Because search still sucks.
No-one does context very well or very consistently. Even with hints. Google can't do it. Wolfram can't do it. UDDI sure doesn't/can't/won't do it.<p>Further, a huge part of the drive to apps is because people prefer more-responsive and dependable apps that are geared for the mobile use-case of the query they need at that instant. e.g. an interface that's not only finger-friendly, but one-thumb friendly and/or low contrast-friendly.<p>Even in a magical UDDI future, no generic interface group is going to churn out something that displays subway maps as well as a dedicated UX group that's <i>only</i> worried about subway maps.<p>Lastly, you only search for an app once. And most people never search randomly at all: their friend recommends an app and they search for that specific app by name. You may recognize this behavior as: the way most people use the internet. The worst the 'appocalypse' could ever get, is as horribly unusable as the current internet. And we certainly have enough history on <i>that</i> to see whether people will ignore it because it can be difficult to find things [1].<p>That the author <i>totally</i> skips the UX concerns and shamefully overhypes the search process strikes me as somewhere between 'just not getting it' and 'intentionally disingenuous'.<p>[1] So we're clear: It really <i>is</i> still too difficult to search for most things online. My point is that state of affairs just doesn't matter. Maybe you could get <i>more</i> use from <i>more</i> people with better search. It remains to be seen whether people would rather search for themselves or whether they truly prefer to get their information through third party curators and aggregators. But clearly apps won't run into a roadblock <i>because of search</i> any time soon.
> When I query for Rockefeller Plaza and I’m sitting at the Thompson LES, a logical intent is travel to/from Rockefeller.<p>For you, this may be a logical intent; but it would be a bad idea to try and generalize to a whole population of users from your own anecdotal experience.
The obvious reason in because you have no internet connectivity in the subway stations.<p>But that doesn't affect the arguments, just that one example.<p>On a recent visit to New York, Google guided me all around Manhattan with great efficiency, but I had to keep an app for when I was underground.
Well, UDDI was an architecture astronaut's fantasy back then... and it still is today. This might be a theoretically better way to deliver the service, but it needs too many bits and pieces to fall into place (particularly bits that require the concurrent agreement of thousands of businesses and governmental organisations with conflicting aims) in order to become a reality...
I'm the developer of Routesy (routesy.com), a public transit app for SF Muni/BART/Caltrain/AC Transit. My app has been around since the first day of the app store, and I get asked this question all the time.<p>The short answer is that Apple gives me two important things:<p>1. A decent development platform with UI controls that provide a good, familiar user experience
2. A marketplace that lets my app make money so I can afford to continue developing it<p>I've done some offline app development using HTML5 as well, and these apps just don't "feel" the same. Had I taken the HTML5 route, it would have been far easier for me to port my app to Android (which I haven't done yet), but my experience has been (at least for productivity and utility apps) that the more native an application feels, the better it sells.
Apps provide a thick-client experience (richer UI, off-line storage etc) and people when they want to do a specific task know what to use. It seems obvious why until the web can be all things to all people we will always have apps. 10B to be precise! Clearly a lot of people like them.<p>Until native UI features are available using a web based driver there will likely always be some advantage to a slightly thick-client. Exposing UI features is a battle, look at the past for details of hard this is, ActiveX for example. In theory this would have made all Windows UI components available to the web browser, until someone figured out that a security model would be necessary that handicapped things so much it led to Flash. Now we are a decade and a half further on and technologies like jquerymobile will likely see many web solutions be more app like.<p>Once Apple figure out a better way to save a web 'page' to the home-screen that's intuitive and provides for local storage we will see apps.
Apps vs the Web isn't a new debate.<p>Some thing apps are merely a stepping stone and the Web will be everything in the future. A bit like how 5-10 years ago, Flash was the only way to do "rich" Web apps whereas now <i>most</i> things Flash can do, HTML/JS can now do.<p>The problem with apps isn't really about payment though. I have a paid NYC subway app and quite happily paid for it. I'd prefer to do that than have some micropayments system where really I had no idea how much it was going to cost.<p>It's a bit like how phone calls from land lines, unless they're international, aren't charged on a per-call or per-minute basis (in the US, YMMV elsewhere). The situation is analagous to micropayments IMHO.<p>People generally prefer flat cost models for simplicity, even when it means they pay more than they would had they paid for each call. But that's a function of risk. You pay insurance on your house even though the expected value of all your insurance payments is you're worse off than had you self-insured: you're transferring that risk to a third party.<p>Also, micro-payments (and this includes charging per phone call) has another cost: the cost of billing actually becomes significant. So the phone provider prefer a flat rate rather than keeping track of and billing you for all those calls.<p>Anyway, back to apps.<p>Some people don't like apps because they're balkanized. If you write an app you need to write an iOS version, a version for Android, a version for Blackberry and so on. It's a valid point but one I think will sort itself out in time as such platforms inevitably become commoditized.<p>What you have to remember is that most people aren't tech-savvy. So give a person and tell them you click on this icon and it gives you a subway map and the times and they understand that. Tell them to go to a Web page and it's a whole lot harder.<p>Yes you can bookmark a page on the home screen but that experience isn't yet as good. Web apps <i>generally</i> don't work offline (which is a bit of a problem in our subway example). Web pages vary greatly in their mobile user experience, both in terms of display/layout and in terms of remembering what the user was doing as you switch apps (which is an issue on mobile but not on a laptop/desktop).<p>Lastly, games I see as being apps for a very long time to come. Sure computing power is increasing but power on mobile is an issue so the pressure will simply be to reduce power consumption rather than increasing CPU power, making the viability of HTML/JS for something like Angry Birds just that much further in the future.<p>The fact is though you don't <i>need</i> to buy apps for pretty much anything. There are lots of free apps and free Web pages. I can navigate around NYC using Google Maps if I want to but I like my paid NYC subway map.
There are two good rebuttals to this article:<p>1. Apps are useful in an offline market, like when you are in the subway with no data service.<p>2. People don't like micropayments. They are willing to put up with ads instead. Why do people keep flogging micropayments and ignoring actual customer behavior? On-search-result ads will get you some slight income without the hassle of trying to get your customer base to adopt some wacky and ill-supported payments mechanism.<p>I feel that the dismissal of apps in favor of a major shift in customer behavior is at best a sign of detachment from what the end user wants. (And I would tend to go further into "boil the ocean" and "architecture astronaut" thinking but that is not likely to be productive here, so let's leave well enough alone.)
This sounds like a combination of Wolfram Alpha-esque search experience with APIs.<p>But I think this fellow is discounting how much value a good UI/UX is a part of what makes an application valuable. Every transit system out there had some crappy trip planner for a long time before Google Transit came along & replaced them. Star charts get a lot more useful with window-to-the-sky UI in new apps.<p>Does the NYC subway even have a fixed schedule during most times of the day? It's usually just "go in the station and a train will show up in a couple of minutes."
Remember the first iPhone? You weren't supposed to need to install any apps because you could just make a web page to do the same thing.<p>Apple has served up 10B apps to date.. so developers will be making money from selling "useless apps" through app stores for at least the next few years.<p>I can see this changing if wireless phone data networks can speed up network latency. The web is too laggy on phone data networks at this point IMO.
Also worth noting that non-app solutions do exist. [NextBus](<a href="http://www.nextbus.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.nextbus.com/</a>), for instance, includes both a web interface and an SMS-based query centered around texting it your stop number.