It's also fair to ask if websites will kill apps. Widespread mobile data access and HTML5/CSS3 are beginning to let developers duplicate the advantages of apps and keep the advantages of web. The winner will be determined by cashflow - apps are often purchased; many sites still rely on ads. Which model is more profitable?
Here's one overlooked reason why apps are better than websites: no passwords! I absolutely hate that every time I had to use the mobile GMail app I had to enter in a password again, even though everything else has a native app feel.
I disagree that passwords are a browser con, especially given the number of people who leave their phones lying around or let friends use them. If the app deals with anything sensitive (and email can certainly be one of those) it should require a password every time.
Imagine if someone found your phone with email logged in. They would immediately be able to scan through your email for registration confirmation emails, go to that site and reset the password giving them complete access. If one of those accounts was for a site which saved cc details and had something the thief wanted (or could sell), they can drain your card with out setting off any fraud warnings, because you wanted to convenience of not having to type your password every time.
And then you have something like the iTunes Connect app, where you constantly have to re-enter your long password on a small touchscreen keyboard. I've basically stopped using the app because of it.
I want to agree, but website passwords are a usability nightmare for mobile users. Take all the hassles that come with sites having eleven million mutually incompatible sets of requirements for passwords, and throw on top of that that typing them on a phone's keyboard is slow and error-prone. Only password-compulsive geeks are going to go for that option. Your average user won't. For them, it's a huge con.
I agree that it's troublesome that people have their phones set up so that anyone with physical access to an unlocked phone has access to everything. But I'm inclined to think of that as a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself. The root of the problem being that too many folks who draw up security schemes don't seem to grasp the most basic lesson about how people deal with security: When given a choice between excessively inconvenient security and no security, your average user will always opt for no security. If that's not an option by default, they will figure out a way to make it an option, and then opt for it. (Sticky notes, y'all.) If there's no way to make it an option, they will go find someone who lets it be an option, then opt for it.
Biometric authentication can be a way out of this difficulty. A fingerprint scanner at the back of a smartphone will be a painless way of logging into anything you want.
As long as it can't be defeated with scotch tape and gelatine.
One great thing about non-biometric authentication systems is that it's easy to replace a compromised keycard or password. Replacing your own fingers, not so much.
Well, if you don't mind using a complex password on a keyboard-less device, the whole discussion is moot.
Aren't we talking about alternatives to conventional password entry because it is a great nuisance?
Voice recognition, Face recognition and Finger Printing all seem reasonable alternatives. I do believe it is a matter of time before they become viable in smartphones.
How about an RFID chip in your wrist watch which makes your smartphone log in. Outside of a meter or two, it will ask for a complex password. Why not? I will buy it :-)
It did occur to me. If your information is _that_ valuable then you have a different class of problem than the inconvenience of entering a password on a device with a soft keyboard.
I think in eBay's case there is nothing stopping them from making their website more user friendly. The reason their apps are is because they had to build it mostly from crash (from a ui perspective anyway) so why not tkae that opportunity. It seems that loads are people are using their website effectively, so why change it? Changing it might only piss off long time users anyway.
None of the cons of website actually need to be cons, they dont need to be slow, they dont need to have unsuitable UI's for mobile, and they dont need to break when they go offline.
We have done a bad job up until now of realising users expectations that the web should have a great / simple ui and work offline, we just need to improve, much in the same way as the slow transition from desktop apps to web apps has been going, I think its inevitable that we will build most of our technology for the web
I think he forgot to take into account the mobile version of websites, which can be just as simple as native apps, and almost as fast (since they don't have to do much anyway).
> I think its inevitable that we will build most of our
> technology for the web
If by that you mean connected, then yes. If by that you mean "using HTML, CSS and JavaScript"—not necessarily.
As someone else mentioned in comments the most likely scenario would be backend with API and native apps and web apps as clients for that API.
I don't want to have a separate app for every web site I currently use. Drilling down through a hierarchy of apps or flipping through page and page of apps versus starting to type the url? Doesn't seem like an upgrade.
Maybe UIs will start acting more like a browser and let me find apps easily. Maybe browsers will just present apps with all the same power apps have. Maybe it doesn't matter.
That's true and it also include contacts. I suppose my slow typing speed on the iPhone has somehow inhibited me from using it.
The best thing is having multiple ways to do things. Which the iPhone provides, of course.
One especially nice one is how double-pressing the home button presents icons for your running apps at the bottom of the screen. You touch to re-enter it or hold it down to get a way to kill it.
An app launcher that did essentially that (start to type the name) is easy enough to build that the problem much lie elsewhere. Possibly with the interface itself (mobile devices inheriting legacy web ux & ui.)
I would suggest the essential difference may be found along an axis of user input that has data entry at one end and pure selection on the the other.
I'd further suggest that as this technology evolves the emphasis shifts from data entry to selection and interaction with technology becomes less about inputting data and more about making choices.
What data is needed is grabbed from your device's sensors; you don't actually need to enter it.
Ultimately what we're trying to build is a device that knows what you want (before you do!) and serves it up to you with the greatest efficiency.
One thing jumped out that I hadn't really considered before: They [apps] aren't indexed by Google
If apps really do "kill" websites, or make a significant dent in them, this could be bad news for Google's business model, as well as anyone else who relies on adsense income.
I was thinking something similar when I was browsing the other day. We've made such advancements in technology, but I bet that the average time it takes to load a web page hasn't much improved.
I guess it's natural that we want to push boundaries, but maybe Gopher wasn't such a bad idea? :)
I hope apps don't kill websites for the same reason I'm glad people don't build flash microsites anymore.
The number one reason I prefer the web is that it's extensible! If there's a web app I don't like, I can write a userscript to modify it to my needs. The web has a standard API (HTML/JS/CSS) and a means for extension so I'm free to make the web suit me. This freedom is something that I miss when I'm using a mobile device and I hope it never goes away.
This is a somewhat inflammatory title with a fairly unsubstantial article behind it. Whatever.
First came applications. In the mid-90s Microsoft was terrified that the Internet and Netscape would kill the Windows/Office golden goose and they (fairly successfully) subverted the Internet through browser fragmentation.
The advantage of the Web was that it wasn't OS-specific. Microsoft wanted (wants!) you to be locked into their platform.
The 2000s see the rise of the RIA (Rich Internet Applicatdion). One-page sites like GMail, etc (although they aren't always strictly one page). The core idea here is that even though performance was (is?) bad, increasing computer power will solve that problem sooner rather than later.
Let's face it, HTML/CSS/JS is a pretty terrible solution. Browser/OS differences are endemic. It's slow. Modularization (of a Web app) is awkward at best. Offline is incredibly awkward.
What caught people by surprise was mobile. Unlike a desktop, power usage and size became far more important than raw CPU power. Uh oh, Moore's Law no longer to the rescue.
You can be pedantic about J2ME apps (or whatever) predating iOS apps but let's face it: Apple popularized and commercialized the idea of apps even if they didn't outright invent them.
While the rise of the mobile app may appear quick, the pedigree of iOS in particular goes back 15 years. It's really an amazing set of APIs. At the same time, Apple has largely avoided fragmentation issues.
So what makes the app market successful on mobile is:
1. Easy to purchase, install and update. You cannot discount the lack of friction in purchasing apps. It is (IMHO) incredibly important;
2. Much better performance both online and especially offline; and
3. Ease of discovery.
Apple may not have been the first to recognize it but they've also embraced this same strategy on OSX. Google (disclaimer: I work for Google) has the Chrome Web Store. Microsoft is essentially copying the OSX App Store for Windows 8.
I don't see any doomsday scenarios about the Web going away. That's just linkbait. If anything, what I see will happen is consolidation. Now instead of producing just a Website, you need an app (or, preferably, several apps for the different relevant mobile OSs).
Take Newegg. The website is still as good as ever but honestly it's a joy to use their app on the iPad, so much so that I will have trouble buying my parts from anywhere else.
Apple has recognized the need in the modern computing environment to essentially sandbox everything. The Microsoft of old used to take as gospel the need for backwards compatibility so always avoided breaking changes. Google too has realized this to a degree (websites are sandboxed).
Personally I believe the dark horse in that race is Chrome's NaCl (Native Client) as it combines the delivery of the Web (to Chrome at least) with the speed of native applications. Time will tell.
But please do me one favour and quit it with the linkbait-y "apps will kill the Web", "Apple's/Facebook's walled garden will ruin everything", etc. Fears of the worst are nearly always overblown.
Easy to purchase, install and update. You cannot discount the lack of friction in purchasing apps. It is (IMHO) incredibly important;
Compared to what? Not having to purchase, install and update at all? Lack of friction compared to not having to travel the mile at all?
Ease of discovery
I think "read tweet, click link" is as fast as it can to go. And still, the most used mobile app is the browser.
My personal opinion is that native apps that have a WWW equivalent are doomed: Their appeal rests on the fact that they can still do "cool" stuff by taking advantage the touch interfaces that the web was not designed for. Otherwise, they are indistinguishable from desktop apps: games and other heavy-duty processing. The web is not going anywhere.
Atwood seems to completely miss one important point: doing an app is a greenfield project. It's the elusive complete rewrite, without the re-. A website like eBay has hundreds of small features, each of which needs to be considered and included in a redesign. An app can just focus on making the 10% of the features that the 90% use really good.
"To be fair, eBay is struggling under the massive accumulated design debt of a website originally conceived in the late 90s, whereas their mobile and tablet app experiences are recent inventions."
Unless I missed it there is one key point the the article didn't mention. The strength of the web is links and hence the ability to access anything that we can uniquely identify as a resource. Apps don't have links.
One other thing to consider - an app is often an easier thing for a third party to write. Only the original owner can modify the original website. (It's why I scratched my own itch and wrote AuctionSieve - I wanted an easy way to create a kill list to filter out rubbish search results.)
These days I do not code a website to begin with. I create web services(REST/JSON) first and then code a native app to access it if my use case fits mobile better. If I need a website, then I implement it by calling the same web services. I believe the web as we know (of front end data handling) will surely die. It will be replaced by headless (UI less) services web. As users migrate to mobile/tablet devices, and new mobile capabilities (touch, location, context etc.) are accessible, many traditional web use cases need to be redefined to optimize for new form factor and to exploit the new capabilities. This will make many new start ups follow a mobile first approach (a la instagram). Web sites will be required for few use cases that requires heavy data entry and extremely complex UIs. And probably the 80:20 rule will apply. Websites has been built on duct tape technologies for long, and today's mobile development platforms are way too sophisticated and easy to design, code and debug. Yes you don't get the cross platform compatibility - but is it really that important as it is made out to be?
If I am a start up, I will try to iterate on a single platform ( a la instagram) and get my product right. Then I can move to new platforms - It takes more effort to get the product right than implementing it on several platforms. If my product is successful, supporting that on a new platform will take 1% of the money I could raise and effort. Who cares a hoot if you have a half baked product released at once on 100 platforms?
What's up with all the Coding Horror posts on HN lately? Has the userbase of the site really slid to that point? I'd even prefer Daring Fireball to this...
73 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] threadThis is something I've been thinking about when redesigning the 99bikes.com.au ecommerce website. How to bring the app experience to the web.
I don't think apps will kill websites, but should influence the way websites work.
A great example of a app style ecommerce site is fab.com
Imagine if someone found your phone with email logged in. They would immediately be able to scan through your email for registration confirmation emails, go to that site and reset the password giving them complete access. If one of those accounts was for a site which saved cc details and had something the thief wanted (or could sell), they can drain your card with out setting off any fraud warnings, because you wanted to convenience of not having to type your password every time.
I agree that it's troublesome that people have their phones set up so that anyone with physical access to an unlocked phone has access to everything. But I'm inclined to think of that as a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself. The root of the problem being that too many folks who draw up security schemes don't seem to grasp the most basic lesson about how people deal with security: When given a choice between excessively inconvenient security and no security, your average user will always opt for no security. If that's not an option by default, they will figure out a way to make it an option, and then opt for it. (Sticky notes, y'all.) If there's no way to make it an option, they will go find someone who lets it be an option, then opt for it.
One great thing about non-biometric authentication systems is that it's easy to replace a compromised keycard or password. Replacing your own fingers, not so much.
Aren't we talking about alternatives to conventional password entry because it is a great nuisance?
Voice recognition, Face recognition and Finger Printing all seem reasonable alternatives. I do believe it is a matter of time before they become viable in smartphones.
How about an RFID chip in your wrist watch which makes your smartphone log in. Outside of a meter or two, it will ask for a complex password. Why not? I will buy it :-)
We have done a bad job up until now of realising users expectations that the web should have a great / simple ui and work offline, we just need to improve, much in the same way as the slow transition from desktop apps to web apps has been going, I think its inevitable that we will build most of our technology for the web
As much as our connectivity is getting better, it is never going to be 100%, without failures, and latency is not going to disappear
Maybe UIs will start acting more like a browser and let me find apps easily. Maybe browsers will just present apps with all the same power apps have. Maybe it doesn't matter.
The best thing is having multiple ways to do things. Which the iPhone provides, of course.
One especially nice one is how double-pressing the home button presents icons for your running apps at the bottom of the screen. You touch to re-enter it or hold it down to get a way to kill it.
I would suggest the essential difference may be found along an axis of user input that has data entry at one end and pure selection on the the other.
I'd further suggest that as this technology evolves the emphasis shifts from data entry to selection and interaction with technology becomes less about inputting data and more about making choices.
What data is needed is grabbed from your device's sensors; you don't actually need to enter it.
Ultimately what we're trying to build is a device that knows what you want (before you do!) and serves it up to you with the greatest efficiency.
If apps really do "kill" websites, or make a significant dent in them, this could be bad news for Google's business model, as well as anyone else who relies on adsense income.
I guess it's natural that we want to push boundaries, but maybe Gopher wasn't such a bad idea? :)
The number one reason I prefer the web is that it's extensible! If there's a web app I don't like, I can write a userscript to modify it to my needs. The web has a standard API (HTML/JS/CSS) and a means for extension so I'm free to make the web suit me. This freedom is something that I miss when I'm using a mobile device and I hope it never goes away.
First came applications. In the mid-90s Microsoft was terrified that the Internet and Netscape would kill the Windows/Office golden goose and they (fairly successfully) subverted the Internet through browser fragmentation.
The advantage of the Web was that it wasn't OS-specific. Microsoft wanted (wants!) you to be locked into their platform.
The 2000s see the rise of the RIA (Rich Internet Applicatdion). One-page sites like GMail, etc (although they aren't always strictly one page). The core idea here is that even though performance was (is?) bad, increasing computer power will solve that problem sooner rather than later.
Let's face it, HTML/CSS/JS is a pretty terrible solution. Browser/OS differences are endemic. It's slow. Modularization (of a Web app) is awkward at best. Offline is incredibly awkward.
What caught people by surprise was mobile. Unlike a desktop, power usage and size became far more important than raw CPU power. Uh oh, Moore's Law no longer to the rescue.
You can be pedantic about J2ME apps (or whatever) predating iOS apps but let's face it: Apple popularized and commercialized the idea of apps even if they didn't outright invent them.
While the rise of the mobile app may appear quick, the pedigree of iOS in particular goes back 15 years. It's really an amazing set of APIs. At the same time, Apple has largely avoided fragmentation issues.
So what makes the app market successful on mobile is:
1. Easy to purchase, install and update. You cannot discount the lack of friction in purchasing apps. It is (IMHO) incredibly important;
2. Much better performance both online and especially offline; and
3. Ease of discovery.
Apple may not have been the first to recognize it but they've also embraced this same strategy on OSX. Google (disclaimer: I work for Google) has the Chrome Web Store. Microsoft is essentially copying the OSX App Store for Windows 8.
I don't see any doomsday scenarios about the Web going away. That's just linkbait. If anything, what I see will happen is consolidation. Now instead of producing just a Website, you need an app (or, preferably, several apps for the different relevant mobile OSs).
Take Newegg. The website is still as good as ever but honestly it's a joy to use their app on the iPad, so much so that I will have trouble buying my parts from anywhere else.
Apple has recognized the need in the modern computing environment to essentially sandbox everything. The Microsoft of old used to take as gospel the need for backwards compatibility so always avoided breaking changes. Google too has realized this to a degree (websites are sandboxed).
Personally I believe the dark horse in that race is Chrome's NaCl (Native Client) as it combines the delivery of the Web (to Chrome at least) with the speed of native applications. Time will tell.
But please do me one favour and quit it with the linkbait-y "apps will kill the Web", "Apple's/Facebook's walled garden will ruin everything", etc. Fears of the worst are nearly always overblown.
You must be new to Coding Horror.
I appreciate upholding high standards.
Compared to what? Not having to purchase, install and update at all? Lack of friction compared to not having to travel the mile at all?
Ease of discovery
I think "read tweet, click link" is as fast as it can to go. And still, the most used mobile app is the browser.
My personal opinion is that native apps that have a WWW equivalent are doomed: Their appeal rests on the fact that they can still do "cool" stuff by taking advantage the touch interfaces that the web was not designed for. Otherwise, they are indistinguishable from desktop apps: games and other heavy-duty processing. The web is not going anywhere.
"To be fair, eBay is struggling under the massive accumulated design debt of a website originally conceived in the late 90s, whereas their mobile and tablet app experiences are recent inventions."
You have less real-estate so you have to focus on delivering what matters. Less is more!
Falls under the category of articles whose headline poses a question the answer to which is "no".
If I am a start up, I will try to iterate on a single platform ( a la instagram) and get my product right. Then I can move to new platforms - It takes more effort to get the product right than implementing it on several platforms. If my product is successful, supporting that on a new platform will take 1% of the money I could raise and effort. Who cares a hoot if you have a half baked product released at once on 100 platforms?