App ecosystems reinvent everything hateful about the software industry before the web blew it up
App-pocalypse Now — I'm getting pretty sick of being nagged to install your damn apps. — XKCD helpfully translates: — Yeah, there are smart app banners, which are marginally less annoying …
Context & Ripple Effects
The essay lands in a debate that has been running since 2010, when commentators first asked why Apple seemed to fear the killer app and then traced how iPhone apps take off without the traditional tech press. The Register had already pitched HTML5 as an antidote to 'App Store-itis' back in January 2011; Jeff Atwood's argument is that three years of app-first behavior have shown the antidote never took, with mobile sites nagging visitors toward native installs — a dynamic the XKCD comic he embeds turns into a punchline.
Its reach was unusual for a single blog post: eight prominent technology voices — Anil Dash, DHH, Mike Loukides, Ed Bott among them — amplified the same piece on the day it published, suggesting the web-versus-apps grievance struck a nerve well beyond Coding Horror's own audience.
First-order effects
- Visitors to companies' mobile websites face aggressive app-install prompts and smart banners rather than usable pages — the exact user-hostile pattern Atwood and his embedded XKCD comic name and mock.
- Developers continue to build native iOS apps ahead of mobile web experiences because Apple's App Store remains the sanctioned channel for reaching iPhone users.
Second-order effects
- Platform owners that control app distribution regain leverage over discovery, updates, and revenue splits — the gatekeeping position the open web stripped away from software vendors before the web era Atwood invokes.
- Every developer weighing one web codebase against two native apps keeps the HTML5 alternative commercially alive, sustaining the counter-position The Register articulated in 2011.
Third-order effects
- If install-nag banners harden into the default seam between web and native, the URL stops functioning as universal distribution and platform owners re-establish tollbooth economics over everyday software.
- An entrenched app-first equilibrium concentrates distribution power in a handful of store operators, setting up the gatekeeper-concentration dynamics that historically draw regulator and developer backlash — though whether that happens depends on choices Apple and its rivals have not yet made.
The trend: Distribution power continues to oscillate between the open web and platform-controlled app stores, with each generation of developers re-litigating which side wins.