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The native vs. web arms race reminds me of Movies vs. Television. To attract people into theatres, the movie people made movies wider, added stereo sound, &c. &

The native vs. web arms race reminds me of Movies vs. Television. To attract people into theatres, the movie people made movies wider, added stereo sound, &c. &c., always trying to keep the theatre experience better than the TV experience. But TV wins for convenience, cost to develop, and ubiquity, so there's plenty of content developed directly for television. It's not a perfect simile, but there's enough of a resemblance that thinking the Movie/TV history through stimulates my thinking about native/Web. JM2(anecdotal and inexpert)C

pirateking 14y ago
Interesting analogy. Here is where it breaks down for me: Assuming (Movies : Apps :: Theater : Operating System), then (Television : Web), makes some sense, but doesn't fully work. The browser (the current medium for interacting with the web), exists on top of the Operating System, but Televisions are not tied to movie theaters in any such way. On the other hand one obvious thing TV and the web do have in common is ads, versus up front cost of admission with native apps and movie tickets. I might be old fashioned, but I see native apps as tools. Sturdy things that you can count on to do a task well. Browsers are one such tool used for communicating over the web. I see the web as a medium of communication rather than a tool. I suppose this mental model is why web apps feel wrong to me.