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Let's not kid ourselves here. Most people download exactly zero apps per month: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/25/a_comscore_study_shows_that_

Let's not kid ourselves here. Most people download exactly zero apps per month: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/25/a_comscore_study_shows_that_most_people_download_zero_new_apps_per_month.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/25/a_comscor... This matches my experience IRL exactly. The whole Native Apps are more popular than the web narrative is a self fulfilling prophecy. People have trouble using websites on mobile because everyone puts up stupid splash pages on sites to force them to download their app. It "educates" people that the web is somehow inferior, when really those sites should be making a proper responsive website so their users can get on with their lives. Nobody gives two shits about your app and it's smooth animations when they are just trying to pull up a recipe for chicken tikka masala.

Scarbutt 12y ago
If only all web apps where as simple as providing food recipes.
- underbluewaters 12y ago
  Very true. For some apps native is the only solution. I'd wager most apps are on that same order of complexity though. For example, I don't think Flipboard's use of Canvas to wrap content with fancy animations and magazine-style layout is really a damning indictment of the web platform. It's a failure to understand the medium on their part. We've got a mature, interoperable, write once run anywhere platform that's completely free to participate in. It has some critical deficiencies I'd like to see fixed rather than abandoned.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
Are native apps more popular than the web? Probably not. Is it harder to make a web app to the same level of quality as a native app? Absolutely. Making a "proper responsive website" for mobile is far more difficult than it needs to be. Assuming it can even be done. Some things you simply can't do. Can you reach just short of native quality by expending significantly more time and effort? Yes! Is that stupid and wasteful? Absolutely.
- woah 12y ago
  It's definitely hard to do animations and touch interactions as good as native apps. Making responsive websites is really really easy for an experienced designer and/or html coder.
  - lftl 12y ago
    Absolutely. I think the disconnect is when some people compare native vs. web, they mean a web app that closely mimics a native app. That's absolutely hard to do, and often not worth the effort. But building a responsive website that simply functions well even if it doesn't try to feel native on every platform is not a major undertaking.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - hiphopyo 12y ago
      > That's absolutely hard to do, and often not worth the effort. I'm not sure I agree. The JS libs are out there, you just need to find them.
      - hiphopyo 12y ago
        My GitHub search skills aren't the best, but here are some of the nicer ones I've found: Dynamic Physics Interactions for the Mobile Web: https://github.com/luster-io/impulse https://github.com/luster-io/impulse Facebook and Path style side menus: https://github.com/jakiestfu/Snap.js/ https://github.com/jakiestfu/Snap.js/ Smooth scrolling: https://github.com/cubiq/iscroll https://github.com/cubiq/iscroll Add to home screen call-out for mobile devices: https://github.com/cubiq/add-to-homescreen https://github.com/cubiq/add-to-homescreen Cross-browser usage of the JavaScript Fullscreen API: https://github.com/sindresorhus/screenfull.js/ https://github.com/sindresorhus/screenfull.js/ Anybody know of any more?
  - chinathrow 12y ago
    This. And don't forget fastclick. https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick
profinger 12y ago
YES!! And on top of that, I don't want an app for every damn site that I visit. I hate that! I go to a website and the first thing that I see is "DOWNLOAD OUR MOBILE APP!" usually gets me mad and, if I can choose, I go elsewhere!
- rimantas 12y ago
  Hey, let's compare comparable things. I.e. native apps to web apps, not native apps to web sites, ok?
chinathrow 12y ago
Yes... just seen that recently with the mobile site of scribd. If anyone of the scribd team is reading this: Why on earth do you think you can force us to install your native app by blocking reading the full content someone else gave you in order that _I_ can read it?
acjohnson55 12y ago
For most purposes, I totally agree! I think what's really needed are better standards for exposing phone functionality to webpages in a sane and secure way (this already exists for location, for example), and perhaps more seamless interfaces to the web from mobile OSs (navigating to websites, login management, etc.). I don't really buy the mobile native > mobile web > desktop narrative on a universal level. It's certainly true for some experiences but for others the opposite holds. At the same time, the state of the browser as a graphical environment needs some help. HTML+CSS is a great interface for written content, but when it comes to dynamic graphical interfaces, it's a little insane how much we've tried to squeeze into a glorified desktop publishing engine. I'd like to think the future is something more like mutually recursive embeddings of a graphical language and HTML. We kinda sorta of have that graphical language in SVG, but I think it lacks some of the features that make HTML really friendly.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
cwyers 12y ago
From the Quartz article that Slate piece gets almost all its info in: > Almost all smartphone owners use apps, and a “staggering 42% of all app time spent on smartphones occurs on the individual’s single most used app,” comScore reports. http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-apps-per-month/ http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-app... I'm not sure that this is evidence that people don't want apps. They just don't want a LOT of them. The ones they DO want, they want very badly.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Virtually every smartphone comes with numerous pre-loaded apps. Nothing in the quoted sentence suggests anything other than "people use the apps that come with their smartphone.
krschultz 12y ago
Did you ever think that maybe these companies have data that disagrees with you? The company I work for has both proper native apps & responsive web sites. We push customers towards the native apps because the difference for us is tens of millions of dollars, at least.
snowwrestler 12y ago
A few mobile apps are super popular, but they are apps that load webpages inside of them. For example, I find a lot of stories to read on Facebook and Twitter. On my phone, I use their mobile apps. And when I read a story, what I'm actually reading is a mobile webpage that loaded inside the app's captive browser view (I'm on an iPhone). So both things are true--I'm spending my time in an app, AND I'm viewing a ton of mobile websites.
hiphopyo 12y ago
Most of the time, the people who argue against the mobile web are the same people whose livelihoods depend on Java and native apps. Ruby on Rails vs Java - Commercial #1 of 9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbuyKUaKFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbuyKUaKFo Erase the Native vs. HTML5 Development Debate with PhoneGap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uea1kAXlGIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uea1kAXlGIY
- bottled_poe 12y ago
  It's not our livelihoods, it's our sanity. CSS + HTML = ?
tootie 12y ago
I'm sure I'm in the minorty, but I'm very anti-app. I'll never install an app where a mobile site exists. For one, I get URLs which are great. Find in page always works. I can always see when I'm on https which is a huge plus. Apps are for games mostly or for services who cripple their mobile sites.
- thesimpsons1022 12y ago
  yep. you are in the minority. This whole thread reeks of web devs hating on native mobile for no reason other than being web devs. the only website I use regularly in the browser is reddit and that is because I don't like any of the native solutions.
  - increment_i 12y ago
    >> "web devs hating on native mobile for no reason other than being web devs." Well I'm not a web guy, but I can imagine at least one reason: having to learn and work with a slew of proprietary software stacks to deploy the same thing over multiple platforms - the web finally looked like the solution to this problem until about 5-6 years ago.
    - thesimpsons1022 12y ago
      i'm not saying web dev isn't easier to deploy for multiple platforms. I'm saying native is much better to use from a user side.
  - zhte415 12y ago
    Please educate me why. I'm not being funny, I truly don't understand. I understand some cases: * Need for offline; * Need to work like an IM (instant updates pushed from a server, like a telephone / IM / email service); * Need to avoid latency in user experience (a native game, vs a web-based flash-style game). But I don't understand any others, and really would like to know.
    - thesimpsons1022 12y ago
Bahamut 12y ago
My personal viewpoint is that I hate downloading extra apps on my phone, having to mentally manage what permissions I want apps to have, and move into a sandboxed place - it helps decrease the amount of crapware I have on my phone, and having to manage the inevitable rogue app (or few) that destroys performance and battery life, especially if they nag me to update via the App Store (iOS) or Google Play (Android). Phones are not powerful or have good enough battery life for me to want to risk lowering my phone's life while I am out of the house. Unless it is something immensely useful to me and/or performance is that big of an issue, I rather just go to a website. If performance is that bad on a website, I'll open up the link in the browser and just use that my mobile Chrome and desktop Chrome are linked to the same account & open the tab there. Given this, I never quite understood the gold rush to go appize everything. I may be a web developer now, but if anything, my becoming a web developer has made me use more apps, not less, simply because I make hybrid mobile apps currently.
mkramlich 12y ago
indeed. for the vast majority of people and cases some mix of Google/Wikipedia/Facebook/Craigslist/Amazon/Ebay/Tumblr/WordPress/Reddit/Yahoo/3tc is going to scratch their itch just fine. (to name just a few "big hammer" tools/platforms)
Immortalin 12y ago
Its much harder to create a decent webapp than a desktop app. For example, you can easily drag and drop together a semi-decent UI using winform/Android IDE in a couple minutes. The time it take construct a decent UI for the web is at least a magnitude longer. It's simply easier to delegate the "simple" web stuff to CMSs and move the harder logic bits to a native app where you don't have to worry so much about client-server problems, rendering etc.
- whoisthemachine 12y ago
  Editing Android UI's is one of the most painful programming experiences I've recently gone through. Microsoft, otoh, has done a great job with UI editors since the Visual Studio 2008 days, especially with WinForms. But it still lacks standard behaviors that HTML has in spades. I constantly find myself surprised by strange/unexpected behaviors with different controls in both XAML and Winforms! HTML I've been doing for some 15 years, and it's still as easy to understand and edit as ever.

Scarbutt 12y ago

If only all web apps where as simple as providing food recipes.

underbluewaters 12y ago
Very true. For some apps native is the only solution. I'd wager most apps are on that same order of complexity though. For example, I don't think Flipboard's use of Canvas to wrap content with fancy animations and magazine-style layout is really a damning indictment of the web platform. It's a failure to understand the medium on their part. We've got a mature, interoperable, write once run anywhere platform that's completely free to participate in. It has some critical deficiencies I'd like to see fixed rather than abandoned.

forrestthewoods 12y ago

Are native apps more popular than the web? Probably not. Is it harder to make a web app to the same level of quality as a native app? Absolutely. Making a "proper responsive website" for mobile is far more difficult than it needs to be. Assuming it can even be done. Some things you simply can't do. Can you reach just short of native quality by expending significantly more time and effort? Yes! Is that stupid and wasteful? Absolutely.

woah 12y ago
It's definitely hard to do animations and touch interactions as good as native apps. Making responsive websites is really really easy for an experienced designer and/or html coder.
- lftl 12y ago
  Absolutely. I think the disconnect is when some people compare native vs. web, they mean a web app that closely mimics a native app. That's absolutely hard to do, and often not worth the effort. But building a responsive website that simply functions well even if it doesn't try to feel native on every platform is not a major undertaking.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - hiphopyo 12y ago
    > That's absolutely hard to do, and often not worth the effort. I'm not sure I agree. The JS libs are out there, you just need to find them.
    - hiphopyo 12y ago
      My GitHub search skills aren't the best, but here are some of the nicer ones I've found: Dynamic Physics Interactions for the Mobile Web: https://github.com/luster-io/impulse https://github.com/luster-io/impulse Facebook and Path style side menus: https://github.com/jakiestfu/Snap.js/ https://github.com/jakiestfu/Snap.js/ Smooth scrolling: https://github.com/cubiq/iscroll https://github.com/cubiq/iscroll Add to home screen call-out for mobile devices: https://github.com/cubiq/add-to-homescreen https://github.com/cubiq/add-to-homescreen Cross-browser usage of the JavaScript Fullscreen API: https://github.com/sindresorhus/screenfull.js/ https://github.com/sindresorhus/screenfull.js/ Anybody know of any more?
- chinathrow 12y ago
  This. And don't forget fastclick. https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick

profinger 12y ago

YES!! And on top of that, I don't want an app for every damn site that I visit. I hate that! I go to a website and the first thing that I see is "DOWNLOAD OUR MOBILE APP!" usually gets me mad and, if I can choose, I go elsewhere!

rimantas 12y ago
Hey, let's compare comparable things. I.e. native apps to web apps, not native apps to web sites, ok?

chinathrow 12y ago

Yes... just seen that recently with the mobile site of scribd. If anyone of the scribd team is reading this: Why on earth do you think you can force us to install your native app by blocking reading the full content someone else gave you in order that _I_ can read it?

acjohnson55 12y ago

For most purposes, I totally agree! I think what's really needed are better standards for exposing phone functionality to webpages in a sane and secure way (this already exists for location, for example), and perhaps more seamless interfaces to the web from mobile OSs (navigating to websites, login management, etc.). I don't really buy the mobile native > mobile web > desktop narrative on a universal level. It's certainly true for some experiences but for others the opposite holds. At the same time, the state of the browser as a graphical environment needs some help. HTML+CSS is a great interface for written content, but when it comes to dynamic graphical interfaces, it's a little insane how much we've tried to squeeze into a glorified desktop publishing engine. I'd like to think the future is something more like mutually recursive embeddings of a graphical language and HTML. We kinda sorta of have that graphical language in SVG, but I think it lacks some of the features that make HTML really friendly.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

cwyers 12y ago

From the Quartz article that Slate piece gets almost all its info in: > Almost all smartphone owners use apps, and a “staggering 42% of all app time spent on smartphones occurs on the individual’s single most used app,” comScore reports. http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-apps-per-month/ http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-app... I'm not sure that this is evidence that people don't want apps. They just don't want a LOT of them. The ones they DO want, they want very badly.

dredmorbius 12y ago
Virtually every smartphone comes with numerous pre-loaded apps. Nothing in the quoted sentence suggests anything other than "people use the apps that come with their smartphone.

krschultz 12y ago

Did you ever think that maybe these companies have data that disagrees with you? The company I work for has both proper native apps & responsive web sites. We push customers towards the native apps because the difference for us is tens of millions of dollars, at least.

snowwrestler 12y ago

A few mobile apps are super popular, but they are apps that load webpages inside of them. For example, I find a lot of stories to read on Facebook and Twitter. On my phone, I use their mobile apps. And when I read a story, what I'm actually reading is a mobile webpage that loaded inside the app's captive browser view (I'm on an iPhone). So both things are true--I'm spending my time in an app, AND I'm viewing a ton of mobile websites.

hiphopyo 12y ago

Most of the time, the people who argue against the mobile web are the same people whose livelihoods depend on Java and native apps. Ruby on Rails vs Java - Commercial #1 of 9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbuyKUaKFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbuyKUaKFo Erase the Native vs. HTML5 Development Debate with PhoneGap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uea1kAXlGIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uea1kAXlGIY

bottled_poe 12y ago
It's not our livelihoods, it's our sanity. CSS + HTML = ?

tootie 12y ago

I'm sure I'm in the minorty, but I'm very anti-app. I'll never install an app where a mobile site exists. For one, I get URLs which are great. Find in page always works. I can always see when I'm on https which is a huge plus. Apps are for games mostly or for services who cripple their mobile sites.

thesimpsons1022 12y ago
yep. you are in the minority. This whole thread reeks of web devs hating on native mobile for no reason other than being web devs. the only website I use regularly in the browser is reddit and that is because I don't like any of the native solutions.
- increment_i 12y ago
  >> "web devs hating on native mobile for no reason other than being web devs." Well I'm not a web guy, but I can imagine at least one reason: having to learn and work with a slew of proprietary software stacks to deploy the same thing over multiple platforms - the web finally looked like the solution to this problem until about 5-6 years ago.
  - thesimpsons1022 12y ago
    i'm not saying web dev isn't easier to deploy for multiple platforms. I'm saying native is much better to use from a user side.
- zhte415 12y ago
  Please educate me why. I'm not being funny, I truly don't understand. I understand some cases: * Need for offline; * Need to work like an IM (instant updates pushed from a server, like a telephone / IM / email service); * Need to avoid latency in user experience (a native game, vs a web-based flash-style game). But I don't understand any others, and really would like to know.
  - thesimpsons1022 12y ago

Bahamut 12y ago

My personal viewpoint is that I hate downloading extra apps on my phone, having to mentally manage what permissions I want apps to have, and move into a sandboxed place - it helps decrease the amount of crapware I have on my phone, and having to manage the inevitable rogue app (or few) that destroys performance and battery life, especially if they nag me to update via the App Store (iOS) or Google Play (Android). Phones are not powerful or have good enough battery life for me to want to risk lowering my phone's life while I am out of the house. Unless it is something immensely useful to me and/or performance is that big of an issue, I rather just go to a website. If performance is that bad on a website, I'll open up the link in the browser and just use that my mobile Chrome and desktop Chrome are linked to the same account & open the tab there. Given this, I never quite understood the gold rush to go appize everything. I may be a web developer now, but if anything, my becoming a web developer has made me use more apps, not less, simply because I make hybrid mobile apps currently.

mkramlich 12y ago

indeed. for the vast majority of people and cases some mix of Google/Wikipedia/Facebook/Craigslist/Amazon/Ebay/Tumblr/WordPress/Reddit/Yahoo/3tc is going to scratch their itch just fine. (to name just a few "big hammer" tools/platforms)

Immortalin 12y ago

Its much harder to create a decent webapp than a desktop app. For example, you can easily drag and drop together a semi-decent UI using winform/Android IDE in a couple minutes. The time it take construct a decent UI for the web is at least a magnitude longer. It's simply easier to delegate the "simple" web stuff to CMSs and move the harder logic bits to a native app where you don't have to worry so much about client-server problems, rendering etc.

whoisthemachine 12y ago
Editing Android UI's is one of the most painful programming experiences I've recently gone through. Microsoft, otoh, has done a great job with UI editors since the Visual Studio 2008 days, especially with WinForms. But it still lacks standard behaviors that HTML has in spades. I constantly find myself surprised by strange/unexpected behaviors with different controls in both XAML and Winforms! HTML I've been doing for some 15 years, and it's still as easy to understand and edit as ever.