if the design changes are only on the javascript side that
the app could just download those instead of them having to be sent for
review.

------
brad0
The biggest problem with native apps is that there are a lot of native mobile
developers. One in 20 or so are actually good.

So you have all these apps that were built by someone who has no idea on how
to architect them. The company has already spent so much just getting it out
the door that they refuse to rewrite it.

Native mobile dev is great. You just need to have good mobile developers run
your team.

~~~
harryf
Same applies for web. There is so much crappy mobile web UX out there. Good
developers, good designers etc. are all essential whatever the platform

------
frame_perfect
Ironically this article doesn't render in MobileSafari for me.

------
johnpjoseph
Interesting that a smallish magazine is moving away from native mobile back to
web while not too long ago I saw that some large retail company discontinued
their mobile web site and require use of their native app (flipkart I think).

I don't think expecting a new audience just because you have an app is
reasonable. I'd be interested in seeing how many new users they generate with
just the mobile web site - I suspect that ultra loyal existing readers may
take the time to bookmark their site and come back, but would be very
surprised if their overall usage doesn't decline.

~~~
har777
One of their acquired companies Myntra is now app only. Only have a pc and the
internet ? Sorry. You can only purchase from our apps.

~~~
lenkite
Myntra sales drastically dropped after going app only.
[http://goo.gl/JQy6IX](http://goo.gl/JQy6IX)

------
alistproducer2
It depends on two things: do you make use of hardware and does your ux depend
on touch gestures.

------
chayesfss
Sencha does this for enterprise apps too. For publishing, I wish RSS feeds had
taken off. Would be great to visit a site and see that I could just subscribe
to their RSS feed and see it in my own reader app.

~~~
baldfat
The loss of RSS just still blows my mind. I still get my podcast with it but
sad to see RSS to be relegated to obscurity when it started out so strong. The
issue was the implementing it was "too much trouble" with the public.

------
Animats
Good. Using the app mechanism to deliver static pages was silly and
inefficient. The only reason it caught on was because it came with a payment
system.

------
cdnsteve
Why not Meteor (meteor.com)? It has hot code push ability. No store approval
required. Everything in JS.

------
beefsack
Horses for courses; the web works well for content, apps work well for
interactivity.

------
hiou
So content is king?

------
ourmandave
I was hoping it would say what their dev stack is.

~~~
sehr
On the front end they use Polymer

[https://youtu.be/fD2As5RmM8Q?t=966](https://youtu.be/fD2As5RmM8Q?t=966)

------
fabioyy
i hear the same bullshit since the time when iphone was released ( and without
apps support )

yet, there isn't a single "amazing" case of webapp. ( the same for xamarin,
phonegap, cordova, name_your_cross_app_development_here )

i call it laziness to learn how to code native apps.

the only cross development that works, is for games ( almost all top 10 mobile
games are in unreal or unity ( or cocosx ) )

~~~
ergothus
It's about your content, not a universal rule.

Text content? Turns out the web is great, and you don't get much benefit from
going native.

Highly interactive, multiple control, local database content? Turns out web
sucks at it on mobile devices.

------
swagv
Native apps are just a momentary crutch until Web standards on devices get
better. Especially since most so-called apps are merely glorified Web pages in
custom browsers.

------
glisom
Lol, sure.

------
stutsmansoft
Good luck

------
rdsnsca
Never heard of this website until today... maybe they should of advertised it
some.

