4 ms·

I find this trend disturbing. This is essentially the opposite of what happened in the 90s during the mass migration from curated networking experiences like AO

by ryandvm 15y ago

I find this trend disturbing. This is essentially the opposite of what happened in the 90s during the mass migration from curated networking experiences like AOL and CompuServe towards the unfettered Internet. Now, people are willingly eschewing the open web in favor of, in the case of iOS, walled gardens. And unless this is reversed, it portends a dismal future for the Internet.

amirnathoo 15y ago
I'm more optimistic - Apple doesn't have a monopoly on the software stack like Microsoft did with Windows. Competition between Android, iOS and Windows Phone already seems to be spurring a race towards openness.
mindstab 15y ago
We're still trying to find the balance of local and cloud. Desktop apps were great in the 90s because they leverage the local machine's speed and hardware (there weren't any mp3 or jukebox webapps in the 90s, games etc). But as the browser and web got more powerful and we started moving around more and having more computers (work, laptop, home) the centrality of "the cloud" because a selling point and for many applications the "local power" of the desktop was less important. Now however we're seeing new constraints play a role. On mobile, again power in some cases is a bit limited, we have more data/sensors to play with and HTML hasn't caught up to complicated swipe interfaces too well yet. We have location and accelerometer sensors that haven't been too well integrated yet. And your phone is always with you. So we're seeing a swing to cloud data back local apps again. The 3 mobile apps I use the most are google reader (the new site layout is space wasteful in a browser on my netbook, good luck having fun reading on a mobile browser), a movie player and a music player. On my desktop I'm just as likely to use grooveshark or some other streaming service, but with still expensive mobile bandwidth having "locally cached" mp3s wins out over streaming. If we want to move this back all onto the web, we need an html6 that supports swipe, mobile app like layout, local storage (I know, html5 draft kinda has this... ish) It's all about device constraints and what is available. This is just a signal we need to develop the browser some more if we again want it to be the platform of choice in this new space.
- rhizome 15y ago
  We're still trying to find the balance of local and cloud. History tells us that this "balance" is a mirage. It's a see-saw with a foundation based on thick vs. thin clients, i.e. where the horsepower is located.
  - gwern 15y ago
    I always liked the metaphor of the 'wheel of reincarnation' from 1968 (!): http://www.cap-lore.com/Hardware/Wheel.html http://www.cap-lore.com/Hardware/Wheel.html (Read the linked PDF paper, better than the HTML summary.)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
huggyface 15y ago
I suspect that many of those minutes are playing Angry Birds or minesweeper. While it might cut into Facebook gaming time, I don't think it really is competition for what most of us see the web as providing. It really is all very temporary anyways. Native apps took off because the web wasn't ready for mobile (most sites were horrendous, etc). I am finding more and more sites offering up excellent mobile experiences that rival or exceed what their parallel native apps offer. Just a few stories away from this the fogcreek crew say "Apps provide things we can’t get out of the web: better speed, offline support, smooth animations, push notifications, and a native look and feel". Of those the only item that legitimately is an advantage of native apps is look and feel.
mindstab 15y ago
Also you're confusing "the internet" with "the web" I think. Most mobile apps are internet backed. Even the games these days all tie into "openfient" for global scoreboarding and acheivment tracking. And most big sites like google reader and facebook offer a mobile app for a better user experience but all the data comes from the internet. The internet is going now where and this won't hurt it at all. As for the web, the subset of the internet that is about passing webpages around? Well, maybe it will be bad for it. And possibly that's not a bad thing. There are pros and cons.
prodigal_erik 15y ago
Javascript had already started killing the web. The industry is going to regress to client/server, and whether the platform will be browsers or mobile devices' own window systems is just an implementation detail. The tradeoffs differ, but they both suck compared to addressable content in standardized formats.
- nkassis 15y ago
  I'm not sure I follow you there, the web has always been more than just html content delivered to your browser. I mean now there is even more access to raw data (json/xml based API) less need to build html parsers and try to scrape sites.
lrobb 15y ago
I think it's even worse... I've done a lot of "desktop" aka "client/server" programming... 5 years ago everyone declared that DEAD. Now, we're going back... it's just now there's a few more devices to support, with tinier screens + touch.

by ryandvm 15y ago

amirnathoo 15y ago

I'm more optimistic - Apple doesn't have a monopoly on the software stack like Microsoft did with Windows. Competition between Android, iOS and Windows Phone already seems to be spurring a race towards openness.

mindstab 15y ago

We're still trying to find the balance of local and cloud. Desktop apps were great in the 90s because they leverage the local machine's speed and hardware (there weren't any mp3 or jukebox webapps in the 90s, games etc). But as the browser and web got more powerful and we started moving around more and having more computers (work, laptop, home) the centrality of "the cloud" because a selling point and for many applications the "local power" of the desktop was less important. Now however we're seeing new constraints play a role. On mobile, again power in some cases is a bit limited, we have more data/sensors to play with and HTML hasn't caught up to complicated swipe interfaces too well yet. We have location and accelerometer sensors that haven't been too well integrated yet. And your phone is always with you. So we're seeing a swing to cloud data back local apps again. The 3 mobile apps I use the most are google reader (the new site layout is space wasteful in a browser on my netbook, good luck having fun reading on a mobile browser), a movie player and a music player. On my desktop I'm just as likely to use grooveshark or some other streaming service, but with still expensive mobile bandwidth having "locally cached" mp3s wins out over streaming. If we want to move this back all onto the web, we need an html6 that supports swipe, mobile app like layout, local storage (I know, html5 draft kinda has this... ish) It's all about device constraints and what is available. This is just a signal we need to develop the browser some more if we again want it to be the platform of choice in this new space.

rhizome 15y ago
We're still trying to find the balance of local and cloud. History tells us that this "balance" is a mirage. It's a see-saw with a foundation based on thick vs. thin clients, i.e. where the horsepower is located.
- gwern 15y ago
  I always liked the metaphor of the 'wheel of reincarnation' from 1968 (!): http://www.cap-lore.com/Hardware/Wheel.html http://www.cap-lore.com/Hardware/Wheel.html (Read the linked PDF paper, better than the HTML summary.)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

huggyface 15y ago

I suspect that many of those minutes are playing Angry Birds or minesweeper. While it might cut into Facebook gaming time, I don't think it really is competition for what most of us see the web as providing. It really is all very temporary anyways. Native apps took off because the web wasn't ready for mobile (most sites were horrendous, etc). I am finding more and more sites offering up excellent mobile experiences that rival or exceed what their parallel native apps offer. Just a few stories away from this the fogcreek crew say "Apps provide things we can’t get out of the web: better speed, offline support, smooth animations, push notifications, and a native look and feel". Of those the only item that legitimately is an advantage of native apps is look and feel.

mindstab 15y ago

Also you're confusing "the internet" with "the web" I think. Most mobile apps are internet backed. Even the games these days all tie into "openfient" for global scoreboarding and acheivment tracking. And most big sites like google reader and facebook offer a mobile app for a better user experience but all the data comes from the internet. The internet is going now where and this won't hurt it at all. As for the web, the subset of the internet that is about passing webpages around? Well, maybe it will be bad for it. And possibly that's not a bad thing. There are pros and cons.

prodigal_erik 15y ago

Javascript had already started killing the web. The industry is going to regress to client/server, and whether the platform will be browsers or mobile devices' own window systems is just an implementation detail. The tradeoffs differ, but they both suck compared to addressable content in standardized formats.

nkassis 15y ago
I'm not sure I follow you there, the web has always been more than just html content delivered to your browser. I mean now there is even more access to raw data (json/xml based API) less need to build html parsers and try to scrape sites.

lrobb 15y ago

I think it's even worse... I've done a lot of "desktop" aka "client/server" programming... 5 years ago everyone declared that DEAD. Now, we're going back... it's just now there's a few more devices to support, with tinier screens + touch.