Comment by TheFullstackGuy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheFullstackGuy | Hacker News Reader

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TheFullstackGuy

I personally feel like websites will win the war against native mobile apps in the long run.

I read a while ago that Steve Jobs never wanted the idea of an App Store on iOS, as he believed webapps and web based services would evolve naturally without any added infrastructure, whereas an App Store would require extreme development effort and infrastructure from Apple.

Obviously he was wrong, and the App Store exploded once it was added.

However, I believe long term his idea is correct, it was just wrong timing. Webapps have only gotten more and more powerful as time has gone on, and they do not require any explicit download from the user and can be updated automatically by the developer. More and more access to the devices physical resources is slowly being added as the years go on, and it’s only a matter of time until more and more are added.

I will admit for scenarios like games or resource intensive computing where access to bare metal is necessary, I’m not sure webapps will be able to fill that void. But for most everything else I see the web as a the future, while mobile apps are the temporary means to an end while browser APIs and capabilities catch up

Okay but web apps have no killer app to motivate switching to. Whatever killer app that webapps can come up with, so can native apps.

The two benefits

- webapps don't need to be explicitly downloaded

- webapps don't need to be explicitly updated

Sound good but downloading and updating was never a problem in the eyes of the general consumer. On the other hand

- native apps are faster

And that's a compelling benefit for that even non technical people will prefer native apps for.

There are really many people who just do not install any apps. Reasons vary a lot, but these people always have access to a browser and use webapps.

The other killer „feature“ of webapps is that you can have a single one for multiple platforms.

> The other killer „feature“ of webapps is that you can have a single one for multiple platforms.

That's a feature for developers, not consumers. Consumers will be unhappy if you tell them your mobile app doesn't exist on the app store and must be downloaded from some third party website.

Jobs was stalling because the native API wasn't polished for release and he needed a story for ATT to bite.

BS. I tried selling Gil Amelio on an App Store concept and he shot it down for channel reasons (still put me on WWDC speaker list). Jobs said the idea was “fucking stupid”. For Mac at the time.

Well, one could argue that an App Store anything like the one that we have now -- i.e., all driven by digital downloads -- was fucking stupid for the Mac at the time, given that the time you're talking about sounds like it's over two decades ago and the majority of users who were online were still using modems. Time may have proved your concept right, but that doesn't mean your timing was right. :)

I don't know whether Jobs really wanted the iPhone to be open all along and was just playing dumb with his "sweet solution" of anemic web apps. Some of what I've heard from others supports the idea that he really did think web apps would work, but it also seems to be common knowledge that they were working on what became the iPad before the iPhone, and it seems pretty unlikely that they were planning to shop that without support for third-party applications -- although, of course, they might not have been thinking of an app store.

Oh, my timing was definitely wrong. :/

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