Slashdot Mirror
How Mobile Apps Are Reinventing the Worst of the Software Industry
An anonymous reader writes "Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow, says the mobile app ecosystem is getting out of hand. 'Your platform now has a million apps? Amazing! Wonderful! What they don't tell you is that 99% of them are awful junk that nobody would ever want.' Atwood says most companies trying to figure out how to get users to install their app should instead be figuring out just why they need a mobile app in the first place. Fragmentation is another issue, as mobile devices continue to speciate and proliferate. 'Unless you're careful to build equivalent apps in all those places, it's like having multiple parallel Internets. "No, sorry, it's not available on that Internet, only the iOS phone Internet." Or even worse, only on the United States iOS phone Internet.' Monetization has turned into a race to the bottom, and it's led to worries about just what an app will do with the permissions it's asking for. Atwood concludes, 'The tablet and phone app ecosystem is slowly, painstakingly reinventing everything I hated about the computer software industry before the web blew it all up.'"
A whole new paradigm. You just don't get it! There's no down side etc. etc.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
You don't need to guess what app is going to do with these permissions, you just assume it will abuse it, because it has no reason not to. What missing is ability to push back against unreasonable permission requests without having to root your device. Both Apple and Google dropped the ball on this.
We hate most, that which we see in ourselves.
The question is... what can be done to stop and revert this horrible trend? Developers need to further promote current and future web browser standards so we can have all the fancy functionality of the apps in a web page. It doesn't always work, but it should be the long term goal.
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
In other words, when the herd broke out of the corral. But now we're getting the livestock rounded up and fenced back in where they belong. We'll even let them think they're choosing which fenced pasture they're going into, but by God, once they're in, they're staying in. Free Markets demand well-constrained consumer herds! Barbed wire was the ultimate victory over the Wild West!
To which I say, "Moo! It's nice in the Android Paddock."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Like everything else in the world, there are multiple accepted standards, nerds rage, film at 11.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I simply don't install applications on Android that ask for abusive permissions, which pretty much puts my phone back into the stone age. I don't need the project right now of installing a root kit, tweaking non-standard security settings, then wondering whether the next glitch is something I have to fix myself.
Net effect, so far as I'm concerned, is that the smart phone has not been invented yet.
I've always considered the Brights movement to be tragically misnamed (almost cringe-worthy) but at this point I'd have no problem carrying around a Bright phone where the device's intelligence was on my side for once.
What is truely awful is DLC or "in app purchases" Honestly writing a half assed app then extorting money from your users is the path of the scumbag.
Dont be a scumbag developer.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Of the complaints, most of them apply to the web as well.
The reason that mobile apps have been so popular is that in many ways they offer a better experience to websites. If Jeff wants more people to use the web instead, he should be learning from the successes of mobile apps and applying them to his websites. StackExchange has great content, but problematic UI, and it's got a really bad UI on mobile web. I'd love a more capable app version.
Firefox OS is trying to fix much of this.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firef...
https://developer.mozilla.org/...
The Web is the most successful platform of all time and we're leading the pack on bringing a the Web platform to mobile in a way that's integrated rather than fractured like the existing app store models.
A huge problem with iOS apps is that they all are given access to the Internet, with no ability to opt out (unless the user activates airplane mode before launching!)
You have seen all the millions of apps?
There's an old saying: To gain knowledge, add something every day; to gain wisdom, get rid of something every day. I'm not sure exactly how that is supposed to work (where does the wisdom come from?), but clearly you can choke your life if you accumulate too much stuff.
And that's really true for mobile apps, which can choke your phone. Two years ago my wife's phone (Android 2.x) became unusable, and I discovered that she had installed five or six dozen free apps, and many of them had installed service daemons. (Why do workout tracking apps, cookbook apps, or lightweight games need daemons?) She made an effort to purge down to just the apps she needs.
Even if you assume that the phone can handle all the apps, they still add chaff for you to sort when you are looking for the app you actually want to run.
P.S. Jeff Atwood's rant was good, but he missed one of my pet peeves: I will click on a news story link in a blog or Slashdot or something, and the linked site will pop up a banner: Hey! Don't you want to install and use our mobile app? Why no, web site I have never heard of before, I really don't want to download and install your app. I just want to read the one story, and at the moment I'm reconsidering even that.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
In the beginning, we had the mainframe and everyone used "cheap" dumb terminals to connect to it to run centrally installed applications.
Then we had the microcomputer and everyone used expensive computers and bought and installed applications locally.
Then we had the cloud and everyone used cheap computers and accessed centrally installed applications.
Now we have the mobile, where everyone uses cheap computers and locally installed apps to access information in the cloud.
What missing is ability to push back against unreasonable permission requests without having to root your device.
Apple did a great job with iOS in that regard - not at launch, but at this point it's pretty good. You are asked AT THE TIME THE APP TRIES TO ACCESS a resource like your photo library, contacts, location etc. if you want to allow it.
If you change you mind later, you just go into privacy settings and control access to any of those items to shut down access by apps you might suspect are misusing things (or you know they are, as can be the case with push notifications)
I agree with your point, but Apple has done a good job so far in helping users push back to whatever degree they desire.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
right out of the box we have no secrets, we tell each other everything.... in some other dimension this works based on the integrity of us users on our own without 'supervision'. critical parenting overkill crud forced down our cpuS works poorly to say the least & is of insidious motive in origins of greed fear & ego based spiritless numerologist zionic nazi genocider types...
obligatory; slashdot only allows...... per day... deepending on how much ediocy that can be tolerated
That's why we have consumer choice. You can select Apple devices that only have 98% awful junk.
Table-ized A.I.
And one reason for in-app advertising is to get applications into countries where Google was slow to add payment processing. Apple, on the other hand, would open an iTunes Store in a country before selling iPhone and iPad products there.
First, big software decided that the PC needed to become a television. Otherwise they would fail in their attempts to get your ass back on the couch.
By then, the PC was too far gone, because the heathens were actually building their own operating systems and programming languages! The horror! We might lose control of the demographics!
They needed a replacement for the PC, so they invented the smartphone. The smartphone is inferior to the PC in almost every way:
1. Slower processor
2. Less memory
3. Almost no storage
4. Slow, shitty, unreliable web access
5. Can't be physically networked with anything at all ever
6. Smaller screen
7. Atrocious, shitty, primitive, clumsy touch interface
8. Can't easily make use of any existing peripheral: printer, mouse, larger monitor, external storage, network
9. Fuckall battery life
10. Massively expensive on a capability-to-price ratio
11. Annoying royal pain-in-the-ass noisemaker
12. Makes everyone look like a jackass staring at it
Naturally, the general public, after being fed a thin gruel of third-rate marketing hype, decided to pitch 30 years of advancement overboard and charge-card their new tamagotchis by the Chinese freighter-load. They gleefully accepted the shitty web browsing, shitty interface and shitty battery life because they could compile monuments of narcissism in the form of 1000-entry selfie albums.
But that's not the best part!
You see, now that the manufacturers have TOTAL CONTROL of the platform (which is something they desperately wanted with the PC but couldn't engineer, despite Microsoft's roaring campaign of evil in the 1990s) they can tell you what programming language to use, what kind of apps to write and how much money you can make from them.
They have won. If you make apps, you are a defacto unpaid employee of Apple and/or Google doing exactly what you are told under pain of being kicked off the platform forever.
The rest of you spend all day staring at a 2x3 screen. I think we know what that makes you.
The results were rather predictable. Real programming and real programming languages have been largely exterminated. The idea of writing C on a development-centered operating system with a full suite of modern capabilities is dismissed by ignorant immature amateurs in favor of some kind of flimsy broken scripting language or worse.
Programmers have no real access to the hardware. Your code is trapped forever, and is useless anywhere else, since its built only for that platform's API. Its also pretty much guaranteed to be obsolete in three years because there will be no hardware to run it.
So we've made the software, the hardware and the developers disposable, and all the money goes to the phone makers, who are the only ones allowed to make anything of any real value.
The whole country staring at a screen which only displays what they want it to display. (The Internet is next)
Exactly the way they wanted it.
Fragmentation into parallel and incompatible app worlds: No, web does have an advantage here
I don't think even this is true. I have THREE browsers installed (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) because often I find a site doesn't quite work right on one but will work on one or more of the others.
As web developers lean on advanced browser features to become somewhat more app like, fragmentation is turning into a real issue.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Most of what I need is on http internet. Some things aren't, thus I have about 10 applications installed on my phone. Everything else is useless/intrusive. Crappy applications with far more privileges that they should need seem the norm. They have no place in my phone--however the masses hardly pay attention to the latter one.
There may be a lot of mobile apps, and most of them may be bad, but unlike web apps, the goods one aren't clunky, fragile shit.
The proliferation of unnecessary apps on tablets and phones. There are maybe 2-3 dozen businesses and sites I interact with enough each year to warrant their own app. The rest I interact with infrequently or they're not a high enough priority (e.g. Slashdot) that I need to be constantly updated to their latest offering and features (e.g. Beta).
The web browser model works really well for these low-priority interactions. I install an app on my computer for the important stuff (financial management, photo editing, code development, word processor, etc). But for all the not-so-important stuff, I install one app - a web browser. The browser then lets me make bookmarks to all those different low-priority sites.
But in their zeal to monetize and get a hold of your data, most companies have crippled or entirely eschewed the mobile browsing experience in favor of their own custom app. Many sites detect my browser is on Android and redirect me to crippled or dysfunctional mobile versions of their sites, when my phone is more than capable of using their full site. The result is whereas I have about 40 programs installed on my laptop and about a thousand bookmarks, I have over 250 apps installed on my phone and only a dozen bookmarks. Management of those apps is starting to become unwieldy as every day a half dozen of them report that they need to be updated.
I yearn for the days when all the less important stuff was just a bookmark in my browser. The browser was like a hub, and the connections between me and these less-important sites were like spokes. The hub-spoke model vastly decreased the number of spokes at my end. But by favoring or requiring dedicated apps in mobile space, these companies/sites have increased my workload and overhead by forcing me to maintain a lot more direct routes to their business/site.
Mobile developers, don't make awful shit. Please.
ShanghaiBill's point, as I understand it, is that end users are more willing to pay for "privileged (behind paywall) content" if it happens to be delivered through a dedicated mobile application than through a web page in the built-in browser.
This is what a bubble feels like to users; to dispassionate observers, the similarities to the 1997-1999 period are striking with respect to the hubris of software writers/producers/peddlers. The general public does not like to be so coerced, and, eventually, use some relatively minor but well-publicized event to abandon the scam.
Someday, abandoning apps and maybe the internet itself will seem cool to youth. Why not a network made up of only known friends? It would be the ultimate clique -- a paradise for 15-year-olds.
History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes (thankyoo Mark Twain.)
I see this as being a real problem on Android and iPhone, because one needs to download a relatively large number of "apps" to get the same functionality built into Windows Phone right out of the box. Windows Phone has a lot fewer "apps" because there's obviously a smaller customer base right now, but also because fewer are needed in Windows Phone 8 than are needed in an Android or iOS environment.
I don't respond to AC's.
I totally agree that there are many apps that shouldn't exist, that are really websites (and that goes down to the fact that a lot of them are just wrapping browser pages).
But that doesn't mean that native apps do not have a good purpose as a complement to websites, in the same way that some websites have also built native applications. Sometimes you want to build something that needs enough UI or low level access to hardware, that a web app just isn't as good.
Mobile apps work when they are focuses and do NOT try to do everything a website does. Jeff complains about the Amazon app, but I actually think that's a pretty good app - because it's focused around why you might want to use it, which is to really quickly find prices for an item on Amazon. Is it faster to do so than to use the web site? For that one use, yes. So there it has succeeded.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
but I have a Nexus 5 and zero apps. I don't know why I would need an app. I don't play games. I can stream music via YouTube or via di.fm without an app. Hangouts is fine for texting. Like most people, I rarely even make actual mobile phone calls. I prefer texting or, even better, email. I'm a techie with almost 20 years in the industry.
I should allow the permissions, not the app.
That was possible in Android 4.3 until Google pulled it when applications started crashing due to an unhandled SecurityException.
To paraphrase something a friend once said to me: "There was a time between 'AOL keyword [thing I'm interested in]' and "Search the App Store for [thing I'm interested in]' when the internet was a pretty cool place.
It's part of the beta.
Apple being the monopoly curator of the App Store runs counter to the sort of "free market" that Slashdot groupthink prescribes. So does the fact that until very recently, cellular carriers in the United States did their damnedest to hide the total cost of ownership of a mobile phone from subscribers.
StackExchange has great content, but problematic UI, and it's got a really bad UI on mobile web. I'd love a more capable app version.
What do you think of Stack Exchange for Android 4?
Which web sites work in Safari but fail in Chrome? I'm trying to consider whether to switch to a Mac or not.
Let's not be unfair now: Comrade Dice has clearly indicated that the people's wishes are being fully consulted, and the New Slashdot will only be rolled out in such a manner as to benefit us all.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
and people were ripping on them for that, demanding that they open the platform up for native apps. Which of course they did.
You have to understand that from a user perspective a native app is often preferred to a web app. Within a web app, access to hardware features is limited and so is storage of local data. However there are ways to leverage web development knowledge and skills when creating native apps for mobile devices.
Does the current situation complicate things for people who want to deploy applications on different mobile devices? Yes and No. Nothing is stopping you from creating a web app.
PHB: "We need an app!"
Developer: "To do what?"
PHB: "Well, I'm not sure. But we need an app. [Some other company] has an app. We need one too!"
Developer: "We could just create a mobile version of our website."
PHB: "But that wouldn't be an app. We need an app!"
Proverbs 21:19
Ask me for each individual thing, ask me each time.
I thought such "mother may I" behavior was exactly what Apple's Mac commercials made fun of. (Cancel or allow?) Condition people to just click OK, and they'll OK anything, no matter when or on what platform.
looks like he's jealous of people more successful than him
To scan a barcode, you need an app. To do voice and video chat, you need an app. To play a game with 3D graphics, you need an app. The capabilities to do these (getUserMedia, WebRTC, and WebGL) are fairly new to HTML5, and mobile web browsers haven't caught up yet
Mobile versions of web sites that "helpfully" add an overlay that reappears every time you scroll, blocking up to 40% of scarce real estate, which you cannot close, or piece of shit mobile sites like Washington Post that put up a smaller circle right in the middle of the fucking text, these programmers, who would be ashamed to show their face in 1978, should have their mother fucking brains splattered against a wall.
Die like pigs in Hell!!!!!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I strongly disagree with the poster. We are in the best period of mobile apps, not the worst. During this period programmers are learning what can be done in the mobile environment and what can not be done well. The Android and Apple mobile environments are very much an exciting, experimental playground right now. The major problem cited is that mobile apps are inefficient, and that they slow down your phone. That won't be much of an issue in a few years, as processors keep getting faster and phones start to ship with 64 GB or memory or more.
Sure there are a lot of bad apps, but that's the point. Try out the bad apps, and learn what you should and should not be using your mobile environment for. Maybe what you originally thought was a bad app turns out to be quite useful for you. On the other hand, the most obvious mobile app might not be very useful. I make under 7 phone calls a week, but spend 4-5 hours per week using the Facebook app. At first I thought Instagram was fairly useless but today I use it more than Facebook. I don't fully know all of my use cases for my phone, but already it's an indispensible tool, and I find about 20-30 apps to be quite useful. Another 100 apps are marginally useful. The rest are as much an experiment for the programmers as for me.
The issue with permissions is being worked on by the Android developers. It's a separate issue.
In 10 years mobile apps will be quite stable. We'll have maybe 50 winners, and things will be quite boring.
'The tablet and phone app ecosystem is slowly, painstakingly reinventing everything I hated about the computer software industry before the web blew it all up.'"
Web blew it all up? Web sucks too.
At home I just do my banking via a website. Why would I need an app on my phone?
So that you can use the phone's camera to scan the front and back of a paper check or cheque that a friend or relative has given you.
Why not the same website?
Because mobile web browsers tend not to offer camera APIs.
True, technically nothing stops me from creating a web application, but error messages stop me from actually running it: "This web browser does not support the Stream API" and "This web browser does not support WebGL".
The smartphone is inferior to the PC in almost every way
For real users, you have that backwards. For the technical elite what you are saying makes sense. Lets go over your points:
1. Slower processor
More like FAST ENOUGH processor. For what most people do, the processor on a smartphone is now FAST ENOUGH to do the same things. .2. Less memory
ENOUGH MEMORY. If you can edit video and photos and write documents on a smartphone, it obviously has enough memory for most people.
3. Almost no storage
32GB is quite a lot of storage for what most people produce over a long period of time - and since smartphones are inherently networked devices it's kind of silly to complain about size of local storage.
4. Slow, shitty, unreliable web access
Less so than a PC. Often the PC web browsing has been exactly that when I was in a hotel room - until I tethered through my smart phone...
5. Can't be physically networked with anything at all ever
Which most people do not care about, and is an annoyance to set up. In that way it's superior not to have that option.
6. Smaller screen
It's enough for most people, especially the phablets.
7. Atrocious, shitty, primitive, clumsy touch interface
It's just different, and for lots of things people do (like scrolling/selecting) it is superior. It's also obviously superior to use touch over tiny physical keyboards, or there would still be a lot of devices sold with tiny physical keyboards instead of virtually none.
8. Can't easily make use of any existing peripheral: printer, mouse, larger monitor, external storage, network
You don't need a mouse with touch. Other than that, all your points are wrong - with AirPlay it's easy to take advantage of a larger TV. It's easy to print to any WiFi supporting printer with iOS, and it's easy to make use of any network I like (including VPN access).
9. Fuckall battery life
Excuse me? Most people use laptops these days, and smartphones have VASTLY better battery life than most laptops.
10. Massively expensive on a capability-to-price ratio
The fact that people are buying them even so shows that people value convenience over any of the points you raise.
Your other points are two stupid to respond to, as is the rest of your message - or presumably whatever you have to say in response.
The truth is that smartphones and tablets have saved normal people from computers being truly usable and useful only to a minority of the technical elite. You hate that normal people are able to use computers. Well I say, I want everyone to benefit from the power of computation and am not willing to make them suffer for it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
TL;DR: "Apps" suck.
Welcome to computer software in the 10s. We've got all of the shovelware and hype of the 80s, but on your phone! With modern flashy graphics!!!
!If you want to get something done, you'll have to wade through a Mos Eisley of shit to find something useful.
I simply don't install applications on Android that ask for abusive permissions, which pretty much puts my phone back into the stone age.
Well why not own an iPhone then? What the hell is the point of having a smartphone unless you can take advantage of the world of applications?
On an iPhone you can deny any app anything you like and it will still work just fine. Don't screw yourself out of the modern era for no reason.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At the very least I want the ability to say which apps can and cannot access the network (both wifi and cellular.. preferably with separate permissions).
On iOS you can turn off cellular data access on a per-app basis - it just does not prompt for that aspect as it does with other permissions. It's the "Ceullular Data" section of settings.
You can't control network access outright per-app, that would be nice.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Elegance is always defined by the lack of complexity, not by the addition of it.
Not necessarily. You can have something that is both elegant and complex. It's just more difficult to pull off. While as a rule of thumb you are correct that simpler does more often result in something elegant, elegance is not defined by simplicity. The two are independent concepts.
That said I do tend to like Colin Chapman's philosophy of "simplify, then add lightness". Minimalism can be a very beautiful thing.
You can compare it to the flood of software in the late 80s / early 90s if you want but at least a large amount of that came from genuine attempts to sell you a game or product even if most of those products weren't really very good. It was just bad software from inexperienced developers with the odd gem when people actually got it right.
These days a lot of these aren't about selling you a product at all, the primary purpose of a lot of these garbage apps is to get at your data. Worse still a lot of it is boilerplate UI code with a bit of custom branding driving repackaged open source software (because so many licenses permit that as long as the source is made available) with some extra bits of code designed to get at whatever data you have on your phone that might be profitable in some way.
What we've ended up with are thousands of apps trying to steal your data while providing the exact same functionality as other apps.
Worse still is most of them are then designed to sell you extra stuff, the 'free' ones are often free-to-play models far worse than anything we had back in the day. There are micropayments everywhere and by the time you've worked out that a piece of software has nothing unique to offer you've often spent a lot more money than you realise reaching that conclusion.
The major problem cited is that mobile apps are inefficient, and that they slow down your phone. That won't be much of an issue in a few years, as processors keep getting faster and phones start to ship with 64 GB or memory or more.
So how do I put the faster processor or the larger memory in the phone that I already own? I didn't think so. Were you recommending putting today's otherwise perfectly working hardware in a landfill?
Do you really think you're going to be able to do a reasonable job of it, if you don't know which functions of your app users have enabled permissions for.
Yes, because a support email from the app can include what features are enabled - or I can just ask them.
But realistically there are not so many permissions choices you cannot test them. The iOS app reviewers do, so you have to test your app with all possible permissions disabled before you submit.
Ooops, your app crashes for the 3% of users who turn of contact searching
And one of the many crash reporters you can (and should) embed in an app will tell you that long before a user sends in a complaint, so it's fixed in the next update.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That and the fact that an "app" is more likely than a "website" to have a working offline mode. This is important especially to tablet owners (who may not have a cellular data subscription at all) and to frequent flyers (who spend a lot of time in airplane mode).
I don't see why any website should need a mobile app.
Anything that needs a camera needs a mobile app because mobile browsers tend to severely cripple web applications' access to the device's camera if they allow it at all. An online store needs a mobile app in order to let the user search products by barcode. A bank needs a mobile app to let the user scan checks for deposit.
Users can even put shortcuts to websites on their home screens with an icon
How may users know this?
Borland Sidekick
What the hell is wrong with having a well-coded, responsive design website?
The fun isn't over until you can get a quarterly subscription to a stack of DVDs or USB jump drives or something containing "100,000 of the best [platform] Mobile Apps" delivered to your door for the low, low price of $125 per quarter.
The smartphone is inferior to the PC in almost every way:
Really? It fits in my pocket, lasts longer on battery than my laptop, it weighs (far) less, it is a phone, I can take pictures with it, it doesn't require a mouse or keyboard to be useful, I can use it to navigate places where I can't take a PC, I can take it places I would never take a PC, I don't have to worry (much) about malware, it wakes up instantly, I can run with it and listen to music while running, it has sensors like accelerometers that aren't very useful on a PC and certainly never are standard. "Inferior in every way"? Pul-leeeze.
BTW most of your points about why it is "worse" are either complete nonsense or only make sense if you foolishly think that a smartphone should be a PC. If you want to use a PC, go right ahead. No one is standing in your way.
(oh and if you're thinking of making some snarky "drink the cool-aid" remark, just go ahead and stuff it)
It's not just the software industry it's the hardware one too.
In the PC market open standards beat out closed propriety hardware a long time ago. With the Desktop PC we enjoyed the ability to connect nearly any peripheral regardless of the manufacturer of the device or the PC. Hardware was modular and pieces could be upgraded or replaced with ones from just about any other manufacturer. Because of standards across the hardware alternative software could be installed other than what the manufacturer originally included.
I realize that much of this modularity would be difficult or impossible to implement in a cellphone-sized device. However, Imagine switching between Android, Maemo or Windows8 as easily as you can switch between Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, etc... on a desktop! Proprietary chips and locked bootloaders make this pretty much impossible. How about being able to plug just any USB (or similar bus) device into your phone and actually expect it to work?
Continue to ponder. You will soon realize where wisdom comes from.
Myself, I do have a "smart phone", but I only use it for checking messages, phoning, minimum amount of browsing and emailing. Nothing fancy. Nothing extra installed. No silly permissions granted.
It's been that way for the past 5 years with me at least. Before that I got choked down with iPhone, iPod, Macbook Pro, super air this, super air that, and other golden cage products. I guess you could call it wisdom.
Every USB keyboard and USB mouse I've tried has worked on my first-generation Nexus 7 tablet, which shipped with Android 4.1 and now runs Android 4.4. So have many USB joysticks. The biggest class I can think of that doesn't work is mass storage, and that's probably because Google and ASUS didn't want to pay Microsoft to license its VFAT and exFAT file system patents. But you're right that Android needs to do a better job of letting applications communicate with USB devices from user mode.
'The tablet and phone app ecosystem is slowly, painstakingly reinventing everything I hated about the computer software industry before the web blew it all up.'
Fair enough -- the web made everything that I hated about the software industry much worse!
Most of what I need is on http internet.
You may want to slightly re-phrase that sentiment in future posts; at first I read that as "Most of what I need is on the hip internet" and was like WHA?!?!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No one in the history of mankind has every wanted to scan barcodes.
Say you're at a store. You can use a barcode scanner app to take a picture of the UPC/EAN barcode on the back of a product's packaging to compare the deal that the store is offering to the deal that, say, Amazon and eBay sellers are offering. This works at garage sales as well: you can scan the ISBN-13 barcode on the back of a book and get a price quote.
Yeah, most of these apps are just facades for what can be done with a browser but they also have built in tracking and other tools to scavenge more data off of your mobile device than a browser would usually allow. To be honest, I believe that is the big reason for all these little do-nothing apps that have popped up especially the immensely popular "ring tone apps" in the Google Play Store for example. Yes we've had the same kind of annoy/malware for desktop apps that embed Firefox, IE etc. but the installation process is a bit more involved than going to a play/app store and clicking install. I'd also liken it to what's happening on SourceForge with this new Dice installer crapware that puts other shit on your system. It's not only bad practice but it also makes me distrust the software I'm trying to install. Google does the same kind of things with Chrome / Google Drive etc. and even after you uninstall them you'll still find little updaters and other crapware that Google leaves around that you have to manually go and remove.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Well, yes that's sort of a fundamental problem with web apps isn't it? - Lack of compatibility and standards compliance amongst browsers. This was the case prior to the explosion of mobile apps and it still exists today.
Rather, it's a list of excuses that tries to rationalize the shortcomings
No - it's pointing out the shortcomings are not short enough to matter for most people.
Most people do not need at this point processors faster than newer smartphones have, for things they use the devices for (either PC or smartphone).
So yes, a smartphone has less of X - but it truly doe not matter TO THOSE PEOPLE.
That stylishly trendy expensive disposable object in your pocket
I've used smartphones generally for a bit over two years each. That's not disposable, and is not much behind my replacement of laptops - only smartphones are way cheaper.
the same reasons that masturbation is popular.
I can assure you a smartphone has more utility than masturbation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think the problem has a lot less to do with access to hardware and storage in most cases, and more to do with wanting something more responsive than a web page over a sometimes very poor connection (either speed or consistency). If all you offer me is a wrapper to an HTML interface, then your 10MB app is of absolutely no value to me, and since your website is not easy to use on this connection, I just won't use your services at all.
The important distinction is that iOS asked for your permission when the app wants to do something sensitive, whereas Windows asks for you to confirm an action you took
Windows Vista asks to confirm elevation when the user does something that Windows considers "sensitive", such as modifying a folder that the administrator owns, installing hardware drivers, or anything else that affects more than one user. Windows 7 fixes some of this by adding buttons with the shield icon that elevate without needing to confirm. I guess part of the difference lies in what each OS considers "sensitive". Is there a comprehensive list of what iOS considers "sensitive" that isn't behind Apple's $99 per year paywall?
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/...
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
I was talking about specific ways that web apps are limited in terms of functionality they can deliver on a mobile platform. Still, you'd probably be surprised at the number of popular native apps that make significant use of web technology.
Anyway, I'm not trying to convince anyone that a web app is just as good as a native app, only that web apps have inherent limitations that make native apps the only reasonable choice in many cases.
The problem isn't just that Safari for iOS supports a nonstandard API, as that can be polyfilled or otherwise abstracted over. It's that Safari for iOS supports no suitable API for 3D rendering or camera access by web applications at all, even after six major version upgrades (from iPhone OS 1 to iOS 7).
Would you like to download it now?
Oh, the irony.
DropBox is only $9.99 / month for 100GB
Or to use the same units, $119.88 per year for 100 GB, which is 40 percent cheaper per GB than iCloud. But do all iOS apps that support iCloud also support Dropbox, Box, Copy, OneDrive, Google Drive, ownCloud, and other cloud storage providers? Is there a cloud storage API that all iOS apps hook into, or are apps hardcoded to use a particular brand of storage?
I can use WiFi on a smartphone anywhere I could with a PC. Only with a smartphone i can ALSO make use of wireless cellular data!
Now I get it. Wi-Fi is better than cellular in some cases, such as at home or at the office. Cellular is better than Wi-Fi in other cases, such as the overcrowded public hotspots that provide what you characterized as "slow, shitty, unreliable web access". Did you know they also make cellular USB sticks and cellular-to-Wi-Fi routers (called "mobile hotspots") for PCs?
Now onto gaming devices that ship with physical buttons, the cost of an Apple TV or Lightning dongle to use AirPlay, cost of replacing a printer, use of wired networks, and the exclusion of entire categories in the App Store Review Guidelines.
After that, the question becomes why is it so important to Apple, et al. to take computing away from their customers?
Car analogy time: Steve Jobs said that a Mac running OS X is like a truck, and an iOS device is like a car: less capable but less complex to operate and more power-efficient. Some people need a sport utility vehicle or pickup truck to do their job, whilst others can get away with owning only a compact passenger car.
There is a way, and it works with both iOS and Android. I think you just might not ready for it.
Just Say No. When someone offers you crank, or bad software, just say no.
What's the matter, can't do it? Then then problem is with you, not your OS. The sooner we get you to choose to install and run the suicide app, the sooner the problem will be fixed. Don't like that answer? Then use my answer instead: "No."
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Install nothing on my phone except what I can 100% (well, close enough) verify as being from a legitimate company (Google Maps, Twitter, etc.). No random but interesting-sounding programs, no games, none of that shit. My device is a phone/GPS/camera/browser/calculator. That it's nothing else not only doesn't bother me, I think it's great. My neck is in good order as well, as it doesn't gravitate toward a near-permanent state of 67.5 degrees. Many others seem to suffer from this, leading me to believe they have too much crap installed on their phone. Get help now, people; it's not as hard as it seems.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
You are here. We read you.
I want the rage. I need the rage. I love the rage!!
Why would you deny us that which sustains us? Heathen unbeliever!
Can those iOS languages be used to build an iOS app
It runs on iOS, therefore it's an IOS app.
and run it on the iPhone like an "official" app?
Yes you can with Codea.
Can you morons PLEASE STFU up now about people not creating anything on mobile devices? I mean after iPad DJ's, New Yorkers covers drawn on a iPad, and begin able to code real games on an iPad - just what is your damage in not understanding tablets are suitable for creation??
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Users are the issue here.
If the user stopped downloading/installing "crap", they wouldn't be a place for them in the market.
The only reason 99% of the app market is full of junk, is because people have a habbit of installing junk and accepting crap handed to them on a plate.
Fix the user's knowledge and acceptance levels of "junk", fix the issue.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that this feature, introduced in iOS 6, is intended for use with the Photos library on the device, and photos that the user takes with this feature go to the user's Photos library. Banks don't want photos of checks going into a Photos library and in some cases even to a public gallery; that could leak PII and make the account holder's identity easier to steal. I do admit however that I lack an iPhone with which to test this. Do photos taken with this feature remain on the device?
they also make cellular USB sticks and cellular-to-Wi-Fi routers (called "mobile hotspots") for PCs
Yes but they are not integrated so most people do not have them
Nor are Apple TV devices and Lightning to HDMI adapters "integrated so most people do not have them." PCs come standard with some features that phones lack standard, and phones come standard with some features that PCs lack standard.
especially because they can thither with a phone which most people DO have.
Citation needed that 1. most mobile phones are smart phones on a multi-gigabyte per month data plan as opposed to budget feature phones on an occasional-use voice plan, and 2. most smart phone data plans allow tethering, especially on those carriers where it still costs extra.
Not everything needs to be an app, certain nothing you listed (like a WiFi list).
If not an app, then what should it be instead? The article is about websites vs. native applications. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds to me like you're trying to claim that a Wi-Fi list ought to be a web application as opposed to a native application. But in order for a user to contribute to a Wi-Fi list, a web application needs to know the location of the user's device and what access points are near it. This means the web browser would have to provide a means to let the user authorize the browser to disclose to a particular web application what access points are near the device. Safari lacks such a means, as far as I can tell.
you can use a WiFi connect from a tablet just as easily as any PC
True. Like my laptop, my first-generation Nexus 7 tablet supports Wi-Fi. On both, I'd need additional hardware to get to Verizon.
you need additional hardware to get to Verizon from a PC.
And you need additional hardware to get to a television from an iPhone: $100 for wireless AirPlay (Apple TV) or $50 for wired AirPlay (Lightning Digital AV Adapter). Some Android phones and tablets, on the other hand, have an actual mini- or micro-HDMI port compatible with an affordable mini- or micro-HDMI cable from Monoprice.
And come on - who brings a laptop into Home Depot/Lowe's???
I do, for one. I don't often use it inside the store except when waiting for another party to finish shopping. But when I do, I have become adept at unfolding my 10" laptop at just the right angle to fit neatly into the child seat. I concede, however, that some of the things I do on my laptop while I ride the bus to and from Lowe's aren't "typical" things that "most people" do, such as lightweight hobby coding, but they are things that Apple just doesn't have an app for. Fortunately, I've also become adept at downloading articles while on Wi-Fi and reading them while offline on the bus, to the point that other passengers often ask me how much I "pay for Internet on that thing".
What carriers restrict tethering now?
I checked today, and tethering on an iPhone still costs an extra $180 per year on Virgin Mobile, on top of the premium that iPhone users are already paying over feature phone users.
PCs come with HDTV compatible video outputs at no additional charge
So you think it has nothing at all to do with the price of the PC. Interesting.
Virtually every PC at every price since the 1990s has had a VGA output, an HDMI or DVI-D output, or a DVI-I output that carries both VGA- and DVI-D video signals. Every HDTV except for very early CRT HDTVs has an HDMI input, which can take DVI-D video signals through another cheap cable from Monoprice, and most that I've seen also have a VGA input.
I'm sick of the advertising.
I always wondered what everyone needed with all the "apps." But I'm one of those BB weirdos who uses the device to communicate securely and nothing else. I expect the size in kbytes when I download, I expect an icon to tell me when the radio is transmitting and receiving, and I expect the phone to blink at me when I have a message becase I don't have time to poll the fucking phone for messages.
WTF is all this app shit about? ROFLMAO.
Apparently HTML5 has some super-secret magic sauce that previous versions did not have, to where every site will suddenly start acting like you wrote it in Flash and eating up your system resources.
Or maybe I am wrong and it is simply a new set of markup elements.
I am sure that you can do tricks with canvas and WebGL and CSS3 transitions and whatever that would be difficult to render. I have no idea why anyone would think that is a good idea -- you know sites get ranked on load times, right? We will ignore that web standards are merely codified industry practices and thus always can be considered incomplete, and that standards generally are either incomplete or inconsistent. We will pardon you for thinking this represents some novel phenomenon and not the entire history of the Web. We're going to have to wonder what you meant in reference to text formats, since Unicode and UTF-8 were the innovations of two decades ago.
But we'll revisit this "HTML4 fallback" phrase, because it is pure nonsense. For one thing, whatever you imagine HTML5 is must be a deep misconception, because aside from canvas (which will never be a foundational part of any site) there is very little visually distinguishing v4 from v5. For another, there is no such thing as a doctype fallback. Either you have a valid doctype on your documents, and the web browser renders that as accurately as it can, or you have an invalid doctype and you get quirks mode. Which is still likely to render any HTML5 elements correctly.
I would take your comments about Firefox OS more seriously if you were not so deeply mistaken in every related aspect.
It was much better when every app was downloaded from a different location or on a different disk, utilized a different installer, may or may not have an update procedure, installed crap files all over the filesystem with no easy way to remove them, etc. Ah, those were the days!
It runs on iOS, therefore it's an IOS app
Not until its approved by Apple.
not understanding tablets are suitable for creation
Because they weren't designed for it. They were designed for three-year-olds to watch cartoons on. Creating anything on an iPad is like trying to do plumbing repairs with nothing but a pair of pliers.
Not until its approved by Apple.
Which is how you get into the app store. Duh.
I mean, super duh.
But since the original point was you can't get games from Codea onto other iOS devices, that advice is plain wrong. You could do AdHoc builds also for friends of course, or submit it and let everyone use it.
I was right and only whiny childish losers come back with something like "but it has to be approved".
Because they weren't designed for it.
That's true of tablets you use I'm sure. Some of us know better and can select devices with the appropriate level of creative usability.
I had a Cintiq but sent it back because the iPad was enough in terms of drawing capability. You apparently know nothing of the vast array of creation going on with the iPad today - but far worse, you don't even want to know. How much sense does that make, to actually make yourself more stupid on purpose - just from hatred? Absurd.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple did a great job with iOS in that regard - not at launch, but at this point it's pretty good. You are asked AT THE TIME THE APP TRIES TO ACCESS a resource like your photo library, contacts, location etc. if you want to allow it.
And you actually believe that by hitting "NO" the APP isn't going to collect that data anyway?
These security "bugs" they've been finding in the iOS are suspicious! You have to wonder if these companies are allowing these back doors on purpose until they get discovered by security researchers, then labeled "bugs" as opposed to back doors. FOr the companies to collect data and allow other agencies to collect data.
You also have to at least ponder how many of these APPS are being made or indirectly sponsored by the NSA and other spying agencies? Since security researchers will at some point find the holes in an OS.
Can you morons PLEASE STFU up now about people not creating anything on mobile devices?
I can write a book with a telegraph key as well. That doesn't make it as good as a word processor.
If that's not to your liking, try this: I can finger-paint on my tablet yet Adobe is not concerned about losing my future business.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Steve was right that the iPhone doesn't need apps because it has the web and people should be writing web-apps.
Well, he was mostly right. 90% of the Apps out there could be web-apps and you wouldn't need to have two versions (iOS, Android) and I could access them from the desktop.
Instead, the opposite happened: Every other stupid forum tells me to install its app. Where... I can read the forum. Uh, what? When you tell me on your forum to install your app so I can do what I am already doing before you interrupted me with that stupid pop-up then someone somewhere had his brain turned off or he would've realized how utterly stupid that is.
It's like stopping me in front of the grocery shelf in your supermarket to hand me a flyer that tells me that if I go to your supermarket, I can buy groceries there. Uh, yes, dumbo?
The problem is the insanity called advertisement agencies. These people are not selling your product to your customers as they are trying to make you believe. Their product is not your product and their customers are not your customers. Their product is advertisement and their customer is you. As long as you will pay for it, they will sell you any crap they can get away with. And so they will happily repackage the website, forum or whatever else you already created and sell it back to you. And for some reason, people are dumb enough to pay for their own product.
We can only hope that sanity will win in the end and product managers the world over start to kick out these parasites. I, for one, consider a pop-up telling me to install an app that allows me to view the website that I am already viewing as a surefire sign that your company is too stupid to spend money on. Or in simple terms: Want to drive me off? Tell me to install your app.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
And considering that any transportation related article on Trolldot inevitably gets some Eurotrash or New Yorker proclaiming that everyone should use mass transit
And usually my reply to them is "Good luck with that if your employer makes you come in at night or on Sunday."
does that mean most people should rent time on a mainframe?
Fans of "the cloud" at least would approve.
All modern mobile browsers have API to access location services on smartphones
So the site can see where you are in order to return a list of hotspots near you that the site already knows about. But where did the site get the list in the first place? I don't see anything in Apple's page about geolocation in Safari that lets a site see the list of hotspots that your device can see in order to help fill out the list.
But I think what is really holding back WebGL is that 99% of the time some pictures and text, and maybe a video will do -
Are you claiming that browser games should forever remain 2D?
but in the overall scheme of things it's use-importance on the web is about the same as java applets were 10 years ago
By then, browser games were Flash, not Java, and some were starting to use at least software 3D rendering. Software 3D rendering works far better in Flash than in HTML5 because unlike Flash, which uses supersampling to antialias the edges of objects, HTML5 Canvas uses coverage-based antialiasing that introduces visible gaps between adjacent polygons and which a web application cannot turn off.
[Camera and WebGL] work just fine on my BlackBerry and FireFox OS phones.
Even if so, how many users does that cover for an app intended for use in industrialized English-speaking countries? BlackBerry is on its way out in terms of usage share, and I'm not aware of any carrier or any non-carrier electronics chain that offers Firefox OS phones in the United States. I am aware that Firefox OS developer phones are available through mail order, but how many end users in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand will mail-order a Firefox OS developer phone and use it as a primary phone?
Chrome and FireFox for Android have had support for a while as well.
I have Firefox and Chrome installed on my first-generation Nexus 7 tablet running Android 4.4 KitKat. The spinning cube at http://get.webgl.org/ works in Firefox. In Chrome, however, I get "Your browser supports WebGL. You should see a spinning cube", but the cube doesn't appear.
the only limit is yourself
yes, yes, yes.
The fix is on the way and it's called Firefox OS :)
You seem unusually emotional about the iPad. Why are you so invested in making iPads replacements for the PC?
Let me save you some energy. iPads, tablets, phablets, whatever, will never replace the PC. The tactile keyboard is the correct interface for human hands. It has been refined for almost 500 years to feel right. A keyboard provides precise control, which is necessary when a human being is interacting with a complex piece of equipment.
This is also why there will never be touch screens in fighter jets.
Typing on a flat, physically unresponsive surface is the wrong interface for a human being. It confuses people. A bigger screen further away is better than a small screen up close. iPads are useful for mobile viewing of books and videos. They are not PCs. They will never be PCs. They are expensive coloring books for toddlers and a way for Apple to control developers. Simple as that.
Have a nice day.
Carefully test each one and keep only the ones that don't misbehave.
and that way your phone will work fine until the next OS upgrade breaks some of them and it starts randomly flashing the flash and locking up.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.