What I am trying to say (quite unsucessfully it appears) is that with the computing power we can now hold in our hands, most apps don't need to be written in XCode. They will run just fine on an abstraction layer. Yes, we failed to acheive this with Java. But we are getting better. I don't think we are too many iterations away from being able to accomplish this successfully. Just look at WP7. All the non XNA apps run on Silverlight and they perform as well as their native iOS counterparts.
Many don?t have to be, but that doesn?t mean they aren?t better for it. Running in an abstraction layer? just to say your app is ?just fine? isn?t how you make great products.
You and Menno aren?t looking at the big picture. The future will make web apps better but will also make native apps better.
Quote:
Now that I write this, this may be one of the reasons Steve and Co. have been so quiet on the HTML5 front. That bloody thing could be a serious disruptor to the app store. Thinking it through, if the WSJ is not writting an HTML5 version of the WSJ app - they deserve a serious slap across the head!
Apple has been quiet? They changed the game by developing and supporting HTML5/CSS/JS in their efficient and powerful WebKit engine. They have created JS frameworks to make web apps work more like native apps. They even created a way for web designers to save a web app as full screen and an iOS icon to your Home Screen so it looks and feels more like a native app. If they were scared about webcode disrupting the App Store they wouldn?t have invested so much into webcode
was at my favorite local over-priced computer store yesterday afternoon. they had a sign up indicating they had the xoom for sale. i asked the employee if they had a demo unit i could take a look at. they "did", but it was in a kryptonite cage and they wouldn't let me handle it. i asked him which he preferred -- ipad or xoom -- and he said the xoom. but he qualified that with "i haven't used an ipad". i mentioned something about my mac and he said "i use a pc". to myself, i thought "of course you do".
i find it interesting that there is seemingly such a totality of effort being spent, by so many companies, on keeping up with apple, rather than spending it on true innovation. i get that they want a piece of the market ... and although plagiarism might be the most sincere form of flattery, it ain't gonna get you too far. i'm just sayin'
He and his store don't make much money off the Apple products, that's why.
Many don?t have to be, but that doesn?t mean they aren?t better for it. Running in an abstraction layer? just to say your app is ?just fine? isn?t how you make great products.
You and Menno aren?t looking at the big picture. The future will make web apps better but will also make native apps better.
I'm not missing it, I'm saying that for a majority of applications, they'll stop getting the benefits they used to get from being in native code (or the costs will outweigh those benefits)
Will some apps always require native code? Yes. Will HTML5 ever catch up to native code? Highly unlikely. Does this mean that a majority of applications will continue being developed in native code (and then redeveloped if they want to port them)? Unlikely.
I'm not missing the big picture, I just see one that's different.
i find it interesting that there is seemingly such a totality of effort being spent, by so many companies, on keeping up with apple, rather than spending it on true innovation. i get that they want a piece of the market ... and although plagiarism might be the most sincere form of flattery, it ain't gonna get you too far. i'm just sayin'
Because when you're talking iphone/ipad if a company isn't directly trying to compete with those products, the consumer could care less. Apple was VERY successful at getting consumer mindshare. Customer's don't come into a wireless store looking for a smartphone, they come into the store looking for "Something like the iphone" even if they've never handled an iOS device (or a competitors) before. If a device varies in design too much, they risk turning away a customer, even if there is nothing "inferior" about that design.
Of course, some companies take things too far (ala Touchwiz/Galaxy s) But before a company can get someone to look at their software, or what they offer, they have to overcome that significant iHurdle.
There are some companies doing some very innovative things when it comes to their devices, but if they vary too much, they risk alienating their customers. No other company in the world has the mindshare of apple.
Apple creates markets, other companies enter markets.
In the end though, average consumers will try out other products because they're going to be cheaper than iOS products in the future. Yes right now iPad is very competitive in price but it won't last and in the end iPad will go back to be the 'premium product'. Not that it's a bad thing for Apple though.
The OS will have returned (by going forwards) to it's roots, the loader and abstraction. iOS's "dull pages of apps" is the precursor. Not that everyone wants to get this.
The hardware was king
The OS is king
The App will be king
To the point IMHO where you'll have application makers releasing dedicated devices (not only but as well). The device will be totally valueless, it should "disappear" but so should the OS.
Apple said something along the lines of "when the tech gets out the way" in referring to the iPad. Thing is, the uni-tasking nature of iOS means the OS goes away also...
Fanboys in 5 years will be fighting about application conglomerates.
But I think that in this "Post-PC" era, the ability to run the same app on your phone, your computer, whatever else is here in five years without being locked to a single OS to do so.
I think native apps will still have a place (especially with games), but I don't think "locked" applications are the future, no matter how slick the interface, how awesome the code, etc.
People on this forum (and others) like bringing up that if Motorola could get away with making their own OS, they would, and I think they'd like to have some unique OS as well (though looking at Bada, it's clear that this isn't always a good thing)
Let's take the App Read it later as an example.
There is a web app, and an app for iOS and Android. I'm sure there are tablet versions available/in the works as well.
Now, if you want to have the app on your ipad and on your android phone, you'll have to buy it twice. I'm not complaining about that right now, since it's two different OS's so there's different development costs/teams.
But an app like that would be perfect for something like HTML5 (once HTML5 stabilizes). Then instead of buying the app multiple times, you buy it once, and you can use it across platforms.
News apps and the like are the simplest ports, and then some basic games. And once that happens you'll see tablets running different Operating systems because it's not as high a barrier to entry as it is right now.
Think about it. Right now if you want to compete in the phone/tablet space you have to create the Operating system AND an ecosystem because smartphones/tablets are all about apps. If more apps are portable, then all a company needs to do is develop an operating system with a kick a55 browser.
I'm NOT saying that iOS won't improve, I'm just saying that I'm hoping HTML5 becomes increasingly relevant for more than just video. (just look at the insane stuff they can do with Canvas)
The biggest problem with that type of app is efficiency. It's been tried with Javelin, as we all know. But java apps are often ugly, don't conform to a particular platform's UI standards, Nd can't use specific hardware features of different platforms. The same thing will be true of these apps.
While there will always be some apps that are FI e using that model, a large number, even the majority, won't. And then we have games. Simple games will work fine, as the Flash and Java games do now. But anything complex, or that requires performance, won't.
Palm tried that with the Pre at first, and it bombed. Apple had web apps, and they weren't exactly setting the world on fire. Adobe has their commoditizing software that Apple attempted to prevent on iOS, but failed. It will produce apps at the lowest common denominator. In other words, second rate apps that are the same on all platforms.
Is this what most people really want? No, it's not.
What I am trying to say (quite unsucessfully it appears) is that with the computing power we can now hold in our hands, most apps don't need to be written in XCode. They will run just fine on an abstraction layer. Yes, we failed to acheive this with Java. But we are getting better. I don't think we are too many iterations away from being able to accomplish this successfully. Just look at WP7. All the non XNA apps run on Silverlight and they perform as well as their native iOS counterparts.
Now that I write this, this may be one of the reasons Steve and Co. have been so quiet on the HTML5 front. That bloody thing could be a serious disruptor to the app store. Thinking it through, if the WSJ is not writting an HTML5 version of the WSJ app - they deserve a serious slap across the head!
They will never work that well. Apps are already somewhat abstracted from the hardware in modern OS's. You can look to programs such as VMWare and Parallels to see that there is a performance hit. And those work on powerful machines. There is much talk of virtualization as being the answer to most everything, but it's not the answer for many things. Anything that requires performance, or adherence to certain UI standards won't make it in either an abstracted, or virtualized environment.
The reason it that as these environments get better, the OS's themselves get more sophisticated and better. These environments will never catch up. They will always be second best.
They will never work that well. Apps are already somewhat abstracted from the hardware in modern OS's. You can look to programs such as VMWare and Parallels to see that there is a performance hit.
You can even see a difference in how webcode works when running a web app in WebOS v. a native app in WebOS.
Many don?t have to be, but that doesn?t mean they aren?t better for it. Running in an abstraction layer? just to say your app is ?just fine? isn?t how you make great products.
You and Menno aren?t looking at the big picture. The future will make web apps better but will also make native apps better.
Apple has been quiet? They changed the game by developing and supporting HTML5/CSS/JS in their efficient and powerful WebKit engine. They have created JS frameworks to make web apps work more like native apps. They even created a way for web designers to save a web app as full screen and an iOS icon to your Home Screen so it looks and feels more like a native app. If they were scared about webcode disrupting the App Store they wouldn?t have invested so much into webcode
I have a Xoom and the thing is terrible. Although I'm interested to see what Android 3 is doing, it's really all about the experience and they fall short of the iPad 1 in most respects. The thing is slow and laggy, despite having alot more cpu and ram than the iPad 1. Web browsing is very jittery. Playing youtube movies in the browser gives you 10fps playback at best.
The inside of the box actually comes with a slip-card that says "Xoom will work with Flash once it's released" or something to that effect. There is a flash beta release you can download for it, but like everything else its slow and buggy.
They're on par in certain technical respects, ahead in some ways, but far far short of the user experience, and I can attest to the fact there are almost no real tablet apps on the store.
I feel bad for souls that actually bought one of these things, thinking it might be competitive to the iPad. And the entry price is $600, spending more for less. There's a gulf that is real and tangible between what Apple sells and what the competition is selling.
For the record I have an iPad 1 and 2 for comparison.
Apple has been quiet? They changed the game by developing and supporting HTML5/CSS/JS in their efficient and powerful WebKit engine. They have created JS frameworks to make web apps work more like native apps. They even created a way for web designers to save a web app as full screen and an iOS icon to your Home Screen so it looks and feels more like a native app. If they were scared about webcode disrupting the App Store they wouldn?t have invested so much into webcode
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacksons
Man alive you like to hear yourself talk.
And you like to avoid responding to solip's rebuttal.
This sounds awfully like Java. In sw development its not programming that is difficult, but rather testing. That was java's problem. It was write once, debug everywhere.
Of co ruse that is not completely analogous because the majority of browsers nowadays run on webkit. Unfortunately though the biggest market share is with ie followeb by Mozzila's gecko engine. It's only in the mobile space that webkit dominates.
It will. E interesting to see how this plays out. I absolutely agree that the web makes the os less important. In fact I think that is a big reason why the Mac has been able to steal markets are from windows.
As a developer of 16 years, 10 of which was in Java, I can say with certainty that Java was not write once, debug anywhere. I worked on many applications, enterprise apps that ran without modification across different operating systems. The most typical java dev environment is still Windows and overwhelmingly the production system was a Unix variant. I've even deployed apps across Sun's VM to IBM's VM.
Comparing web apps that barely have access to native resources, abilities like threading, or even basic design patterns to enterprise level java applications is absurd.
What I am trying to say (quite unsucessfully it appears) is that with the computing power we can now hold in our hands, most apps don't need to be written in XCode. They will run just fine on an abstraction layer. Yes, we failed to acheive this with Java. But we are getting better. I don't think we are too many iterations away from being able to accomplish this successfully. Just look at WP7. All the non XNA apps run on Silverlight and they perform as well as their native iOS counterparts.
Now that I write this, this may be one of the reasons Steve and Co. have been so quiet on the HTML5 front. That bloody thing could be a serious disruptor to the app store. Thinking it through, if the WSJ is not writting an HTML5 version of the WSJ app - they deserve a serious slap across the head!
No offense, but with respect to java, this simply isn't true. I defy anyone to find any coding environment that brings coding productivity, library support, performance, maintainability, scalablity(both in terms of code and operations) and portability together better than Java. Many can do some, but none can currently do all, IMO.
I?m sure in 5 years webcode(HTML/CSS/JS) will improve even more dramatically than they have in teh past 5 years, but so will Xcode and other native development platforms. People thought Java would do the same thing and it did get better as HW improved but it was still was subpar compared to native apps.
Not exactly. Java is able to match native C/C++ on a variety of performance fronts and exceed it in others. Native back-end code can be hard pressed to match dynamically optimized Java code.
What everyone is talking about is client-side java which, I fully admit is awful. AWT is slow and ugly. Swing is slow and almost as ugly. SWT was faster, better looking, but sacrificed portability.
Server-side java is excellent.
That being said, I agree that cross-platform client side products are usually awful. Go back to the nineties with C++ tools like Galaxy and scripting languages like TCL/TK. All bad.
Flash is a good example of this and one where I agree with SJ wholeheartedly. Cross-platform solutions tend to be either 1)lowest common denominator or 2)full of customized nonstandard widgets. Client cross-platform development tends to lag behind the native environments until the companies can get out support for new features. It wasn't until Java 6 that client Java got support for system tray notifications. That would put us in the 2007 timeframe. Yikes.
Almost four years after iPhone, and all Flash mobile has really done is to add Android to the list of zero day vulnerable platforms.
Native client side code will always, I think, provide a superior optimized experience, certainly for the foreseeable future. Even 5 years out will look like 5 years ago where people were still predicting the rise of the web app and subsequent fall of native. Web apps have many advantages, not the least of which is deployment,but UI is not one of them.
Here's the deal: Apple has taken the slow, considered, multi-pronged approach to product development. The original iPod was four years in development, the iPhone was seven years in development, and the original iPad was, I think, eight years in development.
Apple built the infrastructure with iTunes--an easy way to rip your CD collection to your Mac. iTunes then allowed your Mac to be the "mother ship" for the original iPod, and every subsequent iOS device. Users who bought any iOS device after the original iPod already knew how to make their device work with their Mac. Not only was there a software infrastructure, but a customer base infrastructure as well.
Then, negotiating with record companies and eventually TV networks and movie studios, Apple made it easy for customers to legally acquire movies, music and TV shows, which created a revenue stream for all parties involved. The success of the iTunes Music Store proved that customers weren't all closet pirates--they just needed an easy way to purchase media online. Obviously, piracy will never be completely eradicated, but the iTunes Store has given honest users a "path of least resistance" for acquiring videos, music, apps and games.
This level of security and dependency has created a "safe" environment for developers and users. Apple's "closed" system and restrictive (draconian??) approval process means that nefarious developers will have a tougher time getting their evil intentions out to wreak havoc on hapless users. Apple is not only the shopping mall, but mall security as well.
By comparison, Apple's "competitors" have glued bits of plastic and glass together and said "TA-DA!! iPad killer!" Virtually no security, no infrastrucure, no eco-system.
Comments
What I am trying to say (quite unsucessfully it appears) is that with the computing power we can now hold in our hands, most apps don't need to be written in XCode. They will run just fine on an abstraction layer. Yes, we failed to acheive this with Java. But we are getting better. I don't think we are too many iterations away from being able to accomplish this successfully. Just look at WP7. All the non XNA apps run on Silverlight and they perform as well as their native iOS counterparts.
Many don?t have to be, but that doesn?t mean they aren?t better for it. Running in an abstraction layer? just to say your app is ?just fine? isn?t how you make great products.
You and Menno aren?t looking at the big picture. The future will make web apps better but will also make native apps better.
Now that I write this, this may be one of the reasons Steve and Co. have been so quiet on the HTML5 front. That bloody thing could be a serious disruptor to the app store. Thinking it through, if the WSJ is not writting an HTML5 version of the WSJ app - they deserve a serious slap across the head!
was at my favorite local over-priced computer store yesterday afternoon. they had a sign up indicating they had the xoom for sale. i asked the employee if they had a demo unit i could take a look at. they "did", but it was in a kryptonite cage and they wouldn't let me handle it. i asked him which he preferred -- ipad or xoom -- and he said the xoom. but he qualified that with "i haven't used an ipad". i mentioned something about my mac and he said "i use a pc". to myself, i thought "of course you do".
i find it interesting that there is seemingly such a totality of effort being spent, by so many companies, on keeping up with apple, rather than spending it on true innovation. i get that they want a piece of the market ... and although plagiarism might be the most sincere form of flattery, it ain't gonna get you too far. i'm just sayin'
He and his store don't make much money off the Apple products, that's why.
Many don?t have to be, but that doesn?t mean they aren?t better for it. Running in an abstraction layer? just to say your app is ?just fine? isn?t how you make great products.
You and Menno aren?t looking at the big picture. The future will make web apps better but will also make native apps better.
I'm not missing it, I'm saying that for a majority of applications, they'll stop getting the benefits they used to get from being in native code (or the costs will outweigh those benefits)
Will some apps always require native code? Yes. Will HTML5 ever catch up to native code? Highly unlikely. Does this mean that a majority of applications will continue being developed in native code (and then redeveloped if they want to port them)? Unlikely.
I'm not missing the big picture, I just see one that's different.
i find it interesting that there is seemingly such a totality of effort being spent, by so many companies, on keeping up with apple, rather than spending it on true innovation. i get that they want a piece of the market ... and although plagiarism might be the most sincere form of flattery, it ain't gonna get you too far. i'm just sayin'
Because when you're talking iphone/ipad if a company isn't directly trying to compete with those products, the consumer could care less. Apple was VERY successful at getting consumer mindshare. Customer's don't come into a wireless store looking for a smartphone, they come into the store looking for "Something like the iphone" even if they've never handled an iOS device (or a competitors) before. If a device varies in design too much, they risk turning away a customer, even if there is nothing "inferior" about that design.
Of course, some companies take things too far (ala Touchwiz/Galaxy s) But before a company can get someone to look at their software, or what they offer, they have to overcome that significant iHurdle.
There are some companies doing some very innovative things when it comes to their devices, but if they vary too much, they risk alienating their customers. No other company in the world has the mindshare of apple.
In the end though, average consumers will try out other products because they're going to be cheaper than iOS products in the future. Yes right now iPad is very competitive in price but it won't last and in the end iPad will go back to be the 'premium product'. Not that it's a bad thing for Apple though.
The OS will have returned (by going forwards) to it's roots, the loader and abstraction. iOS's "dull pages of apps" is the precursor. Not that everyone wants to get this.
The hardware was king
The OS is king
The App will be king
To the point IMHO where you'll have application makers releasing dedicated devices (not only but as well). The device will be totally valueless, it should "disappear" but so should the OS.
Apple said something along the lines of "when the tech gets out the way" in referring to the iPad. Thing is, the uni-tasking nature of iOS means the OS goes away also...
Fanboys in 5 years will be fighting about application conglomerates.
I never said they wouldn't.
But I think that in this "Post-PC" era, the ability to run the same app on your phone, your computer, whatever else is here in five years without being locked to a single OS to do so.
I think native apps will still have a place (especially with games), but I don't think "locked" applications are the future, no matter how slick the interface, how awesome the code, etc.
People on this forum (and others) like bringing up that if Motorola could get away with making their own OS, they would, and I think they'd like to have some unique OS as well (though looking at Bada, it's clear that this isn't always a good thing)
Let's take the App Read it later as an example.
There is a web app, and an app for iOS and Android. I'm sure there are tablet versions available/in the works as well.
Now, if you want to have the app on your ipad and on your android phone, you'll have to buy it twice. I'm not complaining about that right now, since it's two different OS's so there's different development costs/teams.
But an app like that would be perfect for something like HTML5 (once HTML5 stabilizes). Then instead of buying the app multiple times, you buy it once, and you can use it across platforms.
News apps and the like are the simplest ports, and then some basic games. And once that happens you'll see tablets running different Operating systems because it's not as high a barrier to entry as it is right now.
Think about it. Right now if you want to compete in the phone/tablet space you have to create the Operating system AND an ecosystem because smartphones/tablets are all about apps. If more apps are portable, then all a company needs to do is develop an operating system with a kick a55 browser.
I'm NOT saying that iOS won't improve, I'm just saying that I'm hoping HTML5 becomes increasingly relevant for more than just video. (just look at the insane stuff they can do with Canvas)
The biggest problem with that type of app is efficiency. It's been tried with Javelin, as we all know. But java apps are often ugly, don't conform to a particular platform's UI standards, Nd can't use specific hardware features of different platforms. The same thing will be true of these apps.
While there will always be some apps that are FI e using that model, a large number, even the majority, won't. And then we have games. Simple games will work fine, as the Flash and Java games do now. But anything complex, or that requires performance, won't.
Palm tried that with the Pre at first, and it bombed. Apple had web apps, and they weren't exactly setting the world on fire. Adobe has their commoditizing software that Apple attempted to prevent on iOS, but failed. It will produce apps at the lowest common denominator. In other words, second rate apps that are the same on all platforms.
Is this what most people really want? No, it's not.
What I am trying to say (quite unsucessfully it appears) is that with the computing power we can now hold in our hands, most apps don't need to be written in XCode. They will run just fine on an abstraction layer. Yes, we failed to acheive this with Java. But we are getting better. I don't think we are too many iterations away from being able to accomplish this successfully. Just look at WP7. All the non XNA apps run on Silverlight and they perform as well as their native iOS counterparts.
Now that I write this, this may be one of the reasons Steve and Co. have been so quiet on the HTML5 front. That bloody thing could be a serious disruptor to the app store. Thinking it through, if the WSJ is not writting an HTML5 version of the WSJ app - they deserve a serious slap across the head!
They will never work that well. Apps are already somewhat abstracted from the hardware in modern OS's. You can look to programs such as VMWare and Parallels to see that there is a performance hit. And those work on powerful machines. There is much talk of virtualization as being the answer to most everything, but it's not the answer for many things. Anything that requires performance, or adherence to certain UI standards won't make it in either an abstracted, or virtualized environment.
The reason it that as these environments get better, the OS's themselves get more sophisticated and better. These environments will never catch up. They will always be second best.
They will never work that well. Apps are already somewhat abstracted from the hardware in modern OS's. You can look to programs such as VMWare and Parallels to see that there is a performance hit.
You can even see a difference in how webcode works when running a web app in WebOS v. a native app in WebOS.
Many don?t have to be, but that doesn?t mean they aren?t better for it. Running in an abstraction layer? just to say your app is ?just fine? isn?t how you make great products.
You and Menno aren?t looking at the big picture. The future will make web apps better but will also make native apps better.
Man alive you like to hear yourself talk.
Man alive you like to hear yourself talk.
Be nice!
The inside of the box actually comes with a slip-card that says "Xoom will work with Flash once it's released" or something to that effect. There is a flash beta release you can download for it, but like everything else its slow and buggy.
They're on par in certain technical respects, ahead in some ways, but far far short of the user experience, and I can attest to the fact there are almost no real tablet apps on the store.
I feel bad for souls that actually bought one of these things, thinking it might be competitive to the iPad. And the entry price is $600, spending more for less. There's a gulf that is real and tangible between what Apple sells and what the competition is selling.
For the record I have an iPad 1 and 2 for comparison.
Sales are quite "smooth."
I think in this case, they really are implying "slow".
Man alive you like to hear yourself talk.
And you like to avoid responding to solip's rebuttal.
Just read it. It your middle name DED?
? sorry, don't know what DED means for?
This sounds awfully like Java. In sw development its not programming that is difficult, but rather testing. That was java's problem. It was write once, debug everywhere.
Of co ruse that is not completely analogous because the majority of browsers nowadays run on webkit. Unfortunately though the biggest market share is with ie followeb by Mozzila's gecko engine. It's only in the mobile space that webkit dominates.
It will. E interesting to see how this plays out. I absolutely agree that the web makes the os less important. In fact I think that is a big reason why the Mac has been able to steal markets are from windows.
As a developer of 16 years, 10 of which was in Java, I can say with certainty that Java was not write once, debug anywhere. I worked on many applications, enterprise apps that ran without modification across different operating systems. The most typical java dev environment is still Windows and overwhelmingly the production system was a Unix variant. I've even deployed apps across Sun's VM to IBM's VM.
Comparing web apps that barely have access to native resources, abilities like threading, or even basic design patterns to enterprise level java applications is absurd.
What I am trying to say (quite unsucessfully it appears) is that with the computing power we can now hold in our hands, most apps don't need to be written in XCode. They will run just fine on an abstraction layer. Yes, we failed to acheive this with Java. But we are getting better. I don't think we are too many iterations away from being able to accomplish this successfully. Just look at WP7. All the non XNA apps run on Silverlight and they perform as well as their native iOS counterparts.
Now that I write this, this may be one of the reasons Steve and Co. have been so quiet on the HTML5 front. That bloody thing could be a serious disruptor to the app store. Thinking it through, if the WSJ is not writting an HTML5 version of the WSJ app - they deserve a serious slap across the head!
No offense, but with respect to java, this simply isn't true. I defy anyone to find any coding environment that brings coding productivity, library support, performance, maintainability, scalablity(both in terms of code and operations) and portability together better than Java. Many can do some, but none can currently do all, IMO.
Man alive you like to hear yourself talk.
But he usually has something to say that is actually worth reading.
I?m sure in 5 years webcode(HTML/CSS/JS) will improve even more dramatically than they have in teh past 5 years, but so will Xcode and other native development platforms. People thought Java would do the same thing and it did get better as HW improved but it was still was subpar compared to native apps.
Not exactly. Java is able to match native C/C++ on a variety of performance fronts and exceed it in others. Native back-end code can be hard pressed to match dynamically optimized Java code.
What everyone is talking about is client-side java which, I fully admit is awful. AWT is slow and ugly. Swing is slow and almost as ugly. SWT was faster, better looking, but sacrificed portability.
Server-side java is excellent.
That being said, I agree that cross-platform client side products are usually awful. Go back to the nineties with C++ tools like Galaxy and scripting languages like TCL/TK. All bad.
Flash is a good example of this and one where I agree with SJ wholeheartedly. Cross-platform solutions tend to be either 1)lowest common denominator or 2)full of customized nonstandard widgets. Client cross-platform development tends to lag behind the native environments until the companies can get out support for new features. It wasn't until Java 6 that client Java got support for system tray notifications. That would put us in the 2007 timeframe. Yikes.
Almost four years after iPhone, and all Flash mobile has really done is to add Android to the list of zero day vulnerable platforms.
Native client side code will always, I think, provide a superior optimized experience, certainly for the foreseeable future. Even 5 years out will look like 5 years ago where people were still predicting the rise of the web app and subsequent fall of native. Web apps have many advantages, not the least of which is deployment,but UI is not one of them.
...What an amazing machine Jobs has put in place!
You're absolutely right.
Here's the deal: Apple has taken the slow, considered, multi-pronged approach to product development. The original iPod was four years in development, the iPhone was seven years in development, and the original iPad was, I think, eight years in development.
Apple built the infrastructure with iTunes--an easy way to rip your CD collection to your Mac. iTunes then allowed your Mac to be the "mother ship" for the original iPod, and every subsequent iOS device. Users who bought any iOS device after the original iPod already knew how to make their device work with their Mac. Not only was there a software infrastructure, but a customer base infrastructure as well.
Then, negotiating with record companies and eventually TV networks and movie studios, Apple made it easy for customers to legally acquire movies, music and TV shows, which created a revenue stream for all parties involved. The success of the iTunes Music Store proved that customers weren't all closet pirates--they just needed an easy way to purchase media online. Obviously, piracy will never be completely eradicated, but the iTunes Store has given honest users a "path of least resistance" for acquiring videos, music, apps and games.
This level of security and dependency has created a "safe" environment for developers and users. Apple's "closed" system and restrictive (draconian??) approval process means that nefarious developers will have a tougher time getting their evil intentions out to wreak havoc on hapless users. Apple is not only the shopping mall, but mall security as well.
By comparison, Apple's "competitors" have glued bits of plastic and glass together and said "TA-DA!! iPad killer!" Virtually no security, no infrastrucure, no eco-system.