You're not genuinely trying to argue that the Wii U is a significant application platform, are you?
I'm using it and other set-top devices as an extreme example from which to argue inward.
You haven't provided evidence for your claim that web development with all its current limitations, with all the vagaries of differences between browsers is more efficient or productive than native cross platform application development.
Here's some evidence, albeit imperfect: Why did Stack Overflow the web app precede Stack Overflow the native app? Why is there still not an official native app for participating in discussions on Slashdot? And even if there were day-one native apps, it's often easier for a user to gain permission from the administrator of the computer he is using to use a web application than to install a native application.
Welcome to professional development. And as you said yourself it's the same deal for web development. What, you got your Wii U for free in a box of cereal or something?
One can test web applications for a set-top device on a retail unit, but one needs a far more expensive debug unit to test native applications.
Small companies can easily find the right development environment for them for native application development for as much or as little money as they want to spend.
But will "as much or as little money as they want to spend" "for native application development" be the same amount of money vs. comparable functionality for web application development?
Who said the application ran on no platforms and had no users?
I didn't mean literally no users as much as an insignificant number of users compared to the number of users that would be possible with a web application.
Prove it.
Native apps from "garage" developers: zero users on Wii U. Web apps from "garage" developers: greater than zero users on Wii U. Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo has said in the past that the company doesn't want amateur developers on its platform, that developers working in a "garage" exhibit negative qualities associated with contestants on American Idol. This means that for some subset of developers, the browser is the only way to get an application onto the platform.
If you build cross platform from the get go there is no huge overhead with native applications.
First, there's the overhead of obtaining hardware on which to test the build for each platform. You essentially have to buy a Mac, buy a copy of Parallels, and buy a retail copy of Windows. And beyond that, there's the overhead of getting approved to develop on certain platforms. For example, it can be cost prohibitive for a hobbyist developer to obtain and annually renew code signing certificates for Windows desktop, Windows Store, Mac App Store, and iOS App Store. And it's virtually impossible for a hobbyist to obtain code signing certificates on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo console platforms in the first place.
Just use the right development environment for what you want to achieve.
That's fine once your company is big enough to afford "the right development environment".
There is not a single german family which had not relatives, or still has living relatives who where WII refugees.
Wii refugees? They must have discovered that they were Nintendo's slaves and wanted to defect to PC to become masters of their own experiences.
Oh, you meant World War II refugees. It took me a while.
What wonders me, why is "emigrate" written with one "m" and "immigrate" with two? Is that supposed to make sense?
"Emigrate" is a contraction of ex-migrate, and "immigrate" a contraction of "in-migrate". N assimilates to the following consonant's place, while X tends to just drop out entirely before M.
Let me know when Microsoft Visual App Studio becomes a Metro-s*xual UWP app. Until then, you'll still need to use Luddite programs to app apps for app devices.
well, it should be as easy as getting cell reception (imagine something like small cryptographic device with an lcd-screen and a 3g modem simalar to the one in amazon's kindles that work in most part of the world).
But who pays for the cell reception? To keep from skewing toward the interests of those most able to pay for cellular data service, election boards would have to subsidize cellular data service for less-advantaged people the way some cities' public transit systems operate without charge on Election Day.
They're not your users in the first place if the application doesn't run on their system.
What good is an application without users?
So as we continue to clarify the metrics that a developer may consider optimizing, let me rephrase: The potential number of users that can be reached per unit of developer effort is greater with web apps than with native apps.
Back when Usenet was popular, members of certain groups in alt. used to call that kind of post a "spelling flame" or later a "spelling lame". If you want to complain about mbps vs. Mbps, please also have something helpful to say about the rest of the post.
For another, only the developer has to have the Mac, Parallels, and Windows, not all users. If you write a native app for Mac, all your users will have to buy a Mac, and unless they were already using a Mac, they'll likely have to buy Parallels and Windows in order to keep running their existing native apps. But if you write a web app, users will be able to run it no matter what they have. In post #51144573, I was complaining about the cost of testing, especially for a small developer trying to turn a hobby into a business and discovering that "Works best with Firefox and Chrome; performance not guaranteed on browsers available only bundled with a proprietary OS" is no longer excusable. Posts #51179969 and #51180251 related more to the end users.
Without statistics, how would an advertiser go about determining which ad buys within a particular campaign were more likely to have contributed to sales? Or are you recommending cost per action (CPA) advertising, such as referral programs where the publisher gets a percentage of the advertiser's directly related sales? One problem with CPA is that it disregards customers who see an ad now and then decide to buy later. The other is CPA's association with CPAlead, a company offering a "content locking" service that requires viewers to take a survey or complete installation of a native application in order to be able to read a web page.
You appear to have replaced your computer with a Mac (starting at $500 from Apple.com) and bought a copy of Parallels Desktop ($80 from Parallels.com) and a copy of Windows ($200 from Microsoft Store) for this Mac in order to be able to run all native apps. But you and others who chose to spend upwards of $780 on a Mac + Parallels + retail Windows are in the minority. Native apps are superior only for this minority case who doesn't have to worry about application platform incompatibility. The rest of us do have to worry about that because we lack the money to replace each of our computers with a comparable Mac + Parallels + retail Windows. This in turn means that application developers cannot assume that their prospective customers will have already purchased a Mac + Parallels + retail Windows. So instead, to target those who have not yet bought a Mac + Parallels + retail Windows, they develop web apps.
Besides, if you are using a computer owned by someone else in your household, you have to wait for the computer's administrator to become available in order to elevate and install the app. With a web app, you can just launch it in your browser.
Even the video ads don't bother me so much because I don't browse with sound.
They'll bother you once you get your Internet bill and see an increase in the monthly data volume because advertisers are pushing 720p ads at you even though your browser window (or even your device's screen) is smaller than 720p.
I'm not sure how pay-per-page will work as long as credit cards still have a swipe fee on the order of 33 cents plus 3.3%. And I'm not sure how Bitcoin is a viable alternative when it still has a fee of 0.0001 BTC (currently 4.3 cents) per transaction to discourage dust spam.
What used to buy you a few GB hosting traffic per month, may now by you 1000x that amount.
And what used to buy you ten articles' worth of writing now buys you five.
Plain image ads (hosted on your own site not 3rd party-provided)
How would that work? If a site hosts its own ads rather than entrusting that to an ad network, how will its advertisers trust that they're being fed accurate view and click statistics and not a line of bull$#!+?
If I want to use an application, I want to use a real desktop application!
How are you going to do that if the desktop application that you want to use happens not to be ported to the operating system that runs on your device? The advantage of web applications is that one application can run on a Windows PC running Edge, a Mac or iPad running Safari, an GNU/Linux PC running Firefox, an Android tablet running Chrome, or even a PlayStation or Nintendo device running NetFront. Good luck even becoming an authorized developer on all those platforms, let alone porting your app and getting it approved on all of them.
TL;DR: Good luck running a Mac.app on a Windows or Linux PC.
"Criticizing our President [...] may constitute an act of treason" That's technically correct in that there may exist extreme scenarios where criticism rises to the level of "levying war against [the United States], or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort" (U.S. Const. III.3; 18 U.S.C. 2381). But the First Amendment has been interpreted to state that these are few and far between, and questioning the motivations of the Nobel committee is highly unlikely to be among them.
If the server was compromised for example, you'd get right place, wrong file.
The same would be true if the build server was compromised.
In addition, for developers not quite as big as Google, one TLS certificate to obtain and keep renewed every year is cheaper in both time and CA fees than one TLS certificate for the website every year and one code signing certificate per platform per year. Or is there a counterpart to StartSSL or Let's Encrypt for code signing yet?
Because the prize for economics is not technically a Nobel prize; it's the Bank of Sweden's prize in memory of Nobel. Or because the Nobel committee has shown itself willing to award prizes based on promises rather than actions, as in 2009 when it awarded the prize for peace to newly elected US President Barack Obama.
Slashdot Mirror
You're not genuinely trying to argue that the Wii U is a significant application platform, are you?
I'm using it and other set-top devices as an extreme example from which to argue inward.
You haven't provided evidence for your claim that web development with all its current limitations, with all the vagaries of differences between browsers is more efficient or productive than native cross platform application development.
Here's some evidence, albeit imperfect: Why did Stack Overflow the web app precede Stack Overflow the native app? Why is there still not an official native app for participating in discussions on Slashdot? And even if there were day-one native apps, it's often easier for a user to gain permission from the administrator of the computer he is using to use a web application than to install a native application.
Welcome to professional development. And as you said yourself it's the same deal for web development. What, you got your Wii U for free in a box of cereal or something?
One can test web applications for a set-top device on a retail unit, but one needs a far more expensive debug unit to test native applications.
Small companies can easily find the right development environment for them for native application development for as much or as little money as they want to spend.
But will "as much or as little money as they want to spend" "for native application development" be the same amount of money vs. comparable functionality for web application development?
Erector, perhaps; what about Meccano?
Last time I checked (two minutes ago), Erector products were made by Meccano.
Who said the application ran on no platforms and had no users?
I didn't mean literally no users as much as an insignificant number of users compared to the number of users that would be possible with a web application.
Prove it.
Native apps from "garage" developers: zero users on Wii U. Web apps from "garage" developers: greater than zero users on Wii U. Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo has said in the past that the company doesn't want amateur developers on its platform, that developers working in a "garage" exhibit negative qualities associated with contestants on American Idol . This means that for some subset of developers, the browser is the only way to get an application onto the platform.
If you build cross platform from the get go there is no huge overhead with native applications.
First, there's the overhead of obtaining hardware on which to test the build for each platform. You essentially have to buy a Mac, buy a copy of Parallels, and buy a retail copy of Windows. And beyond that, there's the overhead of getting approved to develop on certain platforms. For example, it can be cost prohibitive for a hobbyist developer to obtain and annually renew code signing certificates for Windows desktop, Windows Store, Mac App Store, and iOS App Store. And it's virtually impossible for a hobbyist to obtain code signing certificates on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo console platforms in the first place.
Just use the right development environment for what you want to achieve.
That's fine once your company is big enough to afford "the right development environment".
There is not a single german family which had not relatives, or still has living relatives who where WII refugees.
Wii refugees? They must have discovered that they were Nintendo's slaves and wanted to defect to PC to become masters of their own experiences.
Oh, you meant World War II refugees. It took me a while.
What wonders me, why is "emigrate" written with one "m" and "immigrate" with two? Is that supposed to make sense?
"Emigrate" is a contraction of ex-migrate, and "immigrate" a contraction of "in-migrate". N assimilates to the following consonant's place, while X tends to just drop out entirely before M.
Let me know when Microsoft Visual App Studio becomes a Metro-s*xual UWP app. Until then, you'll still need to use Luddite programs to app apps for app devices.
Programs!
well, it should be as easy as getting cell reception (imagine something like small cryptographic device with an lcd-screen and a 3g modem simalar to the one in amazon's kindles that work in most part of the world).
But who pays for the cell reception? To keep from skewing toward the interests of those most able to pay for cellular data service, election boards would have to subsidize cellular data service for less-advantaged people the way some cities' public transit systems operate without charge on Election Day.
They're not your users in the first place if the application doesn't run on their system.
What good is an application without users?
So as we continue to clarify the metrics that a developer may consider optimizing, let me rephrase: The potential number of users that can be reached per unit of developer effort is greater with web apps than with native apps.
Back when Usenet was popular, members of certain groups in alt. used to call that kind of post a "spelling flame" or later a "spelling lame". If you want to complain about mbps vs. Mbps, please also have something helpful to say about the rest of the post.
Seattle's zoning law is anti-utility. For acceptable Internet performance, leave Seattle.
I bought my mother who is 63 a Nokia 640. $55 and works with tracfone.
How much does service for a Lumia 640 on TracFone cost per month?
For one thing, sometimes i argue different positions in comments to different stories to prevent the discussion from becoming an echo chamber.
For another, only the developer has to have the Mac, Parallels, and Windows, not all users. If you write a native app for Mac, all your users will have to buy a Mac, and unless they were already using a Mac, they'll likely have to buy Parallels and Windows in order to keep running their existing native apps. But if you write a web app, users will be able to run it no matter what they have. In post #51144573, I was complaining about the cost of testing, especially for a small developer trying to turn a hobby into a business and discovering that "Works best with Firefox and Chrome; performance not guaranteed on browsers available only bundled with a proprietary OS" is no longer excusable. Posts #51179969 and #51180251 related more to the end users.
Without statistics, how would an advertiser go about determining which ad buys within a particular campaign were more likely to have contributed to sales? Or are you recommending cost per action (CPA) advertising, such as referral programs where the publisher gets a percentage of the advertiser's directly related sales? One problem with CPA is that it disregards customers who see an ad now and then decide to buy later. The other is CPA's association with CPAlead, a company offering a "content locking" service that requires viewers to take a survey or complete installation of a native application in order to be able to read a web page.
So they choose a stupid solution (web apps) instead of the best solution (native Mac apps).
Very few websites can charge their subscribers or advertisers enough to buy a Mac for each visitor.
You appear to have replaced your computer with a Mac (starting at $500 from Apple.com) and bought a copy of Parallels Desktop ($80 from Parallels.com) and a copy of Windows ($200 from Microsoft Store) for this Mac in order to be able to run all native apps. But you and others who chose to spend upwards of $780 on a Mac + Parallels + retail Windows are in the minority. Native apps are superior only for this minority case who doesn't have to worry about application platform incompatibility. The rest of us do have to worry about that because we lack the money to replace each of our computers with a comparable Mac + Parallels + retail Windows. This in turn means that application developers cannot assume that their prospective customers will have already purchased a Mac + Parallels + retail Windows. So instead, to target those who have not yet bought a Mac + Parallels + retail Windows, they develop web apps.
Besides, if you are using a computer owned by someone else in your household, you have to wait for the computer's administrator to become available in order to elevate and install the app. With a web app, you can just launch it in your browser.
Does ABP turn Craigslist into a blank page? That site is 100 percent ads apart from its help pages.
Even the video ads don't bother me so much because I don't browse with sound.
They'll bother you once you get your Internet bill and see an increase in the monthly data volume because advertisers are pushing 720p ads at you even though your browser window (or even your device's screen) is smaller than 720p.
Put up a paywall - subscribers only.
Say you open a search engine, and you find ten pages, one on each of ten different web sites. But each web site wants $20 for a year's subscription. I don't think most people are willing to buy a year's subscription just for one article from each of these sites.
Increased interest in micro-payment options.
I'm not sure how pay-per-page will work as long as credit cards still have a swipe fee on the order of 33 cents plus 3.3%. And I'm not sure how Bitcoin is a viable alternative when it still has a fee of 0.0001 BTC (currently 4.3 cents) per transaction to discourage dust spam.
What used to buy you a few GB hosting traffic per month, may now by you 1000x that amount.
And what used to buy you ten articles' worth of writing now buys you five.
Plain image ads (hosted on your own site not 3rd party-provided)
How would that work? If a site hosts its own ads rather than entrusting that to an ad network, how will its advertisers trust that they're being fed accurate view and click statistics and not a line of bull$#!+?
If I want to use an application, I want to use a real desktop application!
How are you going to do that if the desktop application that you want to use happens not to be ported to the operating system that runs on your device? The advantage of web applications is that one application can run on a Windows PC running Edge, a Mac or iPad running Safari, an GNU/Linux PC running Firefox, an Android tablet running Chrome, or even a PlayStation or Nintendo device running NetFront. Good luck even becoming an authorized developer on all those platforms, let alone porting your app and getting it approved on all of them.
TL;DR: Good luck running a Mac .app on a Windows or Linux PC.
Incidentally, do they count Lubuntu/Xubuntu/Kubuntu in the list?
If they're counting Ubuntu Server, then they're probably counting all Ubuntu-branded distributions.
"Criticizing our President [...] may constitute an act of treason"
That's technically correct in that there may exist extreme scenarios where criticism rises to the level of "levying war against [the United States], or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort" (U.S. Const. III.3; 18 U.S.C. 2381). But the First Amendment has been interpreted to state that these are few and far between, and questioning the motivations of the Nobel committee is highly unlikely to be among them.
Would McCain's boots on the ground have necessarily been more destructive than Obama's Game of Drones?
If the server was compromised for example, you'd get right place, wrong file.
The same would be true if the build server was compromised.
In addition, for developers not quite as big as Google, one TLS certificate to obtain and keep renewed every year is cheaper in both time and CA fees than one TLS certificate for the website every year and one code signing certificate per platform per year. Or is there a counterpart to StartSSL or Let's Encrypt for code signing yet?
Because the prize for economics is not technically a Nobel prize; it's the Bank of Sweden's prize in memory of Nobel. Or because the Nobel committee has shown itself willing to award prizes based on promises rather than actions, as in 2009 when it awarded the prize for peace to newly elected US President Barack Obama.
Perhaps the phone got the app through the carrier's preload list, through some public Wi-Fi hotspot, or through a small download on pay-per-GB terms.