Re:Tablets are waiting for their Movable Type
by quanticle on Monday November 26, 2012 @09:43PM
(#4835340)
Tablets already have their Movable Type. It's called... Movable Type. I understand that the current fad is to go back to native, from HTML5, but for very content-centric app (i.e. one designed to make text easy to read), it makes sense to write it as a webapp. You're not transferring massive amounts of data. You're not dealing with the same level of interactivity requirements as, say, a game. Your job is to display text in a clear, easy-to-read fashion. I think this is something that mobile browsers can already do quite well. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel with a native app, when we can build on Movable Type (or some other blogging platform) to make it more mobile friendly.
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Re:Tablets are waiting for their Movable Type
by Adaptive on Monday November 26, 2012 @10:39PM
(#4835492)
I agree with this in almost every regard. I really don't like the drift towards sandboxed apps where HTML will do just as (or more) nicely.
But: money.
Solve subscriptions. This is what the apps do. Adobe DPS, which I mention below, is so totally geared to creating paid subscription content.
The Readability fiasco was unfortunate since I'd like to see other non-ad based approaches to paying open content publishers/creators. Unfortunately, no one on the vested interest side of the fence (including Apple) has any real motivation to solve for this.
Re:Tablets are waiting for their Movable Type
by quanticle on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @04:20AM
(#4836353)
I don't see how apps solve subscription any more than a (paid-access) website. In fact, thanks to Apple's draconian 30% cut of all in-app purchases, it can be argued that apps are worse, when it comes to subscriptions. At least when you're serving content through the browser you're not automatically losing 30% of your revenue.
Re:Tablets are waiting for their Movable Type
by nc on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @06:02AM
(#4836605)
1 tap (or 2) purchasing and lots of accounts with credit cards attached
Re:Tablets are waiting for their Movable Type
by bonaldi on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @04:09AM
(#4836324)
The job is not just "display text", it is to match the UX of the other newsstand apps:
+ Background Updating
+ Push Notifications
+ Works offline, always
+ Doesn't go down when your server does
+ Subscriptions without a credit card.
I think all of these are something that mobile browsers can't do at all.