Dan Grover | Bots won't replace apps. Better apps will replace apps. - 0 views
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The key wins for WeChat in the above interaction (compared to a native app) largely came from steamlining away app installation, login, payment, and notifications, optimizations having nothing to do with the conversational metaphor in its UI.
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Indeed, the cornerstone of whole experience is effectively a common, semi-hierarchical stream of messages, notifications, and news with a consistent set of controls for handling them. It’s no stretch to see WeChat and its ilk not as SMS replacements but as nascent visions of a mobile OS whose UI paradigm is, rather than rigidly app-centric, thread-centric (and not, strictly speaking, conversation-centric).
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This term – “app” – is rather old, yet only entered common parlance with the proliferation of smartphones. This is no coincidence. The app paradigm introduced on smartphone OSes circa 2007 was a radical improvement over what we’d had on the desktop. For the first time, software was easy to install, even easier to delete, and was guaranteed to not totally screw with your system (due to sandboxing/permissions models).
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"A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION, A LITTLE MORE ACTION I don't know about you, but here's what I want to see happen. I want the first tab of my OS's home screen to be a central inbox half as good as my chat app's inbox. It want it to incorporate all my messengers, emails, news subscriptions, and notifications and give me as great a degree of control in managing it. No more red dots spattered everywhere, no swiping up to see missed notifications. Make them a bit richer and better-integrated with their originating apps. Make them expire and sync between my devices as appropriate. Just fan it all out in front of me and give me a few simple ways to tame them. I'll spend most of my day on that page, and when I need to go launch Calculator or Infinity Blade, I'll swipe over. Serve me a tasty info burrito as my main course instead of a series of nachos. The next time I'm back stateside, I want my phone to support something like Chrome Apps, but retaining a few useful properties of apps instead of being big, weird icons that just link to websites. I want to sit down at T.G.I Friday's4 and scan a QR code at my restaurant table and be able to connect to their WiFi, order, and pay. Without having to download a big app over my data plan, set up an account, and link a card when it is installed. Imagine if I could also register at the hospital or DMV in this fashion. Or buy a movie ticket. Or check in for a flight. As a user, I want my apps - whether they're native or web-based pseudo-apps - to have some consistent concept of identity, payments, offline storage, and data sharing. I want to be able to quickly add someone in person or from their website to my contacts. The next time I do a startup, I want to spend my time specializing in solving a specific problem for my users, not getting them over the above general hurdles. I don't actually care how it happens. Maybe the OS makers will up their game. Maybe Facebook, Telegram, or Snapchat can solve these pr