The issues are quite noticeable for someone that isn't heavily invested in web apps. Most of HN is - and that's why they prefer to ignore them.
But let's look at the market... Have web apps displaced desktop apps? No. Have they displaced mobile apps (as per HN mantra 90% of iPhone apps could be web apps)? Not even close.
Now why is this? It's because web apps offer a significantly poorer user experience across the board.
* with all the progress that's been made in performance, web apps are slower than native apps and will continue to be. There is only so much that you can offload from JS.
* web-apps don't have access to the platform's entire range of graphics capabilities, including standard widgets, animations and so on.
* web apps don't have access to special platform functionality such as GPS, sensors, camera, etc.
Furthermore, the biggest mobile players have all started to invest in native mobile apps to the detriment of web apps. Including Google. It's in their interest to lock-in users to their platform, even more so since Android became a major player.
These issues can be worked around eventually (maybe).
The core issues with web apps can't be worked around:
1. Web apps are using a text-transfer protocol with a pile of hacks on top to make it stateful. To this day engineers are still working on solving this problem (web sockets, web sql, etc). They can't solve it.
2. One does not own web apps, one merely rents them.
I think you're generally right that native apps are better than web apps. I have a few points to pick at, but don't take that as disagreement.
* web apps don't have access to special platform functionality such as GPS, sensors, camera, etc.*
Take a look at PhoneGap. This is definitely becoming less of an issue, and I wouldn't be surprised to see even more progress on it.
Including Google. It's in their interest to lock-in users to their platform, even more so since Android became a major player.
I can't speak for others, but Google's native apps are merely frontends to their web service. I regularly switch between the native and web versions of both GMail and Google Reader on my phone. There's slightly different feature sets (syncing/refreshing tends to be no issue on the web, but it's kind of weird on the native apps. The UI is better on the native apps. I can open links in background tabs for the web, but I have to switch apps for native, etc), but I could completely stop using the native apps with 0 issue.
Other than that, I strongly agree. I've never had to worry about my internet being slow or down to use a native app, and I know I can use them years later with no issue.
The fact that three people consider HN to be an application is nothing short of mind-boggling. I guess if this is the case, I've been doing webapps since before HN was even invented. We used to call them web sites back then though...
> 1. Web apps are using a text-transfer protocol with a pile of hacks on top to make it stateful. To this day engineers are still working on solving this problem (web sockets, web sql, etc). They can't solve it.
I am curious - why would the protocol need to be stateful? What are you trying to accomplish?
> 2. One does not own web apps, one merely rents them.
No. You can buy apps and host them on your own servers, on your own PCs.
But let's look at the market... Have web apps displaced desktop apps? No. Have they displaced mobile apps (as per HN mantra 90% of iPhone apps could be web apps)? Not even close.
Now why is this? It's because web apps offer a significantly poorer user experience across the board.
* with all the progress that's been made in performance, web apps are slower than native apps and will continue to be. There is only so much that you can offload from JS.
* web-apps don't have access to the platform's entire range of graphics capabilities, including standard widgets, animations and so on.
* web apps don't have access to special platform functionality such as GPS, sensors, camera, etc.
Furthermore, the biggest mobile players have all started to invest in native mobile apps to the detriment of web apps. Including Google. It's in their interest to lock-in users to their platform, even more so since Android became a major player.
These issues can be worked around eventually (maybe).
The core issues with web apps can't be worked around:
1. Web apps are using a text-transfer protocol with a pile of hacks on top to make it stateful. To this day engineers are still working on solving this problem (web sockets, web sql, etc). They can't solve it.
2. One does not own web apps, one merely rents them.