I’m Not Sure What There Is to Sigh About

John Allsopp:

I’ve long since pointed out the logical fallacy of the assertion of CocoaTouch apps having the best looking UI. All you need to demonstrate the fallacy of the assertion is to point to a single web tech based app that is better looking than a single CocoaTouch App — which is not even worth attempting it is so obviously true.

I certainly never said that. My piece yesterday certainly argued in broad strokes, but the broad strokes are true. Good native iOS (and Android, and WebOS) apps look better and offer a better experience than good mobile web apps. Of course there are excellent mobile web apps, and of course there are crummy native mobile apps. There are also many situations where making a mobile web app instead of a platform-native app is the right way to go. No one is arguing otherwise.

While we typically associate latency in applications with network performance, I’m guessing Gruber is referring to responsiveness to user input. Is this a huge concern for app developers? Not that I’m particularly aware of.

Every good iOS developer I know of is obsessed with user input touch responsiveness and animation frame rates.

★ Wednesday, 15 June 2011