{"id":2255,"date":"2010-02-17T16:02:48","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T15:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/2255-why-i-dont-want-to-view-bbc-co-uk-through-an-app.html"},"modified":"2010-02-17T16:02:48","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T15:02:48","slug":"why-i-dont-want-to-view-bbc-co-uk-through-an-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/2255-why-i-dont-want-to-view-bbc-co-uk-through-an-app.html","title":{"rendered":"Why I don\u2019t want to view bbc.co.uk through an app"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BBC has announced mobile apps for BBC content<\/a>, the first being for the iPhone. There is a demo posted by David Madden here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Our aim is to develop core public service apps that bring some of the BBC’s most popular and distinctive content to mobile in a genuinely user-friendly and accessible way.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In another post Erik Huggers explains our mobile future<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have reservations about this approach, and wonder if the BBC has been unduly influenced by Apple\u2019s iPhone marketing \u2013 \u201cthere\u2019s an app for that.\u201d The iPlayer<\/a> desktop application makes perfect sense for downloading and viewing video offline; but why make an app to view a web site? I can think of several objections:<\/p>\n

1. It introduces inequality between devices. So iPhone is first. Blackberry and Android are mentioned. What about Palm WebOS? What about Windows Phone 7? Maybe Flash can help with that as a common runtime; but Flash won\u2019t be on Windows Phone in its first release. Older devices will be left behind, even where they have decent web browsers.<\/p>\n

2. It breaks the web. Well, one app does not break the web. But if every major web site decides it has to deliver its content through an app, what happens to hyperlinks? You can go from app to Web, I imagine, but if the target site also delivers its best mobile content through an app, what then? Imagine what the web would be like if, instead of browsing, you were constantly app-switching.<\/p>\n

3. It moves mobile to a separate world. The truth is, there isn\u2019t a hard and fast distinction between a mobile device and a desktop device. A laptop is mobile, but more like a desktop in terms of web browsing. What about the iPad? What about all the new form factors coming down the line? There isn\u2019t any more reason to have apps for mobile devices than there is for desktop devices.<\/p>\n

4. It distracts investment away from what the BBC should be doing: optimising its web site for mobile, and degrading gracefully for less powerful web browsers.<\/p>\n

Are there cases where a BBC app might make sense? Maybe a special for the 2012 olympics, that delivers the latest results, for example? Quite possibly; but what concerns me is the idea that apps become the main way to view BBC content on a phone, rather than the web browser. It is a bad precedent, and one that I hope is not imitated by others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The BBC has announced mobile apps for BBC content, the first being for the iPhone. There is a demo posted by David Madden here: Our aim is to develop core public service apps that bring some of the BBC’s most popular and distinctive content to mobile in a genuinely user-friendly and accessible way. In another … Continue reading Why I don\u2019t want to view bbc.co.uk through an app<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,44,47,56],"tags":[195,492,501,599],"class_list":["post-2255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bbc","category-internet","category-iphone","category-mobile","tag-bbc","tag-internet","tag-iphone","tag-mobile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}