Website clone apps are useful. Not a requirement, but to claim that a tab in ie11 is equal to an app is to fail to see the benefits of the website app in the first place. Switching between tabs in ie11 is different than switching between apps. That makes switching between them all inconsistent and cumbersome. MS needs to allow the launching of live tile shortcuts to launch in separate instances of ie11. That would be incredibly useful.
Another reason for website apps is to customize the experience for the device it is being viewed on. Sometimes I prefer the full desktop version of a site, but others times a custom subset of features optimized for a touch interface are preferable.
Edit: upon further inspection, that list is deliberately skewed toward website apps and conveniently ignores productivity apps. Fanboys will be fanboys.
Exactly, it's skewed by first glance. And being useful or not is missing the point (I don't find tab switching at all cumbersome, but clearly that's just me).
Consider the entire premise in the title: "iOS, Android, Windows Phone &
Windows 8"
Why the ever living heck would you compare a walled-garden app store against the behemoth desktop OS with millions of actual desktop software? That alone already discredits Nick Landry, especially since he goes the extra step of using bright red negative "danger no-no" color. Stick with Windows 8 Phone and he might actually have something there.
Then Surface gets confusedly tossed into the mix: Check out the first comment on that post.
Brian Noyes
on Thu, Aug 8 2013 4:37 PM
Here are a few missing from your list that are big blockers for me from dropping my iOS devices in favor of my Surface or for getting a Windows Phone:
GMail
Words with Friends
Xfinity Play / Connect
TripIt
He's subsequently set straight in comments like that of Kevin Nasello, but Gmail? Really?
My biggest problem with (web) app thinking in terms of the
Surface is that it's extremely rigid, compartmentalized, and short-sighted. The only time an app is "needed" is when a website is incompatible with IE11. Everything else is gravy. Actual productivity apps like... the chemistry equations calculator thing that other guy made--much more interesting. The problem with "needing" more and more discrete, individually updated apps is that that also introduces a whole other kind of mess; what, do apps people want to move away from Web browsers entirely? See, that's just not feasible in the long term.
(Huh, Xfinitytv.comcast.net is streaming fine in IE11. I didn't even realize I had access, woot. Had to disable my Tracking Prot Lists, though.)