Hacker Timesnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

That's what people were saying about PhoneGap three or four years ago when we considered using it at my job. The iPhone is DRASTICALLY faster now than the iPhone 5 (or so) was. Yet the same issues exist.

What was the old adage? "What Moore gives Gates takes away?" I'm sure that's part of it. As more and more processing power is available the OS start using more of it to do other things. So not all that's going to go to the application.

And then you have the bigger problem of lack of access to new functionality. When Apple or Google adds some new piece oh functionality it takes a while (possibly years) for it to appear for webpages. I'm going to take a wild guess and say Apple will never provide Metal to webpages. I would be pretty surprised to see Vulcan for webpages on any platform.

How about using other new things? What about 3D Touch on my iPhone? I'm guessing you're never going to have access to that. Things like PhoneGap may be able to try and work around that, but it still sort of a hack.

You'll always be behind. Waiting for access to the newest technology, the newer interface stuff, whatever optimizations get pushed into the web browser. For certain simple apps it may work fine but if you need any kind of performance or want to do anything especially interesting it's going to be a no go.

Fundamentally the web view suggest to make it easier to display certain kinds of content in your app. All of this is essentially a giant hack. It's never going to be a first class app platform.



I see your point - at the same time I don't quite agree.

The 'threshold' for web apps is closing in on regular apps.

80% of interactivity is pretty basic stuff. Very few apps leverage advanced features such as 3d touch.

I do agree that many apps might need that 'one thing' in order to be great ...

But most don't.

Yelp, Facebook, Twitter ... none of them really need 3d touch ... though maybe that feature will take root.




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: