It's a strategy to dismantle the Web, which had the "disadvantage" of being simultaneously free and a level playing field, and replacing it with a loose network of fiefdoms, each a walled garden (a term often used to describe Apple in its entirety).<p>Most of these apps are advertising delivery mechanisms masquerading as utilities. Another role they have is to prevent copying of content or links from one fiefdom to another. In doing that, they represent a retreat from the ideal of a public forum.<p>I think this idea works best with relatively young people who don't clearly understand what they're giving up when they download a proprietary app in order to read what should be a public document.<p>The old Web has many problems, but freedom of expression remains in the plus column.
I agree for the most part with this article. I think the major problem is that apps are being developed that offer absolutely no advantage over viewing the website in a browser - in fact many offer disadvantages. This is what happens when a market crowded with some shockingly bad app developers is combined with ignorant executive mandates that companies must have apps simply to be able to say that they have them.
Key insight: "do I buy a separate radio to listen to different stations?"<p>Actually, I <i>do</i> use two news apps on my iPhone (aside from Safari and an RSS reader). They're the BBC, and The Guardian. The BBC app is free, and ad-free, at least in the UK, because it's provided by a public service organization with a non-advertising-based revenue model. (You pay your TV license fee, you get your ad-free app.) The Guardian charges for their iPhone app -- a modest annual fee (or rather more every month if you want the full-fat newspaper on your iPad) but thereafter takes a light touch with the advertising on the iPhone app; it's a headline sampler, and in that respect it's arguably a marketing tool for the newspaper itself.<p>The common denominator of both these apps is that they don't do the advertising fandango. I think we can see where this is going, can't we? Yes, it's the separate-radio-per-channel model: it's not so much about providing a better service as it is about obtaining a monopoly lock-in on the user's eyeballs while you feed them ads.
I've built a few mobile "reader" applications for large media clients and the main reason they use native apps is for offline browsing when your connection goes bad, allowing a smooth reading experience. If the app doesn't do this at the very minimum then there's really no point to it.<p>Other things we do:
1. Add games and other content that doesn't work well across mobile browsers.
2. Allow in-app purchases of other content such as white papers or related books that fit into the devices "book shelf" application, whatever that may be.<p>Now for a tech perspective - If you've ever built an app on a mobile device that is based on HTML5 you'll know that the performance lags when compared to a native app. When you throw in content animations, such as in a children's interactive story book, the comparison is moot. I'll bet against anybody that thinks they can get similar performance from a web-based application on a mobile device. I've done it and I know for certain it's a terrible solution who's only benefit is to the development team and not the end user. My apps are almost 100% native now with HTML being used for content I don't want to touch, like terms and conditions and privacy statements that I pull from a website.<p>My point? Native apps benefit the end user if done properly. Just because some fools botched a workflow doesn't negate this.
I think this is mostly misguided trend-following on behalf of product marketing people. "Our competitors have an app, why don't we have an app? Let's make an app."<p>And then, to drive up the app's numbers, put a pop-up on the mobile version of the website with a link to download the app from the app store. Now the marketing genius who came up with this bright idea looks good and deserves a promotion.<p>With any luck the app fad will be over soon and we can get back to using a browser for all content instead of a different client for every type of content.<p>With the strides we've made in responsive layout design (WordPress and Twitter Boostrap sites look GREAT in mobile browsers!) there really is no excuse anymore.
And most apps require permissions that have very little to do with the purpose of the app. Here's what the BBC news reader for Android wants:<p>THIS APPLICATION HAS ACCESS TO THE FOLLOWING:<p>HARDWARE CONTROLS<p>CHANGE YOUR AUDIO SETTINGS<p>Allows the app to modify global audio settings such as volume and which speaker is used for output.<p>NETWORK COMMUNICATION<p>FULL NETWORK ACCESS<p>Allows the app to create network sockets and use custom network protocols. The browser and other applications provide means to send data to the internet, so this permission is not required to send data to the internet.<p>PHONE CALLS<p>READ PHONE STATUS AND IDENTITY<p>Allows the app to access the phone features of the device. This permission allows the app to determine the phone number and device IDs, whether a call is active, and the remote number connected by a call.<p>STORAGE<p>MODIFY OR DELETE THE CONTENTS OF YOUR USB STORAGE MODIFY OR DELETE THE CONTENTS OF YOUR SD CARD<p>Allows the app to write to the USB storage. Allows the app to write to the SD card.<p>SYSTEM TOOLS<p>PREVENT TABLET FROM SLEEPING PREVENT PHONE FROM SLEEPING<p>Allows the app to prevent the tablet from going to sleep. Allows the app to prevent the phone from going to sleep.
Funny how RSS feeds solved this problem years ago. You have a standard format for articles that can contain rich text and embedded images (and videos, if you must). Then you have a single reader app for all news sites that can offline cache content where needed. Hell, you can even synchronize what articles you've read between devices.<p>Of course in a world where everything must be plastered with flashing advertising banners and justified with pageviews, the wonderful RSS idea was quickly crippled through "teaser" articles that forced you to visit a website to read the whole thing and be subjected to the same mess of bad layouts, poorly chosen fonts and distracting advertising. The "download our rubbish app" overlays are merely another wart on top of this terrible state of things.
Mmm... I guess I'm a cynic, but people are, surprisingly, not as stupid as you think. If a company has a phone app, there's a reason.<p>It might be so they can harvest your contacts.<p>It might be so they can have a 'premium' version because they think it'll convert better than a web pay wall.<p>It might be so they have add invasive (read: profitable) ads directly to your device, which (arguably) convert better than web banners which people have 1) banner blindness to and 2) are more difficult to block.<p>It might be because they <i>are</i> stupid and they're playing "me too" because other people have apps, and hey, there must be a reason for that right?<p>...but I'm pretty sure the people in category (4) aren't the majority. Most of the people making these apps are doing it for their own nefarious reasons. It's sure as hell not because they're chasing a 'good user experience'.<p><i>Dont download and install this kind of app, ever</i><p>Even doing that once is probably a +ve data point in the 'lets keep making out ##$@ty native app' business case.
My local newspaper is currently going through their bullshit app phase:<p><a href="http://www.roanoke.com/digitalsubscription/#replica" rel="nofollow">http://www.roanoke.com/digitalsubscription/#replica</a><p>• If you're on a computer, you just head to their website, login, and read the newspaper.<p>• If you're on an Android device, you just head to their website, login, and read the newspaper.<p>• If you're on an Apple device, you're directed to download the bullshit iOS app.<p>The reason they give for requiring the bullshit iOS app is that the website requires Flash to do its thing. That makes me wonder if they bothered testing the website on an Android device released after August 2012, when Adobe dropped support for new installs of Flash Player on Android...<p>It also makes me wonder if they got the memo about the rest of the world moving away from Flash...
Apple could solve this problem on iOS by giving us a button that forces the browser to appear to be desktop Safari, but apparently this is all part of their overall apps strategy or something.<p>The best is when after you go through all the nonsense, you get "This article is not available on your device." It's like when you want to watch a video, and you have to watch a 30 second ad first, and after the ad you get an error saying the video no longer exists. But the ad played. Oh you can bet that ad is always going to exist.
Unfortunately for every clued in person that sees apps for what they are (a return to the past rather than a jump into the future) there are a hundred or more that have no idea about what is at stake here that will happily download your bullshit app.
> <i>Be told you aren’t allowed to read the website.</i><p>Is this true? I've never seen that. Many times the app is heavily suggested, but I've never been locked out of the regular website just because I'm on mobile.<p>I also believe Mobile Chrome lets you fake a desktop user agent so there's no way for a website to lock out a mobile user.<p>That said, I totally agree with the OP, these "content apps" are ridiculous and very annoying.
Personally I'm more of the opinion "I'm not going to read your bullshit news at all". In arguments like this I see many people debating the finer details of App design etc. when the real question is why do we even need this product (news) at all! Part of the answer is also the answer to this article.. because everyone else does it.<p>I think it's a shame more people don't see the mainstream news, in App form, print, TV or whatever, as the farcical waste of time that it is. I guess it makes some of us feel a bit more important to be 'in the loop'.<p>It's been debated many times before so I won't go into it again, just thought I'd inject a bit of big-picture perspective.
I am probably reading different websites, but that is not what happens to me.<p>It is either<p>- full websites opens, maybe forcing me to resize but that's usually ok<p>- mobile webstite opens, which looks good and I can read the stuff as I intended<p>- mobile website opens and it is unusable because of stupid things (see: techchrunch and pagination)<p>maybe sometimes I have to click on "no, I don't want your app" pop-up, but it is never "you can't read it without the app".
I think this is a valid position in the native/web app debate. Most apps are actually web sites, but they are mistakenly built as computer programs. This is not good engineering. In an ideal world %90 of the apps (anything but utilities, games and graphics applications) would remain as web sites, like they are on PCs. We never install a shopping application to our PCs. Web is the standardized and correct way of presenting interactive content.<p>Also note that Apple was against Flash mainly because it contradicts with this walled garden approach. Web+Flash (or HTML5 today) was the standard and free way of building almost all of the "apps" in the PC era. Native may have a performance gain in the short term (which becomes irrelevant in the long term as Moore's law dictates) but our loss of time and standardization in the development of an open and accessible (mobile) web lasts longer.
Not to appear a shill for Amazon, but this is one of the things I like about my Kindle. I subscribe to several newspapers via Amazon, and they're pushed out to my Kindle as e-books each morning.<p>This doesn't solve the problem of URIs or of different layout/content/etc. for web vs e-book, but it does solve the data-container-as-app problem.
Web applications aren't different either.<p>1. Go to website.
2. Be told you aren’t allowed to read the website.
3. Be redirected to /badbrowser or see nothing.
4. Enable JavaScript.
5. Wait while application is loading over your temperamental, expensive EDGE connection.
6. Try to read content through broken layout, blocks floating around, viewport half reduced, overly small or big fonts.
7. Get back home to write proxy converting apps to content.<p>It is content vs app war. Content could be red, shown, styled, stored, indexed, processed in all different ways. By contrast app limits our abilities to its implementation details.<p>Applications should respectfully augment content, not trying replace it.
The only such app I use is the WSJ on the iPad. It's handy for reading the entire paper contents on plane trips back when I used to fly once a week. The rest of the time, web apps seem adequate for the dozens of periodicals I read online.<p>But now it seems every Tom, Dick, and Harry needs to have a mobile app. "Welcome to the South Florida Sentinel -- press OK to download our app, or tap the tiny link 'No thanks, take me to the article'"<p>It seems to me Mr. Morris was a bit over the top in his expletive-laden diatribe. I mean, you don't HAVE to download any apps, right? Just go to the website, or else don't go there at all. No one has a monopoly on the news.
I'm pretty sure there was a similar blog post with the exact same point on HN a few weeks ago. Seems like a rant about mobile apps not being as good as regular websites is a good way to make it to the front page.
Whilst I agree with some of the sentiments the article conveys, I'm doubtful that many people who feel this strongly actually would bother to go through these steps. Of those news organisations whose sites you regularly read, which of them actually do this and of those which would you feel happy installing an app for? I read numerous news articles on the web, but I only have one news app installed (for The Guardian), and they don't even exhibit this behaviour.<p>It would seem to me the most practical thing to do is to just dismiss the alert, cluck my tongue at the site's hubris, then read the article within the mobile browser — which more often than not is an option. Where it is not, to actually go down the route of installing the app of an organisation that manifestly has contempt for the end user, then upon discovering it offers up a terrible experience conclude this is fait accompli in the debate of web vs native apps seems like wilful prejudice.<p>The concluding remarks offer up straw man arguments for why native applications are a bad thing, in spite of the anecdote really just being about companies (which coincidentally makes money from somebody other than the end user) who treat the end user like nothing other the commodity they truly see them as.
I posted about that a while back, although not in such a colorful language, and didn't get that much traction, maybe that's why. ;)<p>But I do agree that it's annoying when you go to a site and it's not just a reminder but a full screen ad for their app. I also hate sites that feel the need to load the page, detect you're on an iPad, clear the screen, then load another version that is slower to load and works worse, but has nifty side scrolling.
I think the goal of an app is prominence on your device. The creator imagines you have an address book app, a camera app, a browser app, and Our Content App on your home page. You might have 100 bookmarks in the browser, but you'll see Our Content App differently, because it's got its own icon.<p>In practice, I think people either 1) have dozens of apps, so that the "priority" effect is less important, or 2) have few apps and generally refuse to install an app to do what a web page should do.<p>Either way, I think that in a few years, we'll look back on this trend and laugh. (Personally, I've been laughing about it for a while.)
I find the default iOS popup advertising an app the worst part, by large the app offers extra functionality over the web. the popup disrupts the experience and I also have the same feelings of rage on random site for some random stupid bullshit app.<p>The compass in the iPhone for example, does device allow a web server query the phones heading through browser?
Offline modes and caching are features not really possible with the browser.<p>As for the giving something up, open public web access to proprietary apps, this is very true. I don't see big content moving away from the web though, the app ecosystem seems to compliment it.
I absolutely agree with this, I recently removed a bunch of news apps from my phone because I found myself using the browser to read news websites even when I had their app already installed.<p>One of the few advantages of a news app is the occasional notification and even then most the time they are implemented in an annoying fashion. It'd be nice if there was a standard that allowed users to subscribe to push notifications directly from websites without having to install an app. In general it'd be nice to see phone OS's opening up their api's to websites and not only apps.
Apps are basically fancy bookmarks with native code abilities and local state (including dreaded settings), as well as notifications.<p>I try to have as few apps as possible on my device. I use the website version of many things, even if that provides a slightly inferior experience, just because it outweighs the disadvantage of having to dl a app for every little thing.<p>A future I hope to see one day is an open OS with downloadable 3rd party "functionality" that expands the abilities of the OS, and apps (basically functionality + crafted experience forced into one) fade to background.
I do really despise how LinkedIn asks me to install the app every single time. It would be easy for them to store a preference that I don't want the app advertisement every time I go to their site.
Speaking with Matt Lauer from the TODAY Show, Zuckerberg said that more smartphone users are actually accessing Facebook through their mobile browser than through apps specifically built for iOS or Android. “There are more people doing that than the iPhone and all of Android phones combined, right? So it’s actually a pretty diverse ecosystem,” said Zuckerberg.<p>---<p>That has surprised me - but given Facebook's large sample size I think that goes to show you that the mobile web is stronger than maybe thought on first glance.
Is this as big of an issue as the article makes it out to be? I just went to about 30 news sites on my iPhone and none of them prompted me to download an app, the more common approach now seems to be a small popup that says "click here to add this homepage to your home screen". The only one that really restricted me was Quora (which isn't news but I saw it mentioned in the comments so I gave it a try).
What this article ignores is that the computer is always a multi-purpose-multi-tasking tool, while phones for the most part and by most people are used for one thing at a time.
There are notifications, but otherwise as long as you're happy doing what you're in an app you'll stay there. That's a big advantage for an organization like a newspaper, and an obvious reason to go for an app.
The iOS version of Safari has the "reading list" feature which downloads an article for offline reading (Instapaper is better IMO, but the functionality is largely the same that if you didn't want to buy another app it's built into your iOS device for free). The browser is well equipped to deal with textual information. I too fail to see the point of "bullshit" apps.
Tom Morris thank you for writing this. It so well echoes my sentiments. For all news site app developers out there, apps are only useful if it provides all the flexibility of reading news in the browser and more, don't let the readers curse you for making them download a pointless app. And yes, there are news apps out there that does things right, but very few.
Just as bad are websites that go over-the-top in changing functionality and layout to seemingly cater to tablets and mobile devices. Vertically scrolling an article on an iPad is a pretty good experience and has the benefit of keeping your site consistent with your web version, does it <i>really</i> need to horizontal paged scrolling?
> Apps ought to provide some actual functionality, not just blobs of content wrapped up in binary files.<p>I completely agree with this. I've downloaded some apps for blogs on my phone, but I realized that they just sit there in a folder, on a home page a rarely visit, while my RSS app is front and center in my dock.
> If you are on Android, be sure to install some anti-adware software in case the app comes with some delightful bit of creepy privacy-intruding out-of-app advertising.<p>Can we please stop perpetuating this myth? Adware is not a problem on Android unless you are downloading fake versions of apps or cracked apps.
<i>No, I'm not going to download your bullshit app</i><p>Ok, so don't! Just because you have no use for an app doesn't mean it's useless to others, or "bullshit" as you so eloquently put it.<p>I have the NPR app on my iPhone and iPad. Wake up in the morning, feel like listening to the radio and don't want to start the day browsing the web? Turn on Morning Edition on the iPad. Listening to a really interesting Fresh Air interview on the car radio but now have to get out of the car and go grocery shopping? Switch to the live broadcast on the iPhone, pop in my earphones, get out, keep listening.<p>The BBC and NYTimes apps are less useful <i>to me</i> but I get news alerts on my mobile from the NYTimes and the AP. And I can quickly check world news headlines or start a BBC live radio stream on my iPhone in a matter of seconds.<p>NPR and the BBC are both free of ads and, in my opinion, are just trying to serve their listeners and readers as best as they can. If you think smart phones and tablets are just smaller versions of your laptop or desktop computer, fine, continue consuming your media just as you did in the 90s, you're not the target audience any way.
Also happens on facebook when you want to read an article/watch a video someone posted. You click just to be redirect to a facebook App that allows you to read the article. It's only after a few posts that I got upset and found out that clicking CANCEL redirects you to the real website page.
The biggest point he doesn't handle is speed: Viewing a news article in a fast newsreader app is much faster than downloading the whole website.<p>I wrote an app which uses rss feeds and smart preloading of data when it is not yet visible. Making it blazingly fast. I don't want to wait for we website to load.
One of my favorite bars in the city -- a homesy British-style pub out near Laurel Heights -- has fliers asking people to 'check out [their] app' replete with an accompanying QR code.<p>There is literally zero reason to use it, and I sincerely hope they didn't spend money on it.<p>It's a great bar, though. Pig and Whistle.
Apple needs to put a feature into Safari that allows you to bypass a stupid "mobile site," if you want, automatically for particular domains. If the likes of Extremetech care nothing for our experience as tablet users, why should we give a damn about their value to their sponsors?
I use a browser that does what I want -- and not what I don't. That includes "lying" to crap Web/Internet properties, as needed.<p>Or, as I often think of it, withholding information that can or will be used against me.<p>I prefer to use (and insist upon using) a general purpose computing device, not an "appliance".
I feel the same as this guy. I despise being forced to download an app when I already have Chrome installed and know that the website contains all the content I went and in a familiar layout.<p>I'm also getting fed up of being asked if I want to install Tapatalk every time I visit a popular forum.
I agree 100%. But I would rephrase it slightly:<p>- Failing to deliver news to your website (for whatever reason): Just a failure, as in, you failed, period.<p>- News App: not a substitute for doing your job (delivering news to your website), nice for people who want it, don't force it on anybody else.
While I completely agree with the OP, I must say that if this happens it's because we users allow it.<p>Let's just stop downloading these apps. Maybe then, the app will be an extra and not a requirement to access web content.
Agree with the OP. I think someone like Flipboard is an example of doing it right. It is focused entirely on the content and the best way to present it to you for ease of consumption.
Or he could hit cancel and let the browser take him to the site. 1 step. No need for the pissy rant. Note that many people like the app model and that's why people are offering them.
You nailed it! May I add:
15. Update the freakin' app every other week.
16. This goes on, until you get the message that the new version of the app is not compatible with your OS.
Discovery is a huge problem for native apps. We're finally come to not an "either or" but a "which one". When building something, don't think I need a drill, think I need a hole.
Are there some websites which don't work well after selecting "request desktop sure"? So far it's been my default reaction when "forced" to install an app.
He missed step 1: try to click on the fiddly, tiny hyperlinks to dismiss the gigantic "How cookies work" statement, every bloody time you visit the site.
Without the exploration of seemingly ridiculous ideas there is no progress. What does not work ultimately evaporates into history. The truly useful remains. And during the transition some ignore it while others adopt, experiment, learn and contribute.<p>And, of course, there's yet another group that can do nothing but whine.<p>That's not to say that this might not have some value. However, for some reason, if I was the first guy trying to rub two sticks of wood together to make fire I think the whino's would be kind of annoying.
I'm just bringing up three points in relation to this article I'm popping out in my lunch break, I know they are rantish - but they are on my mind a lot...<p>a) Maybe I am missing something, but where is the mobile web app 'store' as a good middle ground for people trying to find mobile versions of sites? So many people have been conditioned out there to think mobile = 'apps' - perhaps a push in this direction would be an idea?<p>What I seriously dislike about Google search on my phone is it gives me a mish-mash of Web and Mobile results that give a totally inconsistent user experience. For some sites I can get away with using a standard 'big' web view - but for anything generally requiring input, forms, etc - 'conventional' web pages are a serious pain. Try booking a hotel room with one of them.<p>b) One thing to keep in mind as we get more and more devices (and thats what the hardware manufacturers want us to do right?) I notice the download an app model as not 'scalable' in this way. I can see a future where I have a desktop at my office, a tablet sitting at my office, a phone always in my pocket, a tablet sitting in my bedroom, a laptop at home, a tablet sitting in my kitchen, a tablet sitting in my lounge room, a tv connected to the internet, a tablet that I take out with me when I'm on the road, a tablet kind of device in my car. Do I really want to be downloading, installing and <i>updating</i> apps on every single device? This might sound far fetched today - but I still have computer magazines from about 1990 when 16MB of RAM was US$4000. And I can still remember seeing my first plasma TV for sale for about US$20000 in the late 90's. Prices will continue to drop on these things and people will get more of them - I'm sure of that. But it's already annoying enough to have to sync, install, update apps across two devices right now.<p>c) I keep hearing that people are calling for native apps in mobile devices for reasons such as they offer a faster user experience, offer more native controls, etc. But I could make the argument that building a desktop version of say, Facebook would offer something faster and look more 'native' than what I currently see in the web. But where is the demand for this? People you are missing out on a beautiful 'glides like butter' Facebook shiny, polished look and feel experience on iOS! Where is there an outcry? I think the only reason HTML5 sucks in most use cases for mobile web is it's just still too slow - but each keynote for a new iPhone I hear about delivers speeds usually 2x of the previous version. Therefore I sometimes think this is a short term problem. I think the web in any form it takes will always take a while to 'be ready - how long did it take Wikipedia to push off the CD-ROM behemoth Encarta?
It's not an entirely false rant but how can you take an author who writes this seriously:<p><i>"Dear Lisp programmers: Microsoft have implemented the mixing of code and data, like you asked for. Only, they’ve called it ‘Word Macros’. Enjoy."</i><p>?
Amusing that a rant like this reached #1 spot. Take worst case scenario, darken colors a bit more and then make a generalized conclusion on "web vs. apps".
Why do you even look at it as web vs. apps? Are we still fighting radio vs. tv vs. movies vs. theater?<p>If your app is nothing more than webview loading the same content, it is stupid.
To see each app as a threat to "open web" even more stupid. To pretend that web tech is always superior… well, that just shows you don't know much about either web tech and native frameworks.<p>And you know what? It is not that app developers want to kill web, it's the opposite—some web devs want to kill apps "before it is too late". I have no idea, why.
This is sad, really, and even more sad when prominent figures in web world start spreading FUD, sometimes even presenting it as "disspeling myths".
How about putting your insecurities aside, take a deep breath, spend some time thinking what the web is and what it is good for, what an app is and what it is good for and act accordingly?