The Death of the Web? | Hacker News Reader

The Death of the Web?

danieltenner.com

20 pointsttol23 comments

Inflammatory title. Come on, seriously? The vast majority of people don't own iOS devices, but access the web through a variety of other OSs. Given that Android is outpacing iOS and that both are extremely popular, the Web is the obvious way to target both.

The Web is important because you can use it without regard for what type of computer you're using.

As I mention in my article, what you say is true, but hasn't stopped iOS apps from taking off. Yes, many people won't be able to use Mac OS App Store apps because they don't have Macs, but that won't be a problem to the web developers who switch to Mac, because they'll be willing to make the trade-off based on the hype and numbers that the Mac Store achieves.

Not everyone has a Mac, but enough people have one to make it worthwhile. And those Mac owners actually buy apps, unlike the vast majority of windows computer owners.

As someone who specializes in mobile marketing I can tell you for a fact that you're assessment is misguided.

Please refer to: http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/emarketer-mobile-users-o...

And those Mac owners actually buy apps, unlike the vast majority of windows computer owners.

Wait. What?

Most consumer windows PC owners pirate apps. Anecdotal evidence, of course, but for every one who's keen on paying for software there's 10 who will call a "techie" friend up and ask where they can get a free version.

If you have no real evidence for this assertion, then why do you even try to make the argument in the first place? Couldn't you just use that same logic for Mac users?

That isn't even an anecdote, so I would probably classify it as a "baseless assertion" rather than "anecdotal evidence."

This should really be titled something like "App Store will replace/compliment (or already is replacing/complimenting) some components of the Web"

No where near "Death of the Web"

Many iPhone Apps embed the kit web browser to provide core functionality in the app.

+1, I hit the browser's back button as soon as I see Mac, Iphone or App Store somewhere on the page. The misleading title wasted me those precious 2 seconds.

Title makes me not bother clicking. I hate people who love to declare that things are dead. Fundamentally it's much easier to talk shit about someone's creation than it is to actually create something.

"But for many, the web is a shortcut to avoid the problems of piracy and distribution."

I think this misses the point. The web won because it's inherently cross-platform. The iOS walled garden is the exact opposite of this.

The real trend is towards 'apps' in general (read: Chrome Web Store).

Sure, develop only for iOS devices if you feel like only targeting 6% of the PC and 14% of the mobile markets.

Or you can continue to develop web apps and hit 100% of internet-enabled devices.

> The Death of the Web?

...there is nothing like the smell of rotting corpses in the morning. But seriously the title suggest that this will be a one sided and pointless philosophic post.

> Here’s how it will happen.

This post is a prediction.

> Currently, the most sensible way to develop software and make money from it is as a web application.

Last time I checked Star Craft 2 was still a native application.

> It gets around the problems of piracy, distribution of updates, and it makes use of the awesome platform that is the web.

The author probably never heard of Internet Explorer and XSS.

> Sure, it is possible to make money (even large amounts of money) selling one-off software licences, but compared to selling recurring licences for a web app, it’s a dying model.

The author probably never heard of Photo Shop. Sure it's one off payments, but in the long run you will end up upgrading to the latest versions and it's not a web application.

> That’s very sensible, and I expect people to continue developing web applications in the future.

The author probably forgot the title at this point. I mean when I hear "death of the web" I think of all the web being gone for good.

> But, if you poke around web developer communities, you’ll see one obvious trend: almost everyone is either very interested in building some kind of iOS app, or is already doing so.

I really like the "obvious trend" part that tries to sell the phrase as exact science. How much is "almost everyone"?

> This seems to affect almost every web developer community, from Flash/Flex to RoR including Python along the way.

Very nice, but where are the data and the numbers?

> A lot of bleeding edge web developers use Macs, and a lot of them are lusting over iOS and want to build apps for it.

How much is a "lot"? What does "bleeding edge web developers" mean? Why are they "lusting over iOS"?

> But for many, the web is a shortcut to avoid the problems of piracy and distribution. And the web is a shortcut with a lot of headaches. It’s a lot simpler to build an iOS/MacOS app and distribute it through the App Store than to run web servers and keep them up to date and build billing systems and maintain mailing lists and so on2.

This phrase seems to a suggest that the App Store fixes piracy issues.

> It’s a lot simpler to build an iOS/MacOS app and distribute it through the App Store than to run web servers and keep them up to date and build billing systems and maintain mailing lists and so on2.

A lot more expensive too: 30% of your selling price.

> So a lot of iOS apps are likely to be developed (in the past and in the future) by web developers, if only because they make a nice mobile client for their existing web application.

> likely to be developed (in the past and in the future)

The past already happened unless the author invents time travel it's impossible for more applications to "likely to be developed" "in the past".

> Why would you deal with all the angst of writing a billing system

I could not agree more, use PayPal and a shopping cart that supports it.

> why would you maintain servers, deal with hairy scalability issues

What kind of scalability issues?

> deal with the craptastic reality of Internet Explorer,

I don't know, let me see why I develop for IE... ohh yes, because it means that my app is accessible to IE users!

btw: looks like the author remembered that IE actually exists, see previous comment.

> why would you do all this if you can just plug into the App Store and let it handle all the headaches?

Three reasons: 1) I need to learn Objective-C and iOS APIs 2) it means a lot less users than the IE users 3) I don't want to give away 30% of my earnings to Apple

> Sure, for some apps, it will still make sense to be on the web, or even to be only or mostly on the web. But for many, the web is a shortcut to avoid the problems of piracy and distribution.

I really like paragraphs where "some" and "many" many are used to give a sense of scale without presenting facts.

The web is not a shortcut to avoid piracy problems, it wouldn't work for games.

It's a lot smaller user base too.

> To put a final nail in the web-coffin, a lot of web developers have already gotten acquainted with the fundamental tools for building Mac OS apps while building their iOS satellite apps. It’ll be an easy transition for them to build their next app solely in the Mac ecosystem and avoid all the headaches of the web world.

Once you earn 1000$ it's easy transition to 200$.

The death of spoken language? The death of the book? The death of the inkpen? The death of the phone system? The death of the desktop computer? Mainframe?

Sigh.

How many inkpens or mainframes did you use during the last month? How many might you have used 50 years ago?

I know I used one mainframe - I access my Chase Manhattan bank account online on a regular basis. You think they're running Haskell on Unix? Or COBOL on big iron?

My point is that new technologies typically coexist with the old ones for a very long time indeed, and talking about the "death" of something is generally hype.

App stores could imply the dead of applications like Google Docs the office suite: there's actually no need to put your data on the web, except for the fact that the app requires it.

But for other applications, especially those that require a central database for all users (classic client/server setup), web applications still make the most sense.

One of the main value propositions of web apps such as google docs is that your data is stored in the cloud and accessible to you AND others on any machine that has a modern web browser. The value I currently get out of local Microsoft Excel over Google Spreadsheets is waning as the quality of such web applications increase. I think the mac app store is going to be great for single functionality novelty apps, but any serious product, especially those that require a lot of collaboration will stay on and continue to move to the web.

One of the benefits that web development offers that the App Store doesn't is that the code you write runs on any machine that has a web browser. Certainly dealing with IE is a headache - but to completely discount that fact that it doesn't run on Windows and ignore the majority of potential paying customers seems silly to me.

Certainly people can and will make money selling software in the App Store - there are some good reasons why listed in the article - but I disagree that web developers being acquainted with Mac OS tools is going "to put a final nail in the web-coffin". Web development seems alive and well. It is not dying - it is still in it's awkward adolescent years.

Sorry about the title, folks. A rushed (and incorrect) decision, clearly. Will try and make keep it saner for the next one. Mea culpa.

This article is not worth anemones time, it's completely biased, and baseless.(see my previous comments for details)

It's like propaganda, the author lives in an alternate reality.

TL;DR: the web will end, and the Apple App Store will take over

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