No, I'm not going to download your bullshit app | Hacker News Reader

No, I'm not going to download your bullshit app

tommorris.org

799 pointsk33l0r218 comments

It's a strategy to dismantle the Web, which had the "disadvantage" of being simultaneously free and a level playing field, and replacing it with a loose network of fiefdoms, each a walled garden (a term often used to describe Apple in its entirety).

Most of these apps are advertising delivery mechanisms masquerading as utilities. Another role they have is to prevent copying of content or links from one fiefdom to another. In doing that, they represent a retreat from the ideal of a public forum.

I think this idea works best with relatively young people who don't clearly understand what they're giving up when they download a proprietary app in order to read what should be a public document.

The old Web has many problems, but freedom of expression remains in the plus column.

> It's a strategy to dismantle the Web

Dismantling the Web isn't anybody's strategy (making money is), but in any case, it's a poor strategy nonetheless. One of the most important things I've learned is that all other things being equal, convenience always wins. A strategy that makes things less convenient for consumers is a losing strategy.

>> It's a strategy to dismantle the Web

> Dismantling the Web isn't anybody's strategy ...

By "web" I mean the public forum that anyone can access with a standards-compliant browser. And yes, there is such a strategy, and making money is the underlying motive.

> A strategy that makes things less convenient for consumers is a losing strategy.

Yes, unless consumers have no choice. Consider the present cell phone system -- it's perfectly terrible, and consumers can't do anything about it. The reason? Each cell phone company sells you a different interface device and tells you what you can and cannot do with it, to the degree that they now can charge you with a felony if you jailbreak their phone:

http://internetlawforbusinesses.com/2013/01/31/how-your-cell...

My point is that a free, public forum has every advantage (as you say) but if a company can prevent such a free forum in the name of making money, they will.

  > but if a company can prevent such a free forum in the
  > name of making money, they will.

That's easy for those walled gardens: just don't ship the browser and don't allow any in appstore.

From the article

>For those who may not have understood or thought to ask, “unlocking” is not the same as “jailbreaking.” In a nutshell, jailbreaking involves making it possible for a device to run code either from sources the manufacturer did not intend the device to be able to use or to run code the manufacturer did not intend it to be able to run (though most people talk about Apple IOS devices, Sony, for example, will note that other devices can also be “jailbroken”). Unlocking, however, involves making it possible for a device intended for use on one wireless network to be used on a different network – wireless devices sold by a particular wireless company are generally, but not always, sold programmed so that they can only use that company’s network.

Jailbreaking is still legal. Also

There are a couple of factors that will disrupt the Web architecture. The Web has trained us to build dumb clients and centralize anything of value on the server, at a huge cost and never enough trust. We can safely predict today that light-weight protocols, mediated by the mobile OS (and its Platform) will directly challenge the Web architecture, precisely because we can leverage the platform trust model. That evolution is extremely profound. For instance, apps running on your device can securely and privately share information without requiring a complex temporal integration involving a 3rd party service (such as Google AdSense). The information is produced and consumed on the device or the device of a related end-user. What happens on your device can now stay on your device. Just to be clear, and to show how disruptive that architecture is, the primary key of your private data becomes your phone, not your identity. Merchants no longer need to identify you. They can’t care less about YOU, they just care to know some information about you. The problem with the Web Architecture was that the only way to do that was to associate PII to a primary key on a server and hence merchants needed to identify you to track your every move (and they shamelessly did). The second factor is just as profound: the very open nature of the Web is driving scale over scope. The Web has successfully nurtured the largest Catalog, the largest Search engine, the largest Auction site, the largest Social Network, but I see this as a negative side effect of the Web architecture because it limits the scope of what people can do. In other words, the scope of what Amazon, Google or Facebook offer is limited by the scale (and hence the revenue) they can achieve. I actually argue that a trust-based neutral Platform will support a more vibrant and diverse ecosystem than a truly open model because in essence a Web business couples the leve of trust it can achieve with the functionality it can deliver. The Platform decouples the trust from the functionality and it enables much smaller actors to deliver a lot more scenarios while relying on the trust establish by the Platform.

> Jailbreaking is still legal.

Not any more:

http://investorplace.com/2013/01/jailbreaking-your-phone-wil...

Quote: "‘Jailbreaking’ Your Phone Will Be Illegal After Jan. 26 ... Wireless carriers will now have to give permission"

Read the article. The article you've posted conflates jailbreaking with unlocking. As the OP pointed out:

Jailbreaking: getting root on the phone

Unlocking: configuring the phone so it can be used on any cell network

Jailbreaking is still legal.

All US Carriers at least allow unlocking as long as you own the phone. Emphasis on own (paid off your contract so you are no longer "renting" it or you paid for it outright). That would include all GSM phones and all Global phones on CDMA based carriers (such as the Galaxy S3 or iPhone 5).

If I'm understanding you correctly, then you're essentially arguing that the CATB analogy applies to the infrastructure of the web. Would you say that something like Diaspora is something which uses the Bazaar approach?

Secondly, given your model of what you believe the future of trust looks like - what do I do if I lose my phone? How do I 'get back in' to the Platform if my primary key gets lost?

In my view, authentication requires a third-party - one which provides the 'yay or nay' that somebody is who they say they are. If you don't have that, then your relationship with any client is one which cannot be verified: it's the equivalent of asking for an ID card without checking that it's real.

So this is just splitting hairs between proximate and ultimate causes. We could say the the prime motivation is profit - a specialized case of making money. In order to turn a profit one must make more money than one spends. It is thought that by monetizing the content and sealing it off one can maximize one's revenue stream. The end result is dismantling the web.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximate_and_ultimate_causatio...

Convenience does always seem to win. I suppose because people are lazy. Or short-sighted. It's hard to put in extra effort now for some saving down the road.

It's also because those savings are not obvious for most of the people. It's temporal discounting plus a concrete reward now vs. a fuzzy reward later.

"Dismantling the Web isn't anybody's strategy". How do you know? Have you read the mind of every human alive?

Let's not split hairs, I think, from the context, it is clear what he meant.

> Another role they have is to prevent copying of content or links from one fiefdom to another.

I have a hard time believing that considering the prevalence of the "share" button in apps.

There is certainly a "walled garden" problem on iOS, with all the jailbroken nonsense linked to it, but on Android (don't know about MS phones) I can run whatever I want. The app store is just curation, not limitating. Granted there are still some problems with rooting, but they seem to be disappearing from my view. Freedom of expression is still there.

>I think this idea works best with relatively young people who don't clearly understand what they're giving up when they download a proprietary app in order to read what should be a public document.

Could you cite an example where this is really true? I'm not trying to be facetious here, I'm just wondering what app locks out what would in another world be completely open info. The only thing I can think of is messangers, but that's more a practical thing than anything (again... access to phone APIs trump idealism).

>> Another role they have is to prevent copying of content or links from one fiefdom to another.

> I have a hard time believing that considering the prevalence of the "share" button in apps.

But a "share" button in a dedicated app isn't remotely a hyperlink. A hyperlink only tells the reader about the destination, but a "share" button also tells the recipient about the source.

>> I think this idea works best with relatively young people who don't clearly understand what they're giving up when they download a proprietary app in order to read what should be a public document.

> Could you cite an example where this is really true?

Sure -- paywalls are a classic example. As soon as we accept paywalls and read articles behind paywalls, we can't share content any more. These dedicated apps are like paywalls taken to the next level.

But young, inexperienced people often don't see the problem with paywalls when compared to a public forum. The same logic applies to these dedicated apps -- they make it harder to share information. Their existence only serves the interests of the companies that create them.

> I'm just wondering what app locks out what would in another world be completely open info.

A browser gives you access to all content. A dedicated app only gives you access to that fiefdom's content. So such an app is not open in the way that a browser is, and you're limited to that app's purview.

Consider a cell phone as an more extreme example. It's a way to take conversation and make it into a product. A cell phone is sort of like one of these dedicated apps, in the sense that you can't freely move between fiefdoms -- and if you try, you have to pay "roaming charges".

The global issue is the commoditization of information -- turning information into property, into a commodity. The idea is to take a public forum like the Web, privatize it, and sell it back to what are now captive information consumers.

> Sure -- paywalls are a classic example. As soon as we accept paywalls and read articles behind paywalls, we can't share content any more. These dedicated apps are like paywalls taken to the next level.

> But young, inexperienced people often don't see the problem with paywalls when compared to a public forum. The same logic applies to these dedicated apps -- they make it harder to share information. Their existence only serves the interests of the companies that create them.

Not exactly citation.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/238775/attitudes-towards-...

Which, coincidentally, is itself behind a paywall.

> Not exactly citation.

True, but I wasn't making a quantitative claim about behavior, only saying that it existed as a factor. And I have a self-referential problem with the source:

"With the purchase of a Premium Account figures, numbers, and downloads may be accessed."

Somewhat funny, actually. :)

The paywall is a good point. The current NYT model (pay after N articles, easy to circumvent) is a model I could live with in exchange to high-quality content. The problem is do I really want to pay for 5 different papers?

Great example. I used to think of paywalls a good thing (in exchange for less ad bullshit), but now it seems a bit dangerous.

Yes, but you want a discount.

It appears that part of the pricing strategy for online news is to charge so much that your subscribers won't even think of paying for another paper. I thought no one would pay these outrageous rates and the strategy would be DOA, but apparently it's actually been quite successful.

>I have a hard time believing that considering the prevalence of the "share" button in apps.

In the OP's example this share button would just lead to a message of 'you need to download our app to view this material'

>There is certainly a "walled garden" problem on iOS, with all the jailbroken nonsense linked to it, but on Android (don't know about MS phones) I can run whatever I want. The app store is just curation, not limitating. Granted there are still some problems with rooting, but they seem to be disappearing from my view. Freedom of expression is still there.

AFAIK he wasn't talking about the OS being a walled garden, more that each app was. Not being able to share content between apps, combine the functionality of them, etc.

Being able to run whatever you want doesn't help if the content owners have locked it down to being only viewable in their app.

> but on Android (don't know about MS phones) I can run whatever I want.

Yeah, you need to install some other 'security app' that is essentially another rogue/thief to defend against any other burglar.

This has happened and is still happening in China where the Google Play is blocked and a number of 3rd party markets exist and thrive. Even a social network app would bother to remind you upgrading some other apps you have installed. Who knows who is stealing what?

I don't know if its intentional or not, but I've run into several apps where highlight and copy isn't implemented / enabled. That's pretty very frustrating. Sometimes I just want to take notes, or google something, not share whatever it is on facebook / twitter / snapchat.

Sorry, but I see way way way less ads in apps than on the web. I'd say the web is stuck with the mindset that the only way to make money is by heavy advertising or selling you to the ads companies.

> Sorry, but I see way way way less ads in apps than on the web.

Yes, because these "walled-garden" apps are just being introduced, and they want to be on their best behavior for the moment. Sort of like a drug dealer, who gives the addict his first hit free.

Also, I think you meant to say "fewer ads", not "less ads":

http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/less-or-fewer

That grammar rule is BS.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.h...

> That grammar rule is BS.

Since language isn't science, and since dictionaries are only meant to describe how people use words, not tell people how to use words, that claim could be made about any grammar rule or word definition or spelling, with some degree of justice.

The counterargument is that clear communications is helped along by adopting common conventions for word usage.

And the linked article only points out that there are ambiguous cases where less or fewer are equally appropriate, not that the rule has no merit.

How about adds taking less space?

> How about adds taking less space?

Or fewer ads requiring less space.

A lot of those tablet apps suck, because the priorities driving them aren't the readers. This means that they'll either lose in the long run, or adapt to serve reader's needs.

I see your point, but if this were true, then cell phone service (another walled garden of separate fiefdoms) would gradually get better instead of worse. But it's getting worse.

I don't think this is correct. It's far more difficult to compete as a cell phone service due to FCC regulations. It's a government granted mono/duopoly.

I expect to see cell service remain complete shit. I don't expect these per-website apps as they exist now to be widely used.

This needs a lot of expansion. Which FCC regulations are keeping competition out?

Spectrum ownership and broadcast power limitations. To operate as a wireless service provider at the scale that cell phone companies do, you need the FCCs explicit permission. The process to get approval is long, expensive, and fraught with peril (see the LightSquared debacle [1]).

This kind of regulation is ultimately justifiable. You don't want service providers using conflicting technologies and hammering each others airspace. You quickly end up with what economists call the tragedy of the commons[2].

1. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/lightsquared-redu... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

It's my impression that the fact that a fairly limited range of frequencies are allocated for mobile phone use is a barrier to entry.

I don't think that's the main difference between the US and say... Germany though. I'm pretty sure German carriers are required to sell each other access to their networks under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, making it fairly easy to become a carrier without building a bunch of cell towers. The phones are all GSM and almost all unlocked, so it really is as easy to switch as getting a SIM from a new carrier.

This actually appears to be a case of more regulation, applied to just the right spot resulting in more competition. Politically, I'm not usually in favor of a lot of regulation, but it looks like it works in this case.

I believe because it is a government-granted monopoly there must be regulation to introduce competition or the customers will be taken advantage of (especially with something like internet which should be regulated as a utility in the first place).

Like your case in Germany, and elsewhere in Europe where they are required to lease the "last mile" at a reasonable price. Internet connections in countries with these regulations are much faster and the charges are less compared to the USA.

I wrote that article (http://internetlawforbusinesses.com/2013/01/31/how-your-cell...), and while that does not necessarily make me an authority (certainly not in my own opinion), I endorse your points above - both of them.

In the US, we HAD a history of controlling monopolies and oligopolies carefully - the trust-busting era, the steel breakup, the comparatively recent AT&T breakup - but the government has largely abdicated any significant role here. The notable exception was the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger, which, ironically, probably would have actually helped improve technology and push down prices because both of those carriers are moving into the prepaid/pay as you go space aggressively. Unfortunately, both also use GSM band technology...

With respect to unlocking, however, I can't fathom why the device manufacturers, particularly Google/Motorola Mobility, don't play the adults here. They have more to gain from impressing the end-consumer than making time with carriers. It has to be more expensive for manufacturers to create several different versions of the same device for different carriers. In many cases, these are all but different devices - not the same radios, not the same functions, often not even the same processors. If these manufacturers made their flagship devices with both CDMA and GSM radios operating on all common bands (deactivated or not, as need may be), they would benefit from economies of scale, lowering their costs and allowing the devices to sell, unlocked, at lower costs. This would make sales directly to end-consumers more realistic, which would FORCE the carriers to improve their service, in order to bring people into their no longer walled gardens. That would force improvements in speed, price, and quality.

Right now, I guess, manufacturers benefit from advertising done by the carriers, but they also suffer from the walled garden and loss of economies of scale. I have no way of knowing which is worth more to them, but we have yet to see a true, universal, unlocked device from a carrier. We can tweak world CDMA phones to "work" on GSM networks, but not too well so far.

Huh? As far as I can tell, cell phone service is getting better at a good clip. Were you routinely getting 10-20 Mbps of bandwidth three years ago? I wasn't.

My experience (in Australia) is not this. Sure, the number they write on the advertisement keeps getting bigger. But my mobile phone on Telstra CDMA circa 2001 was orders of magnitude better at making voice calls than my 3G Android phone today. It was a gradual decline. As the years went by, and I "upgraded", the quality of the phone call aspect of the device just went down and down and down. The computing and data aspect has got miles better, but the voice call 'feature' is now what I would consider broken.

I feel they are focusing on the data networks over the voice networks and phones are now computers, and all I really want is a reliable, robust voice call device, but I suppose I am not "the market" and the market wants shiny bells and whistles and apps that download content. Who makes calls anymore? I do.

"Who makes calls anymore? I do."

I think you might rapidly be becoming a minority. The data service to my phone (ok 'phablet') is far more important to me than the voice aspect. I make a call a week on average, but use data constantly. This is not 'bells and whistles' and more, it's primary function.

I have a pocket-sized networked tablet that, as a bonus, can handle voice service pretty OK.

I agree for the most part with this article. I think the major problem is that apps are being developed that offer absolutely no advantage over viewing the website in a browser - in fact many offer disadvantages. This is what happens when a market crowded with some shockingly bad app developers is combined with ignorant executive mandates that companies must have apps simply to be able to say that they have them.

We've been conditioned to want apps. Or... many people have. iPhone is synonymous with 'apps'. My grandmother understands 'apps' (well, mostly!)

I was on a project last year, and we built a mobile website (could work in iPhone/Android and probably winphone, but we didn't test). Got a lot of immediate "yeah that's great" from some people. Partners reached out for potential customers/sales - every single one returned with "where do I get the app".

Us: "http://foobarsite.com.

Them: "Cool, but I can't see where to download the app!"

Us: "You don't - you just go to the website"

Them: "But I need an app!"

I'm continually disappointed by the non-proliferation of webapps. The iPhone has hooks enabling you to make it fullscreen, have an app icon, work offline, even control the colour of the status bar... but no-one knows how to use them. And Android doesn't even support them- I thought Google was supposed to be a friend of the web?!

In theory you're right. Unfortunately in practice most webapps better stay in the browser on iOS. The Javascript engine on full-screen webapps is slower than the one in Safari (that's why the previous Facebook app was slow as hell).

Aside from that, offline app cache is a PITA to implement.

Things have got better though. Web audio works on iOS 6, and Chrome on Android finally delivers a proper browser. I hope in a few years time we'll actually be able to serve games in WebGL to the browsers on both platforms.

The Javascript engine on full-screen webapps is slower than the one in Safari (that's why the previous Facebook app was slow as hell).

Not true[0]. Home-screen web apps use the Nitro engine as of iOS 5. It's only embedded web views (i.e. the Facebook app, Google Chrome on iOS) that don't. FWIW Chrome is my favorite browser on iOS, despite the speed loss.

[0] http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/06/ios-5-brings-nitro-spee...

We're solving that by actually having an app "installer" on the web page. It looks and feels like the App Store, and you "tap to install" just like you would a normal app.

We do actually download and stash most web resources, to speed up load times, so it's not completely window dressing. Our app is designed to be added to the Home Screen, but it also runs inside Safari or Chrome just fine.

They don't necessarily know what they need. Perhaps all they need is a bookmark for your site, exposed as a big button choice. You'd have to follow up with some testing to find out what this really meant.

Those people don't know what an app is. The people going "where's the app" will also look at your site on your phone and think it is an app. They just need a way to bookmark your site and see a little icon for it with their apps.

In most cases, I find the apps are actually worse than using the browser. A lot of them are little more than branded Webkit wrappers, with $SITENAME in a coloured bar across the top. If you're going to force me to use an app, it needs to offer some really concrete advantages over the site, and should actually act like an app. One simple win would be a global text resize setting -- give me the option to increase, or decrease, text size throughout your app and then remember it.

One mobile app that I do think `does it right' is eBay's. It's not spectacular, but it's much better than their mobile site and feels like I'm using a real app. It really needs to improve upon its caching behaviour, though.

There's actually a submission rule for iOS that says an app shouldn't be just a web view for one site and no extra features. It's frustrating that the AppStore rules are often not enforced consistently.

They're popular with people who take the subway. Think about it, you're sitting there for half an hour with no service. An app that pre-downloads all of a newspaper's stories is handy and easy to use.

Most of the time the app does not predownload all of the content in advance though.

The Reuters app _used_ to download all the content and then was changed not to. Who does that?

Someone who can see the bandwidth cost, but not the utility.

It's static content, how much could it cost?

the cost of the bandwidth

I mean, if the content is cached in a CDN the bandwidth is going to be negligible.

The bloke in charge of the server budget.

Yes, but that market is covered by Instapaper and Pocket, among others.

Sure it is, so long as you've remembered to fill Instapaper or Pocket with stories from the newspaper's website that you wanted to read. If you ran out the door without having time to peruse the stories on the internet this morning Instapaper won't do you any good.

Neither will having an app that you didn't launch and sync before getting on the subway. Seems like the same amount of effort to me.

There's an advantage to Instapaper and company in that it's centralized and you only have to launch the one app to pull down all of your content regardless of the source.

> Neither will having an app that you didn't launch and sync before getting on the subway. Seems like the same amount of effort to me.

And here I thought in 2013 apps could download their content in background when phone is idle. Maybe when the owner is sleeping at home with fast wifi all around. Might make too much sense though.

I can't tell if you're being purposefully obtuse or not.

iOS does not allow background downloading, unless your app is part of Newsstand. While it would seem to make sense to make your news delivery app appear in Newsstand, it does come with some trade-offs, most significantly that your app is locked inside the Newsstand shelf and can't be placed in a primary app slot.

And, even if your app is in Newsstand, you have to actively go into Settings and turn on background download on an app-by-app basis.

Finally, even then, the app will only background-download if you're on a WiFi connection. I agree, this makes sense in this age of metered WAN bandwidth.

So, if you're using iOS, there's a really good chance that you will not have that content before getting on the subway, unless you remember to click into it on the walk over to the station.

I'm not being purposefully obtuse. I was not aware of this particular limitation of iOS (and probably numerous others). Permission-controlled background downloading would seem like a reasonable solution to this particular problem to me.

OK, good -- thought I might be taking troll-bait, but in that case, glad I could provide information.

In principle, you're exactly right -- but iOS in particular has been notoriously picky about app sandboxing, and there is a very short list of permissions that apps are allowed to ask for: location, push notification, and I believe now address book access.

Perhaps not with iOS, but Android allows such things in their SDK. Guess iOS is just more restrictive in that manner.

I've never tried this feature as it requires location services, but doesn't Instapaper offer exactly that? Location-based automatic downloading of new articles?

As long as it isn't a single application for each and every source you'd read things from.

well, at least in Lisbon (Portugal) we have GMS/UMTS coverage inside the subway (Metro) since 2006 :)

What? No coverage in subway? You must live in Sahara.

Or London six months ago...

or DC

or NYC

Offtopic, but I prefer it that way. I hear enough people yammering away all day, I don't need it on my commute as well (I'd be fine with it if they just instituted data, but since when has the MTA ever done anything intelligently?)

Actually, London has data on the Underground (wifi) but no mobile signal.

(Okay, you could use Skype or whatever, but I'd expect the latency and reliability of the connection is too shitty for that.)

So, modern infrastructure Sahara then :)

What I really really don't like about the Android app model is that an app will come along and demand over a dozen permissions. And I either accept them all or don't download the app.

I really hate it when some apps require unnecessary permissions. Why would a game require access to my contacts or my personal photos and videos? Flicks me into the paranoid mode, especially since the news about Facebook and other major companies exporting your contact list and personal information to their servers.

I have seen an app (probably root-only) that can restrict specific permissions on applications. There are no promises if it will break the app or not, though.

Currently, removing an individual permission from an app will almost certainly cause an unhandled exception, since having that permission makes security exceptions for the corresponding API calls unexpected.

This could be changed without breaking existing apps.

Google could modify Android's app model just slightly, to enable apps to declare in their manifest that they support "a la carte" permissions and then enable users to select individual permissions. To work under this new permission model, apps would have to test for permissions, or handle security exceptions - small modifications.

I think this kind of change would be well worth it. For example, I prefer to trust the OS is preventing location tracking than that the app developer is being honest about turning it off in a setting.

"ignorant executive mandates that companies must have apps simply to be able to say that they have them"

This seems to be the case more often than not. Company executives feel pressured to release an app, any app, because "that's the future" according to whatever self-styled expert they listened to at XYZ Conference. So they crank out a useless app or two, and they get to tell their colleagues, peers, ad agencies, and Wall Street that they are forward thinking.

Such a strategy completely ignores the customer and his/her needs, of course. Publishing an app just to publish an app is pointless at best, and damaging to one's brand at worst. A company without a solid app strategy would be far better served just not releasing one at all. There is a negative ROI associated with a bad app, and not just in terms of the development and marketing dollars burned.

I think the main problem is that companies have their website designed for large screens only. Since it sucks on mobile screens, they then build an app instead of redesigning their website so that it works on little screens. The most famous example for that is Twitter.

> This is what happens when a market crowded with some shockingly bad app developers is combined with ignorant executive mandates

You may be a clueless pointy-haired boss if...

I continue to believe that most of these completely unnecessary apps are by internal devs who want to hone their skills in what they see is the great new lottery ticket, so they convince their hapless managers that they have to get on the app train. I've dealt with this enough.

Key insight: "do I buy a separate radio to listen to different stations?"

Actually, I do use two news apps on my iPhone (aside from Safari and an RSS reader). They're the BBC, and The Guardian. The BBC app is free, and ad-free, at least in the UK, because it's provided by a public service organization with a non-advertising-based revenue model. (You pay your TV license fee, you get your ad-free app.) The Guardian charges for their iPhone app -- a modest annual fee (or rather more every month if you want the full-fat newspaper on your iPad) but thereafter takes a light touch with the advertising on the iPhone app; it's a headline sampler, and in that respect it's arguably a marketing tool for the newspaper itself.

The common denominator of both these apps is that they don't do the advertising fandango. I think we can see where this is going, can't we? Yes, it's the separate-radio-per-channel model: it's not so much about providing a better service as it is about obtaining a monopoly lock-in on the user's eyeballs while you feed them ads.

That's your choice.

You should also be allowed not to put up with their apps. I simply opted for not reading the news on my phone as it's painfully inconvenient to me. My 512MB phone struggles with 5 odd apps in the background and I'm not going to install yet another app taking over my phone as it didn't run anything else. Yes I do kill processes etc but this kind of shite should not be the standard.

Been there, done that (I leapfrog iPhone generations, so for some months before each upgrade things are running painfully slowly). I will note that disabling Javascript on most news sites seems to disable the "why don't you download our app?" nonsense and a lot of the irritating fripperies that slow down the basic news experience.

My main issue is that this exposes some of the drawbacks of a business model that relies on advertising: it delivers false incentives that cause the business to pursue ad clicks rather than customer satisfaction (i.e. short term profit over long-term customer base).

> Actually, I do use two news apps on my iPhone (aside from Safari and an RSS reader). They're the BBC, and The Guardian.

I'll also use the NPR app from time to time. Its design isn't bad, and I like being able to switch from print to streamed audio sometimes.

> it's not so much about providing a better service as it is about obtaining a monopoly lock-in on the user's eyeballs while you feed them ads.

Apps and mobile sites that make you wait five freaking seconds so they can load ads and all of the metrics for their sponsors -- who are they fooling? Have they even tried to use their own app?

I've built a few mobile "reader" applications for large media clients and the main reason they use native apps is for offline browsing when your connection goes bad, allowing a smooth reading experience. If the app doesn't do this at the very minimum then there's really no point to it.

Other things we do: 1. Add games and other content that doesn't work well across mobile browsers. 2. Allow in-app purchases of other content such as white papers or related books that fit into the devices "book shelf" application, whatever that may be.

Now for a tech perspective - If you've ever built an app on a mobile device that is based on HTML5 you'll know that the performance lags when compared to a native app. When you throw in content animations, such as in a children's interactive story book, the comparison is moot. I'll bet against anybody that thinks they can get similar performance from a web-based application on a mobile device. I've done it and I know for certain it's a terrible solution who's only benefit is to the development team and not the end user. My apps are almost 100% native now with HTML being used for content I don't want to touch, like terms and conditions and privacy statements that I pull from a website.

My point? Native apps benefit the end user if done properly. Just because some fools botched a workflow doesn't negate this.

I think this is mostly misguided trend-following on behalf of product marketing people. "Our competitors have an app, why don't we have an app? Let's make an app."

And then, to drive up the app's numbers, put a pop-up on the mobile version of the website with a link to download the app from the app store. Now the marketing genius who came up with this bright idea looks good and deserves a promotion.

With any luck the app fad will be over soon and we can get back to using a browser for all content instead of a different client for every type of content.

With the strides we've made in responsive layout design (WordPress and Twitter Boostrap sites look GREAT in mobile browsers!) there really is no excuse anymore.

I agree. I think it's more 'stupidity' than evil intent in this case.

And most apps require permissions that have very little to do with the purpose of the app. Here's what the BBC news reader for Android wants:

THIS APPLICATION HAS ACCESS TO THE FOLLOWING:

HARDWARE CONTROLS

CHANGE YOUR AUDIO SETTINGS

Allows the app to modify global audio settings such as volume and which speaker is used for output.

NETWORK COMMUNICATION

FULL NETWORK ACCESS

Allows the app to create network sockets and use custom network protocols. The browser and other applications provide means to send data to the internet, so this permission is not required to send data to the internet.

PHONE CALLS

READ PHONE STATUS AND IDENTITY

Allows the app to access the phone features of the device. This permission allows the app to determine the phone number and device IDs, whether a call is active, and the remote number connected by a call.

STORAGE

MODIFY OR DELETE THE CONTENTS OF YOUR USB STORAGE MODIFY OR DELETE THE CONTENTS OF YOUR SD CARD

Allows the app to write to the USB storage. Allows the app to write to the SD card.

SYSTEM TOOLS

PREVENT TABLET FROM SLEEPING PREVENT PHONE FROM SLEEPING

Allows the app to prevent the tablet from going to sleep. Allows the app to prevent the phone from going to sleep.

All these are sort of explainable, Hardware and Audio is to allow the user to control volume or widgets for feeds and multimedia.

Network access is usually reserved for multimedia

Phone Calls - status - is usually because if you receive a phone call any multimedia knows when to stop

storage - to store things to your sd card or move the app to your sd card

prevent from sleeping - if you're watching a video you don't want the screen to sleep.

Right, so in order to duplicate everything the browser already does, they "need" these overly broad permissions. That's exactly the point the OP was making.

I think the real problem is that permissions are either too broad for the purpose of displaying some content, or they are too many for anyone to understand. My conclusion is that such apps simply make no sense.

They may be explainable but do you really want to install an app that _could_ keep track of the numbers you call and then send them back to a central server?

In this case it is the BBC, so its probably only likely that the british government, the metropolitan police or mi 5/6 would be able to convince them to do it but a whole lot of less scrupulous organisations ask for that permission.

Looks like android needs to fix it's permissions system.

I think Android permissions are probably the best at the moment, because they actually exist, are centrally located, and are easy to read. You won't see any certain permission detail longer than a few sentences. They also are shared, so if you have seen one permission for an app to access your contacts, it will be the same in all apps. Apple requires less permissions disclosure and they can be listed in the app store, or on the developers site.

However, ideally I would like to see the current Android permissions segmented further. Right now they act as a catch all to ensure all bases are covered. This is often way beyond what most apps need and actually use, making users second guess what they are installing (at least, they do for me).

the only difference between ios and android is android tells you the permissions an app requires. All mobile os need their permission systems fixed

I'm not an expert on Android permissions, but those seem reasonable to me. What permissions do you have a problem with, and what should they replace it with, or do you think is totally unnecessary?

It would be interesting to know why a news reading application needs full access to my file system.

The BBC news app caches pics and content - that's how when you open it a second time (even if it was shut down) it can show the tiles really quickly without downloading them.

Okay, and why does that mean it needs access to my complete filesystem rather than just a little namespaced, security-controlled chunk of filesystem allocated by the OS to it?

Historically, on Android, there has been very little space in the data area for each individual app. An app that cached to that would have been unusable on my Nexus One for example, where I constantly had to delete apps whenever I wanted to install a new one, and I had very few - something like 10 or 15.

The best place for the user has been to cache to the SD card, or the internal storage partition setup to look like an SD card. There are even many root required hacks to move app data to there and similar. The storage permission is needed to access the SD card, however.

Even in non-rooted Android things are changing, however. Apps that accept certain limitations, like no reliable background services, can be set to be installed to SD card. The latest versions do away with mounting as an SD card entirely and should help unify the storage, although everyone hates the new MTP protocol being used to access data from the PC when the phone is plugging in now.

One issue with these permissions is that I don't have a clue what they mean. Does the list of permissions I posted give that app the right to read all my personal data and upload it to one of their servers? Can it delete all my contacts or pictures? Can it make phone calls on my behalf or record my phone calls and upload the audio file to a server?

I know it's not answering your actual point, but I'll answer your specific questions. No, it can't record audio, or make phone calls on your behalf -- both require specific permissions that aren't listed here. It can't access your contacts at all, either, as that requires a specific permission.

Pictures are stored on the SD card, so the app could read all your pictures, upload them, then delete them. Newer devices have more internal storage, so hopefully applications will gradually move away from using this permission. Apparently, the next version of Android will introduce a new permission for reading the SD card too -- at present, any application may read from the SD card.

"Read[ing] all my personal data" depends on what you count as personal data -- security-sensitive info should not be on the SD card (things like phone number (although the phone state and identity permission gives access to this), contacts, account details), but anything that is on the SD card may be read by any application. That means pictures and music, at least.

I wonder if it might be useful to always list all of the common permissions, to make it easier to see which ones an application doesn't have. I've installed enough Android apps to have a reasonable idea of what's available (and by extension, what any given app can't do) but it's reasonable to assume I'm in a small minority.

Thanks for the info. I agree that knowing what an app can't do would be very useful.

And I think there should be a notion of "secure/private/encrypted storage". So when I tell an app to store some item there, I can be absolutely certain that no other app will ever be able to access it, regardless of any permissions.

Every app has its own protected storage space, but that's historically often been quite restricted in size. This is where things like SQLite databases are usually stored. It's also (pretty much by definition) not accessible using a file manager and it's much more difficult to share data from it, so it's not appropriate for music or pictures.

Why not just do the same thing we have been using for years, /tmp. If the program just needs scratch space why do we deem it proper to allow any app to traverse an entire partition so it can set down a couple of files?

That's why you are better off with Android + Opera and change your user agent for Desktop. It is a not perfect solution but works.

Plus, Opera mobile is, by far, the snappiest Android browser I've used.

I use Chrome for iOS's "Request Desktop Site" feature so much. Very useful on my iPad mini (my only mobile device).

Funny how RSS feeds solved this problem years ago. You have a standard format for articles that can contain rich text and embedded images (and videos, if you must). Then you have a single reader app for all news sites that can offline cache content where needed. Hell, you can even synchronize what articles you've read between devices.

Of course in a world where everything must be plastered with flashing advertising banners and justified with pageviews, the wonderful RSS idea was quickly crippled through "teaser" articles that forced you to visit a website to read the whole thing and be subjected to the same mess of bad layouts, poorly chosen fonts and distracting advertising. The "download our rubbish app" overlays are merely another wart on top of this terrible state of things.

Mmm... I guess I'm a cynic, but people are, surprisingly, not as stupid as you think. If a company has a phone app, there's a reason.

It might be so they can harvest your contacts.

It might be so they can have a 'premium' version because they think it'll convert better than a web pay wall.

It might be so they have add invasive (read: profitable) ads directly to your device, which (arguably) convert better than web banners which people have 1) banner blindness to and 2) are more difficult to block.

It might be because they are stupid and they're playing "me too" because other people have apps, and hey, there must be a reason for that right?

...but I'm pretty sure the people in category (4) aren't the majority. Most of the people making these apps are doing it for their own nefarious reasons. It's sure as hell not because they're chasing a 'good user experience'.

Dont download and install this kind of app, ever

Even doing that once is probably a +ve data point in the 'lets keep making out ##$@ty native app' business case.

I think a lot of the development of apps (and before that the web itself) was "me-tooism," but that doesn't necessarily make it stupid.

It's more a matter of getting on the bandwagon while things are still heating up, and figuring out how to make it work for you as you go.

"The web is going mobile; we need to be on mobile; the mobile world is a world of apps; therefore we need an app to stake out a presence in that space."

No part of the chain of reasoning is wrong or stupid in and of itself, but the product of thousands of actors following the same logic is chaos and waste. You could see it as a variation on the tragedy of the commons.

My local newspaper is currently going through their bullshit app phase:

http://www.roanoke.com/digitalsubscription/#replica

• If you're on a computer, you just head to their website, login, and read the newspaper.

• If you're on an Android device, you just head to their website, login, and read the newspaper.

• If you're on an Apple device, you're directed to download the bullshit iOS app.

The reason they give for requiring the bullshit iOS app is that the website requires Flash to do its thing. That makes me wonder if they bothered testing the website on an Android device released after August 2012, when Adobe dropped support for new installs of Flash Player on Android...

It also makes me wonder if they got the memo about the rest of the world moving away from Flash...

Apple could solve this problem on iOS by giving us a button that forces the browser to appear to be desktop Safari, but apparently this is all part of their overall apps strategy or something.

The best is when after you go through all the nonsense, you get "This article is not available on your device." It's like when you want to watch a video, and you have to watch a 30 second ad first, and after the ad you get an error saying the video no longer exists. But the ad played. Oh you can bet that ad is always going to exist.

>apparently this is all part of their overall apps strategy or something.

Actually, in iOS 6, Apple added a graceful way to handle this case. The site can use a special HTML tag to indicate they have an app available, and that will show a tasteful banner at the top of the Safari screen that can be easily dismissed and that can launch the app, with context of the current page. Much better than some homebrew Javascript solution.

But site developers still have the option to completely block you from their content when they detect you're using iOS Safari. Which is what so many news sites are doing.

I'm confident when they see a significant traffic drop-off that idiotic behavior will adjust itself.

I hope you know Chrome for iOS has that exact feature. It makes the iPad a lot more useful for me.

...as do other alternative browsers, like iCab Mobile or AtomicWeb.

Handy for not just getting around app-prompts but also other over-customization for mobile/touch devices (like 'OnSwipe' or forced-mobile-site-version).

Unfortunately for every clued in person that sees apps for what they are (a return to the past rather than a jump into the future) there are a hundred or more that have no idea about what is at stake here that will happily download your bullshit app.

If you don't mind me asking, what exactly is at stake? It's not exactly a step into the future but it's not really a step back either, when you consider apps that access phone capabilities (notifications, for example). For me there's also this notion of apps being registered on my phone for specific actions (want to share a photo? Use the facebook app). There are also places where I don't have net access, so having offline apps can be useful.

In an ideal world almost all of this can be transformed into what I imagine FF OS is trying to accomplish... but until then I am not exactly thrilled about it, but apps are not the devil incarnate either. They're pretty much the status quo.

> If you don't mind me asking, what exactly is at stake?

Only the old-style Web, by design a public forum, accessible by everyone in the same way using standards-compliant browsers.

What we're seeing is a plan to convert a very efficient way to share information, but not an efficient way to make money, into something that favors the latter goal over the former.

> They're pretty much the status quo.

That may be, but not so long ago the Web was the status quo -- the free, public forum.

Remember when Tim Berners-Lee complained about the deleterious effect of nonstandard browser extensions? This trend is the ultimate nonstandard browser extension -- it eliminates the browser entirely.

I dont think the point is that apps are evil; the point is that they are inconvenient and unnecessary way to deliver text and images, if that's all they're designed to do. Interacting with the phone and notification capabilities of the OS is a solid use case for a client app; reading news articles is just not.

There's nothing preventing the implementation of sharing via a website (or posting to a URL) instead of an app. There's nothing preventing standard interactions with your phone to be delivered by checking an API instead of requiring an app. You can still use many websites in offline mode.

They are right, pushing for apps can a way to silo data and prevent you from using your phone as a general purpose device. How can you share from the app if they don't bring up the list of intents for you? Can you select which push notifications to receive for a given app or do you get all of them? Etc.

  > prevent you from using your phone as a general purpose
  > device

So some time ago you were able to use your phone as a general purpose device? Interesting, for me iPhone was the first phone that made web bearable on mobile.

Me too.

But there's Apple's continued refusal to let us use the hardware in any way they don't like, and this push for apps instead of websites. It looks to me like one step forward, two steps back.

We finally have these tiny computers in our pockets. We should push hard to stop anything restricting it. For me that includes refusing to use an app that offers nothing over the website other than push notice advertising.

> Be told you aren’t allowed to read the website.

Is this true? I've never seen that. Many times the app is heavily suggested, but I've never been locked out of the regular website just because I'm on mobile.

I also believe Mobile Chrome lets you fake a desktop user agent so there's no way for a website to lock out a mobile user.

That said, I totally agree with the OP, these "content apps" are ridiculous and very annoying.

Quora does exactly that, or at least it did on 14.1.2013 (dd-mm-yyyy)

https://plus.google.com/106938703242944328523/posts/4CopSTtW...

I just tested this in Chrome on Android and it's not true; I'm able to browse Quora all I want without downloading any app (although there is a prominent button that says "View in Quora App").

To be really sure I also tested it in Safari on iOS and the experience is the same.

I can post pictures if you don't believe me! ;-)

Personally I'm more of the opinion "I'm not going to read your bullshit news at all". In arguments like this I see many people debating the finer details of App design etc. when the real question is why do we even need this product (news) at all! Part of the answer is also the answer to this article.. because everyone else does it.

I think it's a shame more people don't see the mainstream news, in App form, print, TV or whatever, as the farcical waste of time that it is. I guess it makes some of us feel a bit more important to be 'in the loop'.

It's been debated many times before so I won't go into it again, just thought I'd inject a bit of big-picture perspective.

I am probably reading different websites, but that is not what happens to me.

It is either

- full websites opens, maybe forcing me to resize but that's usually ok

- mobile webstite opens, which looks good and I can read the stuff as I intended

- mobile website opens and it is unusable because of stupid things (see: techchrunch and pagination)

maybe sometimes I have to click on "no, I don't want your app" pop-up, but it is never "you can't read it without the app".

I think this is a valid position in the native/web app debate. Most apps are actually web sites, but they are mistakenly built as computer programs. This is not good engineering. In an ideal world %90 of the apps (anything but utilities, games and graphics applications) would remain as web sites, like they are on PCs. We never install a shopping application to our PCs. Web is the standardized and correct way of presenting interactive content.

Also note that Apple was against Flash mainly because it contradicts with this walled garden approach. Web+Flash (or HTML5 today) was the standard and free way of building almost all of the "apps" in the PC era. Native may have a performance gain in the short term (which becomes irrelevant in the long term as Moore's law dictates) but our loss of time and standardization in the development of an open and accessible (mobile) web lasts longer.

Flash performance is shit on a mobile which is why Android dropped it as well.

Not to appear a shill for Amazon, but this is one of the things I like about my Kindle. I subscribe to several newspapers via Amazon, and they're pushed out to my Kindle as e-books each morning.

This doesn't solve the problem of URIs or of different layout/content/etc. for web vs e-book, but it does solve the data-container-as-app problem.

Web applications aren't different either.

1. Go to website. 2. Be told you aren’t allowed to read the website. 3. Be redirected to /badbrowser or see nothing. 4. Enable JavaScript. 5. Wait while application is loading over your temperamental, expensive EDGE connection. 6. Try to read content through broken layout, blocks floating around, viewport half reduced, overly small or big fonts. 7. Get back home to write proxy converting apps to content.

It is content vs app war. Content could be red, shown, styled, stored, indexed, processed in all different ways. By contrast app limits our abilities to its implementation details.

Applications should respectfully augment content, not trying replace it.

The only such app I use is the WSJ on the iPad. It's handy for reading the entire paper contents on plane trips back when I used to fly once a week. The rest of the time, web apps seem adequate for the dozens of periodicals I read online.

But now it seems every Tom, Dick, and Harry needs to have a mobile app. "Welcome to the South Florida Sentinel -- press OK to download our app, or tap the tiny link 'No thanks, take me to the article'"

It seems to me Mr. Morris was a bit over the top in his expletive-laden diatribe. I mean, you don't HAVE to download any apps, right? Just go to the website, or else don't go there at all. No one has a monopoly on the news.

I'm pretty sure there was a similar blog post with the exact same point on HN a few weeks ago. Seems like a rant about mobile apps not being as good as regular websites is a good way to make it to the front page.

Whilst I agree with some of the sentiments the article conveys, I'm doubtful that many people who feel this strongly actually would bother to go through these steps. Of those news organisations whose sites you regularly read, which of them actually do this and of those which would you feel happy installing an app for? I read numerous news articles on the web, but I only have one news app installed (for The Guardian), and they don't even exhibit this behaviour.

It would seem to me the most practical thing to do is to just dismiss the alert, cluck my tongue at the site's hubris, then read the article within the mobile browser — which more often than not is an option. Where it is not, to actually go down the route of installing the app of an organisation that manifestly has contempt for the end user, then upon discovering it offers up a terrible experience conclude this is fait accompli in the debate of web vs native apps seems like wilful prejudice.

The concluding remarks offer up straw man arguments for why native applications are a bad thing, in spite of the anecdote really just being about companies (which coincidentally makes money from somebody other than the end user) who treat the end user like nothing other the commodity they truly see them as.

I posted about that a while back, although not in such a colorful language, and didn't get that much traction, maybe that's why. ;)

But I do agree that it's annoying when you go to a site and it's not just a reminder but a full screen ad for their app. I also hate sites that feel the need to load the page, detect you're on an iPad, clear the screen, then load another version that is slower to load and works worse, but has nifty side scrolling.

Or worse, a full screen ad, and then redirecting you to their main page, instead of showing you the article you wanted to see.

Download Atomic Web Browser for iOS. In the settings, select Identify browser as... choose Firefox. Changes your User-Agent. Problems solved.

Atomic is the cat's pajamas. Love the absurd level of gesture configurability. If it had Nitro, I'd probably use it over Safari full-time.

I think the goal of an app is prominence on your device. The creator imagines you have an address book app, a camera app, a browser app, and Our Content App on your home page. You might have 100 bookmarks in the browser, but you'll see Our Content App differently, because it's got its own icon.

In practice, I think people either 1) have dozens of apps, so that the "priority" effect is less important, or 2) have few apps and generally refuse to install an app to do what a web page should do.

Either way, I think that in a few years, we'll look back on this trend and laugh. (Personally, I've been laughing about it for a while.)

I find the default iOS popup advertising an app the worst part, by large the app offers extra functionality over the web. the popup disrupts the experience and I also have the same feelings of rage on random site for some random stupid bullshit app.

The compass in the iPhone for example, does device allow a web server query the phones heading through browser? Offline modes and caching are features not really possible with the browser.

As for the giving something up, open public web access to proprietary apps, this is very true. I don't see big content moving away from the web though, the app ecosystem seems to compliment it.

Yes, compass heading can be queried through the browser: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/device/orientation/

As of April 2011, the article claims various degrees of support from mobile Chrome, Safari, Opera and Firefox.

There's also plenty of work on application caching and offline support (though, to be fair, that's a very hard problem): http://www.html5rocks.com/en/features/offline

I absolutely agree with this, I recently removed a bunch of news apps from my phone because I found myself using the browser to read news websites even when I had their app already installed.

One of the few advantages of a news app is the occasional notification and even then most the time they are implemented in an annoying fashion. It'd be nice if there was a standard that allowed users to subscribe to push notifications directly from websites without having to install an app. In general it'd be nice to see phone OS's opening up their api's to websites and not only apps.

> It'd be nice if there was a standard that allowed users to subscribe to push notifications directly from websites without having to install an app.

Is using a single RSS app for all content feeds not sufficient?

> Is using a single RSS app for all content feeds not sufficient?

Yes, true, but companies can't sell you RSS, it's free in the same way that a browser is free, so that's right out.

The basic idea is to take what already exists and is free, and think of a way to capture it and sell it back to people.

Well, iOS does have its "Newsstand" app, which is essentially a reader for paywalled RSS feeds.

Still, the standalone apps for every publication that this thread is complaining about are free, too. I don't see paywalls being effective for anything but the most established media properties - NY Times can (sort of) get away with it, but can everyone else?

If the propagation of native apps really is because of an "everyone else is doing it" mindset, there's no reason not to just use RSS instead.

And all of these sites, even NY Times, already have RSS feeds of their content anyway.

> Still, the standalone apps for every publication that this thread is complaining about are free, too.

We've been discussing their effect, not their cost. If they prevent free exchange of information, then perhaps that's a meaning of "free" worth talking about.

That might be one of the manifest effects, but it's arguable as to whether that effect is actually the primary intention of driving users away from web content and toward standalone clients.

I doubt that most of the media sources that are pushing native apps are even thinking about it in these terms; most of it is probably bandwaggoning, and the originators of the phenomena probably just wanted a way of keeping their brand and content visible on the dashboard to avoid "out of site, out of mind".

In all likelihood, the net effect of attempting to shovel users off the web and into native apps is probably detrimental to the bottom line.

> but it's arguable as to whether that effect is actually the primary intention of driving users away from web content and toward standalone clients.

To the degree that people use dedicated apps, it is to that same degree that they're not using browsers and open media.

The motive for creating dedicated apps should seem obvious -- it turns a public forum into a series of competing private experiences, each with a loyal (or trapped) following. The classic example is Facebook -- people could have social media with a browser in a much less structured way, but people prefer Facebook, even though it is a highly structured, separate environment, one in which Mark Zuckerberg gets to decide what experience you have.

Because of Facebook's success, many other companies want some version of the same structure -- a controlled version of web browsing, separate from the public kind.

> In all likelihood, the net effect of attempting to shovel users off the web and into native apps is probably detrimental to the bottom line.

If that were true, people would avoid it (and Facebook would fail). But it's not true, and Web metrics support the idea that a dedicated app is a more efficient way to generate profits than waiting for people to visit your public Web site.

> ... to avoid "out of site, out of mind".

Cute pun on "out of sight, out of mind".

> To the degree that people use dedicated apps, it is to that same degree that they're not using browsers and open media.

True enough, but I'm not convinced that the latter effect is intended ore merely a side effect. This distinction is certainly key in assessing what alternatives those pushing native apps would be willing to consider.

> it turns a public forum into a series of competing private experiences

Again, this is a precipitate effect, but it's not clear that this is the intended effect that reveals the underlying motivation. I do think that motivation is present among some - Facebook, certainly, though they seem less interested in driving people away from the web than in hijacking the web and turning it into their own proprietary platform - but, again, I think that the native-app trend is largely bandwagonning initially motivated by smaller websites' management desiring to have their brand in readers' view for more often and for longer. If the UI for iOS worked differently, and RSS feeds could be accessed via a method indistinguishable from accessing native apps, I think we'd see far fewer native apps.

> and Facebook would fail

It may yet.

> In general it'd be nice to see phone OS's opening up their api's to websites and not only apps.

It's hard to see that happening while the OS makers are involved in a "my App Store is bigger than your App Store" war, and they'd risk losing out on that 30% cut of paid apps.

Server Sent Events are possibly what you're looking for. There are extensions for interfacing with low power mobile device wakeup and notification protocols as well, IIRC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server-sent_events

Apps are basically fancy bookmarks with native code abilities and local state (including dreaded settings), as well as notifications.

I try to have as few apps as possible on my device. I use the website version of many things, even if that provides a slightly inferior experience, just because it outweighs the disadvantage of having to dl a app for every little thing.

A future I hope to see one day is an open OS with downloadable 3rd party "functionality" that expands the abilities of the OS, and apps (basically functionality + crafted experience forced into one) fade to background.

I do really despise how LinkedIn asks me to install the app every single time. It would be easy for them to store a preference that I don't want the app advertisement every time I go to their site.

Speaking with Matt Lauer from the TODAY Show, Zuckerberg said that more smartphone users are actually accessing Facebook through their mobile browser than through apps specifically built for iOS or Android. “There are more people doing that than the iPhone and all of Android phones combined, right? So it’s actually a pretty diverse ecosystem,” said Zuckerberg.

---

That has surprised me - but given Facebook's large sample size I think that goes to show you that the mobile web is stronger than maybe thought on first glance.

Is this as big of an issue as the article makes it out to be? I just went to about 30 news sites on my iPhone and none of them prompted me to download an app, the more common approach now seems to be a small popup that says "click here to add this homepage to your home screen". The only one that really restricted me was Quora (which isn't news but I saw it mentioned in the comments so I gave it a try).

What this article ignores is that the computer is always a multi-purpose-multi-tasking tool, while phones for the most part and by most people are used for one thing at a time. There are notifications, but otherwise as long as you're happy doing what you're in an app you'll stay there. That's a big advantage for an organization like a newspaper, and an obvious reason to go for an app.

I don't see why that makes the case for native apps more compelling.

It helps the consumer because if it's a good app, it allows you to better focus on that one task you're after. Reading the news, for example. I haven't had any of the problems he discusses with the NYTimes app, for example.

For the organization, the benefits of longer engagement are pretty obvious as well.

He's right about a lot of bad developers (and clueless execs) producing really crappy apps. He's wrong if he thinks that a lot of the bigger brands are still at that stage.

I am yet to see an improved "reading" experience in an app. It's words on a screen. The ability to innovate is very limited.

Want swipe page turns ? That can be done in web. Scrolling? Zooming? Etc etc can all be done with a website.

Apps have there place, but I don't think news readers are it.

Not having the huge address header on the iPhone with Safari is already a huge improvement of the reading experience.

The iOS version of Safari has the "reading list" feature which downloads an article for offline reading (Instapaper is better IMO, but the functionality is largely the same that if you didn't want to buy another app it's built into your iOS device for free). The browser is well equipped to deal with textual information. I too fail to see the point of "bullshit" apps.

Tom Morris thank you for writing this. It so well echoes my sentiments. For all news site app developers out there, apps are only useful if it provides all the flexibility of reading news in the browser and more, don't let the readers curse you for making them download a pointless app. And yes, there are news apps out there that does things right, but very few.

Most recent offender: Quora.

Quora has refused to allow casual viewers for some time now. I've removed them from my search results and my online experience is better for it.

Just as bad are websites that go over-the-top in changing functionality and layout to seemingly cater to tablets and mobile devices. Vertically scrolling an article on an iPad is a pretty good experience and has the benefit of keeping your site consistent with your web version, does it really need to horizontal paged scrolling?

> Apps ought to provide some actual functionality, not just blobs of content wrapped up in binary files.

I completely agree with this. I've downloaded some apps for blogs on my phone, but I realized that they just sit there in a folder, on a home page a rarely visit, while my RSS app is front and center in my dock.

> If you are on Android, be sure to install some anti-adware software in case the app comes with some delightful bit of creepy privacy-intruding out-of-app advertising.

Can we please stop perpetuating this myth? Adware is not a problem on Android unless you are downloading fake versions of apps or cracked apps.

No, I'm not going to download your bullshit app

Ok, so don't! Just because you have no use for an app doesn't mean it's useless to others, or "bullshit" as you so eloquently put it.

I have the NPR app on my iPhone and iPad. Wake up in the morning, feel like listening to the radio and don't want to start the day browsing the web? Turn on Morning Edition on the iPad. Listening to a really interesting Fresh Air interview on the car radio but now have to get out of the car and go grocery shopping? Switch to the live broadcast on the iPhone, pop in my earphones, get out, keep listening.

The BBC and NYTimes apps are less useful to me but I get news alerts on my mobile from the NYTimes and the AP. And I can quickly check world news headlines or start a BBC live radio stream on my iPhone in a matter of seconds.

NPR and the BBC are both free of ads and, in my opinion, are just trying to serve their listeners and readers as best as they can. If you think smart phones and tablets are just smaller versions of your laptop or desktop computer, fine, continue consuming your media just as you did in the 90s, you're not the target audience any way.

Also happens on facebook when you want to read an article/watch a video someone posted. You click just to be redirect to a facebook App that allows you to read the article. It's only after a few posts that I got upset and found out that clicking CANCEL redirects you to the real website page.

The biggest point he doesn't handle is speed: Viewing a news article in a fast newsreader app is much faster than downloading the whole website.

I wrote an app which uses rss feeds and smart preloading of data when it is not yet visible. Making it blazingly fast. I don't want to wait for we website to load.

One of my favorite bars in the city -- a homesy British-style pub out near Laurel Heights -- has fliers asking people to 'check out [their] app' replete with an accompanying QR code.

There is literally zero reason to use it, and I sincerely hope they didn't spend money on it.

It's a great bar, though. Pig and Whistle.

Apple needs to put a feature into Safari that allows you to bypass a stupid "mobile site," if you want, automatically for particular domains. If the likes of Extremetech care nothing for our experience as tablet users, why should we give a damn about their value to their sponsors?

I use a browser that does what I want -- and not what I don't. That includes "lying" to crap Web/Internet properties, as needed.

Or, as I often think of it, withholding information that can or will be used against me.

I prefer to use (and insist upon using) a general purpose computing device, not an "appliance".

I feel the same as this guy. I despise being forced to download an app when I already have Chrome installed and know that the website contains all the content I went and in a familiar layout.

I'm also getting fed up of being asked if I want to install Tapatalk every time I visit a popular forum.

I agree 100%. But I would rephrase it slightly:

- Failing to deliver news to your website (for whatever reason): Just a failure, as in, you failed, period.

- News App: not a substitute for doing your job (delivering news to your website), nice for people who want it, don't force it on anybody else.

While I completely agree with the OP, I must say that if this happens it's because we users allow it.

Let's just stop downloading these apps. Maybe then, the app will be an extra and not a requirement to access web content.

I'm very much in the `take a stand' crowd, but the problem with using that approach is that most people just want to RTFA, so a lot of them will grudgingly download the app in question to do so. And once it's on there, there's no frustrating first step, so they continue to use it. It builds, slowly but surely, a user-base for the app, which means that those refusing to use it become easier to ignore.

Agree with the OP. I think someone like Flipboard is an example of doing it right. It is focused entirely on the content and the best way to present it to you for ease of consumption.

Or he could hit cancel and let the browser take him to the site. 1 step. No need for the pissy rant. Note that many people like the app model and that's why people are offering them.

You nailed it! May I add: 15. Update the freakin' app every other week. 16. This goes on, until you get the message that the new version of the app is not compatible with your OS.

Discovery is a huge problem for native apps. We're finally come to not an "either or" but a "which one". When building something, don't think I need a drill, think I need a hole.

No, I'm not going to read your linkbait headlined article.

Are there some websites which don't work well after selecting "request desktop sure"? So far it's been my default reaction when "forced" to install an app.

He missed step 1: try to click on the fiddly, tiny hyperlinks to dismiss the gigantic "How cookies work" statement, every bloody time you visit the site.

The UK Information Commissioners Office have now changed their policy on that...

It was/is a similar story with dictionary apps until free software clients came along and "Hey arseholes just sell us dictionary files, mmkay?"

I couldn't agree more. At least, they should give us choice between the regular website (or even better a mobile-friendly one) and the app.

Without the exploration of seemingly ridiculous ideas there is no progress. What does not work ultimately evaporates into history. The truly useful remains. And during the transition some ignore it while others adopt, experiment, learn and contribute.

And, of course, there's yet another group that can do nothing but whine.

That's not to say that this might not have some value. However, for some reason, if I was the first guy trying to rub two sticks of wood together to make fire I think the whino's would be kind of annoying.

Your point is valid but does not refute the OP, who is saying "this does not work and should evaporate into history." Such reactions are part of how we collectively discard failed ideas.

Points 7,8,9,10,11 are not about web vs. app. They could be applicable to "old website design" vs. "new website design" story also.

I'm just bringing up three points in relation to this article I'm popping out in my lunch break, I know they are rantish - but they are on my mind a lot...

a) Maybe I am missing something, but where is the mobile web app 'store' as a good middle ground for people trying to find mobile versions of sites? So many people have been conditioned out there to think mobile = 'apps' - perhaps a push in this direction would be an idea?

What I seriously dislike about Google search on my phone is it gives me a mish-mash of Web and Mobile results that give a totally inconsistent user experience. For some sites I can get away with using a standard 'big' web view - but for anything generally requiring input, forms, etc - 'conventional' web pages are a serious pain. Try booking a hotel room with one of them.

b) One thing to keep in mind as we get more and more devices (and thats what the hardware manufacturers want us to do right?) I notice the download an app model as not 'scalable' in this way. I can see a future where I have a desktop at my office, a tablet sitting at my office, a phone always in my pocket, a tablet sitting in my bedroom, a laptop at home, a tablet sitting in my kitchen, a tablet sitting in my lounge room, a tv connected to the internet, a tablet that I take out with me when I'm on the road, a tablet kind of device in my car. Do I really want to be downloading, installing and updating apps on every single device? This might sound far fetched today - but I still have computer magazines from about 1990 when 16MB of RAM was US$4000. And I can still remember seeing my first plasma TV for sale for about US$20000 in the late 90's. Prices will continue to drop on these things and people will get more of them - I'm sure of that. But it's already annoying enough to have to sync, install, update apps across two devices right now.

c) I keep hearing that people are calling for native apps in mobile devices for reasons such as they offer a faster user experience, offer more native controls, etc. But I could make the argument that building a desktop version of say, Facebook would offer something faster and look more 'native' than what I currently see in the web. But where is the demand for this? People you are missing out on a beautiful 'glides like butter' Facebook shiny, polished look and feel experience on iOS! Where is there an outcry? I think the only reason HTML5 sucks in most use cases for mobile web is it's just still too slow - but each keynote for a new iPhone I hear about delivers speeds usually 2x of the previous version. Therefore I sometimes think this is a short term problem. I think the web in any form it takes will always take a while to 'be ready - how long did it take Wikipedia to push off the CD-ROM behemoth Encarta?

Turning "blobs of content" into apps is going to make a lot of money when the Apple TV comes out

Roku already exists.

I feel like most of the points can be summed up as "it's different from what I'm used to"

Firefox Nightly mobile has a nice "request desktop version" ability.

All android browsers (not sure of ios) have view in desktop mode.

CBS does this with the 60 Minutes website. It's so irritating.

you have to download commentapp2013 to read this comment sorry

The SMH website is 100% inferior to the iPad app.

Technology for technology's sake.

The Magazine anyone?

True that!

Well said.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/internet-users-demand-less-...

It's not an entirely false rant but how can you take an author who writes this seriously:

"Dear Lisp programmers: Microsoft have implemented the mixing of code and data, like you asked for. Only, they’ve called it ‘Word Macros’. Enjoy."

Because sometimes the author is having a laugh.

Buy a Surface if you want the same fucking apps everywhere.

What if you don't want "apps" unless there is some actual functionality? The Web is just fine without being appized.

Just an angry dude trying to recruit more anger to justify his lack of pleasure in life. First-First world problems at best.

Amusing that a rant like this reached #1 spot. Take worst case scenario, darken colors a bit more and then make a generalized conclusion on "web vs. apps". Why do you even look at it as web vs. apps? Are we still fighting radio vs. tv vs. movies vs. theater?

If your app is nothing more than webview loading the same content, it is stupid. To see each app as a threat to "open web" even more stupid. To pretend that web tech is always superior… well, that just shows you don't know much about either web tech and native frameworks.

And you know what? It is not that app developers want to kill web, it's the opposite—some web devs want to kill apps "before it is too late". I have no idea, why. This is sad, really, and even more sad when prominent figures in web world start spreading FUD, sometimes even presenting it as "disspeling myths". How about putting your insecurities aside, take a deep breath, spend some time thinking what the web is and what it is good for, what an app is and what it is good for and act accordingly?

> Why do you even look at it as web vs. apps?

Because the issue under discussion is proprietary applications with sequestered content, versus standards-compliant browsers accessing a public Web.

> To see each app as a threat to "open web" even more stupid.

Try to fill out your argument. Calling it "stupid" isn't an argument.

If an app sequesters content, and if that content would otherwise be publicly available, then the app has nothing but disadvantages compared to a browser -- for the user, not the company that designed the app.

> To pretend that web tech is always superior ...

Straw Man. Only you have made this argument.

"To pretend that web tech is always superior"

I didn't. I said that the overhead of installing an app is unnecessary for the use case of reading the news. I wouldn't install a custom binary on my laptop to read a news website, why should I do so on my phone?

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