Can we talk about how we educate users on what a "webapp" is? In the last few years I've shown potential clients, friends and strangers webapps and they've asked "Oh neat.. but is there an app? Where can I download it?" or something similar.
This is very frustrating because it encourages walled-garden..
I've found that generally, the customer wants what the customer wants, and that it's usually pointless to convince them that they should want otherwise. I remember back in the early 2000s, when folks first started switching to webapps en-masse, desktop app developers went through a similar problem. "But - desktop apps update in real-time. They adapt fluidly to different screen sizes. They are about 1000x faster. You can do more with them, like real computer graphics and arbitrary network connections." It didn't matter - customers wanted webapps because they were immune to viruses, could be deployed trivially, updated quickly, and could take advantage of new sharing & social features.
Now the pendulum has swung around again, and customers want native mobile apps because they have fancier animations, are immune to pop-up ads, can access the special hardware on the device, and don't require an Internet connection. There's little developers can do about this, other than wait 15 years for the pendulum to swing the other way.
Did you find out why? Were any of them burned by bad webapp interfaces? Were any of them burned by their webapp getting an "unwelcome update?" Were any of them burned by crappy behavior under limited connectivity? (That one has happened to me a lot with web apps on an iPhone.)
I suspect that the problems of small app developers are much the same as guys on dating sites. All of the discoverability is implemented and controlled by one entity who doesn't depend on your success specifically to make money. They only need just enough success to keep the whole thing running.
I wish now that Jobs had gotten his way in the beginning, and all of the apps would be web apps, and discoverability would be through web links and search engines.
I'd toyed with the idea of doing an app discoverability startup (for Android...Google is not as averse to alternative discovery mechanisms as Apple) and even done some market research, and prospects did not look good. The root cause was that mobile phone users don't even think in terms of "discoverability" - they use a new app when they hear about it from a friend or read about it on a blog, and it fills some hole in the life that's pretty painful. No hole = no app usage. It's not like with Web 2.0, where people were actively seeking out idle diversions to use up their spare time while they sit at their do-nothing jobs. Now, everybody has been laid off from their do-nothing jobs, and they're actively seeking ways to better their circumstances, and if your app doesn't fit into that plan they aren't interested.
As much as I wish Apple & Google would fix the discoverability problem, I'm not sure it would help much. Discoverability today means finding a crucial pain point and then going out, yourself, engaging customers and explaining how your solution helps them accomplish their goals. There are still profitable niches out there, but you have to do the work of building an actual business and not just an app.
> I wish now that Jobs had gotten his way in the beginning, and all of the apps would be web apps
The IPhone ecosystem would be nowhere near what it is today if not for native apps. It would have been a serious mistake. People want native apps because the mobile web sucks for anything a bit more complex than displaying text or simple forms. And web APIs on mobile in general still suck. Caching sucks, The DOM is still slow and cannot deeply interact with phone features or hardware.
The mobile web has failed since native apps are still required. Every web tech base mobile OS have failed. Firefox OS for mobile has failed.
This is a problem with browsers, not with the mobile Web technologies. Browsers are designed with a legacy, slow architecture. This can change without changing the Web APIs much, if at all.
Native technology stacks aren't really that great either, and I think that native has some fundamental disadvantages when it comes to performance, especially around graphics.
We wouldn't have solved anything due to limitations of the web stack. There is no way to make it run fast on a $100 handset. The native stack on the other hand can run pretty fast on low hand devices.
Consumers are not choosing between web apps and native apps. The problem is Path to Discovery and Launch.
Discovery: Google too is an Appstore to most people. You tell well educated people on Desktop to go to Facebook and they do this: Google.com -> Click Search Bar -> Type Facebook -> Click First Link. No matter what first link is. The appstore serves the same purpose to this group.
Launch: If you removed most app icons on people's phone and replace them with web app bookmarks, many will not know the difference. This is a shortcut for them.
Funny story about that... there was an incident where a news article that mentioned Facebook ended up being the #1 result for the keyword on Google. The comments section was inundated with complaints from people who said they couldn't log in demanding the "old facebook" back:
Apple "could" allow webapps on the App store (like the Chrome app store did/does?) Whether that's good or bad for users or Apple I don't know. People would start submitting lots of websites to the app store and Apple would have to start reviewing them, no pr0n, no politics for example, so it's probably not good for Apple.
Then there's the initiative for letting web pages request to be added to the desktop. They tried to make it non-invasive
On iOS, you don't even need the App Store. You can add _any_ URL to your home screen. The only difference with 'real' apps is that URLs on your home screen all run in the same Safari app and share its cache.
This is very frustrating because it encourages walled-garden..