This argument can be summed up by simply stating "huge installed userbase + new technology == native app competition". In terms of new tech, he mentions offline

This argument can be summed up by simply stating "huge installed userbase + new technology == native app competition". In terms of new tech, he mentions offline access to the application. This argument has been made before - heck, as he says, the iPhone originally ONLY accepted web apps - and has been demonstrated to be completely wrong through user behavior. Native apps almost always have a better UI and better user experience due to their access to the underlying system API. The API access lets them make their interface components look right, lets them perform tasks in the background, lets them send messages/alerts to the user, and numerous other things that a web app simply cannot perform due to inadequate access to the system API. Until the user experience with web apps is the same as that with native apps, this argument will continue to be wrong. On a related note, John Gruber has an excellent writeup on this topic here: http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/iphone_web_apps_alternative http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/iphone_web_apps_alternativ...