“We’ve been conditioned for web apps to suck.”

Rob Foster, on web apps vs. native apps:

There is no single explanation [for why web apps generally suck]. The reason browser apps lose this fight is because of a raft of small things. It’s death by a thousand cuts.

After sharing some of those ‘cuts’ in detail, Rob lets loose with his opinion:

When an organization is making the decision not to spend developer money on building native, what they’re saying to me is that they value development costs over customer experience. I believe to do it right, you should offer your app in the way people want to use it the most. That may mean doing it browser-only, but it usually doesn’t. A business will always benefit from giving their customers a great (or insanely great) experience.

I agree pretty thoroughly with Rob’s sentiments, and I’ll tackle this issue at Breaking Development Conference in July. However, given my remarks are titled “Pitfalls and Triumphs of the Cross-Screen Experience”, I’ll also tackle the issue of integrating native apps and web apps into a cohesive, delightful user experience. (Sneak peek here.)