[Discuss] 30% Apple

[ijstokes at hkl.hms.harvard.edu (Ian Stokes-Rees)]

On 8/11/11 9:41 AM, Ben Eisenbraun wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 10:48:46PM -0500, Ben Eisenbraun wrote:
>> As soon as I heard about Apple's 30% take and price-matched inside/outside
>> app purchases, I figured Amazon must have a roomful of coders trying to
>> build Kindle Reader as an HTML 5 web app.
> http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/10/amazon-releases-kindle-cloud-reader-web-app-sidesteps-app-store/
>
> No flies on Jeff Bezos.

Having just, unexpectedly, received an iPad, I've gone somewhat App
crazy and spent more on software in the past week than I have in 5 years
(in $0.99 increments).  It has made me painfully aware of how many apps
don't need to be a standalone app (especially the ones that really only
work with a network connection).  They can just be device-specific HTML
content with JS+CSS3+HTML5+LocalStorage.  I'm sure an advantage of the
"app" model is the device-locked nature.

Anyway, my prediction is that give it a year or two and everyone will
realize how painful it is to write a different app version for every
device and if they can manage it they will go for "responsive web
design" (http://ethanmarcotte.com/ and
http://www.abookapart.com/products/responsive-web-design), and you'll
access most of todays apps through the browser.

Cheers,

Ian

For my own interest, here is the list of apps I've downloaded (and
possibly paid for) that I think would be an easy transition to the
web-based model:

Facebook
MyPad
NYTimes
AP News
Cvore
SaiSuke
LinkedIn
FourSquare
TweetDeck
CitizensBank
XE
PayPal
Pandora
last.fm
Flickr
RTM
DoBot
eBay
Craigslist
Flickr
ABC Player