Killing the browser

With the advent of the iPhone and the iPad, richer applications will be needed to justify the need of these devices. Applications that make users desire them. 

In my opinion, the web we know will never match the expectations created by such devices. Web applications will always reach 80% of an application’s potential while people consuming these new generation devices  certainly will expect more. Way more.  

The web I envision is a web where we use the network to deliver tailored data to our special application; where we really care about the users; and specially a web where we have no web browsers. 

Yes. No browsers, at least the way we use them today. They are basically time sinks. People spend more time searching in the Internet instead of actually doing. The browser is an attempt to provide a generic solution for really specific problems.

Think a bit about it. How many desktop and mobile Twitter clients do we have nowadays? If the web is so good, why people bother building such applications, and other people buy them?

For example, the Twitter for iPad is a billion times better than Twitter’s website, even if compared with the new website version. The way you use it feels much more natural and interactive, and all the information is contained and available within the application itself. Of course it uses a contained web view in some places, and I think they’ve done a terrific job with it. 

So, let’s start to put the dots in the right place: full featured, imersive and interactive applications must be as natural to the platform they’ll be used, while content should be provided to these applications, through the wire, as tailored as possible to increase imersion and user experience. 

Maybe I’m wrong, but whenever I think about web applications I feel like a 2 year old kid trying to fit a cube in a cilinder hole.