I hear this all the time for various webapps and I'm curious about why. Is it because you want to be able to cmd/alt-tab rather than ctrl-tab to the window?
Isolating a service to a program, as well as being able to close the browser fully without closing down music. Throughout my day I open and close my browser often enough.
SoundCloud the webapp already seems to have its UI designed for music playback (it's a very slick and responsive design, by the way).
Whether the UI of the standalone app is more polished that's debatable, but as far as "isolating a service to a program" and "being able to close the browser fully without closing down music" go - in and of themselves - using another browser in paralel looks sort of equivalent to it.
I don't rule out there could be some other advantages of this solution, like smaller memory footprint etc., I addressed the specific reasons given by the parent commenter
Depending on how your OS displays tabbed browser content it can be harder to access one tab/window of many in a single application than a single unique program. It also means that it has the same volume level as the rest of your browser using system volume (if anyone but me does..)
In general I'm a user who never downloads apps on my phone (unless there's something I find unsuited to my browser) - but for a music player I want it to be quickly isolated for skipping, pause, etc etc.
That's also another factor, in-browser stability is subject to each individual end user. A native client helps improve stability in the overall browser.
As a person consistently dealing with lots of tabs (50+) having another tab for solely playing the music is not welcomed. Tab pinning helps, but not much.
I use Chrome's Add to Desktop feature for SoundCloud and other webapps, which adds a shortcut to launch the webpage in a dedicated window (without the browser chrome, etc.) The window is managed separately from your normal browser windows (if any) and acts like a first-class native app.
Why not prefer native apps to webapps? Better performance, a better fit into the OS's look-and-feel, and ability to interface with other OS-wide features such as accessibility and automation etcetera.
Although, Soundnode doesn't seem to be a true native app, as others have pointed out.
I doubt the better performance is true since it's essentially the same technology that would be used on the web. One performance hit you take is loading the resources once.. but you also need to download the app.
Ideally web app and its data is instantly accessible anywhere, not just on your desktop. They bypass any possible install restriction (or AppStore restriction, which is why Apple is deliberately keeping Safari in 2010).
The look & feel argument is total bullshit at least for me. Every native app I am using is completely different. The only consistent look & feel is with ms office apps like excel, word and powerpoint.
Performance is also a lot about how and who wrote the app rather than if the app is native. It's just harder and requires a lot of knowledge to make javascript app perform well, but it's not some impossibility.
And yes, standards are still creating too high level APIs and it takes forever to gain more and more access to the same things native apps have. But that will get better due to extensible web manifesto.
> Ideally web app and its data is instantly accessible anywhere, not just on your desktop.
Where the data resides is not a distinction between web apps and native apps. See Apple's bundled apps, like Notes, Contacts, etc.: you can access the same data via a website or through native iOS/OS X apps.
However, one advantage that native apps have when it comes to accessing cloud data, is that you can still access and update that data even when you have no connection to the internet.
> which is why Apple is deliberately keeping Safari in 2010
What do you mean with this?
> The only consistent look & feel is with ms office apps like excel, word and powerpoint.
This sounds like you are primarily a Windows user, where indeed, MS Office apps seem to be the only ones that share a consistent look-&-feel among them. Even Windows' own applets vary wildly in how they present basic UI elements (like toolbars and Control Panels.)
The overall situation, while with its own unique flaws, is much more coherent on OS X, across all vendors.
> Performance is also a lot about how and who wrote the app rather than if the app is native.
True, but web apps will always be removed from the underlying OS's "metal" by at least one degree, no?
> Where the data resides is not a distinction between web apps and native apps.
Huh? The data is only accessible to native app after you have installed the app on a device. If you only ever use your own one desktop, then it's probably hard for you to see this. Can you even try to imagine that you cannot just install arbitrary native app on let's say, your friend's device to access your data? But you can easily "install" a web app, since technically it's just a website like this one.
> However, one advantage that native apps have when it comes to accessing cloud data, is that you can still access and update that data even when you have no connection to the internet.
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