Do not install or develop mobile apps unless you have to
If you are thinking about installing another mobile app on your smartphone, or thinking about developing a mobile app, I have a simple recommendation: Don’t do it unless you must do it to get the capability you want. In many cases, using or developing just a web application is the better choice.
First, if you install a mobile application, that mobile application often has a lot of access to information that you probably don’t want it to have. What’s more, many of the organizations developing mobile apps have a business model that involves subtly getting as much personal data about you as possible, and selling that to others. Smartphone operating systems have security mechanisms that try to reduce the impact of these problems, by providing some control over what the application can access, and that’s a good thing. However, it’s hard to stem the tide because smartphone operating systems do have direct access to a lot of data about you. Smartphone operating systems have direct access to your location, fixed personal identifiers like your cell phone number, and often have direct access to information such as your list of contacts. There are cases where it needs to be shared, so in the name of “making things easy” these mobile applications often end up with far more privileges than they should have.
In contrast, web browsers have long had to counter web applications that try to extract data from you. They certainly do not prevent all problems, but they are designed so that they do not give away location, cell phone numbers, or your contact list so easily. Many services are perfectly workable through web browsers instead of web applications, at least for typical uses. This includes sites such as Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. In addition, once you do not install those apps, you will have room for applications that really do need to be a mobile app… and thus will not need to upgrade your smartphone as often.
And if you’re thinking about developing a mobile app: Don’t do it, at least without seeing if there’s a viable alternative. For many situations, creating mobile applications is a huge waste of money. The United Kingdom essentially banned the development of mobile applications, noting that mobile applications 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.” A related problem is that if you develop mobile apps you typically have to write at least three versions of the software: an iOS mobile app, an Android mobile app, and a web application so people can use large screens. If you’re a commercial organization, a mobile application can not only be costly to develop (in part because you will have to develop the application multiple times), but in practice you’ll have to pay a large cut of your revenue to Google and Apple (typically 15% of your revenue). Are you really sure you want to spend or lose that much money?
What’s more, web applications can increasingly be used instead of mobile/native applications, even in cases where it was impossible at one time. I should first note that I’m using an expansive definition of “web application” here - I just mean anything you can access using a web browser. Historically, the main reason you needed to create a mobile or native application was because you needed the application to work offline. However, service workers now make it practical to create many offline applications and are widely available. Internet Explorer (IE) is the only major browser that does not support service workers, but people who have IE can easily use or install a modern web browser instead (such as Firefox, Chrome, or Edge). There are other ways to develop offline web applications too. Another reason to create mobile or native applications was speed, but recent JavaScript optimization work has made web applications much faster. In addition, WebAssembly makes it possible to create some applications that run far faster and is supported by Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. When developing web applications to handle all devices you need to use responsive web design, but that is already good practice and widely supported. Since April 2015 Google’s search engine has penalized web sites that are not mobile-friendly; this really is not anything new. Users can easily bookmark your web application to get there later, too.
There are many advantages of just developing a web application. There are a huge number of tools already developed to help you develop web applications, for one thing. Many of those tools are open source software and no-cost. A large number of people already know how to develop web applications, too. Perhaps most importantly, web applications are standards-based; you are not locked into any one organization’s ecosystem.
Most obviously: If you are already going to develop a web application, maybe you don’t need to write two more versions of the same software and try to maintain them too. There are tools that let you try to write software that ports between iOS and Android, but software you do not need to write at all is the easiest to maintain.
Do you need to create a vanity mobile app for your conference so that attendees can see what talks are where? Often the answer is no. Do you need a mobile app so that people can fill in a simple form (such as for government services)? Again, the answer is often no.
Of course, there are perfectly valid reasons to create a mobile application (or other kind of native application) for end-users, and that means there are good reasons to install a mobile app. Some applications require access to specialized device services that are not accessible from a web browser, or have speed requirements beyond what a web browser can currently provide. In addition, some apps are older and are not likely to be rewritten. But today I find that many people are not thinking about the alternatives, and ignoring alternatives is a mistake. Before installing or creating (multiple) mobile applications, ask yourself, do I need to?. If you don’t need to do that, and can use or create a web application instead, you might be able to save yourself a lot of trouble.
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