The Future of Apps Rise of the Independent Builder
For every professional who can brag about being an early adopter, there are just as many who can tell the story of how they “didn’t get it” and, in fact, even critiqued what then came to be a new technology normal. It happens for many reasons, including we’ve invested too much time and resources into a particular technology that is familiar and stable, to abandon it all for something that is new and unknown. The only thing we can be certain of in IT is that change is not only inevitable but by the time we hear about something “leading edge” we are already behind. It is the privileged IT
professional that gets to encounter disruptive technology ahead of the masses, but that doesn’t mean it’s immediately embraced. Changing a paradigm to embrace a new digital reality is extremely difficult. One thought-leader offered the critique that “Native apps are here to stay.” To which I remember stating “I’m Canadian. We used to think that about Blackberry.” If there’s one thing that seasoned IT executives should be wary of is our own experience. The older we get, the more apt we are to believe that we are seasoned enough to recognize a new technology
or way of working. The thought-leader who told us nine years ago that “apps were here to stay” couldn’t have imagined that in 2022 there are apps on user’s devices that got there without ever visiting an app store. They are called PWAs, and they arrived on the scene in 2014. What is a PWA? Google defines Progressive Web Apps as: experiences that combine the best of the web and the best of apps. They are useful to users from the very first visit in a browser tab, no install required. As the user progressively builds a relationship with the app over time, it becomes more and more powerful. It loads
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