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"Super apps" are just bundlers. This is the history of software, and other businesses as well. From Jim Barksdale: “Gentlemen, there’s only two ways I know o

"Super apps" are just bundlers. This is the history of software, and other businesses as well. From Jim Barksdale: “Gentlemen, there’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling.” And said, “We’ve got an airplane to catch.” And we left, and Peter Currie, walking out the door, said, “Those people are looking at you, Barksdale, like you’re crazy. What did you just say?” And I said, “Well, best I can tell, most people spend half their time adding and other people spend half their time subtracting, so that’s what works out.” https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundling-and-unbundling https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundli... Here is another presentation on "super apps" by Connie Chan of A16Z: https://a16z.com/2020/01/23/four-trends-in-consumer-tech/ https://a16z.com/2020/01/23/four-trends-in-consumer-tech/ Of course the largest "super app" is the operating system as it constantly offers new APIs etc.. and devours more features by point solutions leading to terms like being Sherlocked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)

zxcmx 6y ago
I feel like OS as a superapp is an underappreciated concept. Like the idea that fish don't see water. On one side we have WeChat, but on the other side we have IOS, Android, and the browser. And we're free... to install approved apps from approved sources. Free... to view stuff inside a browser window that works the way the platform owners want it to. What if we could unbundle the operating system? I wonder what innovations we're missing out on? For example, true peer to peer networking would be nice. I don't think we'll ever see it from Apple or Google. It's a hard problem sure, but it's also not in anyone's interest to allow people to communicate directly without platforms intermediating.
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  People don't WANT an unbundled OS. What does unbundled from the browser even mean? I can imagine my mom on day one with an unbundled OS ... "Well, first you need to download a browser, I recommended firefox but you have sooo many choices now that they are unbundled! What are those choices? Well, if you go www.browserchoicesexplaned.unbundled you'll ... oh, wait"
  - pydry 6y ago
    People don't want shit browsers either. IE6 was a trainwreck and wasn't improved for years purely because Microsoft didn't have to - coz it was bundled. Companies like to bundle products because they know that when they do that they can sell more mediocrity at a higher price.
    - simonh 6y ago
      >IE6 was a trainwreck and wasn't improved for years purely because Microsoft didn't have to Remind me how that turned out for them. They _thought_ they didn't have to. Bundling is a powerful strategy, but it isn't a magic wand that dispels competition. You still need to offer a compelling product.
      - cptskippy 6y ago
        Microsoft's failures as a monopoly helped write the book on how to keep your monopoly. Apple learned that a monopoly is only illegal when it stifles competition, but if no competition is ever allowed then regulatory bodies completely overlook it. Google learned that you don't have to stifle the competition, instead you overwhelm them with openness. You make everything you do an open or standardized and keep dumping it over the fence.
        simonh 6y ago
        >...if no competition is ever allowed then regulatory bodies completely overlook it. Regulators look at the market. When they looked at desktops in 2001 they saw Microsoft with 90%+ domination and were concerned that consumer choice might be compromised and was being abused. For mobile they don't look at the 'iOS market', they look at the smartphone market and see Apple with less that 50% of it in the US. So if you're concerned about Apple's potential abuse of it's power over it's users, which is entirely fair, anti-trust simply isn't the way to look at it. You'd need to go to regular consumer protection legislation.
        Ensorceled 6y ago
        Apple is sh*t at stifling competition, they have less than 20% of the world smart phone market and a half dozen major competitors. Google stifles competition by using their incredible ad revenue engine to fund products like Android and then giving them away for what amounts to "future consideration", effectively destroying the non-apple OS market as well as other markets.
- fsloth 6y ago
  "What if we could unbundle the operating system? I wonder what innovations we're missing out on?" I think the only one benefitting from that would be the middleman to test the various os:s against the zillion or so hardware platforms and combinations out there to provide at least some selection of OS that might or might not work on your device (instead of just bricking it right away). A mobile device is not some standard hardware supporting a standard OS. A mobile device is an agglomeration standard or non-standard hardware components, and their hardware drivers, bundled with an OS that probably has been customized some way to facilitate the underlying platform. You can't abstract the world away. OS is the level where the dirty nitty gritty details of running a hardware system are hidden away from the user. You still need to have a platform where to install and run all the device drivers and so on..
- rrdharan 6y ago
  It’s not in VirnetX’s interests, certainly...
- simonh 6y ago
  Unbundling the OS is basically the Open Source model. So yes you can install a bare bones OS core and then slot in whatever tools, apps and services you want, but then your system is it's own special individual snowflake. The intersection of all the people using the same text editor, ftp client, mail client, desktop, window manager, browser, IM client, backup software and PDF viewer is, er, just you. So what happens then is people come up with bundled solutions called Distros, but there are dozens of them. On mobile the nearest equivalent are all the small time AOSP based OEMs, but even then end users are manipulated in certain ways by the default apps and app store that comes with the phone.
- csytan 6y ago
  Docker would an example of unbundling apps from the OS. It's specific to the server audience though. Some other examples in the consumer space would be React Native, Flutter, Electron, etc.
aloer 6y ago
The idea of the OS as a super app is interesting and fits nicely with how I personally think the current AI wave will play out: Right now everything is its own product with all the overhead that it brings with it. Eventually, as more and more “AI” things (abstract on purpose) will be integrated on the OS level, we will have a more streamlined process for development of “smart” software products on such a OS. I put AI and smart in quotes because with our current understanding it means ML/DL which means things like voice and pattern recognition, text summarization, perfect OCR, text/content generation, visual indexing etc. We do know from experience that the way we interact with a typical OS, whether mobile or laptop/desktop, does not change very often. iOS was ground breaking because it put the context first. A decision that is still causing problems for power users as seen with the difficulties in becoming productive with iPads. Example: previously: PDF Reader program to show a pdf. Can be saved to disk and sent as file via mail now: pdf file as context passed between apps through share dialog for reading followed by mailing What interests me quite a lot is how we might interact with an OS that will become such a ‘smart OS-like super app’ by bundling the features mentioned above. Will they only exist as APIs for software developers to use on these systems, for ease of development? Or will they be somehow integrated into the common end users usage of and interaction with that system? I bet there is a lot of value in solving the latter
echevil 6y ago
No it's not. With WeChat you can easily get new features by visiting mini-apps. It is actually a distribution channel

zxcmx 6y ago

I feel like OS as a superapp is an underappreciated concept. Like the idea that fish don't see water. On one side we have WeChat, but on the other side we have IOS, Android, and the browser. And we're free... to install approved apps from approved sources. Free... to view stuff inside a browser window that works the way the platform owners want it to. What if we could unbundle the operating system? I wonder what innovations we're missing out on? For example, true peer to peer networking would be nice. I don't think we'll ever see it from Apple or Google. It's a hard problem sure, but it's also not in anyone's interest to allow people to communicate directly without platforms intermediating.

Ensorceled 6y ago
People don't WANT an unbundled OS. What does unbundled from the browser even mean? I can imagine my mom on day one with an unbundled OS ... "Well, first you need to download a browser, I recommended firefox but you have sooo many choices now that they are unbundled! What are those choices? Well, if you go www.browserchoicesexplaned.unbundled you'll ... oh, wait"
- pydry 6y ago
  People don't want shit browsers either. IE6 was a trainwreck and wasn't improved for years purely because Microsoft didn't have to - coz it was bundled. Companies like to bundle products because they know that when they do that they can sell more mediocrity at a higher price.
  - simonh 6y ago
    >IE6 was a trainwreck and wasn't improved for years purely because Microsoft didn't have to Remind me how that turned out for them. They _thought_ they didn't have to. Bundling is a powerful strategy, but it isn't a magic wand that dispels competition. You still need to offer a compelling product.
    - cptskippy 6y ago
      Microsoft's failures as a monopoly helped write the book on how to keep your monopoly. Apple learned that a monopoly is only illegal when it stifles competition, but if no competition is ever allowed then regulatory bodies completely overlook it. Google learned that you don't have to stifle the competition, instead you overwhelm them with openness. You make everything you do an open or standardized and keep dumping it over the fence.
      - simonh 6y ago
        >...if no competition is ever allowed then regulatory bodies completely overlook it. Regulators look at the market. When they looked at desktops in 2001 they saw Microsoft with 90%+ domination and were concerned that consumer choice might be compromised and was being abused. For mobile they don't look at the 'iOS market', they look at the smartphone market and see Apple with less that 50% of it in the US. So if you're concerned about Apple's potential abuse of it's power over it's users, which is entirely fair, anti-trust simply isn't the way to look at it. You'd need to go to regular consumer protection legislation.
      - Ensorceled 6y ago
        Apple is sh*t at stifling competition, they have less than 20% of the world smart phone market and a half dozen major competitors. Google stifles competition by using their incredible ad revenue engine to fund products like Android and then giving them away for what amounts to "future consideration", effectively destroying the non-apple OS market as well as other markets.
fsloth 6y ago
"What if we could unbundle the operating system? I wonder what innovations we're missing out on?" I think the only one benefitting from that would be the middleman to test the various os:s against the zillion or so hardware platforms and combinations out there to provide at least some selection of OS that might or might not work on your device (instead of just bricking it right away). A mobile device is not some standard hardware supporting a standard OS. A mobile device is an agglomeration standard or non-standard hardware components, and their hardware drivers, bundled with an OS that probably has been customized some way to facilitate the underlying platform. You can't abstract the world away. OS is the level where the dirty nitty gritty details of running a hardware system are hidden away from the user. You still need to have a platform where to install and run all the device drivers and so on..
rrdharan 6y ago
It’s not in VirnetX’s interests, certainly...
simonh 6y ago
Unbundling the OS is basically the Open Source model. So yes you can install a bare bones OS core and then slot in whatever tools, apps and services you want, but then your system is it's own special individual snowflake. The intersection of all the people using the same text editor, ftp client, mail client, desktop, window manager, browser, IM client, backup software and PDF viewer is, er, just you. So what happens then is people come up with bundled solutions called Distros, but there are dozens of them. On mobile the nearest equivalent are all the small time AOSP based OEMs, but even then end users are manipulated in certain ways by the default apps and app store that comes with the phone.
csytan 6y ago
Docker would an example of unbundling apps from the OS. It's specific to the server audience though. Some other examples in the consumer space would be React Native, Flutter, Electron, etc.

aloer 6y ago

The idea of the OS as a super app is interesting and fits nicely with how I personally think the current AI wave will play out: Right now everything is its own product with all the overhead that it brings with it. Eventually, as more and more “AI” things (abstract on purpose) will be integrated on the OS level, we will have a more streamlined process for development of “smart” software products on such a OS. I put AI and smart in quotes because with our current understanding it means ML/DL which means things like voice and pattern recognition, text summarization, perfect OCR, text/content generation, visual indexing etc. We do know from experience that the way we interact with a typical OS, whether mobile or laptop/desktop, does not change very often. iOS was ground breaking because it put the context first. A decision that is still causing problems for power users as seen with the difficulties in becoming productive with iPads. Example: previously: PDF Reader program to show a pdf. Can be saved to disk and sent as file via mail now: pdf file as context passed between apps through share dialog for reading followed by mailing What interests me quite a lot is how we might interact with an OS that will become such a ‘smart OS-like super app’ by bundling the features mentioned above. Will they only exist as APIs for software developers to use on these systems, for ease of development? Or will they be somehow integrated into the common end users usage of and interaction with that system? I bet there is a lot of value in solving the latter

echevil 6y ago

No it's not. With WeChat you can easily get new features by visiting mini-apps. It is actually a distribution channel