There is no room for mobile apps in our future.

Welcome to the iCover blog! Perhaps in the near future we will no longer need to install applications — with Google and, more surprisingly, with the help of Apple.

Remember the slogan “There's an App for That”? He has literally defined the vector of development of the mobile world since 2008. Of course, then the applications seemed the only right direction. Like mushrooms after the rain, there were ways to develop applications in a couple of weeks; products began to run commercials on their new applications; Hell, even our family restaurant around the corner got its own menu app.
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With the advent of the App Store in 2008, Apple was the first to popularize the idea of ​​beautifully packaged, easily downloadable applications on the phone. However, this concept of centralized software delivery is not really new. Many portable and desktop devices already had their own app stores built in the years before Apple’s App Store debut. The reason Apple managed to repeat their success, in retrospect, is a good combination of time and technology. By 2008, the iOS (then “iPhone OS”) platform was able to offer access to the 3G network, a well-documented development environment, beautiful graphics, and most importantly, support from the technology giant. There was a reason to create mobile applications. They were the most efficient way to deliver the latest content and services, with proper convenience and performance.

People by and large do not care how it all works, they just want to throw birds at pigs and sit on social networks. The ability to download and run cool apps was a winning feature of the iPhone for a very short time. Android soon followed suit, then smartphones became cheaper; networks have become faster; computational power has increased significantly; applications flourished.

“So what's the problem then?”

In fact, there is no problem. But we can do better! You ask: “ What, is there a way to improve my favorite application that allows me to feed and play virtually with cute kittens? ” Answer: “ Yes .” The fact is that mobile applications have become a good format because of the right combination of fast networking and powerful portable processors. Technology has since progressed much further, and the world of applications has grown to enormous proportions. Among all the headaches that are plaguing the mobile market today, there are two of the most pressing ones: content delivery and availability.

Delivery and availability

Every person with a smartphone once experienced it at some point: " Wow, this restaurant or store offers a 20% discount! ... oh, but only if you have their app " or " Wait, I have to download the whole app in order to just see what my friend wrote to me? "(hi, Facebook Messenger!); or " You probably heard from friends or saw an advertisement about this really cool application that will change your life, but is it worth buying to install, or even worse, then pay a subscription fee for using it? ".


This is a long way to a photo of fried potatoes ...

This problem can be divided into two components. Let's start with the first: shipping. The modern user has a short attention span and little patience. Payment and installation of an application that was once something magical, fast and new experience, is an act of commitment for many in our time. You won’t believe how many people need a convincing reason, and how terribly much effort you need to get them to try a new application. Just remember, you probably have one friend who still flatly refuses to download the Facebook Messenger app (seriously, just make him install it). Companies want easy delivery of content and services to customers as quickly and easily as possible, but the growing reluctance to install a new application becomes an obstacle and sabotage the whole process. Our home screens of smartphones become a battleground - all applications claim to be in the first place!

The second problem, the availability and openness of the content, is a bit more complicated, but it was well formulated by several IT journalists in the past. Many popular applications, such as Instagram and The Daily, began their careers as exclusively mobile applications that are available only within a certain closed platform. You had to download the application and register an Instagram account in order to see Instagram photos of your friends. I am sure that there are still a lot of such applications there, and we just pass by useful content that is not available for searching or viewing in our browser. Fragmented Internet, where creativity and original content are locked inside proprietary platforms, is not the Internet that we know and love.

The connection between applications and their indexing works, but very badly

Now that we understand the problem, let's look at the existing solutions. The phrase “app linking” may seem unfamiliar at first glance, but each time you click on a YouTube link in another application and the native YouTube application opens to play the video, this is the connection between the apps. Google, Apple and Facebook use various implemented versions of this technology. Communication between applications allows you to use exactly the application that best copes with the desired content. Well, that sounds great.

The other half of our existing solution is indexing applications. Google and Apple have provided ways for content providers and other third-party companies to show their own application content in a search query, which allows previously closed content to be visible in Google and iOS Spotlight.

That, too, is excellent in itself! At first glance, this solves our problems with delivery and availability. The user searches for something, the application displays its content in the search results, the user clicks on the link and receives the necessary information in the application.

You may have noticed problems here. What if the application does not support this indexing? Indexing applications requires a content provider, you need to make efforts to implement accessibility, so by default your content is not visible on the world wide web, as opposed to the majority of all web content. Until recently, in order for your application to be indexed by Google, developers had to build its mirror image - a web version. Just imagine these efforts. And from the consumer’s side, what if I don’t have the right application? What if I don’t want to install this application just to read the article? This list can be continued.



Remember the moment when you tried to check something, and instead you are redirected to the application page in the App Store or Google Play. Oh, it annoys you. And no, no one wants to suddenly install another one-time application.
I do not want to build a wall of applications on the screen at all. I want to consume and create content!
" Okay, then what to do? "
You just need to get rid of "applications." Let's see how this can be implemented.

Broadcast applications from Google

Google’s approach to delivery and accessibility relies on indexing applications and the relationship between them. If the developer makes an effort, users can see the desired content in Google search results. This is a great opportunity for Google to keep its search on the mobile market, which is increasingly dependent on the native content of the application instead of web search. But in countries such as China and India, where mobile phones are the first computers for millions of people and mobile content is the only major and important, the phrase “everything you are looking for in just one Google search from you” loses its magic.


A few months ago, Google showed impressive technologies that did not arouse much interest - application streaming (Google App Streaming). The name of this technology corresponds to the essence of its work; instead of installing applications in the usual way, after clicking on the link, Google will broadcast the necessary part of the application to you on demand. There is no need to install it, because you are already working in it. Perhaps this is just a pilot experiment by Google to develop their cloud platform, the idea of ​​streaming phone applications is not new. Moreover, this technology itself was purchased by Google from Agawi a few years ago. But if you properly combine the streaming and indexing of the application, you will remove both barriers to information previously locked in mobile applications.

"Resources on Demand" by Apple

While Google’s fantastic solution is still in an experimental stage, Apple is pushing its developers in roughly the same direction, but (which is typical for Apple), in a less explicit form or more workaround ways.
On-Demand Resources is a technology introduced with iOS 9, when only a small core of the application is loaded when it is first installed, and additional parts and content are loaded as needed. Currently, it is used mainly in games where the user loads resources (graphics, video, etc.) and only a few initial levels. iOS will load more levels on its own, as the user progresses and removes completed levels, to save space.



Much in common with Google's approach? Actually, no. However, if on-demand resources will become commonplace, and the supporting infrastructure will be quite flexible, you can imagine how Apple can take advantage of this, expanding the scope of this approach for a more general use case. In any case, this is a great tool that will potentially find its use in the form of applications that do not require “installation” in its usual form.

Undervalued web apps

While we are talking about Apple, I want to remind the presentation of the first iPhone from Steve Jobs. It is not difficult to remember that the very first iPhone was a closed platform without any environment for developers and without third-party applications. What solution did Steve offer? This is a web application.
Web applications do not require installation. They run in a (relatively) secure, closed browser environment. They are web-friendly - you can index them and search engines will find them. Oh, wait a minute, isn't that what we're aiming for today? It is difficult to answer unequivocally.



I'm still convinced that web applications were just a plan for switching to native applications, but even in this case (even if it was a coincidence), they themselves represented something more. If we had such powerful frameworks in 2008 as we have today, perhaps web applications would not have suffered such a fate. Do not hesitate to write about the fact that Jobs most likely assumed future problems of accessibility and application delivery, because the bet on web applications was an attempt to avoid this situation in the bud.

Future without applications

Many applications compete with other complex technologies that are used in web applications (React Native and others), but the gap between native and web applications is rapidly narrowing. Nevertheless, one of the decisive factors of differentiation is the visual differences between native and web applications, and the performance of web applications is still sorely lacking. The perfect solution still does not exist.

Besides all this, we really need a Solomonic solution for streaming video applications that will fundamentally solve the problems of delivery and availability of such content. We need something similar to Java applets in browsers, but for smartphones. Imagine the possibilities: regardless of the operating system or brand of the super smart phone in your pocket, you will be able to launch applications and view its contents - without discomfort and with the same performance as any native applications. As for developers, the benefits are obvious - you can write an application once and “broadcast” all types of devices and browsers.

Using streaming applications from Google and thanks to Apple’s decision to push developers to store some of their applications in the cloud, we may have started an irreversible way into that version of the future where “installation” will become an outdated concept and the border between “website” and “native” application "will be completely blurred. This is our future without applications. And that's great.

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