"It seemed like a decision that had everything to do with what’s in the best interests of the business, and nothing to do with what’s good for the customer."
They already told you they're a small team, with mostly windows users and AIR allowed them to offer a cross platform solution. This is a polite way of saying "you're an outlier, you're not our target user, please go away and stop bothering us".
"People seem to hate AIR. Wherever you see AIR apps, there are support forum threads opened by customers begging for a native alternative"
I've personally never noticed this, got any examples?
Let me say here: I'm not a fan of AIR - I'm completely indifferent to it as a technolgoy - but so far you're just bitching about your personal experiences with one application and wishing the world were different from how it is so you'd find it more enjoyable.
"a moderator sheepishly explaining that they just don’t “have the time” "
What's to be sheepish about!? There's no shame in not having the time to build native apps for every platform. I don't have the time to write all of my code in assembly so I use high level languages. If you tried to run a modern operating system on 1980s hardware you wouldn't get particularly far. Technologies are built and adopted to improve productivity and get products to market faster - AIR is one of these. Whether or not it is the best choice for one application or another, or whether you happen to enjoy it or not has no bearing on how much actual time a company or individual has to develop software! They make a choice about a technology based on their goals and the information at their disposal. Why should they be feeling sheepish?
"The fact that some subset of users are willing to shell out for these native apps should be a wake-up call. That’s money that those service providers are letting slip away."
No, it's money they're making by opening their product using an API and not trying to be all things to all people. By allowing 3rd party developers to build on their platform they still get your money, but they just don't have to do any extra work for it building a native app for your platform.
"In a nutshell, what you’re communicating with an AIR app is that your business priorities (saving time and money) are more important than what your customers want."
Or maybe you're just trying to build a minimum value proposition, make some money, test the market, receive feedback, learn something, iterate and improve. You seem to think these guys are dishing up an AIR application in an afternoon then taking your hard earned cash and throwing it onto a gigantic "Scrooge McDuck" style money bin, then taking the yacht out for an afternoon spin to laugh at their sucker customers. You don't like the product, don't bloody buy it! That's what the free market is there for.
"“We don’t have time” is the common excuse for delivering an AIR app instead of a good native app. Money, though, can buy someone else’s time. For a price, you can find a great contractor to build a native app for any platform under the sun."
Okay then why don't you build this app that you're after? Just learn to program, then build it yourself. Oh, don't have time? Well just pay someone else to do it for you. If you have the money, fantastic, compete and make a better product. What makes you think that these people are any different from you? That they don't exist in the same world of limitations and constraints that we all do every single day of our lives?
"Humans are gifted with extremely sensitive bullshit detectors."
Yeah mine started going fucking bonkers about paragraph 2 ...
You could have made this article about how flawed you think AIR is as a technology, cited examples of applications that have vocal user communities looking for a native app etc.
Instead you've just made outlandish claims that people building technology and working to create products are lazy, that they're somehow compelled to produce mediocre products (rather than settling for the best they can afford to produce and shipping something in the hopes that some people will get good use out of it).
Software is a constant process of settling for mediocrity. Nothing is ever finished. No software developer has ever typed one last semi-colon, sit back and said "you know what? There's nothing else I'd add to that, it's perfect".
Very well said, dools. I'm a co-founder of the app in question, which is HipChat (http://www.hipchat.com).
If we'd started out making native apps for every platform we wouldn't be where we are today. Sure AIR isn't perfect but it's allowed a 3-man bootstrapped team to create a product that hundreds of companies love to use every day and are happy to pay for.
Alex mentioned his team was going to try setting up their own IRC or Jabber server. That's awesome! The whole reason we're creating HipChat is because the vast majority of business have absolutely NO IDEA how to do that. The fact that more technical teams are willing to invest their precious work hours setting up and maintaining their own group chat system is a testament to how powerful a tool it is.
Of course if you set up your own chat system you won't get drag + drop file sharing, archived history, or inline image previews no matter how technical your team is. :)
Oh and we'll be opening up XMPP access soon so anyone who really needs a native app is more than welcome to build one.
I rationally agree with the decision your team has made, but I realized I no longer have any AIR apps running on any of my systems. They've been unconsciously filtered out for native or web alternatives.
If your team does decide to build for a platform/OS I hope it's OS X first :D. Best of luck either way!
I genuinely enjoyed this comment. Really. It's probably the most passionate response I've received.
I was going to argue with you point-by-point, particularly about your false claim that I didn't include any examples (which another commenter addressed, and you acknowledged). At the end of it all, after a lot of flailing, I think this is really your thesis:
"Software is a constant process of settling for mediocrity."
I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree there. If that's how you approach what you do, then I understand your position. If that's your approach, then sure, AIR is a reasonable choice. That isn't my approach, and I think it's also not the approach of the people who, much to your befuddlement, keep upvoting this story and tweeting positively about the post.
They already told you they're a small team, with mostly windows users and AIR allowed them to offer a cross platform solution. This is a polite way of saying "you're an outlier, you're not our target user, please go away and stop bothering us".
Alex's point is that they should have built a native windows app in that case. Even on Windows, AIR apps kinda suck.
It all comes down to the oft-rehashed point from 37signals: build half a product, not a half-assed product.
AIR always feels half-assed. It's slow, resource-intensive, doesn't look like the other apps, and generally gives a slightly uncomfortable feeling.
They already told you they're a small team, with mostly windows users and AIR allowed them to offer a cross platform solution. This is a polite way of saying "you're an outlier, you're not our target user, please go away and stop bothering us".
"People seem to hate AIR. Wherever you see AIR apps, there are support forum threads opened by customers begging for a native alternative"
I've personally never noticed this, got any examples?
Let me say here: I'm not a fan of AIR - I'm completely indifferent to it as a technolgoy - but so far you're just bitching about your personal experiences with one application and wishing the world were different from how it is so you'd find it more enjoyable.
"a moderator sheepishly explaining that they just don’t “have the time” "
What's to be sheepish about!? There's no shame in not having the time to build native apps for every platform. I don't have the time to write all of my code in assembly so I use high level languages. If you tried to run a modern operating system on 1980s hardware you wouldn't get particularly far. Technologies are built and adopted to improve productivity and get products to market faster - AIR is one of these. Whether or not it is the best choice for one application or another, or whether you happen to enjoy it or not has no bearing on how much actual time a company or individual has to develop software! They make a choice about a technology based on their goals and the information at their disposal. Why should they be feeling sheepish?
"The fact that some subset of users are willing to shell out for these native apps should be a wake-up call. That’s money that those service providers are letting slip away."
No, it's money they're making by opening their product using an API and not trying to be all things to all people. By allowing 3rd party developers to build on their platform they still get your money, but they just don't have to do any extra work for it building a native app for your platform.
"In a nutshell, what you’re communicating with an AIR app is that your business priorities (saving time and money) are more important than what your customers want."
Or maybe you're just trying to build a minimum value proposition, make some money, test the market, receive feedback, learn something, iterate and improve. You seem to think these guys are dishing up an AIR application in an afternoon then taking your hard earned cash and throwing it onto a gigantic "Scrooge McDuck" style money bin, then taking the yacht out for an afternoon spin to laugh at their sucker customers. You don't like the product, don't bloody buy it! That's what the free market is there for.
"“We don’t have time” is the common excuse for delivering an AIR app instead of a good native app. Money, though, can buy someone else’s time. For a price, you can find a great contractor to build a native app for any platform under the sun."
Okay then why don't you build this app that you're after? Just learn to program, then build it yourself. Oh, don't have time? Well just pay someone else to do it for you. If you have the money, fantastic, compete and make a better product. What makes you think that these people are any different from you? That they don't exist in the same world of limitations and constraints that we all do every single day of our lives?
"Humans are gifted with extremely sensitive bullshit detectors."
Yeah mine started going fucking bonkers about paragraph 2 ...
You could have made this article about how flawed you think AIR is as a technology, cited examples of applications that have vocal user communities looking for a native app etc.
Instead you've just made outlandish claims that people building technology and working to create products are lazy, that they're somehow compelled to produce mediocre products (rather than settling for the best they can afford to produce and shipping something in the hopes that some people will get good use out of it).
Software is a constant process of settling for mediocrity. Nothing is ever finished. No software developer has ever typed one last semi-colon, sit back and said "you know what? There's nothing else I'd add to that, it's perfect".
Who keeps upvoting this!?