Comments on: The Application Is Dead; Long Live the App

By: kelly thomas

kelly thomas — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 17:43:13 +0000

re> Small, single purpose applications…
re> “tiny programs that are really good at doing one thing”

Surely you are referring to “Desk Accessories” which before OSX were installed under the Apple Menu using the Font/DA Mover. Used the heck out of that calculator and I really miss KeyCaps.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:30:40 +0000

Apps are the wave to the future as todays web evolves to the LiveWeb. The edge of the future lies in event driven device apps performing late data binding through new generation browser apps. In order to do this Apple, google et al. the like, will have to open mobile browsers up allowing a first road in from the legacy application paradigm.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:59:54 +0000

NextStep…

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:46:46 +0000

Nope, I’m going the other direction. I’m using those general purpose apps as I always have. Big meta-apps brought together with a combination of Applescripts and QuiKeys to make them do things they can’t on their own. Apps such as Photoshop, Mail, Acrobat Pro, Filemaker Pro, Numbers or Excel, Pages or Word.

But custom apps were made possible with web apps and small inexpensive apps on the iPhone and now iPad. Nothing else compares to the OS X and iOS ecosystems for that kind of productivity and workflow. And with the bifurcated Android ecosystem, as well as the Xoom/Paybook ecosystems devoid of meaningful apps at this point, I don’t see iOS and OS X getting any real competition for years.

By: TWiT Commander

TWiT Commander — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:40:56 +0000

If these “Apps” are tiny programs that are really good at doing one thing, and they can do only that one thing, may be we should call them “widgets” instead of “apps”.

By: Jatin

Jatin — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 05:11:20 +0000

Great Article, Long Live App.

By: ronald

ronald — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 19:47:08 +0000

The state of Android development as exemplified in talks at last years IO, from the outside looking in.
First a talk about ListView[1], then a talk about UI patterns[2]. In which the presenter mentions, don’t use my examples with ListView. I attended the talk earlier and apparently I use it wrong and I’m not a GUI designer.
It’s not about who had it first, it’s about who made it useful.
I hear through the grapevines that Apple is working on an implementation of context. My guess is. Before they have it fully fleshed out it will be 2 full OS generations (3-4 years), will Google come out afterward and claim, but we could have done the same thing.

BTW: I work on an Android implementation of “something”.

1. http://developer.android.com/videos/index.html#v=wDBM6wVEO70
2. http://developer.android.com/videos/index.html#v=M1ZBjlCRfz0

By: Ted

Ted — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 11:30:03 +0000

Roz has it right. For 10 years Cocoa has made it very easy for a single developer to build an application of extremely high quality in a comparatively short time. This is the power of Cocoa. However, independent developers always have a tough time getting noticed and the infrastructure of providing serial number generation/collection, and credit card processing has proven time consuming. The App Stores take those issues off the table for indie’s (for a nominal 30% cut of your app), and so far, the developers seem to love it.

By: dissidently

dissidently — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 04:25:11 +0000

I’m with roz above. The appstores revolution is that it makes making small, lightweight app purchasing transactions commercially viable. There weren’t before. Hence the BIG software. It justified the effort required by everyone involved, even if many users only used a tenth or less of its features.

Take Microsoft Word for example. It used to be where I wrote everything.
Then Scrivener became my “goto” writing software, with a tenth of the functionality of Word.
Now I’m using Essay on iOS most of the time, with a tenth of the functionality of Scrivener.
I feed what I do back up through Scrivener and then to Word and ultimately to Indesign as it reaches various stages of completion.

I don’t need Scrivener until I’m organising. I don’t need Word until I’m formatting, and I don’t need Indesign until I’m publishing. Essay on iOS, is JUST words. And it’s because of the appstore that it exists. Not because of google. Or twitter.

By: roz

roz — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 03:07:12 +0000

People have been calling Applications, Apps, for a long time. I don’t think we are seeing the death of the Application. Photoshop and Word still have a job to do. What we are seeing is that the economics of releasing a simple, single purpose app have changed. They are now viable. People used to write small, simple apps for the Mac, they just could not make much money doing it. First there was the problem of discovery, then finding a method to collect payment, then the trouble with installation and updating. All of those hurdles limited the market for small simple software. The appstores change this by removing a lot of these hurdles. Now you can find and buy small apps that are make money for developers – and those apps take their place along side the big apps suites that have dominated for so long.