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Rather than provide an academic argument as to why HTML5 apps are as good as native, it would be better to provide great examples of where it has worked. Even Steve Jobs originally thought web apps were all you needed but he was eventually convinced otherwise.

In short, how about some proof by example? Lots of examples...

I've always wondered why the App Store was a web app. It seems really out of place considering its job is to distribute native apps.

On the other hand it has probably been the driving force to make mobile safari better.

Probably so that they can make iterations on its design without requiring people to download new software updates - a huge attraction of web apps.

I guess my question then is, why does that hold more true for the App Store than for any of their other native apps?

Their other built-in apps don't involve as much marketing efforts inside them and don't drive post-purchase sales.

I guess there is Newsreader or whatever but I haven't used it and can't comment on it.

Because the iTunes platform is written in Java with a legacy web framework called WebObjects. Also the iTunes business unity has more characteristics in common with Amazon than Apple itself. That's why we're stuck with a thin client for the AS.

> There is no question that native apps provide better UI's

This is was me talking about mobile. Then I went on to explain why. So I don't think I need to provide any examples there.

As for HTML5 on the desktop you can peruse the Chrome Web Store to find some good stuff. iCloud.com is actually an excellent example of HTML5 done right (for the most part).

Your html5 done right example fails to work on all three browsers on my phone (opera,firefox,native). Quite a performance...

> HTML5 on the desktop

I wasn't talking about mobile.

Try iCloud.com on Mac Safari, it's quite nice. Not sure what browsers Apple is targeting for this.

My assumption is that the 5 major desktop browsers can host web apps of this quality if the app developer chooses to target them. Hopefully as time passes the "chooses to target them" part won't be an issue if standards-compliance is a norm.

As you may know, iCloud is written in SproutCore. If you compare the development process and programmer productivity of SC with let's say Cocoa, you'll see SC can't get near Cocoa in these aspects. It's a mess.

One fairly obvious example would be that facebook still have twice as many users on their web app as their native

Oh great knower of things, inform us as to how terrible chrome mobile is

Most of the artifacts in Chrome Mobile stem from the fact that the latest stable version branches from Chrome 18 at which point the chrome compositor was in somewhat of a disastrous state (things are somewhat better in Chrome 20 and up). Chrome attempted/attempts to support transforms regardless of the underlying engine (be it OpenGL ES 2.0 or skia) and as result of this ended up implementing a lot of things that would be handled by OpenGL ES natively within Chrome itself, like backface culling, clipping, layer sorting, etc. Unfortunately, most of this math was wrong and as a result many things that use css3d transforms are a flickering disaster. Instead, I think they should have interfaced entirely through OpenGL ES and let a software implementation simulate it in the case of GPU-less hardware (which I think they've actually licensed and are already deploying in some later versions).

If you look at Safari, on the other hand, the only real major issue with 3d transforms is hit detection can sometimes be wonky, but this isn't something that OpenGL makes particularly easy anyway.

The ironic thing is that the stock Android browser is actually much better than Mobile Chrome, likely because it was written directly on top of OpenGL ES 2 from the start, whereas mobile chrome was actually a full port from the desktop. I haven't read much of the Android browser code though, so this is largely speculation.

That was far more insightful than I expected, thanks. Here's to hoping that chrome mobile gets to v19 and greater asap.

Facebook's API is out there. If "they built a terrible iOS app and blamed the technology", how come no one has come up with snappy fast HTML5 client against their API?

There are not many third-party clients for Facebook (mobile or otherwise) because Facebook's public API has several limitations that make creating and supporting such an application difficult. For example, users can change their privacy settings so that some or all of their information is inaccessible to the API.

What's the business plan there? Make an app that becomes the default way to access facebook on mobile? Show ads?

Facebook decides it wants in on the action and cuts you off a la twitter...

They have: m.facebook.com

It might not be entirely 'snappy', but it's a hell of a lot better than the installed app version. I laugh every time I go to the website and it suggests I install their app on the login page.

[1] Anyone who brings up mobile Chrome will get a mouthful about why that's terrible as well.

Personally I prefer stock browser over Chrome because I find it faster and more responsive. That said: I'll bite.

What's so horrible with Chrome on Android? And I say that as someone who is interested in learning, not someone debating the correctness of your claim.