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?

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.