Am I the only one exhausted by "apps"? I've gone as far as to limit myself to only two pages worth on my phone, without folders. I feel like most apps could just be the mobile/responsive versions of the existing site. Maintaining separate interfaces always leads to inconsistencies.
If Apple supported the latest standards in mobile Safari, you could write web apps that work offline and have push notifications like on Android. That's not in Apple's interest though.
Serious question, why do we need apps that work offline? Finding it hard to imagine what you can do on a computer theses days without an internet connection, besides maybe an old single player game devoid of any patches.
It's not so much that you can use it offline (though that's one benefit) but rather that it caches your assets so if there's very, very slow connection you can still use and read content. If it's something that requires the Internet to work, it can show a "no connection available" message but it still load, similar to a native app.
The goal is to avoid the "white screen of death" you get when a web app won't load.
Travel. I can still look at my ToDos, email, note, saved stories (Instapaper) on a plane thanks to offline apps. I can use it as a clock/alarm/calendar while in another country. My phone can even be used as a GPS when offline thanks to apps like GPS Nav that allow navigation using saved map data.
Always-online is a luxury of spending all your time in certain parts of the world. Baking that assumption into all apps diminishes their utility greatly.
Native app vs web. There is always features missing from one or the other, and I'd much prefer one consistent interface at xyz.com no matter the device.
What web app? Do you think every app on app store has web version?
I prefer apps, always I do not want consistent, I want good and smooth.
Web apps sucked, suck, and will suck.
