3 ms·

User experience, discoverability, and offline. These three features have traditionally been the primary reasons to build a native mobile app, and even target mo

User experience, discoverability, and offline. These three features have traditionally been the primary reasons to build a native mobile app, and even target mobile first. But the web, with its open nature and flexible usefulness, has a way of reducing the lead that native has in these three areas. User experience - You can still create a better experience with a native mobile app, but that's changing and many apps don't require the snazziness of a native experience to still be amazing. (See Basecamp mobile) Discoverability - The web hasn't changed much, but the app stores are hurting themselves. Vibhu's point that discoverability and the viral loop is VERY hard on mobile is illustrative of the lead that native mobile had in discoverability diminishing. Offline - Although HTML5 can handle much of that problem on the web, I think a really great offline experience still requires a native mobile app. However, the increase in connectedness and the realization that most apps don't need to have offline at their core means the gap is narrowing as well.

Joeri 14y ago
We've been here with the desktop before, and it's shaking out much the same way: User experience: web apps are still worse than desktop apps and always will be. Good enough is good enough. On mobile the good enough tipping point for web apps is now. Discoverability: the app stores don't have enough shelf space for new apps just like the physical stores didn't have enough shelf space for boxed copies. Web apps were more discoverable because word of mouth is the primary vector and nothing is easier than sharing a link. On mobile the same is true: going viral is easier with a mobile web app loaded in the browser, but people haven't caught on to that yet. Offline: i've built and shipped an offline mobile web app. There is only one hard constraint, and that's the 50 mb of storage you get on iOS (and that with caveats). Otherwise it's just a question of the API's being nicer to use on native. That reduces offline on web to a matter of tooling and expertise, painful but solvable. You can implement all the same use cases, it just takes more engineering in some cases. On iOS you can even hide the browser's chrome, and put a nice glossy icon on the homescreen.

Joeri 14y ago

We've been here with the desktop before, and it's shaking out much the same way: User experience: web apps are still worse than desktop apps and always will be. Good enough is good enough. On mobile the good enough tipping point for web apps is now. Discoverability: the app stores don't have enough shelf space for new apps just like the physical stores didn't have enough shelf space for boxed copies. Web apps were more discoverable because word of mouth is the primary vector and nothing is easier than sharing a link. On mobile the same is true: going viral is easier with a mobile web app loaded in the browser, but people haven't caught on to that yet. Offline: i've built and shipped an offline mobile web app. There is only one hard constraint, and that's the 50 mb of storage you get on iOS (and that with caveats). Otherwise it's just a question of the API's being nicer to use on native. That reduces offline on web to a matter of tooling and expertise, painful but solvable. You can implement all the same use cases, it just takes more engineering in some cases. On iOS you can even hide the browser's chrome, and put a nice glossy icon on the homescreen.