Can We, As a society live without relying on Apps?

Can We, as a society live without relying on apps?

The title of this blog might actually be slightly misleading, as the question should more be asked if we always need apps to access the world we digitally access.

First let us look at some of the pros apps like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus have going for them.  These pros include, but are not limited to

working as a quick home screen shortcut to the service

launching a user interface that is formatted to the smaller screen size of a Smartphone

allowing the breaking out of specific services without launching the full site

Again, as I said, these are all pros, but there are also cons to stand alone apps for each service that a site like Facebook and Google Plus offers in a complete package when one moves from the Smartphone to the Tablet interface.

First, if you look at the modern Mobile Web Browsers, on Android, iOS and Windows one will notice that they all display these sites in a comparable fashion to how Desktop Browsers display them.  An exception being if a Website relies on the dying technology of Adobe Flash.

The second thing one needs to take into account is storage space on a tablet.  Most tablets tend to come in storage sizes ranging between 16 and 128 GB of storage.  Breaking out the services can produce a collection of Apps that each do one thing.  As an example, take a look at Facebook's offering on iOS

Facebook............................. 60.3 MB
Messenger........................... 33.0 MB
Pages Manager................... 42.6 MB
Camera................................18.0 MB
Poke....................................  9.0 MB

That makes for a total of 5 Apps taking up 162.9 MB or a little over 1/10th of a GB , or about the size of two copies of Angry Birds Star Wars.

So, while Apps do have some advantages to them, the question does always need to be asked. Can I do this without taking up the space that stand alone apps take up?