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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 .
Well its not as bad as Microsoft failures

Microsoft BOB LOL
Windows Me LOL
MSN messenger LOL
Windows Live Care LOL
Windows Defender LOL
Windows Movie Maker
Internet Explorer LOL
Microsoft Zune LOL

& The biggest Windows Vista, on every top 10 tech failures vista has got either number one or number two.

The G4 Cube was a work of art, the newton was way ahead of its time & the Lisa was brilliant although cost $10,000. How is Apple TV a failure???, I know alot of people who have them including myself, I stream content to our 52'' Samsung downstairs, works brilliantly and its not even that expensive for what your buying.

Other notable Microsoft "accomplishments:"

Live Search: destroyed by Google.
Play For Sure: destroyed by Microsoft itself.
MSN Music: destroyed by anyone else who had an online music store.
Zune (as you mentioned): destroyed by iPod.
Xbox 360: destroyed by the lowly Wii (and its own horrific failure rate).
Vista (as you mentioned): destroyed by users who recognize it for the crap that it is.
Office 2007: a big seller I'm sure (due to long-term IT agreements with MS), with an interface that is more loathed than loved.
Windows Mobile: destroyed by iPhone, and soon by Pre and Symbian as well.

This is a company that can't stand not to have its fingers in everyone's pie - and the lack of focus has resulted in a vast collection of mediocre to bad products.
 
Other notable Microsoft "accomplishments:"

Live Search: destroyed by Google.
Play For Sure: destroyed by Microsoft itself.
MSN Music: destroyed by anyone else who had an online music store.
Zune (as you mentioned): destroyed by iPod.
Xbox 360: destroyed by the lowly Wii (and its own horrific failure rate).
Vista (as you mentioned): destroyed by users who recognize it for the crap that it is.
Office 2007: a big seller I'm sure (due to long-term IT agreements with MS), with an interface that is more loathed than loved.
Windows Mobile: destroyed by iPhone, and soon by Pre and Symbian as well.

This is a company that can't stand not to have its fingers in everyone's pie - and the lack of focus has resulted in a vast collection of mediocre to bad products.

It's a shame they are such a failure in the world of business. Have you ever considered working with them on corporate strategy?
 
This may be true, but it's the distant future. Applications, I think, are a little like music in this regard. People generally want to buy/download and keep, not rent or subscribe.

I agree. Add to that that relying on the internet is far too fragile of an existence for my taste. I like my software stored on my computer, thank you very much. It only takes a simple power outage for a DSL modem to become a paper weight.
 
So you don't have any credit cards? No bank account? Never filled out any employment or tax forms? No utilities in your name? No government issued ID?

Do I think Apple is passing around design info in Google Docs? Probably not, but to assume that no one trusts 'the cloud' and/or 3rd parties w/their valuable info isn't realistic.


Lethal

Don't put words in my mouth, speak for yourself. I never said no one trust 'the cloud.' I did say no one should trust a cloud server.

As for all the other stuff you mention, give me a break. I was talking about company data such projects yet to be patented. But I don't like the fact that every one can steal my privacy and or identity. However, that's bad enough. Why should we add an all cloud option to the security hole that already exist.

Not that I think a cloud-only software option for all application software will ever exist.
 
Don't put words in my mouth, speak for yourself. I never said no one trust 'the cloud.' I did say no one should trust a cloud server.
I'm not putting words in your mouth. You said, "...no intelligent person is good to trust a outside company with their valuable data." I was just trying to get a better idea of what you meant because billions of people already trust 3rd parties w/their valuable information.

As for all the other stuff you mention, give me a break. I was talking about company data such projects yet to be patented.
If you would've been more specific sooner we could've skipped this back and forth. ;)


Lethal
 
The Cloud won't Fly in the United States for Sure!

Possibly in Japan or parts of western Europe, this theory could be plausible, but that's about it.

And certainly NOT in the U.S. where "the cloud" is not so speedy and won't be for probably a decade. Even G3 speeds are not anywhere near nationwide or even hitting max G3 speeds, and G4 speeds are not scheduled to even to roll out until a year or 2 from now and won't have any more coverage than current G3 speeds most likely. In the U.S., more so than in some other more densely populous countries, there will ALWAYS be significant GAPS in "the cloud."

Face facts Google, your cloud is a slow moving, somewhat uncontrollable giant that even the huge conglomerate Google has little control of. And neither does Apple.
Why else would Apple have even considered buying their own cellular frequencies and bandwidth?

Simple answer: Because the U.S. is dead last in the western world in cellular infrastructure thanks to dozens of FCC decisions over the last decade, many related to the delay and bungling of the DTV conversion and the lack of available bandwidth and frequencies, not to mention piss poor cellular corporations. I'll resist going off on an ATT or Verizon tangent here. I think people know what I mean and get it.

And this problem will not be quickly solved for Google's cloud.

It's possible that at some point in the future, the cloud will be as fast and efficient as the app, but we're talking a DECADE or more at least if not longer, if ever.

Oh, and let's not forget, web apps can be website spoofed to spread viruses more easily than an app can. Imagine having your cell phone hacked and you can't even make an emergency call!
It's almost as if Google is starting to think like Microsoft these days and several people have pointed out Microsoft's recent failures, so I won't go into that either.

The dirty little secret of this "Cloud theory" is that Palm and the other cell phone manufacturers are just putting all their eggs in the Google Cloud Theory basket because

A. They don't have to ability or money to create something like iTUNES or the App Store.
B. This Google Cloud and web apps is their only other option! LOL

One final point... This theory also assumes people don't want to OWN their own apps.
Ya know, the way people prefer RENTING music instead of buying it today? HAha!
Umm, I rest my case on that point as I think that theory has been thoroughly put to bed by Apple's iTUNES and I suspect the App Store over The Cloud will prove the exact same thing over time.

So no, I don't see the cloud winning any time soon and possibly never, and certainly not in the U.S.
 
I don't think the man on street cares about cloud computing or if his apps are written in HTML5, C++ or whatever as long as the experience is good. Apple knows all about user experience and should that experience become better on the cloud, I'm sure Apple will glide in that direction. The internet has to become ubiquitous on mobile devices for this to become a reality. The internet is a delivery system and should HTML (or other) become robust enough to rival present languages I'm sure people will change. If the internet is not ubiquitous by that time people will still want to store apps. locally though. I think this is all academic for the average person.
 
I think there will be a balance between the two. Right now, with the slow speed of the 3G internet connection, the Apps are prevailing because the main program is already installed on the phone, and just small bits of info need to be obtained from the 3G connection; greatly speeding things up. As the internet connection gets faster (4G, 5G, and so forth), people will use Safari more like we use full-size computers (to get info from the same websites we access on our computers). However, there are certain Apps that are still much better than any webpage (sometimes, when I am at my computer, I still use my iPhone to look up certain info from a certain App), and some Apps that are too complex to be in a webpage. In the future, once internet speeds make Safari less tedious, I think we will eventually see a balance between Apps and Safari.
 
Web apps. It may be 10-20 years away but one day everything, your files, your programs, your OS, for all your computers and other devices will be in the cloud.
 
With Google Gears you can still use web applications when offline. There is no reason why you can't download a web application to your hard drive and use it offline.

Which begs the question: why use a development environment that is basically a markup language with bits and pieces of some system's API retrofitted onto it when you could opt for a real set of APIs and a real development environment instead?

I don't understand this rush to make HTML/CSS/JS into some kind of wonder hammer of programming and development. Surely, it's far more flexible and more powerful to treat the networking/Web aspect of a programming environment as a subset of the available tools and not the other way around.
 
Google Wave

I can't believe it. Seve pages of discussion on this one and no one mentioned Google Wave. Just look at this video: http://wave.google.com/
Google got it so right. The web, and services like Google Wave, is the future. It's all about interoperability and free accessabilty. _And_ we have to differentiate here further. It's much more about the backend than about the frontend. Apple might write a nice client for Google Wave, but that doesn't matter anymore, because the money won't be spent on the frontend, but on the backend, as more and more companies (yes even Microsoft) have learned well from Apple how to design a good frontend. Or, to put it in other words, in a world with highly accessible backend infrastructure (read: web-based) you can chose from a variety of frontends. And, you won't need non-web-based frameworks to create appealing frontends either. It will not be easy to stand out in competition here.

Two last thoughts:
(i) Im really curious for Chrome OS with Google Docs/Spreadsheet together with Googel Wave. I guess this will really change the way we work today. Apple can only hope to „get on the wave“ (sorry for that :-D) asap.
(ii) I hope Apple has some competing products in the pipeline that can make a difference here. I would love to hear news concerning iwork.com. sproutcore is about to get to 1.0, and I guess they have spent lots of time and effort to get things right for iwork.com.
 
in other news....
Toyota believes the future of transportation is the car...
Coca Cola believes drinks are best for beating thirst...
Airlines say flying is the best way to travel...

Google is promoting itself to a media that generally doesn't do any fact checking and reports by press release.....


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.

the cloud is the only way to ensure that all users are using the most up to date version of the software (and paying for it), basically a way into forced updates whether you perceive value in them or not. You can probably also assume that they (are?) offering a few GB or storage space online to act as a virtual data drive for you as well.

Instead of having people upgrade apps maybe every other release at best, have people go with the cloud and over the course of say 2 or 3 years (a normalish upgrade cycle) you might not make as much money per user as you would as if they all upgraded but you would make more money overall as you have more users (in theory) paying per month for the service.

I see the consumer market being more hit and miss, the corporate market has potential as a lot of companies probably would enjoy not needing all the physical servers & IT Support in house and the money (potentially) saved can be used in offering more complex/more varied solutions. Remove the cost of 24*7 data center monitoring, cost of cooling, cost of servers, cost of maintenance agreements, cost of IT staff to support/fix/patch servers, cost of (specialized) floor space, cost of potentially under/over providing (too many or two few servers based on demand) etc etc.

In the consumer market these days it can pretty much come down to ... give me a laptop & broadband connection. Local wins as most of us don't want to pay for mobile broadband solutions which cost as much or more than broadband connections in the home for a lot less speed & more restictive data limits. Free wifi isnt always as easy to find as we might like it to be.
 
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I have to agree with Google.. the future is web apps. We see this trend on the desktop already. As Cell phone speeds / data rates get cheaper, more powerful, the same thing will happen on Cell Phones too.

Web based technologies have progressed in the past few years and the usability of web apps have improved dramatically.

Ultimately, the future does belong to the Web Application, depending on the type of application.
 
This would mean for everyone to have super fast internet connections wherever they are, can't see that happening to be honest.

Highly agree. I am surprised at the fact that NZ lags behind on broadband infrastructure. I think Google wants to push this agenda to mine more data from us...creepy.
 
I think the poll question and the general topic are slightly different.

To "Which do you believe will dominate mobile development?" I voted for 'Native applications'. Because I think they will do for some time to come, and the key word here is 'development'. It might be meant just as 'making apps' but in a wider sense, the whole idea of making apps is still developing - and once they're all in the cloud (which I think will happen, but not for a long time) I'm not sure we will even be able to call them 'applications' any more in the sense that we have used that term thus far - they'll be more like 'web services' you subscribe to, probably subsidising the hardware you use as is the case with phones now.

All sounds pretty horrible to me, I'd rather just own my software locally, and hopefully there will be enough people who share my view that native apps will never completely die.
 
This is what apple say to when release first iphone, isnt it?

Well, firstly, things have moved on since then, for example, HTML5 has now been introduced, making this more possible.

Secondly, just because Apple failed, this also means everyone else will fail? Your really saying "Well, Apple couldn't do it, so no one else can".
 
The network is the slowest part of the system. It slower than the disk, ram, and CPU cache. If you advocate building a system around the network that doesn't absolutely have to be, you are a bad designer.
 
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