No, I'm not going to download your bullshit app

by k33l0r • 13 years ago

799 218 13 years ago

lutusp14• 13 years ago

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).

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.

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.

The old Web has many problems, but freedom of expression remains in the plus column.

stcredzero4• 13 years ago

A lot of those tablet apps suck, because the priorities driving them aren't the readers. This means that they'll either lose in the long run, or adapt to serve reader's needs.

lutusp14• 13 years ago

I see your point, but if this were true, then cell phone service (another walled garden of separate fiefdoms) would gradually get better instead of worse. But it's getting worse.

coffeemug• 13 years ago

> It's a strategy to dismantle the Web

Dismantling the Web isn't anybody's strategy (making money is), but in any case, it's a poor strategy nonetheless. One of the most important things I've learned is that all other things being equal, convenience always wins. A strategy that makes things less convenient for consumers is a losing strategy.

lutusp14• 13 years ago

>> It's a strategy to dismantle the Web

> Dismantling the Web isn't anybody's strategy ...

By "web" I mean the public forum that anyone can access with a standards-compliant browser. And yes, there is such a strategy, and making money is the underlying motive.

> A strategy that makes things less convenient for consumers is a losing strategy.

Yes, unless consumers have no choice. Consider the present cell phone system -- it's perfectly terrible, and consumers can't do anything about it. The reason? Each cell phone company sells you a different interface device and tells you what you can and cannot do with it, to the degree that they now can charge you with a felony if you jailbreak their phone:

http://internetlawforbusinesses.com/2013/01/31/how-your-cell...

My point is that a free, public forum has every advantage (as you say) but if a company can prevent such a free forum in the name of making money, they will.

retrogradeorbit2• 13 years ago

"Dismantling the Web isn't anybody's strategy". How do you know? Have you read the mind of every human alive?

igravious• 13 years ago

So this is just splitting hairs between proximate and ultimate causes. We could say the the prime motivation is profit - a specialized case of making money. In order to turn a profit one must make more money than one spends. It is thought that by monetizing the content and sealing it off one can maximize one's revenue stream. The end result is dismantling the web.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximate_and_ultimate_causatio...

Convenience does always seem to win. I suppose because people are lazy. Or short-sighted. It's hard to put in extra effort now for some saving down the road.

rimantas5• 13 years ago

Sorry, but I see way way way less ads in apps than on the web. I'd say the web is stuck with the mindset that the only way to make money is by heavy advertising or selling you to the ads companies.

lutusp14• 13 years ago

> Sorry, but I see way way way less ads in apps than on the web.

Yes, because these "walled-garden" apps are just being introduced, and they want to be on their best behavior for the moment. Sort of like a drug dealer, who gives the addict his first hit free.

Also, I think you meant to say "fewer ads", not "less ads":

http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/less-or-fewer

rtpg3• 13 years ago

> Another role they have is to prevent copying of content or links from one fiefdom to another.

I have a hard time believing that considering the prevalence of the "share" button in apps.

There is certainly a "walled garden" problem on iOS, with all the jailbroken nonsense linked to it, but on Android (don't know about MS phones) I can run whatever I want. The app store is just curation, not limitating. Granted there are still some problems with rooting, but they seem to be disappearing from my view. Freedom of expression is still there.

>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.

Could you cite an example where this is really true? I'm not trying to be facetious here, I'm just wondering what app locks out what would in another world be completely open info. The only thing I can think of is messangers, but that's more a practical thing than anything (again... access to phone APIs trump idealism).

cjh_• 13 years ago

>I have a hard time believing that considering the prevalence of the "share" button in apps.

In the OP's example this share button would just lead to a message of 'you need to download our app to view this material'

>There is certainly a "walled garden" problem on iOS, with all the jailbroken nonsense linked to it, but on Android (don't know about MS phones) I can run whatever I want. The app store is just curation, not limitating. Granted there are still some problems with rooting, but they seem to be disappearing from my view. Freedom of expression is still there.

AFAIK he wasn't talking about the OS being a walled garden, more that each app was. Not being able to share content between apps, combine the functionality of them, etc.

Being able to run whatever you want doesn't help if the content owners have locked it down to being only viewable in their app.

lutusp14• 13 years ago

>> Another role they have is to prevent copying of content or links from one fiefdom to another.

> I have a hard time believing that considering the prevalence of the "share" button in apps.

But a "share" button in a dedicated app isn't remotely a hyperlink. A hyperlink only tells the reader about the destination, but a "share" button also tells the recipient about the source.

>> 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.

> Could you cite an example where this is really true?

Sure -- paywalls are a classic example. As soon as we accept paywalls and read articles behind paywalls, we can't share content any more. These dedicated apps are like paywalls taken to the next level.

But young, inexperienced people often don't see the problem with paywalls when compared to a public forum. The same logic applies to these dedicated apps -- they make it harder to share information. Their existence only serves the interests of the companies that create them.

> I'm just wondering what app locks out what would in another world be completely open info.

A browser gives you access to all content. A dedicated app only gives you access to that fiefdom's content. So such an app is not open in the way that a browser is, and you're limited to that app's purview.

Consider a cell phone as an more extreme example. It's a way to take conversation and make it into a product. A cell phone is sort of like one of these dedicated apps, in the sense that you can't freely move between fiefdoms -- and if you try, you have to pay "roaming charges".

The global issue is the commoditization of information -- turning information into property, into a commodity. The idea is to take a public forum like the Web, privatize it, and sell it back to what are now captive information consumers.

bradleyjg• 13 years ago

I don't know if its intentional or not, but I've run into several apps where highlight and copy isn't implemented / enabled. That's pretty very frustrating. Sometimes I just want to take notes, or google something, not share whatever it is on facebook / twitter / snapchat.

ttflee• 13 years ago

> but on Android (don't know about MS phones) I can run whatever I want.

Yeah, you need to install some other 'security app' that is essentially another rogue/thief to defend against any other burglar.

This has happened and is still happening in China where the Google Play is blocked and a number of 3rd party markets exist and thrive. Even a social network app would bother to remind you upgrading some other apps you have installed. Who knows who is stealing what?

downandout• 13 years ago

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.

koralatov2• 13 years ago

In most cases, I find the apps are actually worse than using the browser. A lot of them are little more than branded Webkit wrappers, with $SITENAME in a coloured bar across the top. If you're going to force me to use an app, it needs to offer some really concrete advantages over the site, and should actually act like an app. One simple win would be a global text resize setting -- give me the option to increase, or decrease, text size throughout your app and then remember it.

One mobile app that I do think `does it right' is eBay's. It's not spectacular, but it's much better than their mobile site and feels like I'm using a real app. It really needs to improve upon its caching behaviour, though.

BenSS• 13 years ago

There's actually a submission rule for iOS that says an app shouldn't be just a web view for one site and no extra features. It's frustrating that the AppStore rules are often not enforced consistently.

wmil• 13 years ago

They're popular with people who take the subway. Think about it, you're sitting there for half an hour with no service. An app that pre-downloads all of a newspaper's stories is handy and easy to use.

ersii• 13 years ago

As long as it isn't a single application for each and every source you'd read things from.

hilko3• 13 years ago

Yes, but that market is covered by Instapaper and Pocket, among others.

nodata• 13 years ago

Most of the time the app does not predownload all of the content in advance though.

Sami_Lehtinen2• 13 years ago

What? No coverage in subway? You must live in Sahara.

paigalhaes• 13 years ago

well, at least in Lisbon (Portugal) we have GMS/UMTS coverage inside the subway (Metro) since 2006 :)

antninja• 13 years ago

I think the main problem is that companies have their website designed for large screens only. Since it sucks on mobile screens, they then build an app instead of redesigning their website so that it works on little screens. The most famous example for that is Twitter.

mgkimsal• 13 years ago

We've been conditioned to want apps. Or... many people have. iPhone is synonymous with 'apps'. My grandmother understands 'apps' (well, mostly!)

I was on a project last year, and we built a mobile website (could work in iPhone/Android and probably winphone, but we didn't test). Got a lot of immediate "yeah that's great" from some people. Partners reached out for potential customers/sales - every single one returned with "where do I get the app".

Us: "http://foobarsite.com.

Them: "Cool, but I can't see where to download the app!"

Us: "You don't - you just go to the website"

Them: "But I need an app!"

slurgfest• 13 years ago

They don't necessarily know what they need. Perhaps all they need is a bookmark for your site, exposed as a big button choice. You'd have to follow up with some testing to find out what this really meant.

papsosouid• 13 years ago

Those people don't know what an app is. The people going "where's the app" will also look at your site on your phone and think it is an app. They just need a way to bookmark your site and see a little icon for it with their apps.

untog• 13 years ago

I'm continually disappointed by the non-proliferation of webapps. The iPhone has hooks enabling you to make it fullscreen, have an app icon, work offline, even control the colour of the status bar... but no-one knows how to use them. And Android doesn't even support them- I thought Google was supposed to be a friend of the web?!

erichocean2• 13 years ago

We're solving that by actually having an app "installer" on the web page. It looks and feels like the App Store, and you "tap to install" just like you would a normal app.

We do actually download and stash most web resources, to speed up load times, so it's not completely window dressing. Our app is designed to be added to the Home Screen, but it also runs inside Safari or Chrome just fine.

danielweber• 13 years ago

What I really really don't like about the Android app model is that an app will come along and demand over a dozen permissions. And I either accept them all or don't download the app.

jzelinskie• 13 years ago

I have seen an app (probably root-only) that can restrict specific permissions on applications. There are no promises if it will break the app or not, though.

nivla• 13 years ago

I really hate it when some apps require unnecessary permissions. Why would a game require access to my contacts or my personal photos and videos? Flicks me into the paranoid mode, especially since the news about Facebook and other major companies exporting your contact list and personal information to their servers.

jonnathanson• 13 years ago

"ignorant executive mandates that companies must have apps simply to be able to say that they have them"

This seems to be the case more often than not. Company executives feel pressured to release an app, any app, because "that's the future" according to whatever self-styled expert they listened to at XYZ Conference. So they crank out a useless app or two, and they get to tell their colleagues, peers, ad agencies, and Wall Street that they are forward thinking.

Such a strategy completely ignores the customer and his/her needs, of course. Publishing an app just to publish an app is pointless at best, and damaging to one's brand at worst. A company without a solid app strategy would be far better served just not releasing one at all. There is a negative ROI associated with a bad app, and not just in terms of the development and marketing dollars burned.

stcredzero4• 13 years ago

> This is what happens when a market crowded with some shockingly bad app developers is combined with ignorant executive mandates

You may be a clueless pointy-haired boss if...

corresation• 13 years ago

I continue to believe that most of these completely unnecessary apps are by internal devs who want to hone their skills in what they see is the great new lottery ticket, so they convince their hapless managers that they have to get on the app train. I've dealt with this enough.

laurent123456• 13 years ago

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.

kyllo2• 13 years ago

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."

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.

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.

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.

hilko3• 13 years ago

I agree. I think it's more 'stupidity' than evil intent in this case.

jacquesm• 13 years ago

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.

rtpg3• 13 years ago

If you don't mind me asking, what exactly is at stake? It's not exactly a step into the future but it's not really a step back either, when you consider apps that access phone capabilities (notifications, for example). For me there's also this notion of apps being registered on my phone for specific actions (want to share a photo? Use the facebook app). There are also places where I don't have net access, so having offline apps can be useful.

In an ideal world almost all of this can be transformed into what I imagine FF OS is trying to accomplish... but until then I am not exactly thrilled about it, but apps are not the devil incarnate either. They're pretty much the status quo.

kyllo2• 13 years ago

I dont think the point is that apps are evil; the point is that they are inconvenient and unnecessary way to deliver text and images, if that's all they're designed to do. Interacting with the phone and notification capabilities of the OS is a solid use case for a client app; reading news articles is just not.

lutusp14• 13 years ago

> If you don't mind me asking, what exactly is at stake?

Only the old-style Web, by design a public forum, accessible by everyone in the same way using standards-compliant browsers.

What we're seeing is a plan to convert a very efficient way to share information, but not an efficient way to make money, into something that favors the latter goal over the former.

> They're pretty much the status quo.

That may be, but not so long ago the Web was the status quo -- the free, public forum.

Remember when Tim Berners-Lee complained about the deleterious effect of nonstandard browser extensions? This trend is the ultimate nonstandard browser extension -- it eliminates the browser entirely.

krichman5• 13 years ago

There's nothing preventing the implementation of sharing via a website (or posting to a URL) instead of an app. There's nothing preventing standard interactions with your phone to be delivered by checking an API instead of requiring an app. You can still use many websites in offline mode.

They are right, pushing for apps can a way to silo data and prevent you from using your phone as a general purpose device. How can you share from the app if they don't bring up the list of intents for you? Can you select which push notifications to receive for a given app or do you get all of them? Etc.

hv23• 13 years ago

Most recent offender: Quora.

krichman5• 13 years ago

Quora has refused to allow casual viewers for some time now. I've removed them from my search results and my online experience is better for it.

NZ_Matt• 13 years ago

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.

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.

dan1234• 13 years ago

> In general it'd be nice to see phone OS's opening up their api's to websites and not only apps.

It's hard to see that happening while the OS makers are involved in a "my App Store is bigger than your App Store" war, and they'd risk losing out on that 30% cut of paid apps.

Gormo4• 13 years ago

> 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.

Is using a single RSS app for all content feeds not sufficient?

lutusp14• 13 years ago

> Is using a single RSS app for all content feeds not sufficient?

Yes, true, but companies can't sell you RSS, it's free in the same way that a browser is free, so that's right out.

The basic idea is to take what already exists and is free, and think of a way to capture it and sell it back to people.

drivebyacct2• 13 years ago

Server Sent Events are possibly what you're looking for. There are extensions for interfacing with low power mobile device wakeup and notification protocols as well, IIRC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server-sent_events

LAMike• 13 years ago

Turning "blobs of content" into apps is going to make a lot of money when the Apple TV comes out

MrMan• 13 years ago

Roku already exists.

zenocon• 13 years ago

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.

bambax2• 13 years ago

> Be told you aren’t allowed to read the website.

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.

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.

That said, I totally agree with the OP, these "content apps" are ridiculous and very annoying.

Sami_Lehtinen2• 13 years ago

Quora does exactly that, or at least it did on 14.1.2013 (dd-mm-yyyy)

https://plus.google.com/106938703242944328523/posts/4CopSTtW...

bambax2• 13 years ago

I just tested this in Chrome on Android and it's not true; I'm able to browse Quora all I want without downloading any app (although there is a prominent button that says "View in Quora App").

To be really sure I also tested it in Safari on iOS and the experience is the same.

I can post pictures if you don't believe me! ;-)

loopdoend• 13 years ago

Download Atomic Web Browser for iOS. In the settings, select Identify browser as... choose Firefox. Changes your User-Agent. Problems solved.

lukifer• 13 years ago

Atomic is the cat's pajamas. Love the absurd level of gesture configurability. If it had Nitro, I'd probably use it over Safari full-time.

hn-miw-i• 13 years ago

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.

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.

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.

fpgeek• 13 years ago

Yes, compass heading can be queried through the browser: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/device/orientation/

As of April 2011, the article claims various degrees of support from mobile Chrome, Safari, Opera and Firefox.

There's also plenty of work on application caching and offline support (though, to be fair, that's a very hard problem): http://www.html5rocks.com/en/features/offline

fauigerzigerk4• 13 years ago

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:

THIS APPLICATION HAS ACCESS TO THE FOLLOWING:

HARDWARE CONTROLS

CHANGE YOUR AUDIO SETTINGS

Allows the app to modify global audio settings such as volume and which speaker is used for output.

NETWORK COMMUNICATION

FULL NETWORK ACCESS

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.

PHONE CALLS

READ PHONE STATUS AND IDENTITY

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.

STORAGE

MODIFY OR DELETE THE CONTENTS OF YOUR USB STORAGE MODIFY OR DELETE THE CONTENTS OF YOUR SD CARD

Allows the app to write to the USB storage. Allows the app to write to the SD card.

SYSTEM TOOLS

PREVENT TABLET FROM SLEEPING PREVENT PHONE FROM SLEEPING

Allows the app to prevent the tablet from going to sleep. Allows the app to prevent the phone from going to sleep.

angryasian3• 13 years ago

All these are sort of explainable, Hardware and Audio is to allow the user to control volume or widgets for feeds and multimedia.

Network access is usually reserved for multimedia

Phone Calls - status - is usually because if you receive a phone call any multimedia knows when to stop

storage - to store things to your sd card or move the app to your sd card

prevent from sleeping - if you're watching a video you don't want the screen to sleep.

fauigerzigerk4• 13 years ago

Right, so in order to duplicate everything the browser already does, they "need" these overly broad permissions. That's exactly the point the OP was making.

I think the real problem is that permissions are either too broad for the purpose of displaying some content, or they are too many for anyone to understand. My conclusion is that such apps simply make no sense.

scanr• 13 years ago

They may be explainable but do you really want to install an app that _could_ keep track of the numbers you call and then send them back to a central server?

In this case it is the BBC, so its probably only likely that the british government, the metropolitan police or mi 5/6 would be able to convince them to do it but a whole lot of less scrupulous organisations ask for that permission.

kamkazemoose• 13 years ago

I'm not an expert on Android permissions, but those seem reasonable to me. What permissions do you have a problem with, and what should they replace it with, or do you think is totally unnecessary?

tommorris9• 13 years ago

It would be interesting to know why a news reading application needs full access to my file system.

joseflavio• 13 years ago

That's why you are better off with Android + Opera and change your user agent for Desktop. It is a not perfect solution but works.

StavrosK2• 13 years ago

Plus, Opera mobile is, by far, the snappiest Android browser I've used.

shurcooL3• 13 years ago

I use Chrome for iOS's "Request Desktop Site" feature so much. Very useful on my iPad mini (my only mobile device).

Devilboy• 13 years ago

http://www.theonion.com/articles/internet-users-demand-less-...

marban• 13 years ago

The Magazine anyone?

rimantas5• 13 years ago

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?

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.

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?

lutusp14• 13 years ago

> Why do you even look at it as web vs. apps?

Because the issue under discussion is proprietary applications with sequestered content, versus standards-compliant browsers accessing a public Web.

> To see each app as a threat to "open web" even more stupid.

Try to fill out your argument. Calling it "stupid" isn't an argument.

If an app sequesters content, and if that content would otherwise be publicly available, then the app has nothing but disadvantages compared to a browser -- for the user, not the company that designed the app.

> To pretend that web tech is always superior ...

Straw Man. Only you have made this argument.

tommorris9• 13 years ago

"To pretend that web tech is always superior"

I didn't. I said that the overhead of installing an app is unnecessary for the use case of reading the news. I wouldn't install a custom binary on my laptop to read a news website, why should I do so on my phone?

angryasian3• 13 years ago

All android browsers (not sure of ios) have view in desktop mode.

georgeg• 13 years ago

Well said.

dendory• 13 years ago

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. ;)

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.

halviti• 13 years ago

Or worse, a full screen ad, and then redirecting you to their main page, instead of showing you the article you wanted to see.

davedx• 13 years ago

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.

tommorris9• 13 years ago

The UK Information Commissioners Office have now changed their policy on that...

viraptor• 13 years ago

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.

rwg• 13 years ago

My local newspaper is currently going through their bullshit app phase:

http://www.roanoke.com/digitalsubscription/#replica

• If you're on a computer, you just head to their website, login, and read the newspaper.

• If you're on an Android device, you just head to their website, login, and read the newspaper.

• If you're on an Apple device, you're directed to download the bullshit iOS app.

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...

It also makes me wonder if they got the memo about the rest of the world moving away from Flash...

kapowaz• 13 years ago

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.

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.

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.

tblancpain3• 13 years ago

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.

tommorris9• 13 years ago

I don't see why that makes the case for native apps more compelling.

tblancpain3• 13 years ago

It helps the consumer because if it's a good app, it allows you to better focus on that one task you're after. Reading the news, for example. I haven't had any of the problems he discusses with the NYTimes app, for example.

For the organization, the benefits of longer engagement are pretty obvious as well.

He's right about a lot of bad developers (and clueless execs) producing really crappy apps. He's wrong if he thinks that a lot of the bigger brands are still at that stage.

phatbyte• 13 years ago

While I completely agree with the OP, I must say that if this happens it's because we users allow it.

Let's just stop downloading these apps. Maybe then, the app will be an extra and not a requirement to access web content.

koralatov2• 13 years ago

I'm very much in the `take a stand' crowd, but the problem with using that approach is that most people just want to RTFA, so a lot of them will grudgingly download the app in question to do so. And once it's on there, there's no frustrating first step, so they continue to use it. It builds, slowly but surely, a user-base for the app, which means that those refusing to use it become easier to ignore.

c2prods• 13 years ago

I couldn't agree more. At least, they should give us choice between the regular website (or even better a mobile-friendly one) and the app.

lnanek22• 13 years ago

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.

shadowmint• 13 years ago

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.

It might be so they can harvest your contacts.

It might be so they can have a 'premium' version because they think it'll convert better than a web pay wall.

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.

It might be because they are stupid and they're playing "me too" because other people have apps, and hey, there must be a reason for that right?

...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'.

Dont download and install this kind of app, ever

Even doing that once is probably a +ve data point in the 'lets keep making out ##$@ty native app' business case.

Lagged2Death• 13 years ago

I think a lot of the development of apps (and before that the web itself) was "me-tooism," but that doesn't necessarily make it stupid.

It's more a matter of getting on the bandwagon while things are still heating up, and figuring out how to make it work for you as you go.

"The web is going mobile; we need to be on mobile; the mobile world is a world of apps; therefore we need an app to stake out a presence in that space."

No part of the chain of reasoning is wrong or stupid in and of itself, but the product of thousands of actors following the same logic is chaos and waste. You could see it as a variation on the tragedy of the commons.

ozgung• 13 years ago

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.

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.

youngerdryas2• 13 years ago

Flash performance is shit on a mobile which is why Android dropped it as well.

TeeWEE• 13 years ago

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.

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.

charonn0• 13 years ago

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.

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.

morhus• 13 years ago

you have to download commentapp2013 to read this comment sorry

choochoo• 13 years ago

Buy a Surface if you want the same fucking apps everywhere.

tommorris9• 13 years ago

What if you don't want "apps" unless there is some actual functionality? The Web is just fine without being appized.

runn1ng• 13 years ago

I am probably reading different websites, but that is not what happens to me.

It is either

- full websites opens, maybe forcing me to resize but that's usually ok

- mobile webstite opens, which looks good and I can read the stuff as I intended

- mobile website opens and it is unusable because of stupid things (see: techchrunch and pagination)

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".

baby• 13 years ago

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.

sdfjkl• 13 years ago

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.

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.

sergeykish• 13 years ago

Web applications aren't different either.

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.

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.

Applications should respectfully augment content, not trying replace it.

chris_wot• 13 years ago

The SMH website is 100% inferior to the iPad app.

cstross2• 13 years ago

Key insight: "do I buy a separate radio to listen to different stations?"

Actually, I do 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.

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.

muyuu• 13 years ago

That's your choice.

You should also be allowed not to put up with their apps. I simply opted for not reading the news on my phone as it's painfully inconvenient to me. My 512MB phone struggles with 5 odd apps in the background and I'm not going to install yet another app taking over my phone as it didn't run anything else. Yes I do kill processes etc but this kind of shite should not be the standard.

cstross2• 13 years ago

Been there, done that (I leapfrog iPhone generations, so for some months before each upgrade things are running painfully slowly). I will note that disabling Javascript on most news sites seems to disable the "why don't you download our app?" nonsense and a lot of the irritating fripperies that slow down the basic news experience.

My main issue is that this exposes some of the drawbacks of a business model that relies on advertising: it delivers false incentives that cause the business to pursue ad clicks rather than customer satisfaction (i.e. short term profit over long-term customer base).

stcredzero4• 13 years ago

> Actually, I do use two news apps on my iPhone (aside from Safari and an RSS reader). They're the BBC, and The Guardian.

I'll also use the NPR app from time to time. Its design isn't bad, and I like being able to switch from print to streamed audio sometimes.

> 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.

Apps and mobile sites that make you wait five freaking seconds so they can load ads and all of the metrics for their sponsors -- who are they fooling? Have they even tried to use their own app?

jamesjguthrie• 13 years ago

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.

I'm also getting fed up of being asked if I want to install Tapatalk every time I visit a popular forum.

pyalot2• 13 years ago

I agree 100%. But I would rephrase it slightly:

- Failing to deliver news to your website (for whatever reason): Just a failure, as in, you failed, period.

- 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.

eaurouge• 13 years ago

No, I'm not going to download your bullshit app

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.

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.

The BBC and NYTimes apps are less useful to me 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.

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.

brendyn• 13 years ago

It was/is a similar story with dictionary apps until free software clients came along and "Hey arseholes just sell us dictionary files, mmkay?"

martinced• 13 years ago

It's not an entirely false rant but how can you take an author who writes this seriously:

"Dear Lisp programmers: Microsoft have implemented the mixing of code and data, like you asked for. Only, they’ve called it ‘Word Macros’. Enjoy."

tommorris9• 13 years ago

Because sometimes the author is having a laugh.

tomasien• 13 years ago

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.

grandalf• 13 years ago

No, I'm not going to read your linkbait headlined article.

_mulder_• 13 years ago

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.

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'.

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.

kumail_hemani• 13 years ago

True that!

shurcooL3• 13 years ago

Apps are basically fancy bookmarks with native code abilities and local state (including dreaded settings), as well as notifications.

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.

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.

MikeKusold• 13 years ago

> 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.

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.

balqan• 13 years ago

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.

blisterpeanuts• 13 years ago

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.

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'"

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.

robomartin• 13 years ago

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.

And, of course, there's yet another group that can do nothing but whine.

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.

nathan_long2• 13 years ago

Your point is valid but does not refute the OP, who is saying "this does not work and should evaporate into history." Such reactions are part of how we collectively discard failed ideas.

ErikAugust• 13 years ago

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.

---

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.

ghaskey• 13 years ago

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.

nsxwolf2• 13 years ago

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.

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.

smackfu• 13 years ago

>apparently this is all part of their overall apps strategy or something.

Actually, in iOS 6, Apple added a graceful way to handle this case. The site can use a special HTML tag to indicate they have an app available, and that will show a tasteful banner at the top of the Safari screen that can be easily dismissed and that can launch the app, with context of the current page. Much better than some homebrew Javascript solution.

nsxwolf2• 13 years ago

But site developers still have the option to completely block you from their content when they detect you're using iOS Safari. Which is what so many news sites are doing.

shurcooL3• 13 years ago

I hope you know Chrome for iOS has that exact feature. It makes the iPad a lot more useful for me.

gojomo• 13 years ago

...as do other alternative browsers, like iCab Mobile or AtomicWeb.

Handy for not just getting around app-prompts but also other over-customization for mobile/touch devices (like 'OnSwipe' or forced-mobile-site-version).

macspoofing• 13 years ago

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 really need to horizontal paged scrolling?

agentultra• 13 years ago

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.

hydralist• 13 years ago

Just an angry dude trying to recruit more anger to justify his lack of pleasure in life. First-First world problems at best.

ianstallings• 13 years ago

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.

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.

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.

My point? Native apps benefit the end user if done properly. Just because some fools botched a workflow doesn't negate this.

clarky07• 13 years ago

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.

jimmaswell• 13 years ago

Firefox Nightly mobile has a nice "request desktop version" ability.

repler• 13 years ago

CBS does this with the 60 Minutes website. It's so irritating.

dbh937• 13 years ago

> Apps ought to provide some actual functionality, not just blobs of content wrapped up in binary files.

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.

cramerica• 13 years ago

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).

nathan_long2• 13 years ago

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.

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.

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.)

drp4929• 13 years ago

Points 7,8,9,10,11 are not about web vs. app. They could be applicable to "old website design" vs. "new website design" story also.

choxi• 13 years ago

I feel like most of the points can be summed up as "it's different from what I'm used to"

stcredzero4• 13 years ago

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?

pteredactyl• 13 years ago

Technology for technology's sake.

pasbesoin• 13 years ago

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.

Or, as I often think of it, withholding information that can or will be used against me.

I prefer to use (and insist upon using) a general purpose computing device, not an "appliance".

mmanfrin• 13 years ago

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.

There is literally zero reason to use it, and I sincerely hope they didn't spend money on it.

It's a great bar, though. Pig and Whistle.

u2sonderzug• 13 years ago

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...

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?

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.

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 updating 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.

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?

No, I'm not going to download your bullshit app

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