I mostly agree, but web apps have been set back a few years by mobile. I had this conversation with my girlfriend the other day: Her: If ____ had a [mobile] a

I mostly agree, but web apps have been set back a few years by mobile. I had this conversation with my girlfriend the other day: Her: If ____ had a [mobile] app I'd waste so much time on it. Me: You know you can use their website on your phone, right? Her: Yeah, but apps are so much better. Out of curiosity, I went to this particular site on my phone and they actually do have a mobile web app, complete with home screen icon and the meta tags to make it fullscreen. If you add it your homescreen it could pass as a decent native app. There are two problems with web apps right now: 1) Quality. It's pretty hard to make really nice mobile web apps, or apps in general. There are lots of behaviors in the browser that are un-app-like which you need to work around. Native platforms were designed for apps from the start. Performance can also be an issue (possibly solved by something like NativeClient). 2) Discoverability. Users look for app in the app store first. If they don't find it they often don't check for a mobile web app, either because they're not aware they exist or they assume it will be crap. App stores need to have better integration for web apps. In the meantime, wrappers like PhoneGap can help.