11 ms·

App-pocalypse Now

242 points by Evgeny 13y ago

tmosleyIII 13y ago
Imagine an environment that was not connected to the Internet but you still needed to deliver services through handheld and desktop platforms. Would you go native or a web (internal) based solution? All devices would be the same and all users would have access to same services.
BadassFractal 13y ago
Can we stick to the web somehow instead and bypass the various proprietary walled gardens?
- Ygg2 13y ago
  Just give it a few years (like five or ten), it'll come back to the web. I think the APP-cycle will end and new Web 3.0 will be the new craze.
- _random_ 13y ago
  Yes, just need a way of letting companies innovate on the web of pigeonholing into crappy HTML5 and JS. Maybe make PNaCl more mainstream.
- pjscott 13y ago
  We can. Whenever I see "Would you like to install our app? Y/n", my answer has been Ctrl-w to close the tab. This strategy has worked flawlessly for years. It can work for you, too.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    May I suggest the additional step of an /etc/hosts file entry for the site in question. I recommend '0.0.0.0'.
- nobbyclark 13y ago
  The web is Googles walled garden. Both Facebook and Apple realized this so made their own walled gardens to prevent Google taking over
sgift 13y ago
The only good news: If the web is as dead as the PC or Lisp I won't have to care about these problems for a long time. Back to work ..
- ithkuil 13y ago
  yep, but this kind of considerations define which projects get funded and get traction and excitement. There is always money in legacy, but you don't read often a about a startup creating exiting products for COBOL refactoring...
  - haiduc 13y ago
    Isn't that the definition of exiting? http://www.cobol-it.com/index.php?page=products http://www.cobol-it.com/index.php?page=products "Restructuring COBOL sources" "COBOL-IT is the first company offering an enterprise-class Open Source COBOL Compiler with a wide range of Premium Professional Services"
nunodonato 13y ago
I, for one, am tired of the app-bubble. It will take a few more years, probably, but eventually will go away. Am I the only one that looks at this whole app-crazy-run as something completely unsustainable?
- CmonDev 13y ago
  We are slowly transitioning into HTML5 bubble at the moment.
  - oblio 13y ago
    There is no HTML5 bubble. Even if there is, on the long term it will be a mere blip on the radar. The Web is the Borg. First there was the dotcom bubble, and now the Web is bigger than that. Then there was the Web 2.0 bubble, and now the Web is bigger than that. Now it's time for the HTML5 bubble to grow and burst, and in 10 years the Web will be even bigger still.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Explain? I'm as curmudgeonly as they get. Other than DRM, I think I'm actually pretty happy with what I see in HTML5, though unfortunately there's still no way to actually force Web developers to use just a minimal markup set. If I could force every last goddamned Web dev in the universe to stick with <html>, <body>, <header>, <article>, <aside>, and <footer> tags, along with <p>, <em>, <strong>, <a>, <blockquote>, <ul>, (and list items), form and text elements, and <img>, I think I wouldn't shed a tear. And I could then write my own goddamned CSS to render their pages in a sane and readable fashion. Once (as opposed to the 1000x I'm approaching now via Stylebot). Table elements would be accessible for a fee, waivable for actual data presentation.
    - burkestar 13y ago
      HTML5 isn't just about the tags. It's an ecosystem of technologies that are breaking down the barriers of the browser to enable more native-like experiences over the web. Take for example how Google Maps in the browser can "access your phone's location". Think about what it's doing - there's a browser API that web developers can call that retrieves data sensed off the user's mobile device. This used to only be possible with native apps. Also, the HTML5 ecosystem is more exciting because of the renaissance with javascript (nodeJS for server-side javascript, many JS libraries and frameworks) and the entire developer tooling that is making web development workflows much more productive than in the past.
dredmorbius 13y ago
I saw the WebMD app nag and thought for more than a few moments that it was from codinghorror.com. And was unmistakably annoyed. Then I realized that was precisely the point. And yes, it's absofuckinglutely annoying. Right up there with interstitials and flyovers on webpages. I'm thinking of writing a default Stylebot CSS to simply block any element class / ID starting with "fly". The other problem, of course (and checking to see if Jeff addresses this -- yes, obliquely) is that every app comes with its own permissions set(s) which I the user need to individually inspect and vet. And, frankly, which I'm increasingly reluctant to do so. Fastest way to get your app removed from my phone? Request additional permissions. Goodbye Pandora, whatever that "identify that song" app was, Facebook, Mr. Number (irony: nominally a privacy-enhancing app) and others.
- supercoder 13y ago
  The permission set is just a huge flaw in Android. They really need to adopt the iOS model.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    What's the IOS model? My view: I should be able to specify what (if any) of my information is available. It's up to the app to decide if it wants to be there or not. There are some tools (I run across mentions, and there was one Google apparently pulled after "accidentally" releasing it) which do this. But really, it's why I'm looking for a dumb phone and a tablet running the tools I want (Web, eBook reader, SSH) and local apps, but not Android. Really bad taste in my mouth.
    - rainforest 13y ago
      The iOS model uses App Store reviews (with whatever static analysis secret sauce they do), plus user permission requests for access to some things like location and contacts. I'd suggest Nokia's Symbian permission model was better, if a little annoying. It asked each time the app tried to use a given permission (until you permanently allowed/disallowed it).
skore 13y ago
The problem with "apps" is fundamentally one of curation which IMHO is, in turn, a problem of centralization. If you set out to build "the one big marketplace", you inevitably get to a place where mostly what your marketplace offers is crap, because you have optimized it towards providers putting stuff onto your marketplace. Thus, in building "the big marketplace", you necessarily fail to optimize it towards users getting value out of the marketplace, because you kinda sorta hoped that would be taken care of by "free market" pressures. (And also because it's one of those "hard problems" that you would rather forget about and build some neat code instead.) But it's the users bearing the collateral damage. I'm currently working on a package/application distribution system that is decentralized and the "app-pocalypse" is one of the reasons why I made it so. Being decentralized means that the value you are getting out of it depends mainly on the trust you invest in your immediate channel provider who in turn now has a responsibility to keep you happy. By splitting up the relationship and giving people proper roles instead of the delusion of a grand audience that is fit for whatever some app developers shovel into the system, I hope it will end up providing actual value instead of just a top-down revenue system. Having worked on it for a while now, it always strikes me as weird how we are all on the Internet (which by its design is fault tolerant and decentralized), building these centralized, monolithic services that inevitably fail (either in a big way due to security reasons or in a slow way, like in the app-pocalypse) for the same reasons.
- mattlutze 13y ago
  > Thus, in building "the big marketplace", you necessarily fail to optimize it towards users getting value out of the marketplace, because you kinda sorta hoped that would be taken care of by "free market" pressures. In an open and free market most of the stuff sold "is crap", but people generally discover valuable things and will equalize to the right intersection of value and cost, all things equal. The big problem with a big marketplace is when it obscures the value part of that balance. How do I determine which of these 30 applications has the best value/cost balance? Isn't straight-up downloads, because who knows how many of those people still use the app. Isn't necessarily rating, because we know those responses don't really answer the big question. A small curated market solves the hard question (which is most valuable for the price?) but short-cutting the question. The user doesn't need to ask or research, because by the nature of having a small, curated marketplace, the marketplace organizers rely on their own credibility as curators. Like the news industry, whose job it was to curate the news, eventually a few small curators float to the top and then attract more quality curators, growing that marketplace. But it's still inherently weak, because you're still not supporting the user answering their own question - which of these has the best value for the cost?
oblio 13y ago
Oh, so we've come full circle. Don't download random Windows apps from the internet, they're bad for your PC! Hey, here's my nice shiny app store where the applications are curated. Only quality content, categorized, free of spyware and other distractions. Oh no - market pressure has pushed the bar lower and lower and I once again have to rely on the Internet for reviews and comparisons of apps in order to install only the decent and trustworthy apps. Kind of sounds like the Windows model all over again. But this time I have to go through your BS systems to publish an app on my own device. Yay progress!
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  And the answer which the Linux world came up with: we're going to offer you a repository with your distro from which you can obtain most or all of the applications you need. In the case of one particular distro, Debian, this was backed by a Social Contract[1] and Constitution[2], expressed in Policy[3] which was ultimately enacted by A Package Tool (APT)[4] with user feedback and interaction supported through the Debian Bug Tracking System (BTS)[5]. Among the principles of the Social Contract: "Our priorities are our users and free software". The result: a distro with a tremendous number of packages available (49,614 on my jessie/sid install), in which the significant concerns are user experience (including privacy and security), and freedom of software. The last possibly best exemplified in LWN's coverage of a story ... wow, already a decade ago, on LWN: "Debian and the hot babe problem". It concerned an "ITP" (intent to package) a new piece of software. I'll let Jon Corbet take it from here: The program involved is hot-babe, a graphical CPU utilization monitor. It works by displaying a typical Bruno Bellamy drawing of a minimally-clad, maximally-endowed woman. As the CPU gets busier ("hotter"), the woman undresses to compensate. Your editor, whose journalistic ethics required that he investigate this utility, found it to be an amusing addition to the desktop - for about five minutes, or until the children walk in, whichever comes first. The Debian developers raised the obvious, predictable objection to the inclusion of this utility: the associated images were covered by a non-free license. Hot babes notwithstanding, one thing I noticed Debian didn't have problems with a decade ago were drive-by installs of spyware and adware which were plaguing Windows at the time. That, um, "ecosystem" has now moved into the mobile space, and the negative equity and goodwill associated will, I suspect, play out in time there as well.
philbarr 13y ago
On the reason why people will spend $5 on a coffee but not $1 on an app: I've been thinking about this for a while and noticed this behaviour amongst my friends. I have one friend who is a true apple fan-boy and finishes his phone contract early so he can get the latest iPhone earlier at much cost etc. I recently finished an app and said - hey, do you mind downloading it for me and checking it out? He says, "but it costs £1?!" I said, "ok, no worries, I'll GIVE you the £1 right now" He still said "No". Why? Because "he never spends money on apps." Weird, right? Then last night I'm watching Horizon - "How we make decisions" [1], and they talked about how when we feel we are ahead we are much more cautious than when we feel we are behind, when we experience "loss aversion" and are more likely to take a gamble. I wonder if this is the best way to monetize apps. So you offer the app for free (no risk at all), then instead of offering "add-ons", you offer to remove "restrictions", implying that the user is already behind and they should take the gamble to get back to their "free" app. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/10658646/Horizon-How-You-Really-Make-Decisions-review.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-r...
- megablast 13y ago
  You can't just by one app, unless you link the iPhone to your credit card, which a lot of people do not want to do.
  - philbarr 13y ago
    He had already done that, because he needed to buy a couple of very expensive music apps he "needs". I would agree if that was the case though. Should have said. But usually he doesn't like to buy any apps on general principle. I wanted to explore the feeling of aversion he has to paying £1 on his device, which is so strong he won't do it even if someone pays him £1 to do it. I've felt that aversion myself, and as an indie app dev I'm naturally quite keen on finding ways to explain it or work around it. Some of the bigger companies seem to get around this by just targetting kids who don't experience the aversion 'cos it's not their cash - but I don't want to do that.
    - 13y ago
fauigerzigerk 13y ago
Permissions are a real problem of installed apps, but otherwise I wonder if web apps are that much better _if_ they are really applications and not documents/content. The general functionality provided by web browsers (URLs, the back button, searching in a apge, etc) is very useful as a common basis for different content centric sites. But it just doesn't work very well for applications regardless of whether or not these applications are based on HTML/JavaScript or on some other GUI toolkit. Yes the back button can be made to do _something_ in any app. But how can users have a reasonable expectation or intuition of what it's going to do? "Go back" used to mean "show me the page I saw before clicking the hyperlink". Bookmarking meant "remember the current page". But applications don't have pages, they have states. Pages are concrete. States are abstract. That is the real problem, not the specific technology on which applications are based.
- frik 13y ago
  It's called one-page app. You can control the browser tab history with HTML5/JS5 and create WebApps that offer all the same functionally you see in most native apps.
  - fauigerzigerk 13y ago
    I think you misunderstand me. I didn't say it was technically impossible to create applications based on HTML/JavaScript that have similar functionality to installed apps. What I said is that if you do that, you get the very same UX problems as well. You can implement back button functionality in either technology, but what it does needs to be reinterpreted for every single app because you have lost the page as a concrete unit of reference. There may be other useful units of reference, but they are different ones in different apps regardless of technology.
Ygg2 13y ago
Meanwhile there are decent sites that run fine in the browser. E.g. I had no trouble with http://thrillbent.com http://thrillbent.com adapting to my PC/phone screen size.
smoyer 13y ago
At least the "It looks like you're writing a letter" era came with entertainment by Clippy. I avoid going to sites that don't remember my rejection of their "website-wannabe" apps ... Atwood is right about how annoying that is!
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  You call that entertainment? Back when I had the misfortune to have to use Microsoft software, pretty much the first thing I learned to do on any fresh revision was how to nuke those damned tools with extreme prejudice. The most gratuitously annoying aspect of the cartoons? The little dance they did when you told them to go to fucking hell and never come back. One more half second just to rub it all in.
  - smoyer 13y ago
    Calling it "Entertainment" was tongue-in-cheek ... WSYIWYG is overrated!
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      Seems it's less tongue-in-cheek than staple-into-roof-of-mouth, but yes.
      - smoyer 13y ago
        Ouch! (It hurts to just consider that)
  - gaius 13y ago
    I liked the cat, I still miss him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykGIcXKAXbI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykGIcXKAXbI
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      I'm quite fond of cats. Not that one though. They were all just so gratuitously annoying. Actually, now that I think about it, Microsoft's tone-deafness on just how much people hated Clippy reminds me of Google's attitudes on G+, Real Names, and the Anschluss of all Google services. Note that ZDNet (hardly a harsh Microsoft critic) noted when Clippy was finally killed (in 2001): http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-kills-off-clippy-3002085615/ http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-kills-off-clippy-3002085615/ Software giant Microsoft is laying off one of its most controversial employees: Clippy. The software help system, a long-despised feature of Microsoft's popular Office suite of business software, is the star of a new Web marketing campaign launched on Wednesday. The campaign and a companion Web site trumpet Microsoft's forthcoming Office XP software as so easy to use that Clippy is out of a job. And even that didn't take, they had to take out a second hit 9 years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I
cLeEOGPw 13y ago
There should be some universally recognized icon, like RSS feed icon, which would be on sites offering app versions, and user could press it of he wants to.
- burkestar 13y ago
  It's going that way. Hopefully not some annoying icon featured prominently on every page, but instead a subtle browser-based recognition that the site also has a web app and puts a tiny mobile icon in the browser bar that will launch you to the app's install page.
  - sirkneeland 13y ago
    This functionality is actually built into the Metro side of IE 10/11 on Windows 8. Which sadly means that nobody (especially nobody who reads HN) will ever see it.
    - burkestar 13y ago
      Cool, didn't know that. But HTML5 will enable this in a platform-indepedent manner which is good for the web.
- Raphael 13y ago
  Google Play and Apple App Store each have a "badge" graphic consisting of the logo and some white text on a black, rounded rectangle. Maybe Google wouldn't mind if you cut it down to just the Play logo. Apple says not to modify theirs or use the Apple logo alone. I'm surprised Apple doesn't use their normal pencil-paintbrush-ruler icon for the App Store, as the Apple logo alone doesn't necessarily make sense.
burkestar 13y ago
It seems that the line between native app and web will increasingly blur as HTML5 matures to the point it obviates whatever advantages remain with building native apps. I think this will mean a better end user experience as there will no longer be these walls between the web and mobile experience. It doesn't seem efficient for companies to have to build a website, a mobile version of the website (with responsive design), and native apps (for every platform).
- rimantas 13y ago
  > It seems that the line between native app and web will > increasingly blur as HTML5 matures Would you care to elaborate on that? Because I see no blurring. Building apps with webtech was a stupid idea to start with, and the current state is just incessant running in circles trying to invent a wheel. I am pretty sure that webdevs touting the victory of HTML5 have no idea what native offers and how many years behind even the best web-based offering is. Why don't you first replace all the desktop apps with the browser and then talk about mobile? Why this obsession that web should win? Why not everything has it's place?
  - rockdoe 13y ago
    I am pretty sure that webdevs touting the victory of HTML5 have no idea what native offers and how many years behind even the best web-based offering is. It's just an example of worse-is-better in action. Many webapps offer mediocre features compared to the real thing, but they have no install latency, better monetization features than pay-in-advance or messing with serials and unlocks, and offer enough features that you can get by with them. When the need to use or access them on mobile arises, they are available, and often the native solutions are not. I like LibreOffice Calc (or Excel, for that matter) but they don't work on my Android tablet.
netcan 13y ago
I think this blog (and some other sentiments I've heard lately) is chaotic enough to be boiled down to: "Something's not right here!" I'm not sure that fragmentation, inconsistencies, nag screens, hamburger apps and a general refusal to pay $2.49 for an app are explainable in one easy way. One insight (I think) is - "My son's iPad has more than 10 pages of apps now, we don't even bother with the pretense of scrolling through pages of icons, we just go straight to search every time." If search turns out to be a game changer again, that's an interesting result.
shanselman 13y ago
Apps are the new CD-ROMs. The Web will win. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AppsAreTooMuchLike1990sCDROMsAndNotEnoughLikeTheWeb.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AppsAreTooMuchLike1990sCDROMsA...
- CmonDev 13y ago
  "Yes, JavaScript, HTML and CSS is a mess and it's hard, but it won't always be." - Let's wait till then.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Except the web has always been a Frankenstein mess for development and still is. As someone with long experience in both fields back to the 8 bit days, I welcome the native renaissance.
  - rockdoe 13y ago
    has always been a Frankenstein mess cough Android gargle Or for that matter, rewriting your app for every phone platform.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      > Or for that matter, rewriting your app for every phone platform. Cordova, Qt/C++, Xamarin Mono, Unity, Cocos-2D-X, Titanium, .... There are lots of alternatives to minimize duplicate native code. Plus it is not as if one doesn't need to write once, debug everywhere with HTML 5.
      - rockdoe 13y ago
        And how much of the apps written with such frameworks will feel remotely like a native app? How much of the frameworks you mention even support a reasonable amount of target platforms? I don't disagree HTML5 has porting problems between devices & browsers. I'm just saying that native apps have more.
GBKS 13y ago
And yet app revenues keep increasing every quarter (http://www.asymco.com/2014/02/10/fortune-130/ http://www.asymco.com/2014/02/10/fortune-130/). First, I'm not sure poor marketing practices can be blamed on the App Store itself. It is up to those companies/sites to decide how to promote themselves. I'm also not sure it is the App Stores responsibility to provide many marketing channels. Second, websites are free, that's why most people probably expect apps to be free, too. I think people like to pay for experiences. A coffee is an experience. And you get a friendly barista, a nice store with wi-fi, a whole table with extras to mix in, etc. Software in comparison is really abstract. Out bodies tell us they are hungry or sleepy, and pressure us to do something about it. Our bodies do not pressure us to try out a new calendar app.
frik 13y ago
Surprisingly, in Europe we had that fade two years ago. Every company wanted a Facebook page and a year later an iOS app. Amusingly the marketing departments and executives of many companies were out of touch with their audience/consumer as most had a Android phone or tablet. Two years ago many disco, bar, smaller shops, etc. had such native apps. The main point was they all were useless as they lacked a lot of features that there equivalent websites offered. Fast forwards to 2014 (Europe), most such native apps vanished as well as many business related Facebook pages have decreased in popularity or "dried-out". Now, some companies offer hybrid apps for Android/iOS that is basically a WebView that shows a slightly modified version of their HTML5 website.
- rockdoe 13y ago
  I wish I lived in your Europe. In mine all those venues still have websites built on Flash.
programminggeek 13y ago
The web is not going to "win" because the average consumer has been trained to look for "apps" from the app store, not to use web apps. Web apps packaged in the app store might be a bigger thing moving forward, but the point remains - on a phone people expect an app. No amount of needing out over how things "should" be is going to change the basic behavior of millions of users. Instead of hoping the web will win, smart devs will accept reality and make the best of it.
- nodata 13y ago
  So make the web look like apps, as Firefox OS does.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Which I don't believe will win any usable userbase.
    - rockdoe 13y ago
      You're right, nobody uses websites except for some guys @ CERN.
      - pjmlp 13y ago
        Actually I did work @ CERN. :) What I mean is that I don't see a value in Firefox OS over the existing browsers on mobile OS. It is nothing more than a revamped WebOS.
        rockdoe 13y ago
        I agree there's no point in getting a Firefox OS phone if you have a phone with a decently modern browser. Their pricing and hardware positioning appear to be squarely aimed at those places where those are not available. However, that takes nothing away from, and even supports the assertion, that webapps (or generally, pages that behave like apps) seem more future-proof. They'll work on your "phones with decently modern browser" too, regardless of what happens with Firefox OS.
igravious 13y ago
tl;dr. Jeff loves Apps and would like all of us to make more of them.
arocks 13y ago
"Would you like to subscribe to our Newsletter before you read this article?" is an equally poor, if not worse, way to welcome a visitor. Atleast give me a chance to evaluate that decision.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
>> "I already have 30 apps on my phone, some of them very good. Do I need another one? I don’t use the 30 I have." I hate seeing this argument. Why do you have those 30? Why don't you delete them? Having 30 apps on your phone doesn't mean you don't need more apps. They aren't all the same. It's not like saying 'I have 30 cans of diet coke in the fridge why do I need another?' It's more similar to 'I have sausage and diet coke in the fridge, why should I buy these vegetables'? Because they solve a different problem than the things you already have. I think the reason people are reluctant to spend money on apps is the same reason they are reluctant to spend money on music or movies no matter who convenient it's made for them - people don't see value in digital goods as easily as they see it in physical goods.
- CmonDev 13y ago
  I have 100 bookmarks in my browser: OMG websites are evil.
  - eliasmacpherson 13y ago
    How quickly can you delete 95 of those bookmarks? How long would it take you to delete 25 apps?
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      Better: even my Android browser lets me sort the bookmarks by frequency of use. Hell, I don't think my desktop browsers even do that.
      - rockdoe 13y ago
        Firefox absolutely does.
    - espadrine 13y ago
      Also, how fast can you browse through and find the bookmark you need? There's a lot of useful data attached to each one of them, including a tree structure. If you lose a bookmark (or maybe you're on a different device), how easy is it to get it back? You can even choose from a wealth of great search engines! Maybe search engines will come for "native" apps. Maybe that's what OP hinted at at the end. Even then, those apps are not cross-platform.
sandaru1 13y ago
One of the main reasons companies want people to download their free app is that it's a great marketing channel. Once enough people download the app, it goes up in the App Store rankings. When you are up in the rankings, you get free marketing for your product. Thousands/millions of users are seeing the app and by extension the product.
nahname 13y ago
>Have you ever noticed that the people complaining about apps that cost $3.99 are the same people dropping five bucks on a cup of fancy coffee Every single time there is a post like this we beat the same dead horse.
- JohnBooty 13y ago
  You can certainly be forgiven if you stopped reading the article at that sentence, because that is a frequently-beaten dead horse. However, Atwood is actually making the exact opposite point: he goes on to say that people are justified to gripe about $3.99 apps because the quality of apps is so uneven and there's no real way to ascertain the quality of an app before you buy it. He says we'd certainly be justified about complaining about $3.99 cups of coffee, too, if only 1 in 5 $3.99 cups of coffee was actually a decent cup of coffee!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
nahname 13y ago
Reading this, I was left with the impression that iOS apps took off by offering high quality at low cost. However, the cost differential was wrong and eventually the developers figured it was a scam and changed up. Some provided lame platforms for pump and dump html to apps. Others made their games free and played off their users addiction. Each day app developers burn more and more consumer trust. Eventually we will get to a point where quality matches cost, we may be there already.
MrDosu 13y ago
Jeff Atwood is a horrible analyst and populist writer with mediocre knowledge. Noone should read his blog...
- gauravpandey 13y ago
  Jeff: sorry... who are you?
Kurtz79 13y ago
Jeff is really talking about a very specific kind of app: one that provides an interface to a web service, and that has (or could have) a comparable service accessible through a browser. There are a lot of apps that make the bulk of the "millions of apps" that do not fit this description: games, productivity apps, apps making use of mobile hardware (microphone, camera), that couldn't possibly have web alternatives. It's totally true that App stores have pricing/quality/discovery problems, but I'm not sure that there is a duality with the web (which could be resolved by "product x"), just an intersection.
lmm 13y ago
Funnily enough I've found ebay and similar stuck-in-the-90s websites are very easy to use on my phone. It's the ones from the late '00s fancy css and rounded corners era that are less usable.
abvdasker 13y ago
Literally yesterday I got an email to download the new Sallie Mae app. Now I can have my student loans with me wherever I go! I wouldn't be surprised if the app had a button to "share this loan on Facebook".
cognivore 13y ago
I think that the move from the web to apps the web brought on itself. Fundementally the web is a linked document viewing system. Later it needed scripting and a bletcherous system was hastily added. But the web had huge momentum, the system stuck, and here we are with three+ major browers all interpreting the morass of HTML, DOM, CSS and Javascript slightly different. Yes, HTML5 tries to rectify some of that, but it's sadly too late. As a developer of a mobile or tablet application you have a choice of the technology cesspool that is the web or the nice tidy mobile development tool of your choice (mostly) with sane UI tools and a language that probably didn't need a "good parts" book. You also get a better system for collecting payment, easy access to the customer's data, and when it's installed and then compromised it's on someone else's computer, not yours. And that computer is relatively easy to use. No calling nephews to figure out where the internet went ("It used to be right here on the screen..."). To view a usable 1024x768 web page you need one of those complicated general purpose computers, which really aren't practical or even understandable for 95% of the population. It's so easy to make an app we now have a gajillion of them cranked out daily that no one cares about. Then they get thrown in the the cesspool that is the mobile app market and the suckage continues. If you want to have the web continue to flourish (and I'm not aligning with the trolling and utterly stupid Mr. Rabois here) we should have better tools for creating applications for the web. I'm not sure what that would be (bytecode runtimes, mature HTML5, a new language?) nor how to wrest control from the oppressive JavaScript Empire. But unless that happens don't be surprised if the web turns a bit gray.
- mattgreenrocks 13y ago
  This is one reason why MS had significant developer mindshare ten years ago: they invested a ton of resources into creating great developer tools, be they IDEs, languages, or frameworks. While many have derided MS for their frantic pace with this, it does convey an attitude of "developers are important to us: have some new toys." While those tools weren't always the most advanced, they did build on each other. The web today is still dominated by the same tech stack I learned in HS: HTML/CSS/JS. The DHTML of yesteryear has mainly had hordes of libraries built on it to make it more palatable. But accidental growth tends to spawn a lot of needless complexity. The web is a fantastic delivery mechanism, and I love that it's open. But it's just so painful for app development compared to the walled gardens that I don't blame developers for sticking with something that is more cohesive.
lazyjones 13y ago
Isn't the app-craze just a sign that websites are too complicated, slow, in many cases also somewhat shady and full of annoying ads? Most of them are nearly impossible to navigate using a mobile browser and extremely annoying. App stores give us a tiny bit more security (through moderation) and UIs that will work for our device. Making websites that work well both on desktop and mobile browsers is a PITA. We already have too many browser versions (and deficiencies) to take care of (yes, we really do not want 2-3% fewer users = customers = revenue), mobile browsers add a whole bunch of new issues to take care of (hover, selections etc. all work differently). As long as we don't have a framework or set of widgets that works properly everywhere and is fast/small enough for mobile devices, Apps will have a Raison d'être. Now go write one or stop complaining!
- untog 13y ago
  Isn't the app-craze just a sign that websites are too complicated, slow, in many cases also somewhat shady and full of annoying ads? 1. Complicated? No, I don't think so. If anything the problem is that web sites aren't capable of being as complex as they ideally would be. 2. Slow - yes. But browsers keep getting better (iOS excepted, sadly - Apple appears to have lost a lot of interest) 3. Somewhat shady and full of ads - apps are worse in this regard, IMO. They also ask for access to your location, and all sort of other data access web sites don't have. Making websites that work well both on desktop and mobile browsers is a PITA. Yep. Making websites that work across all desktop browsers was a PITA a few years ago. Cross-platform web development has never really be that easy.
  - lazyjones 13y ago
    > Somewhat shady and full of ads - apps are worse in this regard, IMO. They also ask for access to your location, and all sort of other data access web sites don't have. I disagree with that - App stores will reject many apps but search engines will happily index most shady websites as long as they don't serve obvious malware or try "black hat SEO". Websites can also ask for your location, store a multitude of tracking info (cookies, Flash cookies, local storage...) and while they cannot access contacts, SMS and similar information, they can get very sensitive information though phishing and possibly from browser history. > Cross-platform web development has never really be that easy. We could stick to the lowest common denominator (which is still simple HTML apparently), but people would complain about the obsolete UI.
Zigurd 13y ago
Many people misunderstand the proper boundary between apps and Web sites. Web sites that should remain Web sites "go app" to get more eyes. That's the main fault found in the article. App makers that should be thinking "app first" or "app equal," including Google, often have apps that are not at feature-parity with Web sites. That's also pointless and very annoying. There's a place for both. The Web is great for publishing hypertext information and when you tread that line with e-reader apps, you have to be very careful not to leave out Web functionality. And while Web versions of highly interactive applications offer an anywhere-accessible backstop, if you don't put more effort into the apps, you're missing the point of putting an app in a highly interactive touch device. Apps are inherently better at controlling presentation, direct manipulation, and inter-app cooperation. If you are not accessing these capabilities, you probably cross-trained a bunch of Web UI people to write your apps, gave them a smaller budget, and your product manager wasn't aware there are features that apps should have that are hard to duplicate in Web interfaces.
the_watcher 13y ago
He hits on some good points and misses on some others to me. Most importantly, the question of why you are building an app in the first place is incredibly important. However, he's also got to consider each app maker is unique. McDonald's makes an app because they have a marketing budget so large that their strategy is to appear everywhere - including your phone. However, I generally agree with his point that not everyone needs an app, and they absolutely shouldn't be giving us the mobile equivalent of the Javascript popup every time we hit their website (personally, I like the sites that just have a header bar drop down asking if I'd like to install the app that is easy to scroll past). I don't think the web is dead, but I do think mobile apps are the future. The best UX I can imagine based on what is around right now is something like what Facebook is trying to do - apps that deep link to each other without the user realizing they are moving between apps. The key here is that the apps must be specifically designed to maximize the user experience, not just to have an "app." We aren't at that point yet, but remembering where the mobile web was back in 2005 when I got my first data plan compared to now keeps me incredibly optimistic about its future, as does knowing that some of the smartest people out there are thinking about this problem all the time (like the guys at URX).
- taude 13y ago
  It sounds like someone soon will being reinventing OLE (Object linking and embedding)...which scares me a lot. Maybe call it MOLE - mobile object linking and embedding?
pbowyer 13y ago
Cross-posting my comment from his blog: Since the app ecosystem is generally closed, why aren't apps available as Shareware, with 30/45/60 day trials, or with no-questions-asked refunds within 48 hours of buying? What you said about coffee-vs apps is spot on. I've bought some totally rubbish apps and now it's a hard sell to get me to buy any. Competing apps in a field (e.g. PDF marking up on iPad)? I can't try before I buy, so I haven't bought...
btbuildem 13y ago
One way to deal with app platform fragmentation is to develop your app using a technology that supports multiple platforms -- Sencha Touch comes to mind as one example. Not that it solves the problem entirely, but it does make it cheaper. I'm not sure what makes the app ecosystem that much different from the web at large -- if anything, I think the amount of trite, junky apps mirrors the amount of useless noise found on the web in general. He does make a good observation about there being an opportunity for some startup to come along and do to apps what google did to the web.
mwcampbell 13y ago
This seems to me like a straightforward extension of Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap. Should hardly be surprising.
mathattack 13y ago
The app purchase process is definitely broken. You can't trust ratings, and it's hard to know what you get. In the end it's just "I'll toss a few dollars and roll the dice." I really want high quality education software for kids. The only thing that works is word of mouth. App store reviews don't help. Googling the topic produces mostly reviews that may or may not be ads. I'm waiting for Netflix of the App World.

242 points by Evgeny 13y ago

Imagine an environment that was not connected to the Internet but you still needed to deliver services through handheld and desktop platforms. Would you go native or a web (internal) based solution? All devices would be the same and all users would have access to same services.

BadassFractal 13y ago

Can we stick to the web somehow instead and bypass the various proprietary walled gardens?

Ygg2 13y ago
Just give it a few years (like five or ten), it'll come back to the web. I think the APP-cycle will end and new Web 3.0 will be the new craze.
_random_ 13y ago
Yes, just need a way of letting companies innovate on the web of pigeonholing into crappy HTML5 and JS. Maybe make PNaCl more mainstream.
pjscott 13y ago
We can. Whenever I see "Would you like to install our app? Y/n", my answer has been Ctrl-w to close the tab. This strategy has worked flawlessly for years. It can work for you, too.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  May I suggest the additional step of an /etc/hosts file entry for the site in question. I recommend '0.0.0.0'.
nobbyclark 13y ago
The web is Googles walled garden. Both Facebook and Apple realized this so made their own walled gardens to prevent Google taking over

sgift 13y ago

The only good news: If the web is as dead as the PC or Lisp I won't have to care about these problems for a long time. Back to work ..

ithkuil 13y ago
yep, but this kind of considerations define which projects get funded and get traction and excitement. There is always money in legacy, but you don't read often a about a startup creating exiting products for COBOL refactoring...
- haiduc 13y ago
  Isn't that the definition of exiting? http://www.cobol-it.com/index.php?page=products http://www.cobol-it.com/index.php?page=products "Restructuring COBOL sources" "COBOL-IT is the first company offering an enterprise-class Open Source COBOL Compiler with a wide range of Premium Professional Services"

nunodonato 13y ago

I, for one, am tired of the app-bubble. It will take a few more years, probably, but eventually will go away. Am I the only one that looks at this whole app-crazy-run as something completely unsustainable?

CmonDev 13y ago
We are slowly transitioning into HTML5 bubble at the moment.
- oblio 13y ago
  There is no HTML5 bubble. Even if there is, on the long term it will be a mere blip on the radar. The Web is the Borg. First there was the dotcom bubble, and now the Web is bigger than that. Then there was the Web 2.0 bubble, and now the Web is bigger than that. Now it's time for the HTML5 bubble to grow and burst, and in 10 years the Web will be even bigger still.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Explain? I'm as curmudgeonly as they get. Other than DRM, I think I'm actually pretty happy with what I see in HTML5, though unfortunately there's still no way to actually force Web developers to use just a minimal markup set. If I could force every last goddamned Web dev in the universe to stick with <html>, <body>, <header>, <article>, <aside>, and <footer> tags, along with <p>, <em>, <strong>, <a>, <blockquote>, <ul>, (and list items), form and text elements, and <img>, I think I wouldn't shed a tear. And I could then write my own goddamned CSS to render their pages in a sane and readable fashion. Once (as opposed to the 1000x I'm approaching now via Stylebot). Table elements would be accessible for a fee, waivable for actual data presentation.
  - burkestar 13y ago
    HTML5 isn't just about the tags. It's an ecosystem of technologies that are breaking down the barriers of the browser to enable more native-like experiences over the web. Take for example how Google Maps in the browser can "access your phone's location". Think about what it's doing - there's a browser API that web developers can call that retrieves data sensed off the user's mobile device. This used to only be possible with native apps. Also, the HTML5 ecosystem is more exciting because of the renaissance with javascript (nodeJS for server-side javascript, many JS libraries and frameworks) and the entire developer tooling that is making web development workflows much more productive than in the past.

dredmorbius 13y ago

I saw the WebMD app nag and thought for more than a few moments that it was from codinghorror.com. And was unmistakably annoyed. Then I realized that was precisely the point. And yes, it's absofuckinglutely annoying. Right up there with interstitials and flyovers on webpages. I'm thinking of writing a default Stylebot CSS to simply block any element class / ID starting with "fly". The other problem, of course (and checking to see if Jeff addresses this -- yes, obliquely) is that every app comes with its own permissions set(s) which I the user need to individually inspect and vet. And, frankly, which I'm increasingly reluctant to do so. Fastest way to get your app removed from my phone? Request additional permissions. Goodbye Pandora, whatever that "identify that song" app was, Facebook, Mr. Number (irony: nominally a privacy-enhancing app) and others.

supercoder 13y ago
The permission set is just a huge flaw in Android. They really need to adopt the iOS model.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  What's the IOS model? My view: I should be able to specify what (if any) of my information is available. It's up to the app to decide if it wants to be there or not. There are some tools (I run across mentions, and there was one Google apparently pulled after "accidentally" releasing it) which do this. But really, it's why I'm looking for a dumb phone and a tablet running the tools I want (Web, eBook reader, SSH) and local apps, but not Android. Really bad taste in my mouth.
  - rainforest 13y ago
    The iOS model uses App Store reviews (with whatever static analysis secret sauce they do), plus user permission requests for access to some things like location and contacts. I'd suggest Nokia's Symbian permission model was better, if a little annoying. It asked each time the app tried to use a given permission (until you permanently allowed/disallowed it).

skore 13y ago

The problem with "apps" is fundamentally one of curation which IMHO is, in turn, a problem of centralization. If you set out to build "the one big marketplace", you inevitably get to a place where mostly what your marketplace offers is crap, because you have optimized it towards providers putting stuff onto your marketplace. Thus, in building "the big marketplace", you necessarily fail to optimize it towards users getting value out of the marketplace, because you kinda sorta hoped that would be taken care of by "free market" pressures. (And also because it's one of those "hard problems" that you would rather forget about and build some neat code instead.) But it's the users bearing the collateral damage. I'm currently working on a package/application distribution system that is decentralized and the "app-pocalypse" is one of the reasons why I made it so. Being decentralized means that the value you are getting out of it depends mainly on the trust you invest in your immediate channel provider who in turn now has a responsibility to keep you happy. By splitting up the relationship and giving people proper roles instead of the delusion of a grand audience that is fit for whatever some app developers shovel into the system, I hope it will end up providing actual value instead of just a top-down revenue system. Having worked on it for a while now, it always strikes me as weird how we are all on the Internet (which by its design is fault tolerant and decentralized), building these centralized, monolithic services that inevitably fail (either in a big way due to security reasons or in a slow way, like in the app-pocalypse) for the same reasons.

mattlutze 13y ago
> Thus, in building "the big marketplace", you necessarily fail to optimize it towards users getting value out of the marketplace, because you kinda sorta hoped that would be taken care of by "free market" pressures. In an open and free market most of the stuff sold "is crap", but people generally discover valuable things and will equalize to the right intersection of value and cost, all things equal. The big problem with a big marketplace is when it obscures the value part of that balance. How do I determine which of these 30 applications has the best value/cost balance? Isn't straight-up downloads, because who knows how many of those people still use the app. Isn't necessarily rating, because we know those responses don't really answer the big question. A small curated market solves the hard question (which is most valuable for the price?) but short-cutting the question. The user doesn't need to ask or research, because by the nature of having a small, curated marketplace, the marketplace organizers rely on their own credibility as curators. Like the news industry, whose job it was to curate the news, eventually a few small curators float to the top and then attract more quality curators, growing that marketplace. But it's still inherently weak, because you're still not supporting the user answering their own question - which of these has the best value for the cost?

oblio 13y ago

Oh, so we've come full circle. Don't download random Windows apps from the internet, they're bad for your PC! Hey, here's my nice shiny app store where the applications are curated. Only quality content, categorized, free of spyware and other distractions. Oh no - market pressure has pushed the bar lower and lower and I once again have to rely on the Internet for reviews and comparisons of apps in order to install only the decent and trustworthy apps. Kind of sounds like the Windows model all over again. But this time I have to go through your BS systems to publish an app on my own device. Yay progress!

dredmorbius 13y ago
And the answer which the Linux world came up with: we're going to offer you a repository with your distro from which you can obtain most or all of the applications you need. In the case of one particular distro, Debian, this was backed by a Social Contract[1] and Constitution[2], expressed in Policy[3] which was ultimately enacted by A Package Tool (APT)[4] with user feedback and interaction supported through the Debian Bug Tracking System (BTS)[5]. Among the principles of the Social Contract: "Our priorities are our users and free software". The result: a distro with a tremendous number of packages available (49,614 on my jessie/sid install), in which the significant concerns are user experience (including privacy and security), and freedom of software. The last possibly best exemplified in LWN's coverage of a story ... wow, already a decade ago, on LWN: "Debian and the hot babe problem". It concerned an "ITP" (intent to package) a new piece of software. I'll let Jon Corbet take it from here: The program involved is hot-babe, a graphical CPU utilization monitor. It works by displaying a typical Bruno Bellamy drawing of a minimally-clad, maximally-endowed woman. As the CPU gets busier ("hotter"), the woman undresses to compensate. Your editor, whose journalistic ethics required that he investigate this utility, found it to be an amusing addition to the desktop - for about five minutes, or until the children walk in, whichever comes first. The Debian developers raised the obvious, predictable objection to the inclusion of this utility: the associated images were covered by a non-free license. Hot babes notwithstanding, one thing I noticed Debian didn't have problems with a decade ago were drive-by installs of spyware and adware which were plaguing Windows at the time. That, um, "ecosystem" has now moved into the mobile space, and the negative equity and goodwill associated will, I suspect, play out in time there as well.

philbarr 13y ago

On the reason why people will spend $5 on a coffee but not $1 on an app: I've been thinking about this for a while and noticed this behaviour amongst my friends. I have one friend who is a true apple fan-boy and finishes his phone contract early so he can get the latest iPhone earlier at much cost etc. I recently finished an app and said - hey, do you mind downloading it for me and checking it out? He says, "but it costs £1?!" I said, "ok, no worries, I'll GIVE you the £1 right now" He still said "No". Why? Because "he never spends money on apps." Weird, right? Then last night I'm watching Horizon - "How we make decisions" [1], and they talked about how when we feel we are ahead we are much more cautious than when we feel we are behind, when we experience "loss aversion" and are more likely to take a gamble. I wonder if this is the best way to monetize apps. So you offer the app for free (no risk at all), then instead of offering "add-ons", you offer to remove "restrictions", implying that the user is already behind and they should take the gamble to get back to their "free" app. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/10658646/Horizon-How-You-Really-Make-Decisions-review.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-r...

megablast 13y ago
You can't just by one app, unless you link the iPhone to your credit card, which a lot of people do not want to do.
- philbarr 13y ago
  He had already done that, because he needed to buy a couple of very expensive music apps he "needs". I would agree if that was the case though. Should have said. But usually he doesn't like to buy any apps on general principle. I wanted to explore the feeling of aversion he has to paying £1 on his device, which is so strong he won't do it even if someone pays him £1 to do it. I've felt that aversion myself, and as an indie app dev I'm naturally quite keen on finding ways to explain it or work around it. Some of the bigger companies seem to get around this by just targetting kids who don't experience the aversion 'cos it's not their cash - but I don't want to do that.
  - 13y ago

fauigerzigerk 13y ago

Permissions are a real problem of installed apps, but otherwise I wonder if web apps are that much better _if_ they are really applications and not documents/content. The general functionality provided by web browsers (URLs, the back button, searching in a apge, etc) is very useful as a common basis for different content centric sites. But it just doesn't work very well for applications regardless of whether or not these applications are based on HTML/JavaScript or on some other GUI toolkit. Yes the back button can be made to do _something_ in any app. But how can users have a reasonable expectation or intuition of what it's going to do? "Go back" used to mean "show me the page I saw before clicking the hyperlink". Bookmarking meant "remember the current page". But applications don't have pages, they have states. Pages are concrete. States are abstract. That is the real problem, not the specific technology on which applications are based.

frik 13y ago
It's called one-page app. You can control the browser tab history with HTML5/JS5 and create WebApps that offer all the same functionally you see in most native apps.
- fauigerzigerk 13y ago
  I think you misunderstand me. I didn't say it was technically impossible to create applications based on HTML/JavaScript that have similar functionality to installed apps. What I said is that if you do that, you get the very same UX problems as well. You can implement back button functionality in either technology, but what it does needs to be reinterpreted for every single app because you have lost the page as a concrete unit of reference. There may be other useful units of reference, but they are different ones in different apps regardless of technology.

Ygg2 13y ago

Meanwhile there are decent sites that run fine in the browser. E.g. I had no trouble with http://thrillbent.com http://thrillbent.com adapting to my PC/phone screen size.

smoyer 13y ago

At least the "It looks like you're writing a letter" era came with entertainment by Clippy. I avoid going to sites that don't remember my rejection of their "website-wannabe" apps ... Atwood is right about how annoying that is!

dredmorbius 13y ago
You call that entertainment? Back when I had the misfortune to have to use Microsoft software, pretty much the first thing I learned to do on any fresh revision was how to nuke those damned tools with extreme prejudice. The most gratuitously annoying aspect of the cartoons? The little dance they did when you told them to go to fucking hell and never come back. One more half second just to rub it all in.
- smoyer 13y ago
  Calling it "Entertainment" was tongue-in-cheek ... WSYIWYG is overrated!
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Seems it's less tongue-in-cheek than staple-into-roof-of-mouth, but yes.
    - smoyer 13y ago
      Ouch! (It hurts to just consider that)
- gaius 13y ago
  I liked the cat, I still miss him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykGIcXKAXbI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykGIcXKAXbI
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    I'm quite fond of cats. Not that one though. They were all just so gratuitously annoying. Actually, now that I think about it, Microsoft's tone-deafness on just how much people hated Clippy reminds me of Google's attitudes on G+, Real Names, and the Anschluss of all Google services. Note that ZDNet (hardly a harsh Microsoft critic) noted when Clippy was finally killed (in 2001): http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-kills-off-clippy-3002085615/ http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-kills-off-clippy-3002085615/ Software giant Microsoft is laying off one of its most controversial employees: Clippy. The software help system, a long-despised feature of Microsoft's popular Office suite of business software, is the star of a new Web marketing campaign launched on Wednesday. The campaign and a companion Web site trumpet Microsoft's forthcoming Office XP software as so easy to use that Clippy is out of a job. And even that didn't take, they had to take out a second hit 9 years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I

cLeEOGPw 13y ago

There should be some universally recognized icon, like RSS feed icon, which would be on sites offering app versions, and user could press it of he wants to.

burkestar 13y ago
It's going that way. Hopefully not some annoying icon featured prominently on every page, but instead a subtle browser-based recognition that the site also has a web app and puts a tiny mobile icon in the browser bar that will launch you to the app's install page.
- sirkneeland 13y ago
  This functionality is actually built into the Metro side of IE 10/11 on Windows 8. Which sadly means that nobody (especially nobody who reads HN) will ever see it.
  - burkestar 13y ago
    Cool, didn't know that. But HTML5 will enable this in a platform-indepedent manner which is good for the web.
Raphael 13y ago
Google Play and Apple App Store each have a "badge" graphic consisting of the logo and some white text on a black, rounded rectangle. Maybe Google wouldn't mind if you cut it down to just the Play logo. Apple says not to modify theirs or use the Apple logo alone. I'm surprised Apple doesn't use their normal pencil-paintbrush-ruler icon for the App Store, as the Apple logo alone doesn't necessarily make sense.

burkestar 13y ago

It seems that the line between native app and web will increasingly blur as HTML5 matures to the point it obviates whatever advantages remain with building native apps. I think this will mean a better end user experience as there will no longer be these walls between the web and mobile experience. It doesn't seem efficient for companies to have to build a website, a mobile version of the website (with responsive design), and native apps (for every platform).

rimantas 13y ago
> It seems that the line between native app and web will > increasingly blur as HTML5 matures Would you care to elaborate on that? Because I see no blurring. Building apps with webtech was a stupid idea to start with, and the current state is just incessant running in circles trying to invent a wheel. I am pretty sure that webdevs touting the victory of HTML5 have no idea what native offers and how many years behind even the best web-based offering is. Why don't you first replace all the desktop apps with the browser and then talk about mobile? Why this obsession that web should win? Why not everything has it's place?
- rockdoe 13y ago
  I am pretty sure that webdevs touting the victory of HTML5 have no idea what native offers and how many years behind even the best web-based offering is. It's just an example of worse-is-better in action. Many webapps offer mediocre features compared to the real thing, but they have no install latency, better monetization features than pay-in-advance or messing with serials and unlocks, and offer enough features that you can get by with them. When the need to use or access them on mobile arises, they are available, and often the native solutions are not. I like LibreOffice Calc (or Excel, for that matter) but they don't work on my Android tablet.

netcan 13y ago

I think this blog (and some other sentiments I've heard lately) is chaotic enough to be boiled down to: "Something's not right here!" I'm not sure that fragmentation, inconsistencies, nag screens, hamburger apps and a general refusal to pay $2.49 for an app are explainable in one easy way. One insight (I think) is - "My son's iPad has more than 10 pages of apps now, we don't even bother with the pretense of scrolling through pages of icons, we just go straight to search every time." If search turns out to be a game changer again, that's an interesting result.

shanselman 13y ago

Apps are the new CD-ROMs. The Web will win. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AppsAreTooMuchLike1990sCDROMsAndNotEnoughLikeTheWeb.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AppsAreTooMuchLike1990sCDROMsA...

CmonDev 13y ago
"Yes, JavaScript, HTML and CSS is a mess and it's hard, but it won't always be." - Let's wait till then.
pjmlp 13y ago
Except the web has always been a Frankenstein mess for development and still is. As someone with long experience in both fields back to the 8 bit days, I welcome the native renaissance.
- rockdoe 13y ago
  has always been a Frankenstein mess cough Android gargle Or for that matter, rewriting your app for every phone platform.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    > Or for that matter, rewriting your app for every phone platform. Cordova, Qt/C++, Xamarin Mono, Unity, Cocos-2D-X, Titanium, .... There are lots of alternatives to minimize duplicate native code. Plus it is not as if one doesn't need to write once, debug everywhere with HTML 5.
    - rockdoe 13y ago
      And how much of the apps written with such frameworks will feel remotely like a native app? How much of the frameworks you mention even support a reasonable amount of target platforms? I don't disagree HTML5 has porting problems between devices & browsers. I'm just saying that native apps have more.

GBKS 13y ago

And yet app revenues keep increasing every quarter (http://www.asymco.com/2014/02/10/fortune-130/ http://www.asymco.com/2014/02/10/fortune-130/). First, I'm not sure poor marketing practices can be blamed on the App Store itself. It is up to those companies/sites to decide how to promote themselves. I'm also not sure it is the App Stores responsibility to provide many marketing channels. Second, websites are free, that's why most people probably expect apps to be free, too. I think people like to pay for experiences. A coffee is an experience. And you get a friendly barista, a nice store with wi-fi, a whole table with extras to mix in, etc. Software in comparison is really abstract. Out bodies tell us they are hungry or sleepy, and pressure us to do something about it. Our bodies do not pressure us to try out a new calendar app.

frik 13y ago

Surprisingly, in Europe we had that fade two years ago. Every company wanted a Facebook page and a year later an iOS app. Amusingly the marketing departments and executives of many companies were out of touch with their audience/consumer as most had a Android phone or tablet. Two years ago many disco, bar, smaller shops, etc. had such native apps. The main point was they all were useless as they lacked a lot of features that there equivalent websites offered. Fast forwards to 2014 (Europe), most such native apps vanished as well as many business related Facebook pages have decreased in popularity or "dried-out". Now, some companies offer hybrid apps for Android/iOS that is basically a WebView that shows a slightly modified version of their HTML5 website.

rockdoe 13y ago
I wish I lived in your Europe. In mine all those venues still have websites built on Flash.

programminggeek 13y ago

The web is not going to "win" because the average consumer has been trained to look for "apps" from the app store, not to use web apps. Web apps packaged in the app store might be a bigger thing moving forward, but the point remains - on a phone people expect an app. No amount of needing out over how things "should" be is going to change the basic behavior of millions of users. Instead of hoping the web will win, smart devs will accept reality and make the best of it.

nodata 13y ago
So make the web look like apps, as Firefox OS does.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Which I don't believe will win any usable userbase.
  - rockdoe 13y ago
    You're right, nobody uses websites except for some guys @ CERN.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      Actually I did work @ CERN. :) What I mean is that I don't see a value in Firefox OS over the existing browsers on mobile OS. It is nothing more than a revamped WebOS.
      - rockdoe 13y ago
        I agree there's no point in getting a Firefox OS phone if you have a phone with a decently modern browser. Their pricing and hardware positioning appear to be squarely aimed at those places where those are not available. However, that takes nothing away from, and even supports the assertion, that webapps (or generally, pages that behave like apps) seem more future-proof. They'll work on your "phones with decently modern browser" too, regardless of what happens with Firefox OS.

igravious 13y ago

tl;dr. Jeff loves Apps and would like all of us to make more of them.

arocks 13y ago

"Would you like to subscribe to our Newsletter before you read this article?" is an equally poor, if not worse, way to welcome a visitor. Atleast give me a chance to evaluate that decision.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

>> "I already have 30 apps on my phone, some of them very good. Do I need another one? I don’t use the 30 I have." I hate seeing this argument. Why do you have those 30? Why don't you delete them? Having 30 apps on your phone doesn't mean you don't need more apps. They aren't all the same. It's not like saying 'I have 30 cans of diet coke in the fridge why do I need another?' It's more similar to 'I have sausage and diet coke in the fridge, why should I buy these vegetables'? Because they solve a different problem than the things you already have. I think the reason people are reluctant to spend money on apps is the same reason they are reluctant to spend money on music or movies no matter who convenient it's made for them - people don't see value in digital goods as easily as they see it in physical goods.

CmonDev 13y ago
I have 100 bookmarks in my browser: OMG websites are evil.
- eliasmacpherson 13y ago
  How quickly can you delete 95 of those bookmarks? How long would it take you to delete 25 apps?
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Better: even my Android browser lets me sort the bookmarks by frequency of use. Hell, I don't think my desktop browsers even do that.
    - rockdoe 13y ago
      Firefox absolutely does.
  - espadrine 13y ago
    Also, how fast can you browse through and find the bookmark you need? There's a lot of useful data attached to each one of them, including a tree structure. If you lose a bookmark (or maybe you're on a different device), how easy is it to get it back? You can even choose from a wealth of great search engines! Maybe search engines will come for "native" apps. Maybe that's what OP hinted at at the end. Even then, those apps are not cross-platform.

sandaru1 13y ago

One of the main reasons companies want people to download their free app is that it's a great marketing channel. Once enough people download the app, it goes up in the App Store rankings. When you are up in the rankings, you get free marketing for your product. Thousands/millions of users are seeing the app and by extension the product.

nahname 13y ago

>Have you ever noticed that the people complaining about apps that cost $3.99 are the same people dropping five bucks on a cup of fancy coffee Every single time there is a post like this we beat the same dead horse.

JohnBooty 13y ago
You can certainly be forgiven if you stopped reading the article at that sentence, because that is a frequently-beaten dead horse. However, Atwood is actually making the exact opposite point: he goes on to say that people are justified to gripe about $3.99 apps because the quality of apps is so uneven and there's no real way to ascertain the quality of an app before you buy it. He says we'd certainly be justified about complaining about $3.99 cups of coffee, too, if only 1 in 5 $3.99 cups of coffee was actually a decent cup of coffee!

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

nahname 13y ago

Reading this, I was left with the impression that iOS apps took off by offering high quality at low cost. However, the cost differential was wrong and eventually the developers figured it was a scam and changed up. Some provided lame platforms for pump and dump html to apps. Others made their games free and played off their users addiction. Each day app developers burn more and more consumer trust. Eventually we will get to a point where quality matches cost, we may be there already.

MrDosu 13y ago

Jeff Atwood is a horrible analyst and populist writer with mediocre knowledge. Noone should read his blog...

gauravpandey 13y ago
Jeff: sorry... who are you?

Kurtz79 13y ago

Jeff is really talking about a very specific kind of app: one that provides an interface to a web service, and that has (or could have) a comparable service accessible through a browser. There are a lot of apps that make the bulk of the "millions of apps" that do not fit this description: games, productivity apps, apps making use of mobile hardware (microphone, camera), that couldn't possibly have web alternatives. It's totally true that App stores have pricing/quality/discovery problems, but I'm not sure that there is a duality with the web (which could be resolved by "product x"), just an intersection.

lmm 13y ago

Funnily enough I've found ebay and similar stuck-in-the-90s websites are very easy to use on my phone. It's the ones from the late '00s fancy css and rounded corners era that are less usable.

abvdasker 13y ago

Literally yesterday I got an email to download the new Sallie Mae app. Now I can have my student loans with me wherever I go! I wouldn't be surprised if the app had a button to "share this loan on Facebook".

cognivore 13y ago

I think that the move from the web to apps the web brought on itself. Fundementally the web is a linked document viewing system. Later it needed scripting and a bletcherous system was hastily added. But the web had huge momentum, the system stuck, and here we are with three+ major browers all interpreting the morass of HTML, DOM, CSS and Javascript slightly different. Yes, HTML5 tries to rectify some of that, but it's sadly too late. As a developer of a mobile or tablet application you have a choice of the technology cesspool that is the web or the nice tidy mobile development tool of your choice (mostly) with sane UI tools and a language that probably didn't need a "good parts" book. You also get a better system for collecting payment, easy access to the customer's data, and when it's installed and then compromised it's on someone else's computer, not yours. And that computer is relatively easy to use. No calling nephews to figure out where the internet went ("It used to be right here on the screen..."). To view a usable 1024x768 web page you need one of those complicated general purpose computers, which really aren't practical or even understandable for 95% of the population. It's so easy to make an app we now have a gajillion of them cranked out daily that no one cares about. Then they get thrown in the the cesspool that is the mobile app market and the suckage continues. If you want to have the web continue to flourish (and I'm not aligning with the trolling and utterly stupid Mr. Rabois here) we should have better tools for creating applications for the web. I'm not sure what that would be (bytecode runtimes, mature HTML5, a new language?) nor how to wrest control from the oppressive JavaScript Empire. But unless that happens don't be surprised if the web turns a bit gray.

mattgreenrocks 13y ago
This is one reason why MS had significant developer mindshare ten years ago: they invested a ton of resources into creating great developer tools, be they IDEs, languages, or frameworks. While many have derided MS for their frantic pace with this, it does convey an attitude of "developers are important to us: have some new toys." While those tools weren't always the most advanced, they did build on each other. The web today is still dominated by the same tech stack I learned in HS: HTML/CSS/JS. The DHTML of yesteryear has mainly had hordes of libraries built on it to make it more palatable. But accidental growth tends to spawn a lot of needless complexity. The web is a fantastic delivery mechanism, and I love that it's open. But it's just so painful for app development compared to the walled gardens that I don't blame developers for sticking with something that is more cohesive.

lazyjones 13y ago

Isn't the app-craze just a sign that websites are too complicated, slow, in many cases also somewhat shady and full of annoying ads? Most of them are nearly impossible to navigate using a mobile browser and extremely annoying. App stores give us a tiny bit more security (through moderation) and UIs that will work for our device. Making websites that work well both on desktop and mobile browsers is a PITA. We already have too many browser versions (and deficiencies) to take care of (yes, we really do not want 2-3% fewer users = customers = revenue), mobile browsers add a whole bunch of new issues to take care of (hover, selections etc. all work differently). As long as we don't have a framework or set of widgets that works properly everywhere and is fast/small enough for mobile devices, Apps will have a Raison d'être. Now go write one or stop complaining!

untog 13y ago
Isn't the app-craze just a sign that websites are too complicated, slow, in many cases also somewhat shady and full of annoying ads? 1. Complicated? No, I don't think so. If anything the problem is that web sites aren't capable of being as complex as they ideally would be. 2. Slow - yes. But browsers keep getting better (iOS excepted, sadly - Apple appears to have lost a lot of interest) 3. Somewhat shady and full of ads - apps are worse in this regard, IMO. They also ask for access to your location, and all sort of other data access web sites don't have. Making websites that work well both on desktop and mobile browsers is a PITA. Yep. Making websites that work across all desktop browsers was a PITA a few years ago. Cross-platform web development has never really be that easy.
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > Somewhat shady and full of ads - apps are worse in this regard, IMO. They also ask for access to your location, and all sort of other data access web sites don't have. I disagree with that - App stores will reject many apps but search engines will happily index most shady websites as long as they don't serve obvious malware or try "black hat SEO". Websites can also ask for your location, store a multitude of tracking info (cookies, Flash cookies, local storage...) and while they cannot access contacts, SMS and similar information, they can get very sensitive information though phishing and possibly from browser history. > Cross-platform web development has never really be that easy. We could stick to the lowest common denominator (which is still simple HTML apparently), but people would complain about the obsolete UI.

Zigurd 13y ago

Many people misunderstand the proper boundary between apps and Web sites. Web sites that should remain Web sites "go app" to get more eyes. That's the main fault found in the article. App makers that should be thinking "app first" or "app equal," including Google, often have apps that are not at feature-parity with Web sites. That's also pointless and very annoying. There's a place for both. The Web is great for publishing hypertext information and when you tread that line with e-reader apps, you have to be very careful not to leave out Web functionality. And while Web versions of highly interactive applications offer an anywhere-accessible backstop, if you don't put more effort into the apps, you're missing the point of putting an app in a highly interactive touch device. Apps are inherently better at controlling presentation, direct manipulation, and inter-app cooperation. If you are not accessing these capabilities, you probably cross-trained a bunch of Web UI people to write your apps, gave them a smaller budget, and your product manager wasn't aware there are features that apps should have that are hard to duplicate in Web interfaces.

the_watcher 13y ago

He hits on some good points and misses on some others to me. Most importantly, the question of why you are building an app in the first place is incredibly important. However, he's also got to consider each app maker is unique. McDonald's makes an app because they have a marketing budget so large that their strategy is to appear everywhere - including your phone. However, I generally agree with his point that not everyone needs an app, and they absolutely shouldn't be giving us the mobile equivalent of the Javascript popup every time we hit their website (personally, I like the sites that just have a header bar drop down asking if I'd like to install the app that is easy to scroll past). I don't think the web is dead, but I do think mobile apps are the future. The best UX I can imagine based on what is around right now is something like what Facebook is trying to do - apps that deep link to each other without the user realizing they are moving between apps. The key here is that the apps must be specifically designed to maximize the user experience, not just to have an "app." We aren't at that point yet, but remembering where the mobile web was back in 2005 when I got my first data plan compared to now keeps me incredibly optimistic about its future, as does knowing that some of the smartest people out there are thinking about this problem all the time (like the guys at URX).

taude 13y ago
It sounds like someone soon will being reinventing OLE (Object linking and embedding)...which scares me a lot. Maybe call it MOLE - mobile object linking and embedding?

pbowyer 13y ago

Cross-posting my comment from his blog: Since the app ecosystem is generally closed, why aren't apps available as Shareware, with 30/45/60 day trials, or with no-questions-asked refunds within 48 hours of buying? What you said about coffee-vs apps is spot on. I've bought some totally rubbish apps and now it's a hard sell to get me to buy any. Competing apps in a field (e.g. PDF marking up on iPad)? I can't try before I buy, so I haven't bought...

btbuildem 13y ago

One way to deal with app platform fragmentation is to develop your app using a technology that supports multiple platforms -- Sencha Touch comes to mind as one example. Not that it solves the problem entirely, but it does make it cheaper. I'm not sure what makes the app ecosystem that much different from the web at large -- if anything, I think the amount of trite, junky apps mirrors the amount of useless noise found on the web in general. He does make a good observation about there being an opportunity for some startup to come along and do to apps what google did to the web.

mwcampbell 13y ago

This seems to me like a straightforward extension of Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap. Should hardly be surprising.

mathattack 13y ago

The app purchase process is definitely broken. You can't trust ratings, and it's hard to know what you get. In the end it's just "I'll toss a few dollars and roll the dice." I really want high quality education software for kids. The only thing that works is word of mouth. App store reviews don't help. Googling the topic produces mostly reviews that may or may not be ads. I'm waiting for Netflix of the App World.