I'm curious about the "just a website" bit as well. It's slow going, but new features like service workers, web workers, web sockets, webrtc, seem to be closing the gap between "website" and app.
Is there some point where websites start to significantly displace apps?
Ah, yes. Guess I should have said iphone / android native apps, especially ones that depend on network data such that the native app wouldn't be any faster than a web site.
I don't get the appeal, for example, of native apps for things like airlines, amazon, ebay, etc.
Speed, responsiveness and the ability to work offline. These things sort of work for webapps on the desktop because desktops aren't cpu and memory restricted. Phones are. As a result, webapps are just too damned slow and frustrating to use on a phone.
"Is there some point where websites start to significantly displace apps?"
It seems to me that this is already slowly happening and this instant app thing is the reaction. After all, Google would lost the control if everybody started to use the browser.
Is there some point where websites start to significantly displace apps?