Udacity is getting ready to kill its mobile app. I got following email from them today. I think its a good thing. Mobile apps should die..for they add little value but cause massive privacy problems. I hope this means less intrusive "download our app" requests on websites<p>When we launched the Udacity app over 4 years ago, we were pleased to offer Udacity students our learning experience from the convenience of a mobile app. Ultimately, ten percent of Udacity students downloaded the app, and many enjoyed using it as an additional learning path.<p>In 2019, we are prioritizing massive upgrades to the Udacity classroom and service experience. We are focusing our efforts to support, motivate, and drive not only learning and career success for our students, but also to provide a world-class online learning experience.<p>Because the Udacity app has not significantly advanced students' ability to achieve their learning and career goals, moving forward we will not support many of these product upgrades on the mobile app and will sunset the mobile app as of January 9, 2019. After this point you won't be able to download or use the app anymore. The Udacity classroom experience, including Knowledge and Student Hub will remain supported on mobile web as it is today.<p>If you have questions, view the FAQ doc or reach out by responding to this email.<p>Your Udacity team
> Mobile apps should die..for they add little value but cause massive privacy problems.<p>Mobile apps that are a bad fit for the platform should die. Not everything needs to be a mobile app but some products and services absolutely benefit from being mobile and native.
When you lay off 30% of your staff you have to deprioritize lots of things.<p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/29/edtech-unicorn-udacity-lays-off-125-people-in-global-strategy-shift/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/29/edtech-unicorn-udacity-lay...</a>
I'm going to miss this. I was one of the 10%. I would download a video so I didn't have to download it over mobile for my commute. Then I could watch it on the bus while working problems on my laptop.<p>This isn't a huge loss as 4 years ago I didn't have as much data as I do now. I'll get over it, but I'm still sad.
Just because Udacity is withdrawing their app, it does not mean that mobile apps are dying, or should die. I have passed several courses on Udacity and other MOOCs, and I cannot imagine following a programming course from a mobile device. I need to try out the things by myself, eg.: type code in an actual IDE, install a server on your machine, use command line tools, etc, things that you can't do from a mobile app.<p>"ultimately, ten percent of Udacity students downloaded the app". - this makes sense, why to develop and maintain an app that is barely used?
I used their mobile app because I wanted to download the videos for later viewing in a place with a poor connection. But even basic feature like downloading videos did not always work correctly. It was quite frustrating. So that's why I abandoned their mobile app.<p>I think maintaining a mobile app with basic functionality like downloading videos should not take much effort. We don't need a fancy mobile app where you can learn programming by dragging blocks of statements.<p>Anyway, I still love Udacity. I already graduated from two nanodegrees.
I don't think this is a good use case for "mobile apps should die", quite the opposite - how will I download the content and watch it on subway, airplane, etc?<p>I don't do much video when connected, prefer written format, so without offline capability I literally have no need for video classes etc (even Netflix won me over once I could download for offline viewing).<p>As well, ten percent of your user base ain't nothing!
> Because the Udacity app has not significantly advanced students' ability to achieve their learning and career goals<p>This is oddly worded. It's not the app's fault that Udacity didn't put enough oomph behind it.<p>I'm not saying that it was necessarily feasible or even possible to put more resources behind it, but the wording is irksome.
This sounds like the right business move for Udacity. They’ve had to lay off a significant fraction of their workforce so it makes sense to focus on the platform 90% of their students use.<p>But this doesn’t have much to do with the general question of app vs web site. It really depends on what you’re doing. Also, apps and web sites have the same potential for massive privacy problems. Either way it’s up to what data is collected, how it’s secured and who it is sold to.
In my opinion, if only 10% of your students downloaded the app, that means you never had significant traction outside western countries. Mobile traffic is through the roof for developing Countries, often the only device owned by a learner.
For non-programming subjects that do not require writing code I found the app really useful for watching the courses offline.<p>As that content is mostly free, I see why you decided to discontinue the app.
I did use the mobile app to watch lecture videos on the go. Would it be possible to put the videos in a course-wise playlist on Youtube for easy viewing?
Not sure how it's today but yesr ago udacity website was slow af.
To be short: make your website fast before deleting app.<p>P.s. its friendly hint, i don't care actually