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Which do you believe will dominate mobile development?

  • Native applications

    Votes: 349 72.6%
  • Web applications

    Votes: 89 18.5%
  • Not sure

    Votes: 42 8.7%

  • Total voters
    481
  • Poll closed .
Yeah right

And a more self serving statement you are seldom to see... If Google had a wildly successful appstore would they say the same? oh BTW - try writing an Android app that is any good, that doesn't also access the native services on the phone.
 
goog99=giving what you want. profit.
goog09=taking what you want. paid by goog99.

good search engine+ms style buyouts/marketing?
 
The searches and traffic from MJ's death almost sank the internet... I wouldn't want to depend on online apps for most my work.

Now if they offered these for local installation at local servers (kinda like thin clients in the past) I would be interested.
 
I don't buy it. I think they're full of it.

Lets compare this to the music industry. Do you see everyone listening to music through radiowave, satellite or audio streaming? Most music is downloaded or bought at the local music store. People want to buy it and keep it. Why would software be any different.
There are a lot of people who still listen to the radio or listen to internet radio stations such as Pandora and the XM iPhone app was downloaded over a million times w/in the first two weeks of it's release. So, yeah, there is some demand there. ;)


Lethal
 
Hi
I'd think that's because there hasn't been anything that really rivals the App Store as it stands now. With HTML 5 around the corner, that could change, right?
I don't think so. Look at Flash, it is still too CPU intensive for mainstream mobile device use. Flash is nice but even it isn't perfect. Any complex Web technology seems to require a noticeable amount of CPU 'power'. I'm not saying HTML5 won't be 'cool' or useful but it won't replace native applications. Compliment them as it has so far but I just don't see online apps / services fully replacing native.

I'm a Google search, Google Maps / Google Earth, YouTube, ... fan but this seems like a senseless yell for attention. Which... Well... Doesn't help one's reputation for being a dominator. It's the old, whoever is louder / last word is the winner.

You'd think since Google seems to want to hitch a ride on Microsoft's "World Domination" wagon, that Google would at least try to learn from Microsoft's mistakes.

I'm not saying there isn't room for competition nor that Google shouldn't expand but this is one case where GOogle should just focus on doing even MORE improvements to their current offerings. Obviously, Nokia and Palm will show their face at such a party because they also feel intimidated but that doesn't show much of them either... Though it is partially understandable.
 
When you get on the airplane, they make you turn off the Internet access. I guess all those business people using the web apps won't be able to work in transit... Then again, GO WEB APPS, GO!

I'll always prefer to keep my apps AND my data on my computer, rather on someone else's computer.

-jt2
 
While I don't doubt the possibility of awesome web apps in the future I doubt they will ever be as powerful as native apps, just powerful enough that it doesn't matter.
 
Hi
The searches and traffic from MJ's death almost sank the internet... I wouldn't want to depend on online apps for most my work.

Now if they offered these for local installation at local servers (kinda like thin clients in the past) I would be interested.
That was my other thought. I have decent Internet at home ( 10Mbps / 1Mbps ) but I'm not blind to most ISPs ( in the U.S. anyway ) milking prices as long as legally ( sometimes further ) possible. Now with many ISPs jumping into traffic caps, you'd better think twice before putting everything on the Web.
 
How about.... the Web AND Apps are the future of mobile development? (Just as they have been the past and present.)

Define "development"... I use more HTML pages than apps, but not for the same things. That doesn't make HTML pages the future, but they certainly aren't going away.
 
Web apps... Blah

I understand how great it is to have everything available all the time from any location, but it will never-ever work. You will never have photoshop served from a cloud or any other photo software.

You wouldnt want to be detached from all your information anyway.

As harddrives become cheaper and smaller, the need for cloud based apps decreases since everything can be stored locally anyway. Why would I want to use excel online instead of excel on my computer or whatever they are inventing. Anything local will be many times faster than cloud based. We seem to be working backwards- going back to terminal services instead of client computing.
 
Well Google's mobile platform is going nowhere fast with that outlook. The future is native applications, not web-based. Web-based applications suck. You are running something off of something else. I would much rather have a browser that I can use and have applications.
 
I hope not.

The Internet sucks in these rural parts of England. 3G has less than 20% Coverage here. Villages are BLACK ZONES.

And to-be-honest.. The only good website I've used, in terms of maybe speed and performance.. Is Flickr. All these other wannabes suck.

I've used Google Mail, Google Docs, Calender etc. They were no good.. Google Maps used to be brilliant.. but recently it's been sluggish.

-- And what about us Techies! I enjoy installing stuff!!

Ah well, we're a few years away before 'normal computer folk' start doing this.

:)
 
He can certainly predict that but the problem with his theory is marketing. The App stores are cheap marketing whereas prior to the app stores devs spent a lot on marketing and got very little return.
 
Gnarly dude!

Can I like put bits of the web on my desktop and play audio and crappy games in my browser?

It's like a dream I had once about something called IE4 and DHTML... so sweet!

I love the way every browser renders pages just a bit different to add nuance to the way programs run. Consistency is the last thing I want in my computing...

I have to go and press the random button on my car. Although I won't be driving it anymore, it's all about the asphalt now man, cars have been beaten by the asphalt which has been there all along staring us in the tires...

Btw, I work for an asphalt monopoly, but in no way does that bias my view of cars... ridiculous outdated things they are....
 
Why does it have to be one or the other? As with any networked technology, the balance between local (native app) processing and remote (cloud or server-side) processing should be based on the type of application. The ideal balance clearly differs for different types of apps. Navigation apps needs maps, either locally or remotely. If web access is pervasive, you don't much care which it is. Games often require local installation for performance, but multi-player games need the net. Reference material is handy on a mobile device, but again you don't care whether or not the data is pre-stored on the device as long as you can access and refresh it as needed.

As I read somewhere recently, maybe iPhone apps "feature an embedded web browser or provide access to 3rd party content". So you might buy them (or get them free) from an App Store but the web is what lets them run.

How you acquire an application is mostly inconsequential. One click in a store to "buy" the app (even if it runs only a tiny local client and does the bulk of the work on the net) is much the same as signing up for a web-based service, where you might have to have an account to pay for it. We shouldn't care which case it is, only what we get for our money and how well it works.
 
The Earth Is Flat!!!

I believe that blah blah blah.

Beliefs are a dime a dozen.

All that matters is what people WANT, not what some small group try to jam down our collective throats.

And this people wants LOCAL APs.
 
Is Java included in this vision? Because that would be too funny. Only a decade too late for Sun.
 
1. Just because an app is developed with Web technologies doesn't mean it needs to be connected to the Internet to work. And that also doesn't mean it doesn't have access to hardware. See the Pre for an example.

2. I agree with him. It is clear many of you know nothing about software development, but this is going to happen because by standardizing the development platform, everyone wins. It costs companies less to make their software available to a large number of devices and consumers have more choice of devices becuase many of the applications they rely on operate exactly the same way all the time. Standards are a good things for consumers.

I now await all the flames.
 
The future is web applications and cloud computing. Maybe not the near future, but it is the future.
 
Who wants unoptimized software anyway, except mail clients and other simple pieces of software that you might want access to on the go. Google is smoking some serious **** if they actually believe that people would prefer generic, unoptimized and poorly designed apps over native ones.

Emphasis added by me. Do you really think anyone is arguing "unoptimized and poorly designed apps" are the way of the future? Poorly designed anything isn't the way of the future, unless you're talking about how people structure the way their time is spent (social networking zing!). Are you aware of the offline storage built into the HTML5 spec? It's beyond me how anyone can look at the last 10 years of web evolution and think they know what the future holds.

What exactly is so offensive about Google's statement? Unless you have very poor internet speeds, Google Docs performs about the same as Word/Pages for common tasks; it's just typing text after all. It's this reason that I switched to it for most of what I write for classes at university - as an added bonus, I can see the same version on my mobile phone and I don't have to worry about backups. The statement seemed to be painfully obvious to me; we're more connected every day. Or, as another poster said:

In terms of internet connection, well, I just look at how far we have come in 10 years, in terms of broadband and wireless, and don't really see this as being an obstacle.
 
I generally believe that the direction of the relationship between the web, the web browser, the computer, the OS, and the server is changing. 20-25 years down the line I do think this Google guy may be right. We are just seeing the beginning. It just depends what audience you're going for. 75% of computer users globally probably don't program or use pro apps. They use MS Office and a browser for Youtube and Google News. They don't even use MS Office's full features. That means one can eliminate the need for a local app based platform and focus on storage. Essentially, the computer becomes a small server, and servers function to promote the cloud. I see ZFS playing a huge role in Apple's strategy on this one. The interface to access files will probably change as well.
 
Same thing can be said for Sony entering the video game market, Apple entering the pro video editing market, Red entering the digital camera market, etc.,. If in 2000 Steve Jobs would've predicted what Apple would look like in 2009 everyone and their brother would've called him crazy.


Lethal

Actually Sony didn't really plan on entering the market themself. Sony entered because they were developing a CD version console with Nintendo but Nintendo backed out. Sony thought since they put all the development into it already they might as well go for it.
 
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