Your favourite app isn’t native

http://kennethormandy.com/journal/your-favourite-app-isnt-native

by kennethormandy • 12 years ago

3 6 12 years ago

JetSpiegel• 12 years ago

Basecamp’s iPhone app is a PhoneGap-style web view. Uber’s native app is a web view. Facebook paid $1.1 billion for Instagram.

None of those are my favourite apps, so the argument crumbles on the first paragraph.

johnatwork• 12 years ago

Unless I'm mistaken, Basecamp's App is now a native app built with RubyMotion.

http://www.rubymotion.com/apps/

tonymillion• 12 years ago

Wrong: Instagram is most definitely native - it uses a uitableview for those views (and it's obvious from the sticky headers with the users name / time / etc)

Basecamp does use some web views, but the resources are local (or they used to be last time I checked)

kennethormandy2• 12 years ago

You’re right, I only meant the the timeline is a web view. I probably didn’t communicate that as well as I could have. Part of what’s interesting about hybrid apps is that they can use this approach as much or as little as is appropriate.

mnem• 12 years ago

It's amusing that an article pushing hybrid apps as a good way forward was inspired by a hybrid app breaking in a way a "pure" app wouldn't.

Beyond that thought the article seems a little, well, odd. Is the argument that "web programs are as real as native programs"? If so, isn't that a statement of the obvious? Most modern programs are abstractions upon abstractions - whether your layout engine is an embedded OS provided web browser or an OS provided XML resources parser, does it matter?

Or is this another one of those religious war argument things where programming in a scripting language isn't "real" programming? Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/378/

I probably missed the point of it, but it is Friday after all so I'm mostly waiting for the weekend to start.

kennethormandy2• 12 years ago

You’re right a better experience should have been provided there, but it could have still been done within a hybrid app. It’s noteworthy because it confirms Instagram uses a web view, something they otherwise didn’t ever make any indication of.

And yes, it kind of is one of those arguments! Thanks for feedback.

Your favourite app isn’t native

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