It’s just not as rich
It’s a sentiment that I’ve repeated over and over again on Twitter, much to the dismay of some of my Windows-cuddling followers, but it’s also one that I find hard to explain to those firmly entrenched in the ‘Windows 8 is the future’ camp.
I have a Windows 8 device. I have a iPad. I prefer the iPad. Why? Because the applications I have there are far more immersive and well-built that it just feels smoother. I’m sure it’s all down to personal preference, but I’ve finally figured out what it is that bothers me.
‘Modern UI’ applications feel like web pages. #
Not only that, they feel like side scrolling web pages. Maybe it’s something that can be resolved over time, maybe it can’t, but of all the applications in the store I can’t find a single one that feels as smooth (or as native) as one does on iOS or Android.
Take Metrotwit, for example. It doesn’t really feel like an application at all. To me, it looks and acts like something I’d expect of Tweetdeck (pictured below) or Bottlenose, which both actually run in the browser. It acts and feels like something out of a browser. It doesn’t feel native, and it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s installed on my PC. It’s HTML5.
A similar issue is that of the Facebook app for mobile devices. It is one of the worst applications on mobile because it’s simply a wrapper around a website. You can read millions of one star reviews here. HTML5, in this case, is just not rich enough yet.
I find, even on my tablet, that they don’t enhance the experience. They ‘look’ like tablet applications but they don’t act like them. They act like the web. They scroll like websites scroll, and their elements don’t really provide much more than squares that feel like they’re embedded in a web page.
Mobile apps should be enhancements of what’s available online. #
Complimentary to their website companions, and offer alternative ways to access their content without needing to open a browser. Take The Verge’s mobile app for example, it adds to the experience that you’d get from their mobile site, while presenting their content in a different way and adding functionality. They don’t feel like the web anymore, they feel like extensions of the phone.
With Windows 8, I don’t get that feeling. They don’t feel like natural extensions of my device. They feel like websites and bits of HTML rendered in a shiny wrapper of color. Maybe over time they’ll get better and more powerful, and slowly begin defining how they are an extension of the Windows 8 experience, but right now they feel like nothing more than a random assortment of web pages forced into a ‘Modern-UI’ box.
It’s been over a year, and even Microsoft hasn’t shown us a ‘rich’ application that really shows off Metro (Seriously, just compare the way Calendar for iOS handles VS Calendar for Windows 8).
Where are the incredible applications? I hope that they will be there soon. Or that they are actually possible.