Nowadays lots of apps are simply web apps written in javascript, some advantages are:

  • easy to install, just open the url in a browser
  • looks good
  • always latest version

Some drawbacks are:

  • closed source
  • inefficient, they use a lot of resources
  • data is not local, in general it is saved online
  • updates in the user interface just happen, there is no way to keep a specific user interface

Today I was looking for Automatic replies in Office365, I didn't find it easily since the UI changed since January the last time I used Office365.

I prefer native apps because:

  • users have more control (the user decides when to update)
  • they are efficient and can process a lot of data
  • they use little resources
  • the data is local, I can search my mail in mutt or thunderbird faster than in gmail
  • always available since they are installed locally

Gmail was not working for about 1 hour last week because some google authentication service had problems.

hashtags: #apps