Not long after I made this post, hacker news posted an expirement by http://whitherapps.com/ that is remaking the BBC news app in HTML5. Looks like he is making some headway. This is just an experiment to prove what is possible. Hopefully this catches on and we quit getting all of these os specific apps instead of websites.
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iOS apss are the new hotness right now. Every website needs an app to represent??? WTF? Wake up people. Apps have a place, it isn’t recreating the website for a single platform.
I understand how this came about. Three years ago when apple turned the smart phone world around, no one had a website designed for the new touch interface. iPhone didn’t have support for native apps yet and everyone scrambled to make web apps. It also didn’t have support for html5 and css3 with it’s awesomeness of hardware accelerated transitions. So it used javascript to animate on a weak processor. It was a little jerky and not nearly as fluid as a real app.
Apple released the app store in all it’s glory. Everyone jumped in, apps started to look smooth and fluid. Other’s jumped in just for recognition and cash that the app store can bring. A lot of these native apps are just a different interface to the website service they provide.
Now we have HTML5, CSS3 and hardware accelerated transitions. Mobile webkit is powerful. Google has proved to run gmail without internet in “airplane mode”. Yet we still create native apps for all of our websites. Why?
What we really need isn’t a native app. It’s an interface that is optimized for our interaction with it. In this case it’s our fat finger. We need an optimized interface for the screen size and the pointing device accuracy. Give me a tablet interface. Give me a touch optimized interface. Don’t make me download a new app. Mobile webkit is more than capable of delivering.
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Here is a scenario:
A project/job needs a bid. The employees of the company are asked to input their time estimate. They do, and it turns out that the job has a tighter budget than the time required at the normal rate. The boss then decides to lower the price to get the project. Now they can’t have it eating into their profits. What do they do? They make the employees work long hours (because you can legally require tech workers over a certain wage without paying overtime). This shifts the cost to the employees.
This is common in job shops, but it shouldn’t be. This isn’t a good business model. This isn’t sustainable.
Sure. You could say it’s better to take a hit in times of need. What about when the company exceeds it’s mark? I’m willing to bet these job shops aren’t profit sharing.
This needs to be a give and take situation. If all you do is take, then you’ll have a mutiny on your hands. Or more likely, a never ending revolving door of needy employees.
No one should accept these terms. Deferring Cost to the employee is not a good thing! Whether that cost be in labor or currency, it doesn’t matter. It’s still shifting cost.
Instead of making the employees eat the cost, the company should absorb the cost. It’s worth it just to break even temporarily so they can keep their good employees. Or have the employees work on it strictly in their downtime. Don’t make it a priority. Get creative, but don’t push your costs on the people working for you. That is the opposite reason they are there.
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