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I disagree with your assessment. Web Applications involve running JS downloaded from a remote source. If this is closer to slices, as the article says (did you

by voz_ 7y ago

I disagree with your assessment. Web Applications involve running JS downloaded from a remote source. If this is closer to slices, as the article says (did you read it? assuming yes, as this is HN and not reddit), then it is very different. Web applications are not native UI, and often have far worse experience and clunky usage of things like cameras, peripherals, system audio, etc. Slices would ostensibly be native code bundles, verified and tested by Apple. Moving away from web-ish experiences to native ones is a huge win in my book. PS/opinion/fluff: There is also the implementation detail of language. Swift/ObjC is significantly superior to JS.

diggan 7y ago
> Web Applications involve running JS downloaded from a remote source Any "instant apps" like this is gonna involve running code from remote sources. Then if the code is JS or Swift doesn't really matter. > Web applications are not native UI That's true. But that's up to the company deciding over the operating system and the browser in the end. Apple could have easily expose ways for web developers to write native UIs in HTML, CSS and JS. In fact, browsers used to be "user agents" where the user (and effectively the operating system, but user had final say) decided the styling of the content, but then website CSS became a thing and websites starting getting more control and wanted unique looks instead. Judging by the usage of the web, it seemed to have worked out pretty fine. > Moving away from web-ish experiences to native ones is a huge win in my book. Native in this case means running on one platform. I would much rather focus on making something that works for a bigger part of the world, meaning it doesn't exclusively run on Apple hardware but Windows and Linux as well. The browsers are one way of achieving this. Would be great if everyone (mainly Apple, Microsoft and Google) could align themselves behind one platform and work together. But I guess I've been in isolation long enough to start dreaming impossible dreams. But considering your PS/opinion/fluff, I'm wasting my time discussing with you... Hope you're having a good time anyways and take care!
- voz_ 7y ago
  > That's true. But that's up to the company deciding over the operating system and the browser in the end. The OS is far more powerful, and allows for deeper integration and writing in far faster languages. The browser abstracts away the machine. Most JS writers today have no idea or understanding of the actual computer they are writing against. It's a sandbox for them, and it's the reason apps today bloat to hundreds of megabytes and burn CPU to do the most mundane thing. Less distance from the metal is better in my book. > Native in this case means running on one platform. I would much rather focus on making something that works for a bigger part of the world. Feels like a strawman / bad faith argument. As a user, I'd rather use one fast app on my device, I don't care if some guy on another platform can use this product. As an engineer, I want happy users, and if that means writing X clients, so be it.
  - holoduke 7y ago
    What is native? On Android the native Java UI kit is slow and not native. You need a lot of fancy work to get fast c UI libs working on the 1000 different android devices. Goodluck with that. Browsers are probably the most optimized virtual UI machines out there. Sure not native, but I would argue that an integrated webview with proper css3 is much better optimized that using the android component framework or native draw operations. On ios things are slightly different, but also there the standard UI toolkit is a freaking nightmare. Creating general purpose UIs in a language like css feels so much better than most if not all UI toolkits out there.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      “Native” in this context almost always means “using the platform UI toolkit”.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
  >Would be great if everyone (mainly Apple, Microsoft and Google) could align themselves behind one platform and work together. So you want mediocre, resource hog, lowest-commmon-denominator apps? Because that's how you get mediocre, resource hog, lowest-commmon-denominator apps.
- briandear 7y ago
  > Apple could have easily expose ways for web developers to write native UIs in HTML, CSS and JS. Easily? As as far as running on one platform, I like native because my iPhone X Pro has a heck of a lot more capabilities than some generic back alley Shenzhen Android device. And multi platform necessarily requires developing for the lowest common denominator device. And JavaScript isn’t the best language for everything, let’s stop pretending it is.

by voz_ 7y ago

diggan 7y ago

> Web Applications involve running JS downloaded from a remote source Any "instant apps" like this is gonna involve running code from remote sources. Then if the code is JS or Swift doesn't really matter. > Web applications are not native UI That's true. But that's up to the company deciding over the operating system and the browser in the end. Apple could have easily expose ways for web developers to write native UIs in HTML, CSS and JS. In fact, browsers used to be "user agents" where the user (and effectively the operating system, but user had final say) decided the styling of the content, but then website CSS became a thing and websites starting getting more control and wanted unique looks instead. Judging by the usage of the web, it seemed to have worked out pretty fine. > Moving away from web-ish experiences to native ones is a huge win in my book. Native in this case means running on one platform. I would much rather focus on making something that works for a bigger part of the world, meaning it doesn't exclusively run on Apple hardware but Windows and Linux as well. The browsers are one way of achieving this. Would be great if everyone (mainly Apple, Microsoft and Google) could align themselves behind one platform and work together. But I guess I've been in isolation long enough to start dreaming impossible dreams. But considering your PS/opinion/fluff, I'm wasting my time discussing with you... Hope you're having a good time anyways and take care!

voz_ 7y ago
> That's true. But that's up to the company deciding over the operating system and the browser in the end. The OS is far more powerful, and allows for deeper integration and writing in far faster languages. The browser abstracts away the machine. Most JS writers today have no idea or understanding of the actual computer they are writing against. It's a sandbox for them, and it's the reason apps today bloat to hundreds of megabytes and burn CPU to do the most mundane thing. Less distance from the metal is better in my book. > Native in this case means running on one platform. I would much rather focus on making something that works for a bigger part of the world. Feels like a strawman / bad faith argument. As a user, I'd rather use one fast app on my device, I don't care if some guy on another platform can use this product. As an engineer, I want happy users, and if that means writing X clients, so be it.
- holoduke 7y ago
  What is native? On Android the native Java UI kit is slow and not native. You need a lot of fancy work to get fast c UI libs working on the 1000 different android devices. Goodluck with that. Browsers are probably the most optimized virtual UI machines out there. Sure not native, but I would argue that an integrated webview with proper css3 is much better optimized that using the android component framework or native draw operations. On ios things are slightly different, but also there the standard UI toolkit is a freaking nightmare. Creating general purpose UIs in a language like css feels so much better than most if not all UI toolkits out there.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    “Native” in this context almost always means “using the platform UI toolkit”.
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
>Would be great if everyone (mainly Apple, Microsoft and Google) could align themselves behind one platform and work together. So you want mediocre, resource hog, lowest-commmon-denominator apps? Because that's how you get mediocre, resource hog, lowest-commmon-denominator apps.
briandear 7y ago
> Apple could have easily expose ways for web developers to write native UIs in HTML, CSS and JS. Easily? As as far as running on one platform, I like native because my iPhone X Pro has a heck of a lot more capabilities than some generic back alley Shenzhen Android device. And multi platform necessarily requires developing for the lowest common denominator device. And JavaScript isn’t the best language for everything, let’s stop pretending it is.