[fauigerzigerk]

>The basic issue is that, say, 8 year old hardware is still pretty functional in a lot of cases but that’s probably near the support limit of even fairly long-term OS and app support

I's partly a consequence of forcing people to install so much software on these devices in the first place. Netflix is absolutely fine in the browser, as are 90% of all other apps. No need to create dependencies on a local OS, its oppressive rules and update cycles.

I get the advantages of native apps on PC and Mac, especially open source apps, because it really gives you more control over the software you run. But on mobile, especially on iOS, you have no control anyway.

[pohl]

Re: “consequence of forcing people”, who is doing the “forcing” in your scenario and how is that force applied?

[fauigerzigerk]

Netflix is doing the forcing. Banks are doing the forcing. There are many app categories with very little reason to exist at all, or at least not for creating dependencies on the latest client APIs.

Edit:

And it's not just that these apps are useless. In some cases they are inferior to the web app.

E.g., the Netflix iPad app can't seem to remember where I left off. It misses entire episodes. And every evening when I try to resume watching, I'm getting an error message because the old network connection is broken. Everything that's good about Netflix happens on the server. The app is just a dumb terminal and it can't even serve that purpose properly.