Just look at the Google Voice, Gmail, and Youtube web apps, they are really nice. Problem is, these are all free apps. Small ISVs who want to make money will stick to native apps for the time being. Monetizing web apps is possible, but requires a lot more hassle and infrastructure.
I agree Monetizing a web app is harder, but only because your not in iTunes and that's where you go for Apps. If there was a decent way to reach the public, then to me starting to sell web app's is a lot more appealing and easier for the following reasons:
1. Web App's open standards stuff. If you get stuck there millions of people to help you out on sites.
2. You don't need to pay Apple a yearly fee. What if nobody downloads your app, you don't want to have spent that money.
3. Infrastructure is easy. Hosting is cheap and easy to grow with your apps popularity.
4. Collecting money is easy. Start with something simple like Pay Pal. If you become popular you can go with a better priced service. Everything for having a store to sell you app is also open source and requires no programing.
5. You can do what you want. It's your app on your site. Nobody can say "Sorry your apps declined" or "We've changes the rules and your apps been removed"
So to me, if you could actually get your web app to the public then it would be the way to go. You control everything and none of it's hard. If it fails you haven't lost a lot. If it succeeds you can scale up and increase your profit margin which your also not sharing.
I agree Monetizing a web app is harder, but only because your not in iTunes and that's where you go for Apps. If there was a decent way to reach the public, then to me starting to sell web app's is a lot more appealing and easier for the following reasons:
...
So to me, if you could actually get your web app to the public then it would be the way to go. You control everything and none of it's hard. If it fails you haven't lost a lot. If it succeeds you can scale up and increase your profit margin which your also not sharing.
I think it depends on what your app does whether it makes sense. For example, for a To Do list app, it may simply make more sense to implement this as a native app so that lack of network access doesn't impair functionality. For a painting app, like Brushes, likewise, it makes little sense to implement this as a web app, assuming it would be possible, because, again, it's not something that needs to use the network at all. Games also are probably generally better implemented as native apps.
Web apps are not without purpose, but they aren't always the optimal way to implement something. Realistically, to create a really great web app for iPhone, unless it's fairly generic (like the youtube app) and you want it to run in a single form cross platform, probably takes at least as much work by the developer as creating a native app, and there are likely to always be advantages to going native, both for developers and users.
And, the $99/year it costs to be an iPhone developer isn't a real obstacle to developing native apps, and it's really a trivial amount of money in the context of what it's for.
Nice thing about jQuery is it seems to have the most support. Microsoft include it in Visual Studio and have basically said, we're going to do all our asp.net ajax stuff with it, Google and Microsoft both host it. There's thousands of code samples using it. When does anyone really hear about Sprout Core except in relation to Apple. That's not to say it's bad, but when your picking a technology for your company to use, pick the one with the most available developers, not one that's going to leave you with recruitment issues or a lot of training costs.
A lot of companies seem to think that way, but I think it's a mistake. Given a choice of tools, choose the best available, not the one that has the most developers. The time it takes someone to learn a tool like this isn't significant compared to trying to make tools do things they can't. Easy recruitment also doesn't mean that you will find good people, and usually the most popular tool will also have the most hacks with it on their resume.
That isn't a dig at jQuery in comparison to SproutCore, just a more general observation regarding tool selection and hiring practices. A lot of companies cut themselves off from talent by insisting (or more often by their HR departments insisting) they only consider people whose resumes line up exactly with their job description checkboxes. Smart companies hire smart people who will learn whatever they need to.
EDIT: Probably also worth noting the following from the SproutCore Wiki, in relation specifically to the jQuery comparisons:
Quote:
* SproutCore is not for enhancing web pages. SproutCore is about building full apps. By definition these can't degrade into simple HTML markup. SproutCore is not intended for spicing up document-oriented web pages.
* SproutCore is not a jQuery/Prototype/Dojo/etc.-killer. Proceeding from the above, lower-level DOM libraries in common use do a great job at making it easy to manipulate HTML. SproutCore should work well along-side these libraries; not compete with them.
Naive apps will slowly disappear. Just think how many people have given up on native email clients and use web based email instead? Web apps are getting ever more complex and with technologies like html5, WebGL, native client, etc we will see even more powerful and fully featured web apps in the future. Web based office suites are rapidly getting better and could soon replace native apps for the average business user. We already have games like Tiger Woods (ie proper 3D games) running in browsers and we can expect to see more. Power users will continue to need native apps for quite sometime, but for many other people web apps will soon be able to satisfy all their needs.
And when this happens, it will be the end of Apples's computer business. If you are spending all your time in a browser the OS becomes less important; the advantage of an Apple computer with OS-X over some generic computer disappears.
Maybe your friends use GMail. All my friends use native email app clients, whether its Thunderbird, Mail, KMail, Evolution and more, and they use Exchange, Yahoo, GMail plugins to get that information.
Of course, if you own your own domain one uses their own brand name to get all their email and yes it's a nice feature. It's very inexpensive and after 12 years I've only had a few down days, mainly for upgrading systems. IMAP has always been a pleasure to run.
Please, spare me the Native OpenGL in WebGL [OpenGL ES 2.0] speech. I'm studying it. It's a nice feature to finally leverage a subset of OpenGL, within the web browser, but the real power comes from the Desktop Environment compositing and more using OpenGL and being hardware accelerated via the GPU.
It's performance will vary drastically with the platform, just like OpenGL and in this case, not the native executable of the game on the platform, but the intermediate environment of the web browser that runs the executable on the specific platform. It's an extra level of abstraction.
Web based spreadsheets, word processors, database creation tools, development tools, professional engineering applications [if one can actually claim any web based apps to be called professional engineering apps], etc., will never be eliminating the native application. They are nice tricks, but in the end when it comes to heavy use the native app will always win out.
HTML5 isn't going to change that. It's never been intended to do so. It's intended to eliminate useless system heavy plugins like Flash.
I actually wouldn't be surprised to see a Google web app store appear at some point. i.e. you write an application using some kind of Google HTML5 mobile framework which includes Google Ads, and then Google host the app for you. They could even use your standard Google login for paid apps.
Just think how many people haven't given up native email clients and don't use web based email. Just think of how developers and users have embraced native iPhone apps in a way that web based apps can't compare to. Just think how you haven't really made a persuasive argument.
Hotmail had 359.9 million users as of March 2010, according to online tracking firm comScore. Yahoo! Mail was the next largest email provider with 283.6 million users followed by Google's Gmail with 173 million users (link). Now some of these users will access their email through native email clients, but a huge number just use the web interfaces.
You sound like one of those people who complained when iPad was first announced saying it will never sell because it isn't running the full desktop version of OS-X. You forget that not everyone is a power user. Not everyone needs all the bells and whistles a native application brings. For many people, web apps offer all the functionality they need and as web apps improve they will increasing fill all the requirements of an increasing large number of people.
Hotmail had 359.9 million users as of March 2010, according to online tracking firm comScore. Yahoo! Mail was the next largest email provider with 283.6 million users followed by Google's Gmail with 173 million users (link). Now some of these users will access their email through native email clients, but a huge number just use the web interfaces.
Well, first of all, a lot of those webmail "users" are fake accounts, throw-away accounts, accounts that people only use them for stuff like posting on craigslist, abandoned, etc. So, counting user accounts on big webmail sites doesn't tell you anything about the number of people only, or even primarily, using webmail. Google probably has the highest percentage of "real" accounts, but I wouldn't even want to venture a guess as to what that number is.
And you're also mistaken regarding my initial appraisal of the iPad following the announcement, something you can check my post history for if you like, although I can't understand the logic that could possibly have lead you to that conclusion based on my comments regarding web apps
But, lots of people just don't like web apps, and they really aren't the perfect solution for everything.
And you're also mistaken regarding my initial appraisal of the iPad following the announcement, something you can check my post history for if you like, although I can't understand the logic that could possibly have lead you to that conclusion based on my comments regarding web apps
But, lots of people just don't like web apps, and they really aren't the perfect solution for everything.
I wasn't saying you were one of the iPad haters, but you are currently using the same argument they used against the iPad. Web apps - just like iPads - are not for power users and yes there are people who just don't like them. However, just because they aren't the perfect solution for everything it doesn't follow they aren't the perfect solution for anything. There are plenty of things they are suitable for. Not everyone is a power user.
I wasn't saying you were one of the iPad haters, but you are currently using the same argument they used against the iPad. Web apps - just like iPads - are not for power users and yes there are people who just don't like them. However, just because they aren't the perfect solution for everything it doesn't follow they aren't the perfect solution for anything. There are plenty of things they are suitable for. Not everyone is a power user.
I don't think it has anything to do with being a power user or not. I would probably be considered a power user, and I have an iPad and think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. And plenty of so-called power users love gmail: I hate webmail generally and wouldn't hand over any of my data to Google willingly.
I think web apps are generally fine when the data doesn't belong to you and the app requires the network to function anyway, and it doesn't require particularly sophisticated interaction. (I just posted similar comments on the latest SC article posted this evening.) But, for everything else, you're much better off with a local native app. And I think a lot of people feel the same way, many of them perhaps for reasons they don't even recognize.
I don't really see how the existence of a mobile youtube site means that peoples preference for native apps is questionable or that Native apps don't in general provide better user experiences.
What it means is that Google wants the ad revenue they can maybe get from a mobile website, but don't from Apple's app. So, it says something about Google, and it may say something about the relationship between Google and Apple, but it doesn't say anything about people's preferences.
Even if we assume for the sake of argument that the web app is a better user experience (which I don't actually agree with), that only says something about this particular example, not the situation in general.
Some large leaps of logic there, but you don't quite make it to the other side.
You're right, I'm wrong, I fail at logic, you speak for the "people", and the web sucks.
Comments
Just look at the Google Voice, Gmail, and Youtube web apps, they are really nice. Problem is, these are all free apps. Small ISVs who want to make money will stick to native apps for the time being. Monetizing web apps is possible, but requires a lot more hassle and infrastructure.
I agree Monetizing a web app is harder, but only because your not in iTunes and that's where you go for Apps. If there was a decent way to reach the public, then to me starting to sell web app's is a lot more appealing and easier for the following reasons:
1. Web App's open standards stuff. If you get stuck there millions of people to help you out on sites.
2. You don't need to pay Apple a yearly fee. What if nobody downloads your app, you don't want to have spent that money.
3. Infrastructure is easy. Hosting is cheap and easy to grow with your apps popularity.
4. Collecting money is easy. Start with something simple like Pay Pal. If you become popular you can go with a better priced service. Everything for having a store to sell you app is also open source and requires no programing.
5. You can do what you want. It's your app on your site. Nobody can say "Sorry your apps declined" or "We've changes the rules and your apps been removed"
So to me, if you could actually get your web app to the public then it would be the way to go. You control everything and none of it's hard. If it fails you haven't lost a lot. If it succeeds you can scale up and increase your profit margin which your also not sharing.
I agree Monetizing a web app is harder, but only because your not in iTunes and that's where you go for Apps. If there was a decent way to reach the public, then to me starting to sell web app's is a lot more appealing and easier for the following reasons:
...
So to me, if you could actually get your web app to the public then it would be the way to go. You control everything and none of it's hard. If it fails you haven't lost a lot. If it succeeds you can scale up and increase your profit margin which your also not sharing.
I think it depends on what your app does whether it makes sense. For example, for a To Do list app, it may simply make more sense to implement this as a native app so that lack of network access doesn't impair functionality. For a painting app, like Brushes, likewise, it makes little sense to implement this as a web app, assuming it would be possible, because, again, it's not something that needs to use the network at all. Games also are probably generally better implemented as native apps.
Web apps are not without purpose, but they aren't always the optimal way to implement something. Realistically, to create a really great web app for iPhone, unless it's fairly generic (like the youtube app) and you want it to run in a single form cross platform, probably takes at least as much work by the developer as creating a native app, and there are likely to always be advantages to going native, both for developers and users.
And, the $99/year it costs to be an iPhone developer isn't a real obstacle to developing native apps, and it's really a trivial amount of money in the context of what it's for.
Nice thing about jQuery is it seems to have the most support. Microsoft include it in Visual Studio and have basically said, we're going to do all our asp.net ajax stuff with it, Google and Microsoft both host it. There's thousands of code samples using it. When does anyone really hear about Sprout Core except in relation to Apple. That's not to say it's bad, but when your picking a technology for your company to use, pick the one with the most available developers, not one that's going to leave you with recruitment issues or a lot of training costs.
A lot of companies seem to think that way, but I think it's a mistake. Given a choice of tools, choose the best available, not the one that has the most developers. The time it takes someone to learn a tool like this isn't significant compared to trying to make tools do things they can't. Easy recruitment also doesn't mean that you will find good people, and usually the most popular tool will also have the most hacks with it on their resume.
That isn't a dig at jQuery in comparison to SproutCore, just a more general observation regarding tool selection and hiring practices. A lot of companies cut themselves off from talent by insisting (or more often by their HR departments insisting) they only consider people whose resumes line up exactly with their job description checkboxes. Smart companies hire smart people who will learn whatever they need to.
EDIT: Probably also worth noting the following from the SproutCore Wiki, in relation specifically to the jQuery comparisons:
* SproutCore is not for enhancing web pages. SproutCore is about building full apps. By definition these can't degrade into simple HTML markup. SproutCore is not intended for spicing up document-oriented web pages.
* SproutCore is not a jQuery/Prototype/Dojo/etc.-killer. Proceeding from the above, lower-level DOM libraries in common use do a great job at making it easy to manipulate HTML. SproutCore should work well along-side these libraries; not compete with them.
Naive apps will slowly disappear. Just think how many people have given up on native email clients and use web based email instead? Web apps are getting ever more complex and with technologies like html5, WebGL, native client, etc we will see even more powerful and fully featured web apps in the future. Web based office suites are rapidly getting better and could soon replace native apps for the average business user. We already have games like Tiger Woods (ie proper 3D games) running in browsers and we can expect to see more. Power users will continue to need native apps for quite sometime, but for many other people web apps will soon be able to satisfy all their needs.
And when this happens, it will be the end of Apples's computer business. If you are spending all your time in a browser the OS becomes less important; the advantage of an Apple computer with OS-X over some generic computer disappears.
Maybe your friends use GMail. All my friends use native email app clients, whether its Thunderbird, Mail, KMail, Evolution and more, and they use Exchange, Yahoo, GMail plugins to get that information.
Of course, if you own your own domain one uses their own brand name to get all their email and yes it's a nice feature. It's very inexpensive and after 12 years I've only had a few down days, mainly for upgrading systems. IMAP has always been a pleasure to run.
Please, spare me the Native OpenGL in WebGL [OpenGL ES 2.0] speech. I'm studying it. It's a nice feature to finally leverage a subset of OpenGL, within the web browser, but the real power comes from the Desktop Environment compositing and more using OpenGL and being hardware accelerated via the GPU.
It's performance will vary drastically with the platform, just like OpenGL and in this case, not the native executable of the game on the platform, but the intermediate environment of the web browser that runs the executable on the specific platform. It's an extra level of abstraction.
Web based spreadsheets, word processors, database creation tools, development tools, professional engineering applications [if one can actually claim any web based apps to be called professional engineering apps], etc., will never be eliminating the native application. They are nice tricks, but in the end when it comes to heavy use the native app will always win out.
HTML5 isn't going to change that. It's never been intended to do so. It's intended to eliminate useless system heavy plugins like Flash.
I actually wouldn't be surprised to see a Google web app store appear at some point. i.e. you write an application using some kind of Google HTML5 mobile framework which includes Google Ads, and then Google host the app for you. They could even use your standard Google login for paid apps.
Interesting times ahead!
Actually, Google already has plans for a web app store. They call it the Chrome Web Store. (https://chrome.google.com/webstore) They also already have the Google App Engine (http://code.google.com/appengine/) for hosting web applications.
Google has some really great tools for web developers.
Just think how many people haven't given up native email clients and don't use web based email. Just think of how developers and users have embraced native iPhone apps in a way that web based apps can't compare to. Just think how you haven't really made a persuasive argument.
Hotmail had 359.9 million users as of March 2010, according to online tracking firm comScore. Yahoo! Mail was the next largest email provider with 283.6 million users followed by Google's Gmail with 173 million users (link). Now some of these users will access their email through native email clients, but a huge number just use the web interfaces.
You sound like one of those people who complained when iPad was first announced saying it will never sell because it isn't running the full desktop version of OS-X. You forget that not everyone is a power user. Not everyone needs all the bells and whistles a native application brings. For many people, web apps offer all the functionality they need and as web apps improve they will increasing fill all the requirements of an increasing large number of people.
Hotmail had 359.9 million users as of March 2010, according to online tracking firm comScore. Yahoo! Mail was the next largest email provider with 283.6 million users followed by Google's Gmail with 173 million users (link). Now some of these users will access their email through native email clients, but a huge number just use the web interfaces.
Well, first of all, a lot of those webmail "users" are fake accounts, throw-away accounts, accounts that people only use them for stuff like posting on craigslist, abandoned, etc. So, counting user accounts on big webmail sites doesn't tell you anything about the number of people only, or even primarily, using webmail. Google probably has the highest percentage of "real" accounts, but I wouldn't even want to venture a guess as to what that number is.
And you're also mistaken regarding my initial appraisal of the iPad following the announcement, something you can check my post history for if you like, although I can't understand the logic that could possibly have lead you to that conclusion based on my comments regarding web apps
But, lots of people just don't like web apps, and they really aren't the perfect solution for everything.
And you're also mistaken regarding my initial appraisal of the iPad following the announcement, something you can check my post history for if you like, although I can't understand the logic that could possibly have lead you to that conclusion based on my comments regarding web apps
But, lots of people just don't like web apps, and they really aren't the perfect solution for everything.
I wasn't saying you were one of the iPad haters, but you are currently using the same argument they used against the iPad. Web apps - just like iPads - are not for power users and yes there are people who just don't like them. However, just because they aren't the perfect solution for everything it doesn't follow they aren't the perfect solution for anything. There are plenty of things they are suitable for. Not everyone is a power user.
I wasn't saying you were one of the iPad haters, but you are currently using the same argument they used against the iPad. Web apps - just like iPads - are not for power users and yes there are people who just don't like them. However, just because they aren't the perfect solution for everything it doesn't follow they aren't the perfect solution for anything. There are plenty of things they are suitable for. Not everyone is a power user.
I don't think it has anything to do with being a power user or not. I would probably be considered a power user, and I have an iPad and think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. And plenty of so-called power users love gmail: I hate webmail generally and wouldn't hand over any of my data to Google willingly.
I think web apps are generally fine when the data doesn't belong to you and the app requires the network to function anyway, and it doesn't require particularly sophisticated interaction. (I just posted similar comments on the latest SC article posted this evening.) But, for everything else, you're much better off with a local native app. And I think a lot of people feel the same way, many of them perhaps for reasons they don't even recognize.
I don't really see how the existence of a mobile youtube site means that peoples preference for native apps is questionable or that Native apps don't in general provide better user experiences.
What it means is that Google wants the ad revenue they can maybe get from a mobile website, but don't from Apple's app. So, it says something about Google, and it may say something about the relationship between Google and Apple, but it doesn't say anything about people's preferences.
Even if we assume for the sake of argument that the web app is a better user experience (which I don't actually agree with), that only says something about this particular example, not the situation in general.
Some large leaps of logic there, but you don't quite make it to the other side.
You're right, I'm wrong, I fail at logic, you speak for the "people", and the web sucks.
I understand now. Cheers mate!
You're right, I'm wrong, I fail at logic, you speak for the "people", and the web sucks.
I understand now. Cheers mate!
No problem, happy to clear up your confusion.
No problem, happy to clear up your confusion.
His.. DEPARTMENT?? Seriously?!
Let it go.... it's a Dukes of Hazard thing.