I don’t like web apps. It always feels to me as if you couldn’t make a real one and have compromised. Plus, in trying to make one that fits all yet possible screens out there, you end up with one that doesn’t fit any of them.
Lloyds Bank in the UK fairly crowed about its great iPhone app, for instance, but it’s really just a webapp in a wrapper. If they’d said that instead of pretending it was a full app, I’d have understood. I wouldn’t have used it, but I’d have understood. Instead, you open it up like a real app and then it just has the same problems as reading their website on a mobile device. It’s not that there is any great fault, it’s just that the display is ugly and you have to scroll left and right to do things. And the reason for this is that it was cheaper for them to do it this way. That’s a great reason when you’re the one paying, it’s less compelling if you’re the user. And telling me it’s one thing while it’s really the cheaper one, that’s bad. I used their app once.
But there is an advantage to web apps that I hadn’t considered. An advantage to users. If you’re working in a group where you are all on different platforms like PC and Mac or iOS and Android, a web app can get anywhere and work with you app.
That’s what this is: AllThings is a web-based task manager or To Do app for groups. Check out Lifehacker’s feature for more details: