The AndPlus Blog

In 1994, the first smartphones became must-have devices and changed the way we do everything. It’s reasonably safe to say the mobile platform is here to stay.

From the “It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again” Department

Previously in this space, we discussed the relative merits of web applications in comparison with native apps for desktop platforms, such as Windows and Mac. Today we examine the question: Are there similar advantages and disadvantages with regard to native mobile apps?

Consider the lowly umbrella: A mundane object, often cheaply made and inexpensively acquired, and with a singular habit of failing to do the job it was designed for. In anything but a light rain that falls straight down, an umbrella—even one of those big golf umbrellas—will keep very little of you dry. And if you’re sharing it with someone, forget it. As the Police sang many years ago, “It’s a big enough umbrella, but it’s always me that ends up getting wet.” It’s a wonder anyone uses the dadgum things at all.

The grand vision for human-computer interaction in recent years has been mobility: Users with lightweight, low-power “dumb terminals” communicating with cloud services via ubiquitous and speedy wireless connections to perform every computing task imaginable, from email and web surfing to more computationally intensive tasks such as video editing and big-data analytics. All of this, of course, would be courtesy of the cloud; there would no longer be any need, outside of perhaps gaming, for laptops and desktops with super-powerful, multicore processors.

Think, for a moment, about the dashboard in the vehicle you drive. Whether your vehicle is a 1973 AMC Gremlin, a yacht, or a Boeing 747, the characteristics are the same. They all provide:

• Instant, visual indications of the most important operational parameters of the vehicle.
• Visual and/or audible indications of abnormal conditions.
• Controls for certain important functions.
• Indications that are arranged to be seen all at once.

Remember when “surfing the web” was a thing? The very phrase seems as antiquated as the dial-up modems we used for that purpose. Once the novelty of the World Wide Web wore off, we as a society spent less time following random links and started more purpose-driven Internet activities, such as shopping for books, buying airline tickets, and meeting people in “chat rooms.”