Instead of building fast native application delivery and sandboxing we're taking the longer way around and reinventing OSes inside a document (!) browser.
Blame the OS vendors. There's no money in making an OS secure enough to run arbitrary portable code from a decentralized marketplace in a sandbox. All the money is in monopolizing app distribution, forcing use of their proprietary SDKs and APIs, and deleting any app they feel like "for your protection" (and also some other reasons but don't mind those...).
Blame web developers. There's no money in making web pages simple enough to be delivered to the client as fully functional hypertext without running arbitrary code. All the money is in stalking users across the app, forcing them to watch ads and navigate paywalls, and denying service to any ad blocker they feel like "for their survival" (and also some other reasons).
Oh, come on. Don't pretend like there are zero web apps with useful functionality. Or would you prefer Google Maps shut down and we all go back to Yahoo Maps where we click an arrow button that reloads the entire page with a new map tile displayed?
Oh yes. Not the slightest hyperbole. That would be amazing.
What we have now really is a tragedy of the commons situation.
edit: Google maps (or equivalent) is a true game-changer that has a lot of value and one of the very few websites with actual value from javascript. But, we could just use Google Earth as a separate application for it. Just as we did in the early days when google maps on the web was a poor fit.
But Google Earth was a terrible app with inconsistent UI! To my mind it’s one of the posterchildren of why making crossplatform native apps often ends up a total mess.
I feel like when everyone says “this should be a native app” their imagined app is absolutely flawless and integrates seamlessly on every OS. But reality has rarely matched that ideal.
Let’s take Google Docs as an example. A word processor where you can collaboratively edit a file with someone simply by sharing a link, without requiring anyone to install an application. How do you do this without the web and JavaScript?
This is a total non sequitur in the context of the question implied by the top level comment, which is about why native app platforms haven't fixed some crucial issues that the web solved a long time ago.
Another way of looking at it is that we're inventing an app sandbox at the web browser level.
I'm not a huge fan of a lot of web apps either but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of introspection on the part of native app proponents. They're faster, they consume less memory, yet overwhelmingly people choose to make apps using web technologies. Why isn't anyone interested in exploring why native failed to offer what these people wanted?
Because many developers don't care about the user and UX.
They care only about themselves
It's easier for them to develop and easier to put trackers inside to monetize their work.
Bloated pages, crappy performance, battery draining? Who cares.
> I wish, most of the time web apps are either optimized for mobile phone, tablet or desktop not all three of them.
This. I'm fed-up of "mobile first". I know why it's done, more website hits are from phones than desktop/laptop systems. But "first" is supposed to mean that something comes after; an awful lot of projects aren't "mobile first", they're simply designed for mobile.
I hate smartphones. I can't use them. I can't read the screen properly, and my fingers all turn to thumbs when I try to interact with them. I own one, so that I can call a taxi when I'm out, and so I can receive SMS messages. And some government services require a mobile number. But I have no data plan, and my smartphone normally just sits on my desk.
Just wanted to call out point 4 — native apps can absolutely change without your knowledge and execute malicious code as well. And the potential risk is higher for native apps (on desktop, at least) — the browser sandbox is another advantage of web apps!
I don’t think this qualifies as introspection. You’re genuinely saying the only reason no one makes cross platform native apps is because the developers are lazy? You can’t think of anything else that turns people away?
There is no real cross platform, either the apps are native and take advantage of all the benefits or they are cross-platform and only represent what is possible on all systems, usually with poor performance and more space consumption.
For years I've been hearing about better frameworks and better tools for web development, but then when I open a website on the go, there are very often issues with rendering ot performance not to mention that a simple website consumes a large portion of my data bandwidth.
This also happens with native apps but more often with web apps.
> Why isn't anyone interested in exploring why native failed to offer what these people wanted?
I haven't looked into this in detail, but I did started out programming in QBasic, used Delphi for over 20 years on Windows, and done cross-platform (all three) with WxWidgets and Qt, and I have given this some idle thought over the last few years.
I'm sure the truth is multi-faceted, but I feel it's primarily a combination of smartphones, lack of good cross-platform UI toolkits with low barrier to entry and the rise of SaaS.
Existing programs were not a good fit for smartphones. You couldn't easily take your existing C++ product and just recompile it. Simultaneously, smartphones required drastically simpler UIs, simple enough that a web page could be sufficient.
While cross-platform applications were possible with toolkits like WxWidgets and Qt, for most non-trivial programs you'd still end up with a ton of special cases needing handling. In one project we had one developer tweaking the OSX build, changing fonts and layouts to make it look and behave "proper" on that platform. It was better with Qt, but not perfect.
Also, these toolkits require a lot of ceremony to get going. Making a basic web page and adding some rudimentary javascript is quite easy, it's interactive and it's visual, which is great for learning. It's way more exciting to program something visual than mess around on a command prompt. I know many who became programmers through this route, people who otherwise hadn't thought about becoming programmers. Many of these have not moved much beyond the frontend.
Most people though don't really want to deal with computers. They want to use them, but not have to mess with them. Figuring out how to install and maintain applications, keeping track of security updates and all that jazz. This goes for individuals as well as companies. Thus the rise of SaaS.
Now, where I currently work we provide a hybrid SaaS-ish model for a Win32 desktop application. Customers provide the metal or VM, and we install and maintain the server software and client applications. However most customers don't really want to host servers in-house, and for us it's a pain to deal with all the various IT departments and their peculiarities. So both want to move to a proper SaaS, where the servers are hosted by us. Customers also want to be able to use Mac's.
This means we need a proper frontend/backend split regardless. No more direct connection to the database server. With that in mind, if you have a not-too-complex application, maybe a web page frontend is easier for both developer and user?
Now for our case, we have a complex CRUD application, so it's not so clear-cut. But if you have a relatively simple application with a handful of controls, then the choice seems to be much easier to me.