Mobile apps must die
netmagazine.com
netmagazine.com
Why is it so hard to imagine a world where we have both? I don't use Google's dedicated iOS app because www.google.com happens to load just fine in Mobile Safari. I do use the iOS Maps application because maps.google.com doesn't work as well as I'd like in the aforementioned browser.
We have to let go of this notion that for web apps to win, mobile apps have to lose (or vice versa). [1]
[1] http://www.edibleapple.com/2009/08/06/when-apple-and-microso...
As to the people on this thread that think JIT interaction is a privacy nightmare, i never said these things would install automatically, this has to offer itself when the user requests it, i.e. I want to look at THIS bustop now. All I'm talking about is reducing the pain threshold to getting to functionality. That's all. It's not as sinister as you make it sound.
Webapps are fine in very few scenarios (like the movie poster one you mentioned), but for quite many they are lousy. For example, most games & productivity tools perform far better when on the device. And these are the best selling apps.
Finally, the first argument of your post, about the app organisation.. Really? In case of the iPhone there are three ways to access each app. First there is the home screen, and I agree that it becomes messy when dealing with >50 apps. BUT there is also an app search and the "recently opened" list - these make the whole "app organisation" thing a non-issue. I guess the same goes for other mobile platforms.
Besides - you're trying to tell us that mobile apps are easier to organise? I either have to type in the whole address (so it's slower than using the built-in app search), or google the app name (even slower & requires net access), or choose it from my bookmarks (which is basically the same as the home screen).
Apple's Siri is a good example. You're using many apps simultaneously through one interface - calendar, weather, alarms, maps, etc. You don't have to worry about how someone decided to bundle functionality into apps, you just access the functionality.
If this new genre of apps appears it doesn't sound like the user experience will be improved.
Also, what phone doesn't have a search feature now to find the app you're looking for?
I disagree. That's a solved problem. The App Store and Android Market both notify when there are updates and it's very painless to apply them.
The real problem is discovery. Apple and Google both set the precedent for crapware while building up their markets and it hasn't gotten any better. What we need is access to curated collections outside the respective app stores. This won't happen until Apple unbinds their iDevices from the App Store and Android goes a bit further.
> apps magically appearing on your phone
There is no way that anyone can make that sound at all reasonable. Security & privacy demand that, at a minimum, the user be allowed to reject the installation of a native app.
The privacy-destroying aspects of what he describes are beyond terrifying.
Mobile app development is fragmented, cumbersome, ugly and I bet in few years most apps will be abandoned. In addition most apps I bothered to try were not even worth the download. People will stop buying apps at some point, and unfortunately a lot of development effort will be lost.
I never read .net magazine even when I had a subscription, theres something about the tone of the magazine that rubs me up the wrong way, and its in this article as well.
Not sure how to describe it but I always get a feeling like I'm dealing with a shady street vendor and I have to watch every moment to make sure I'm not being conned. Like buying off pikeys in the UK, you just know something isn't legit.
The MS evangelists I dealt with where A+ characters so I guess they just threw it in as a bribe to butter me up and I was foolish enough to snap up free goodies without question...
EDIT: MS do infact make a magazine called .Net Magazine, I was totally confused by another magazine with the same
Anyone have a link for this claim? I'd be really interested in reading more about what GOOG found... I probably missed a flurry of remarkable discussion around this that I'd love to catch up on.
- App organisation problem If there are too many apps on the device for the user to handle, there are other solutions. For example sorting them by how often they are used (iPhone does this already on the task bar)
The rest of the article is even worse...
Have one that isn't zero.
Please. I don't want to resize my browser (currently 925px, which is reasonable) to make your content readable.
This is what I'm talking about: http://i.imgur.com/Dlcgg.png
Once, long long ago, servers on the world wide web simply sent me data (text, links, and maybe images) and I could format how I pleased client side. I think we have gotten too far away from that original model. (These days I have to run your client side code to download to insert text in the DOM. On top of some ugly background. With margins unusable on my devices. If you want to serve me some text, just send the damn text).
Yes, it is nice that a web designer can suggest to my client how that text might best be rendered, but when it comes down to it I actually know how I want to read a document; hint: it probably doesn't match your layout.
[ / end rant ]
* Yes, I understand _actual_ applications exist on the web now; rant applies only to "articles"
940 is a commonly used width content for many grid based frameworks. That 940 doesn't include an internal margin, instead it is handle by an external 10px margin taking the whole width upto 960px.
Check out 960.gs for their framework, but they aren't alone in those figures, because of the way it subdivides.
Actually I would rather use a browser width of 600-700px, as that would fill around half the width of my 13" laptop screen, and be more typographically optimal in terms of not requiring as much horizontal eye scanning, and not stretching out paragraphs into 2 or 3 line horizontal stripes. But there are too many websites out there that assume I have a giant monitor and a browser window that's maximized to fill it.
As for the iPad... it scales websites to fit its format, so I'm not sure what the issue if there.
Sure, organizing mobile apps is a pain. I agree. But I can't tell you the number of times I've known there was a website that had some web app, and had a heck of a time trying to find it.
URLs, in people's minds, are very ephemeral... while apps are more tangible in a way.
I think for some applications the web delivery mechanism will be superior, while for other applications, native apps will always be superior.
Is the Facebook iPhone app a web app or a mobile app, or a hybrid? Facebook gives people the choice.