Comment by remir | Hacker News Reader

Comment by remir | Hacker News Reader

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I would say apps are at a dead end. The way we are using our mobile devices with rows and rows of single purpose apps seems so... primitive now.

I mean, you need "Pizza Place" app to order pizza, "TicketMaster" app to order concert tickets, "HotelWhatever" app for hotel reservation, "Parking Meter" app, "Fitness" app, "News" app, etc...

Like I said; rows and rows of information silos taking place on your phone, unable to talk to each other, requiring new account for each of them, entering your credit card again and again. It's terrible.

Now let's say you want to order pizza. Instead of downloading yet another app, you could just type "order pizza" in the search box and an interface is created by the OS and you can chose the pizza place you want, toppings, etc, and the OS handles everything (adresse, payments).

AI is getting more and more capable and I think we reached the end of the "There's an app for that" era. Can Android evolve to this post-app paradigm? I don't think so. Same thing with iOS.

That's why, I think, Google is working on Fuchsia.

> you could just type "order pizza"

"Type"? What year is this, 2005?

That's a surprisingly narrow view of what the future looks like.

Today, you can already ask your phone "order pizza" and it will do just that. Whether it's done by an app or an intent or a web site is irrelevant: it just works.

Which is why the OP article "Android is a dead end" is so preposterous. There is no analysis, no reasoning, no evidence. Just a silly claim that criticizes the OS used by 80% of the phones in the entire world for simple click baiting.

Sure, I said "type" because that's what I would do, but you can speak to the phone or Assistant and achieve the same result.

I'm not going to have an argument with my phone on the train by talking and constantly trying to clarify the exact words I said. I use speech for when I'm driving, and that's about it, most of the time I'm going to be typing/tapping.

The year is 2017, and speech to text still isn't perfect.

And it will never be.

For English, and this kind of specific sentence, it's above 99%, though. Good enough for you?

What you are doing is called the Nirvana fallacy. Look it up, and stop doing it.

I actually meant more the speed rather than the accuracy. At least on my phone, it takes a fair bit longer to listen to me and process my voice than to swipe in two words.

Having to create and track separate identities for each app, particularly transactional/infrequently used apps, does indeed seem dated. But I think it’s a mistake to confuse the identity issue with apps as a whole.

AI won’t solve every use case. There will always be a need for experiences tailored for niche needs in productivity/creativity, utilities, entertainment, etc.

They kind of got a second lease on life with chromeos support for Android. However with Web assembly and progressive web apps the chromeos support for Android is a transitional move, eventually webassembly will eat the desktop market and the mobile app stores.

Isn't this what Google Wallet and Apple Pay were supposed to solve?

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