4 ms·

If Apple doesn't want your app published, good luck providing that "better experience". The smart money is in making a web app for everyone first, perhaps not

If Apple doesn't want your app published, good luck providing that "better experience". The smart money is in making a web app for everyone first, perhaps not with all the bells and whistles, but sufficiently functional, and then making platform-specific apps. Regarding "offering the same lowest common-denominator user experience on all devices"—know your audience. You don't have to make your app pixel-perfect for IE 6 if iOS users are all you're targetting. Web browsers "degrade" gracefully. One of the features of web apps is that they can be anything—"the web is open". Mobile native apps are (often solely) available through app stores which are dictatorships, controlling when—and if—your app and its updates are released.

slaven 15y ago
But that's a fallacy - web apps can't be "anything". For example, right now they can't pulse phone's vibrate function, or turn on camera flash LED if your stock hits a certain price. Yes, maybe some day they will, through a "camera flash control XHTML extension", but by then we'll want those same apps to also toggle the built-in hologram projector.
- beaumartinez 15y ago
  That's true—I wasn't thinking about the more hardware-focused apps at the time (rather the Apple-won't-allow-that kind). Regarding "camera flash control XHTML extensions", Mozilla's WebAPI[1] is trying to provide a standard API to interact with (namely) phones' software and hardware. [1] http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/08/introducing-webapi/ http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/08/introducing-webapi/
technoslut 15y ago
It depends on which app your creating, doesn't it? Google's Marketplace for Android is completely open but they don't have the users purchasing apps as they should. Many web apps haven't proven to be financially profitable except a well-publicized few,
mechanical_fish 15y ago
app stores which are dictatorships The 1990s called. They want their metaphor back. Let's face it: The "dictatorship" metaphor was fun (Remember the cartoons with the X-wing fighter torpedoing the AT&T Death Star logo? Good times.) but it was probably overwrought even back in the old days when DOS software and Mac software and each of the 23 different Unices were binary incompatible and emulation was dog slow and virtualization was like science fiction and choosing a platform felt like proposing marriage. But now? It might even be a dangerous line of thinking. You need to learn to think like your customer, and they don't see this oh-so-crucial distinction between "native apps" and "web apps". Except to the extent that web apps are a trifle more difficult to find: Instead of finding the pretty icon and touching it, you have to touch Safari and then type the name of your desired app into the Googles. (No, of course the average customer doesn't know how to bookmark a URL. They don't know what a URL is.) A defining characteristic of the metaphorical "dictatorship" is that people can't vote. In particular: They can't vote with their feet, because the wall is too high or the ocean too wide or the border guards (on whichever side of the border) are too expensive to bribe. But there are only two kinds of native-app platforms today: A) The platforms in which a full-featured HTML5-compliant browser is at most two clicks away at any time; B) The platforms that are being crushed to death by iOS, Android, and the other platforms in Category A. Where's the big barrier here? Half of my native apps embed entire HTML5 web pages. Or they link out to HTML5 web pages. Meanwhile, an increasing quantity of web pages prompt me to install native apps. The answer to "web apps or native apps" is "both", to the degree that they interpenetrate and are inseparable, and what reason is there to believe that this won't continue? Developers obviously care about their release schedules and their profit share and the backend technology underlying each and every screen on the phone, but customers don't know and they don't much care.
- beaumartinez 15y ago
  More than anything I meant the allusion to a dictatorship as to the fact that Apple can decide whether they want your app or not, and can decline it for any reason. (And I agee, it's a worn metaphor but I couldn't come up with a more succinct description.) > Web apps are a trifle more difficult to find That's pretty much my point—Apple want to control what you put on their devices. Remember when they were touting web apps[1]? Look at the page now. Most recent: 12/03/2010. iPhone 3Gs. They dropped that as soon as they realised they were harming their profits with the App Store. [1] http://apple.com/webapps http://apple.com/webapps

slaven 15y ago

But that's a fallacy - web apps can't be "anything". For example, right now they can't pulse phone's vibrate function, or turn on camera flash LED if your stock hits a certain price. Yes, maybe some day they will, through a "camera flash control XHTML extension", but by then we'll want those same apps to also toggle the built-in hologram projector.

beaumartinez 15y ago
That's true—I wasn't thinking about the more hardware-focused apps at the time (rather the Apple-won't-allow-that kind). Regarding "camera flash control XHTML extensions", Mozilla's WebAPI[1] is trying to provide a standard API to interact with (namely) phones' software and hardware. [1] http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/08/introducing-webapi/ http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/08/introducing-webapi/

technoslut 15y ago

It depends on which app your creating, doesn't it? Google's Marketplace for Android is completely open but they don't have the users purchasing apps as they should. Many web apps haven't proven to be financially profitable except a well-publicized few,

mechanical_fish 15y ago

app stores which are dictatorships The 1990s called. They want their metaphor back. Let's face it: The "dictatorship" metaphor was fun (Remember the cartoons with the X-wing fighter torpedoing the AT&T Death Star logo? Good times.) but it was probably overwrought even back in the old days when DOS software and Mac software and each of the 23 different Unices were binary incompatible and emulation was dog slow and virtualization was like science fiction and choosing a platform felt like proposing marriage. But now? It might even be a dangerous line of thinking. You need to learn to think like your customer, and they don't see this oh-so-crucial distinction between "native apps" and "web apps". Except to the extent that web apps are a trifle more difficult to find: Instead of finding the pretty icon and touching it, you have to touch Safari and then type the name of your desired app into the Googles. (No, of course the average customer doesn't know how to bookmark a URL. They don't know what a URL is.) A defining characteristic of the metaphorical "dictatorship" is that people can't vote. In particular: They can't vote with their feet, because the wall is too high or the ocean too wide or the border guards (on whichever side of the border) are too expensive to bribe. But there are only two kinds of native-app platforms today: A) The platforms in which a full-featured HTML5-compliant browser is at most two clicks away at any time; B) The platforms that are being crushed to death by iOS, Android, and the other platforms in Category A. Where's the big barrier here? Half of my native apps embed entire HTML5 web pages. Or they link out to HTML5 web pages. Meanwhile, an increasing quantity of web pages prompt me to install native apps. The answer to "web apps or native apps" is "both", to the degree that they interpenetrate and are inseparable, and what reason is there to believe that this won't continue? Developers obviously care about their release schedules and their profit share and the backend technology underlying each and every screen on the phone, but customers don't know and they don't much care.

beaumartinez 15y ago
More than anything I meant the allusion to a dictatorship as to the fact that Apple can decide whether they want your app or not, and can decline it for any reason. (And I agee, it's a worn metaphor but I couldn't come up with a more succinct description.) > Web apps are a trifle more difficult to find That's pretty much my point—Apple want to control what you put on their devices. Remember when they were touting web apps[1]? Look at the page now. Most recent: 12/03/2010. iPhone 3Gs. They dropped that as soon as they realised they were harming their profits with the App Store. [1] http://apple.com/webapps http://apple.com/webapps