Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Go native. Web apps aren't there yet.

What's so great with a native app, when you can build a web app that works across all mobile devices? If you're just aiming to provide information and have no use of all the fancy hardware of smartphones, what's the point with learning Objective-C etc?

Seems pointless and expensive to write that app.

Hey, I want an app! Everybody's got an app, I want one too. They are.. you know.. apps.

That's no good. Here is list of real reasons for writing that native app: 
  1. Apple is running an apartheid system against web apps. Se below.
  2. A web app can't cache data as easily as a native app, which leads to slow responsiveness (or is this true with html5?)
  3. It is close to impossible to make a web app respond to taps as fast as a native app.
  4. It's really difficult to make a web app as stable as native app. I've compared the Facebook native app and web app: The web app just simply does not do anything when I tap "Check In".
Apple's apartheid against web apps:
  • A web app has to share browser windows, and there are just 8 of them, before one app gets kicked out.
  • A web app will reload even if it's already loaded => slowness.
There you go. Make that app.

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