A Murder of Apps
Jul 9, 2025
A few weekends ago, I traveled to Philadelphia for a friend’s wedding. Shortly before I left, my wife texted me to ask when my return flight was scheduled to land. She was planning her weekend and wanted to know when I’d be home. Smartphone in hand, I felt confident. Should be straightforward, right?
Here’s the user journey that ensued (tap to advance):
When I show people these slides in person, I can tell it strikes a nerve. People grow visibly irritated watching me fumble through 30 tedious steps to retrieve a single piece of information. Afterwards, everyone has their own version of this story. The task varies, but the pattern is the same. You begin with something simple and end up trapped in a maze of re-entering passwords, mandatory updates, jumping between apps, searching through results, and endless swiping and scrolling.
Of course, this isn't news. Apps have always been frustrating to use. Bloggers have been declaring the “Death of Apps” for nearly as long as apps have existed. In 2012, Forbes wrote:
Apps, as we know them, are over. This thing of having the home screen of your device littered with hundreds of little icons that you have to download, organize, search and prune is kinda insane, eh?
But apps continue to dominate over a decade later. There’s no “death from natural causes” in software. A new approach must emerge that’s dramatically superior to what we have now. The death was foretold, but we didn't have a killer.
Well, it’s finally here. Soon, that same user journey will look like this:
I’m sure I’m not the first to dream about this type of user experience. Of course it'd be awesome to have an assistant offer what you need, before you even ask for it.
The difference now is that there’s actually a clear path to build it.
Concretely, here’s how it will work:
Anyone who has used vibe-coding apps will recognize this flow. The technologies that make this possible—LLMs, tool-calling, planning, thinking, MCP, agents—are all here. It’s just a matter of tying it all together.
We’ll continue to use apps in some cases—my ‘assistant’ mockup above, for example, is still in Messages. But for many tasks, we’ll increasingly rely on connected assistants to automate the work for us. The next killer app will be an app killer. And I, for one, will be happy if I never have to update the United app again.
-Tim L
If you’re interested in accelerating this future, consider joining us at Onit. You can find us on Discord or get in touch here.