I don't think so. Given the huge amount that are still in circulation, and the number of people who are hoarding them for spare parts for machines they are still using I suspect you'd have to wait much longer than 10 years to profit from it.
I implemented a little bit of animation and a 'native-esque' SPAM button in my app Herenow. I used css3, and to be honest, it doesn't feel quite native because the webview isn't as fast as a native control would be. Looks are easy, feel is hard.
Author of the blog post here. From my experience, achieving a native feel with a hybrid app on e.g. iOS isn't that hard. There are constraints, true. But it can be done.
My strategy is to use GPU-accelerated CSS transitions, test often on the real device and see how others are doing it, e.g. in UI frameworks (onsen ui, framework7, ratchet, etc).
Maybe I'm a moron, but the entire concept of "native look and feel" means nothing to me. I have used android for about 5 years and have played with plenty of iOS devices and I'm still not sure what parts are native. Apps all have seemingly different look and feel. We certainly never sweat nativeness on the web going for consistency across OSes instead. It seems like going to native look is not even a desirable thing.
Incidentally i spend the last 2 weeks going through various Android devices, and iOS devices, various javascript frameworks and various CSS frameworks.
I'm happy to see others having opinions on this subject.
Essentially i did the research for these combinations:
It was hard and tiresome but the conclusion - same as yours - iOS works very well for cordova/phonegap. Android is a no-go!.
Among the frameworks I checked: backbone, ember, angular, ionic, topcoat and various other CSS frameworks.
All were slow on Android. Also discovered 4.4 introduces worse performance (acknowledged by google) which is solved with crosswalk. However crosswalk brings many bugs to the table itself.
Really disappointing - currently I'm opting out and going Native.
Allow me to suggest taking a look at QML/Qt Quick. I've only recently started working with it, but so far the UI performance is excellent and for someone experienced with HTML/CSS layouts and JavaScript it's quite easy to pick up. (Also, FWIW, it's more enjoyable than twiddling with CSS.)
I'm a solo founder, and it's hard keeping motivated, if i'm not committing to the code, it's just not getting done. If I had a cofounder there would be someone else adding code, and I'd feel compelled to do my share.
It's definitely doable though, and it's much more productive just working on your idea than hanging around meetups hoping to meet that someone special.
Really? He explicitly says "This is not a demand or an accusation or a plea. It's a polite request from a huge fan." It seems like he's asking as politely as possible. It's not "you should give us this," but "hey, you know what would be cool? giving us this."
The issue is that nobody is going to see it that way without actually reading the page, and let's face it, not an amazing amount of people are actually going to read the page. The majority will just see titles like this one, which mention nothing about a polite request and instead make it sound like a plea from a Tesla relative to fund this idea. Now if he doesn't fund it the media may pick it up and make him look bad, even though that's not the intent of The Oatmeal's post here. Noting that, I don't see why they didn't just ask in private instead of something public like this.
Also worth noting, the last thing I read was that Elon Musk had to borrow money to get through the month since he sunk all of his money into his companies and he didn't have enough on hand to spend, so I'm not exactly hopeful that he'd be able to do this. Obviously he could sell some stock or similar to get the money, but I doubt he'd really want to do that.
I have to agree with you. The fact that he is going through Musk's finances, measuring how much money he can make by Tesla's stock bumping up a point, and stating that the publicity of this Oatmeal article will be measured (in hopes that it has a positive impact) all seem, to me, like a back handed plea.
He's also stating that the name / technology has entered the public domain so he knows that Musk is doing nothing wrong by using it and naming his company with the family name. I've got to give him credit for a creative approach to raise the money but it really feels ugly and backhanded. If it gets funded -- great! I just don't know how I'd feel in Musk's shoes considering it opens him up to future things he should donate to because he is using somebody else's work / tech to piggy back his way to where he is now: success.
> The issue is that nobody is going to see it that way without actually reading the page, and let's face it, not an amazing amount of people are actually going to read the page.
The issue is that people in general need to be more thoughtful in general rather than spouting off knee-jerk opinions. That statement that "nobody is going to see it that way" sounds like an appeasement to the mob.
I mean, that same mob were the ones who were shouting very loudly about electric cars getting set on fire.
