App development : Quo vadis?

January 9, 2007.
Nobody had the vaguest idea how important that day will be. The way the world thinks about software and the way the world does software will be changed forever.

iPhone

From day one iPhone became a magnet for many programmers, but until mid-2008, when the App Store was launched, the only way to create apps for it was the web apps : special sites optimized to run in Mobile Safari.

This, and the fact that Flash was not running on the iPhone, had a decisive impact on the spread and the adoption of HTML5.

AppStore

Almost instantly after the App Store went live, most of the developers switched their apps from web to native: being in the App Store was equivalent with fame and fortune for many lucky developers.

However at that point the evolution of HTML5 was unstoppable. It continued to be adopted on all platforms and all browser makers.

It’s 2012. These are the hey-days. It feels like the whole world is making apps. Whatever you can think of, there is an app for that.

Status Quo

Today the trend is to create native apps. But this trend might change once the HTML5 support and performance reaches a certain trash hold.

I am suppose to start a app today, to invest time and money in it, what should I do? Should I go the iOS way or the HTML5 way?

The main difference is this:

• iOS offers superior performance. No need to design and test on an infinity of device types.
  
• HTML5 offers access to all the internet enabled gadgets in the world.
  We can use the skills we already have: HTML, CSS, JavaScript. No need to buy Macs for development, can do HTML5 development on any OS.

Tough choice.
I can see people arguing on this forever. I tend to bet on HTML5 because is cheaper but I can see problems with it already. Nothing is ever perfect.(The app must be present in the AppStore, no doubt about it, but web apps have PhoneGap for that.)

App not application

©Morton Lin(Creative Commons)

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone on January 9, 2007 nobody had the vaguest idea of how important that day will be. Whatever we chose, native or web, I know we’ll create an app not an application. It will be something simple and easy to use, fast, light and beautiful.

An app people will have fun with, an app that matters.