Apps schmapps … selling beyond reason
Cards on the table, I [personally] am not an Apple fan. That is not to say they haven’t had some amazing success with their iPhone/iPad products. The smart-phone market really needed that charismatic device to give it a boost and Apple seem to have achieved this very well.
Smart-phones are phones that try to provide much of the functionality your laptop or desktop does, but in a mobile footprint. With features such as emailing on the go, synchronising with your desk-bound computer’s contacts or playing games for time-suckage they were very definitely a niche market for power-users and geeky-types. They were never really easy to use, and industry politics fragmented the market just as much as they did with the browser wars of the 90’s. If you were a Microsoft user, you’d use Windows Mobile, if you were in Europe, you’d remain loyal to Nokia and if you were a business user, you’d use BlackBerry.
Apart from the trickiness in setting up their internet with your network provider, internet access was difficult. Browsing web-sites on mobile devices was not a very enjoyable experience. Web site developers didn’t think (or care) that people would access their site on a mobile device, with a 3inch screen, so didn’t put the thought into how their site should behave. What resulted is a mess for both the web-site and web-browser. The web-browser would try to accommodate the developer’s shortcomings and try to make sites work, often by mimicking a desktop browser interface. Zooming pages down, resizing pages, etc. were some of the techniques which, in my opinion, were wrongly used to fix what was essentially a problem of the web developer. In much the same way, Internet Explorer can often be a horrendous development experience because of the little “fixes” added to the browser to overcome deficiencies in the web-site mark-up.
Since the Apple iPhone, web-sites have started to do things how they should be done … properly. When developing a site, some consideration should be made for alternative platforms (mobile phone, tablet, projection, television) and sites are approaching this using one of two techniques:
- Developing their site according to web standards and mobile-aware stylesheets. Therefore, a mobile user sees the same site as a desktop user, but with an optimised layout. This is the preferred method.
- Developing a specific web-site for the mobile interface. This essentially doubles the work, but can result in a more optimised experience though confusion between two essentially different web URLs may result. This is a method employed by the BBC, Twitter and Facebook, all complex sites so reducing the “noise” (and therefore data charges).
The down-side of the Apple iPhone/iPad/i* model is the concept of the “app”. An App is an application that fulfils a discrete function, and tends to be small, cheap and easy to install for the user. Brilliant idea.
This is where I must be missing the point.
Apps are essentially proprietary. If you have an Apple device, you can only use apps on the Apple app-store. If you have an Android, you can’t access the apps on the Apple app-store, due only to the developer’s decision - which may be due to resource, device accessibility, preference or ability. The user suffers. A web-page (maybe an “HTML5 app“) is accessible by all.
Apps are difficult to update. If an app is released and a security hole is identified, or a bug found that requires urgent attention, it becomes difficult to “push” that update out to the users. The app becomes subject to the politics and workflow associated with its respective store. In the case of the Apple App store, updates are particularly difficult to deploy, even for minor fixes. Issuing a fix on a web-page is done exactly once and is visible to all instantly. Users suffer with bugs.
Apps require wider skill-sets. Developing apps requires a programmer able to access the development skills and resources of the target device. For Apple, it’s Objective-C, for Windows Phone, Silverlight and .NET, for Android it’s Java. These tools are essentially free, but for how long and how much did it cost to train up that programmer? Users suffer if the developer isn’t completely “clued-up”, businesses have to pay for same functionality many times.
Apps are political. The politics behind the respective app-store for the device will ultimately define your user experience, the delivery of your app and your ability to effectively support your users. Politics and the freedom app-stores create for developers range from the “open” Android store to the dictatorial Apple store. “Thou shalt not use any environment other than Objective-C” meaning iPhones can’t access Flash or Silverlight content. (Though Apple are not alone in this restriction.) Users suffer due to missing content. Income streams may be wiped out, overnight.
Many apps require internet access for functionality to be available, and there are many examples of this. The BBC iPhone/iPad app - isn’t that just sucking in an RSS feed? Facebook for iPhone - again, just using an internet data-source and rendering content? There is surely no need for these apps? Why isn’t a web-page sufficient, particularly as both sites have dedicated mobile sites. The only reason why I would imagine that they would need an “app” would be for offline access, a “cache content and look later” model - but HTML5 defines a standard for local file storage which is implemented on iPhone which would achieve this.
Perhaps the app offers an improved user experience using the native user-interface API, but that itself is not a strong enough reason. If the user is browsing using an iPhone, use an iPhone skinned CSS stylesheet, likewise for Windows Phone, etc. If it’s accessibility of the web-site that’s the issue, the phone OS should allow bookmarks of sites to become first-class citizens within the OS user experience. Windows Phone 7 does this excellently with pinnable “tiles” representing bookmarked sites on the Start screen. Thumbnails instantly identify the purpose of the site.
For me, the only reason an application should be developed is if the functionality is not available within a web browser. And that would be access to local resources or OS features. The Facebook for BlackBerry application integrates with the phone’s Contacts application to allow access to Facebook profiles, for example. This would clearly not be possible from within a web-browser but offers a seamless user experience. Facebook for Windows Phone 7 is similarly a first-class citizen within the phone itself, though not via an “app”.
So what explains this tendency for every site to reproduce identical functionality and content to the original web-site? I can only think that “sex sells”. The “there’s an App for that” model is seen to be sexy, cool and easy to use. Few companies are as guilty of over-marketing the banal and simple as Apple, and they have achieved it right here. They have developed an eco-system, a culture and a platform that stifles innovation, widens the gap between the developer and the user and acts anti-competitively towards key rivals. I remember another company getting its hands very publicly slapped for similar practices, but Microsoft just weren’t “sexy” enough.
