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If so I'm in full agreement. It's truly mind-blowing how much energy has been wasted on trying to shoehorn the web into an app delivery platform over the last

If so I'm in full agreement. It's truly mind-blowing how much energy has been wasted on trying to shoehorn the web into an app delivery platform over the last decade. To what end? To make the browser a general purpose platform? We have that already, it's called an "operating system". Edit: that said, I disagree with many points and the general negativity in TFA

aperiodic 9y ago
It's a great example of worse is better in action: a technically inferior platform winning out because it's better at one or two things that enable virality, which is the only thing that matters when all the money is looking for high growth. In this case, it's that webapps require zero effort and time from the user to get started with, and allow developers to get the closest to the "write once, run anywhere" dream than anything else (if you're doing a decent responsive design, you can even get a good experience on both desktops and phones with much less effort and no gatekeeping), so the development effort is a lot lower. These two attributes make it really hard for a native app to compete on growth terms with a webapp, since it has a higher hurdle for users, higher initial development costs to target the same amount of users, and higher iteration costs to ship (and get users to install) a new version. It doesn't matter that it's hilariously inefficient; as long as it's just below the threshold where the user tears their hair out, they're not going to jump ship.
- tannhaeuser 9y ago
  True, but I think the push for web apps is mostly about lock-in and ad-financed web services.
  - aperiodic 9y ago
    How do web-apps help lock-in? Because you can force users to update?
    - tannhaeuser 9y ago
      Because your data is being held hostage by the service provider. No more grandmas showing photo albums to their grandchildren when Facebook is long gone 30 years from now :'(
      - aperiodic 9y ago
        Well, you can easily do this with a native app that relies on content from your servers (e.g. dropbox).
        tannhaeuser 9y ago
        But with dropbox and/or alternatives you can always access raw files via the/a file browser. With Fb, OTOH, there was a story some time ago where you only could download photos in downscaled resolutions, or where downloading native resolution files was hidden in obscure option menus.
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  Also web is open. I don't need Tim Cook's permission to run something. And despite this lack of walled garden, I'm much less likely to get something bad from web, than from app, because web have much better sandbox than app ever will.
  - LnxPrgr3 9y ago
    I don't know about that: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1224/product_id-15031/opec-1/Google-Chrome.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1224...
erikpukinskis 9y ago
Are you comfortable running arbitrary binaries built by arbitrary people? If not, then I fail to see how an operating system is a sensible general purpose computing platform. It worked OK when we just wanted to run software written by a handful of trusted parties... Microsoft, Adobe, id Software. But as soon as there were 1000s of companies writing software that we wanted to try, running binaries ceased to be a good idea. I don't really trust any binary software on my machine that isn't written by Apple. But I will open basically anything in a web browser because I don't have to trust it. Even now, with all the sandboxing, Microsoft and Apple still have to manually review software in their stores. And truthfully, app stores are basically a naive Web of Trust system. It's not safe at all. Applications constantly open up holes and then say "oops! Security bug!" and what... you're owned now? But Apple doesn't believe it was a maliciously placed hole, so it's all good? Hell of a security model!
- tannhaeuser 9y ago
  Web apps are hardly a solution to this problem, those being always connected. If regular apps need permissions (for eg. opening photos on your device) then so do web apps. Are you comfortable with web sites sending your location home, or recording audio/video? If anything, web apps are too sandboxed to do anything useful.
- blub 9y ago
  "But I will open basically anything in a web browser because I don't have to trust it." That's incredibly funny. I guess sooner or later you'll learn why it's a losing strategy. The web is probably the largest malware infection vector nowadays.
  - Brakenshire 9y ago
    It's the largest malware vector because it's the largest software vector. It still remains true that running a random website is a million miles away from running a random exe.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Instead of making fun of me, could you point me at a place to learn? What in-browser malware am I not aware of?

aperiodic 9y ago

It's a great example of worse is better in action: a technically inferior platform winning out because it's better at one or two things that enable virality, which is the only thing that matters when all the money is looking for high growth. In this case, it's that webapps require zero effort and time from the user to get started with, and allow developers to get the closest to the "write once, run anywhere" dream than anything else (if you're doing a decent responsive design, you can even get a good experience on both desktops and phones with much less effort and no gatekeeping), so the development effort is a lot lower. These two attributes make it really hard for a native app to compete on growth terms with a webapp, since it has a higher hurdle for users, higher initial development costs to target the same amount of users, and higher iteration costs to ship (and get users to install) a new version. It doesn't matter that it's hilariously inefficient; as long as it's just below the threshold where the user tears their hair out, they're not going to jump ship.

tannhaeuser 9y ago
True, but I think the push for web apps is mostly about lock-in and ad-financed web services.
- aperiodic 9y ago
  How do web-apps help lock-in? Because you can force users to update?
  - tannhaeuser 9y ago
    Because your data is being held hostage by the service provider. No more grandmas showing photo albums to their grandchildren when Facebook is long gone 30 years from now :'(
    - aperiodic 9y ago
      Well, you can easily do this with a native app that relies on content from your servers (e.g. dropbox).
      - tannhaeuser 9y ago
        But with dropbox and/or alternatives you can always access raw files via the/a file browser. With Fb, OTOH, there was a story some time ago where you only could download photos in downscaled resolutions, or where downloading native resolution files was hidden in obscure option menus.
vbezhenar 9y ago
Also web is open. I don't need Tim Cook's permission to run something. And despite this lack of walled garden, I'm much less likely to get something bad from web, than from app, because web have much better sandbox than app ever will.
- LnxPrgr3 9y ago
  I don't know about that: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1224/product_id-15031/opec-1/Google-Chrome.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1224...

erikpukinskis 9y ago

Are you comfortable running arbitrary binaries built by arbitrary people? If not, then I fail to see how an operating system is a sensible general purpose computing platform. It worked OK when we just wanted to run software written by a handful of trusted parties... Microsoft, Adobe, id Software. But as soon as there were 1000s of companies writing software that we wanted to try, running binaries ceased to be a good idea. I don't really trust any binary software on my machine that isn't written by Apple. But I will open basically anything in a web browser because I don't have to trust it. Even now, with all the sandboxing, Microsoft and Apple still have to manually review software in their stores. And truthfully, app stores are basically a naive Web of Trust system. It's not safe at all. Applications constantly open up holes and then say "oops! Security bug!" and what... you're owned now? But Apple doesn't believe it was a maliciously placed hole, so it's all good? Hell of a security model!

tannhaeuser 9y ago
Web apps are hardly a solution to this problem, those being always connected. If regular apps need permissions (for eg. opening photos on your device) then so do web apps. Are you comfortable with web sites sending your location home, or recording audio/video? If anything, web apps are too sandboxed to do anything useful.
blub 9y ago
"But I will open basically anything in a web browser because I don't have to trust it." That's incredibly funny. I guess sooner or later you'll learn why it's a losing strategy. The web is probably the largest malware infection vector nowadays.
- Brakenshire 9y ago
  It's the largest malware vector because it's the largest software vector. It still remains true that running a random website is a million miles away from running a random exe.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Instead of making fun of me, could you point me at a place to learn? What in-browser malware am I not aware of?