Dispatches From The Internets

Yup. And they’re even bricking phones sent to them for repair and charging customers (like me) to replace them.

Riffing on a post in ReCode and research done by Quartz, Slashdot asked its readership if apps are done. The comments are especially telling. My personal favorite is this gem:

Everything has an “app” … that is a sad rehash of their website. I don’t need access to a diluted version of your content SO BAD that I’m going to store an icon for it on my phone. Maybe if people started releasing apps that were AT LEAST as fully functional as their webpages (hopefully more) people would actually download them.

Long live the Web!

Reading Jeremy’s history with the Web, I noticed a lot of parallels with mine. I think a lot of us old timers made our way to the Web in a very similar fashion and it’s surprising how many of us made our way here through music.

This! An excellent interview with Ben Terrett:

Apps are “very expensive to produce, and they’re very very expensive to maintain because you have to keep updating them when there are software changes”

But…

Sites can adapt to any screen size, work on all devices, and are open to everyone to use regardless of their device. “If you believe in the open internet that will always win,” he says. And they’re much cheaper to maintain, he adds, because when an upgrade is required, only one platform needs recoding.

Share this with your boss and your boss’ boss.v

Excellent advice (as usual) from Jonathan Snook. Although, based on the project—such as a limited-scope site with a tight size limit—you may want to define almost everything as base styles. As with everything on the Web, it depends.

Parker looks like an interesting tool for general information about your CSS, but you should take its reporting with a grain of salt.

An excellent post from Ada Rose Edwards on Progressive Web Apps. She’s brings up some very real concerns, many of which I share:

• The basis for what Chrome defines as a Web App is based upon a set of technology rather than a set of features.
• We need to consider carefully before we throw away URLs or the entire browser chrome in an effort to look like and behave like platform-specific apps.
• The install banner is the browser manufacturers’ choice; it’s not a spec.

Moving in this direction poses a lot of problems for terrestrial data. It could also increase the digital divide.

Ratcheting prices up further will only increase the digital divide, but the difference won’t just be between those who have Internet access and those who don’t. The cost of data limits could also divide the population between those who can take full advantage of high-bandwidth applications like streaming and video conferencing, and those who have to curb their usage for fear of incurring overage charges.