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Those are not issues that will stop the spread of webapps though. One major impediment into the mobile market is the fragmented environments. Using a common e

Those are not issues that will stop the spread of webapps though. One major impediment into the mobile market is the fragmented environments. Using a common environment (ie open web) would allow much more flexibility to develop multiplatform apps. At that point, most people would be willing to give up some of the platform specific features (inertia, etc) to run across platforms. edit: this is my opinion as a web developer who is thinking of getting into the mobile market, not as a mobile developer.

nupark2 15y ago
As a mobile developer, our clients are either in the business of selling products/services to users, or selling users to advertisers. Either way, our clients need people to download and use their application. In turn, we must provide the best possible user experience for those prospective users; If our application provides a worse user experience than the competitor's, users will choose the competitor. In some cases, you might get away with a worse user experience -- if you want Netflix's content, you have to use Netflix's application, and a competitor can't edge out Netflix without providing replacement content, as well. However, this is unlikely to be to your benefit if another competitor does offer content of equivalent value to users, and they choose to spend their attention on an application with a superior user experience.
bad_user 15y ago
Unfortunately phones have lots of useful features that aren't exposed in the browser. For instance, I just installed an app on my Android that creates a blacklist of phone numbers to reject, both calls and SMS and also cleans up the phone's logs. Basically once you add a phone number to that app, it may as well not exist anymore. I love this little app so much that I would rather do without all available web apps out there on my phone ... because the main purpose of my phone is to connect with people and not having API integration with its core functionalities, like voice calls and SMS would make whatever "smartness" it has basically useless. I'm still baffled as to why this isn't a standard feature in phones, but whatever, at least on Android you can add it (versus the iPhone, which requires rooting). And exposing these low-level features in the browser through proprietary extensions wouldn't help the fragmented market. It also doesn't help that each environment has its own look&feel, so you'll have to add lots of platform specific stylesheets and Javascript for emulating standard behavior. The best combination for me (as in fast development, not the best user experience) is building native apps with a web interface exposed through an embedded web view.

nupark2 15y ago

As a mobile developer, our clients are either in the business of selling products/services to users, or selling users to advertisers. Either way, our clients need people to download and use their application. In turn, we must provide the best possible user experience for those prospective users; If our application provides a worse user experience than the competitor's, users will choose the competitor. In some cases, you might get away with a worse user experience -- if you want Netflix's content, you have to use Netflix's application, and a competitor can't edge out Netflix without providing replacement content, as well. However, this is unlikely to be to your benefit if another competitor does offer content of equivalent value to users, and they choose to spend their attention on an application with a superior user experience.

bad_user 15y ago

Unfortunately phones have lots of useful features that aren't exposed in the browser. For instance, I just installed an app on my Android that creates a blacklist of phone numbers to reject, both calls and SMS and also cleans up the phone's logs. Basically once you add a phone number to that app, it may as well not exist anymore. I love this little app so much that I would rather do without all available web apps out there on my phone ... because the main purpose of my phone is to connect with people and not having API integration with its core functionalities, like voice calls and SMS would make whatever "smartness" it has basically useless. I'm still baffled as to why this isn't a standard feature in phones, but whatever, at least on Android you can add it (versus the iPhone, which requires rooting). And exposing these low-level features in the browser through proprietary extensions wouldn't help the fragmented market. It also doesn't help that each environment has its own look&feel, so you'll have to add lots of platform specific stylesheets and Javascript for emulating standard behavior. The best combination for me (as in fast development, not the best user experience) is building native apps with a web interface exposed through an embedded web view.