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>That's quite a leap considering that the big movement of late has been towards native apps (in the context of tablets/phones) That was a few years ago, the in

>That's quite a leap considering that the big movement of late has been towards native apps (in the context of tablets/phones) That was a few years ago, the industry has moved on since the iPhone. I can't think of any exciting new native apps in the last few years. Were there even any native apps at all created by the last batch of YC companies? >Also considering that much effort is being spent on things like PNacl to get native apps to run over the web. PNacl is not going to take off, and rightly so: it's Google's attempt to lock the web into their own proprietary platform. >Web apps still suck compared to their native counterparts I disagree. I don't have to worry about saving, I can use them from any computer anywhere in the world and continue what I was doing. I don't have to worry about updates. My system won't get compromised because I forgot to install a vital security upgrade for app X Y or Z. My app won't suddenly get deleted from my computer because the OS vendor decided to censor it. I don't have to worry if it will run on my system, or work out what dependencies I need to install. It will always just work.

rayiner 14y ago
Since when is "created by the last batch of YC companies" the benchmark for the direction the industry has been moving? How about: Apple spent the last few years making a huge amount of money pushing a new platform for native apps (iOS). Google and Microsoft followed suit with Android and Windows 8. That's been the story of the last few years. The big movement has been towards tablets, and tablets have been a vehicle for native apps. Re: web apps sucking--many of the issues you mention are solved on iOS/Android, and can be solved by backup mechanisms like Dropbox.[1] Some of the issues you mention are imagined (OS vendor deleting apps from your computer). Finally, you fail to address the actual point, which is that web apps suck at what they do. The most popular and commonly used web app is probably Google Docs, and it's total shit. It's so shitty that I'm pretty sure AbiWord in 1998 was a better product than Google Docs circa 2013. I can't remember font rendering shittier than Google's PDF viewer in the last decade, and that's going back to GTK 1.x here. It's a cute trick that's helpful in a pinch, but it still sucks compared to even shitty native Office competitors. [1] It's telling that arguably the most well-known YC company's product is fundamentally based on making it easy to integrate native apps with cloud storage.

rayiner 14y ago

Since when is "created by the last batch of YC companies" the benchmark for the direction the industry has been moving? How about: Apple spent the last few years making a huge amount of money pushing a new platform for native apps (iOS). Google and Microsoft followed suit with Android and Windows 8. That's been the story of the last few years. The big movement has been towards tablets, and tablets have been a vehicle for native apps. Re: web apps sucking--many of the issues you mention are solved on iOS/Android, and can be solved by backup mechanisms like Dropbox.[1] Some of the issues you mention are imagined (OS vendor deleting apps from your computer). Finally, you fail to address the actual point, which is that web apps suck at what they do. The most popular and commonly used web app is probably Google Docs, and it's total shit. It's so shitty that I'm pretty sure AbiWord in 1998 was a better product than Google Docs circa 2013. I can't remember font rendering shittier than Google's PDF viewer in the last decade, and that's going back to GTK 1.x here. It's a cute trick that's helpful in a pinch, but it still sucks compared to even shitty native Office competitors. [1] It's telling that arguably the most well-known YC company's product is fundamentally based on making it easy to integrate native apps with cloud storage.