zlacker

>>bertma+(OP)
I don't think Google has handled Android particularly well, but you have to be on some 1990s Netscape kool-aid to think that the web is or should be "the primary way for users to experience computing". Computing is just one kind of online service, and despite decades of effort to attempt to force-fit all applications into a browser, sometimes just a damn program that runs natively on the CPU is a much better fit for the task. Computing through the use of such programs is not a bad thing. Providing a central distribution point for such programs is not a bad thing—Linux distros do it all the time. Some of the fuckery-duckery Google has tried to pull with Android should be criticized, but it's not as cut and dry as "the web is open, everything else is proprietary vendor lock".

>>bitwiz+N2
Most applications are forms and slow moving visualizations. Consider banking - banking is very complicated. It's just forms and slow moving visualizations. It can, and should, be on the web.

Also, most native apps are just web views anyway.

>>array_+QU1
Banking is one kind of app where additional security constraints make a mobile app experience more convenient than a web app. Yes, you can do security stuff in a web app, no it isn't as seemless or nice as a mobile app. Everything else, sure, but anything that requires higher stakes authentication (beyond just buying things) I'm ok with it being a mobile app.