If you don't mind me asking, what exactly is at stake? It's not exactly a step into the future but it's not really a step back either, when you consider apps that access phone capabilities (notifications, for example). For me there's also this notion of apps being registered on my phone for specific actions (want to share a photo? Use the facebook app). There are also places where I don't have net access, so having offline apps can be useful.
In an ideal world almost all of this can be transformed into what I imagine FF OS is trying to accomplish... but until then I am not exactly thrilled about it, but apps are not the devil incarnate either. They're pretty much the status quo.
> If you don't mind me asking, what exactly is at stake?
Only the old-style Web, by design a public forum, accessible by everyone in the same way using standards-compliant browsers.
What we're seeing is a plan to convert a very efficient way to share information, but not an efficient way to make money, into something that favors the latter goal over the former.
> They're pretty much the status quo.
That may be, but not so long ago the Web was the status quo -- the free, public forum.
Remember when Tim Berners-Lee complained about the deleterious effect of nonstandard browser extensions? This trend is the ultimate nonstandard browser extension -- it eliminates the browser entirely.
I dont think the point is that apps are evil; the point is that they are inconvenient and unnecessary way to deliver text and images, if that's all they're designed to do. Interacting with the phone and notification capabilities of the OS is a solid use case for a client app; reading news articles is just not.
There's nothing preventing the implementation of sharing via a website (or posting to a URL) instead of an app. There's nothing preventing standard interactions with your phone to be delivered by checking an API instead of requiring an app. You can still use many websites in offline mode.
They are right, pushing for apps can a way to silo data and prevent you from using your phone as a general purpose device. How can you share from the app if they don't bring up the list of intents for you? Can you select which push notifications to receive for a given app or do you get all of them? Etc.
> prevent you from using your phone as a general purpose
> device
So some time ago you were able to use your phone as a general purpose device? Interesting, for me iPhone was the first phone that made web bearable on mobile.
But there's Apple's continued refusal to let us use the hardware in any way they don't like, and this push for apps instead of websites. It looks to me like one step forward, two steps back.
We finally have these tiny computers in our pockets. We should push hard to stop anything restricting it. For me that includes refusing to use an app that offers nothing over the website other than push notice advertising.
In an ideal world almost all of this can be transformed into what I imagine FF OS is trying to accomplish... but until then I am not exactly thrilled about it, but apps are not the devil incarnate either. They're pretty much the status quo.