DISQUS

jdavey · 6 months ago

I 100% agree with Vic here. I've always thought that one day separate apps, and apps stores for that matter, would concede victory to the web. If you look at the specs for HTML 5, alot of what makes third party apps special now will be supported. Palm is even pushing for accelerometer support!

That said, that'll be many years into the future. And the mobile web won't really be a huge success until we all adapt our 'desktop' web material for smaller screens. I think the app store model will be a multi-billion dollar/year model for quite a few years to come, but in my opinion, the web will eventually win.

Anthony Ha · 6 months ago

Agreed.

Ryan · 6 months ago

Well, this prediction is in-line with Google's own interests. After all, more native apps means less opportunity for google ads on mobile.

riazrizvi · 6 months ago

Oh come on. Native applications will never disappear.

Compute heavy applications that push the envelope of hardware design will always be written natively. Better games will be pushed out natively on the next pocket device with a quantum leap in screen res and processing power. Just as more ambitious scientific applications are being written right now on the current desktop revolution in massively parallel architecture. Talking about a final universal platform implies there will be an end to this boundary pushing, an end to this computer-engineering progress. It sounds like a Victorian Englishman twirling his curly mustachios harping about the coming end of science.

The web browser as a universal platform is just another platform battle. The best outcome is a period of standardization, and yes we might see one of those. Roll on web apps.

Peter Antypas · 6 months ago

Native apps will disappear when every peak, valley and waterway on Earth is covered with broadband wireless signal. In other words, never.

igniguy · 6 months ago

For mobile apps, writing a web app instead of native apps has huge advantages, no update nightmares, no need to code in (very) different platforms, no need to wait for months for your app to get approved, no need to change your app every time a platform updates. We chose to go with a web solution for our application and been very happy so far.

The only advantage of native apps (i am excluding games here) is access to hardware such as the GPS etc. HTML5 comes very handy with geolocation support, but i wish there was more, like support for notifications.

Mobile apps are , by nature, constrained. Moving them to the browser has huge advantages for the developer with little loss on user experience.