The difference was that then there was a meaningful functional difference between a cloud app and a local desktop app. Cloud apps were better, and people appreciated that.
I'm not convinced that web apps, which have worse UI, not access to native apis (camera, notifications, contacts, etc) offer a meaningful benefit over native apps.
You use mail.google.com on your phone? I don't.
How about Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? App or website?
It's because the native app is better.
The web is not special, it just happens to exist. If you keep building experiences for it that are meaningfully less functional than native apps, people will continue to flock to native apps.
sure... it's not all about hitting 60fps animations on a web app; but web apps that are closer to the look and feel of native apps is the way forward if you're building for the web.
apps are the dominant paradigm on phones and tablets because the web experience on touch only devices with tiny screens was terrible when phones and tablets took off. the web experience has improved but still lags behind because the investment in native apps far outstrips the investment in making webapps better on mobile
trying to emulate native apps in the browser is the same losing battle, but the inverse. good luck with canvas
The difference was that then there was a meaningful functional difference between a cloud app and a local desktop app. Cloud apps were better, and people appreciated that.
I'm not convinced that web apps, which have worse UI, not access to native apis (camera, notifications, contacts, etc) offer a meaningful benefit over native apps.
You use mail.google.com on your phone? I don't.
How about Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? App or website?
It's because the native app is better.
The web is not special, it just happens to exist. If you keep building experiences for it that are meaningfully less functional than native apps, people will continue to flock to native apps.
sure... it's not all about hitting 60fps animations on a web app; but web apps that are closer to the look and feel of native apps is the way forward if you're building for the web.