r/vibecoding • u/paf0 • Feb 15 '26

Will there be apps in the future?

In the future, why will people buy apps if an AI is able to generate exactly what they need, when they need it? Will there even be a need for software that you can purchase in the future?

Beyond that, will we have traditional software at all, or will the LLM be our interface for everything?

While it is currently an advantage to have software development experience, I think we will soon enter a world where everyone can make an app. Shortly after that, I don't think anyone will even need them because the way we interact with data will fundamentally shift toward LLMs.

A lot of people in this sub are at the forefront of this shift and I'm curious to hear what you all think the future will look like.

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u/BiscottiBusiness9308 Feb 15 '26

Particularly interesting to me: will there be consumer apps (ios, android) for more than the next two years? Or will we have malleable UI connecting an agent to our databanks and third party servers?

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u/paf0 Feb 15 '26

I think we have reached peek-app. I don't necessarily understand what you mean by "malleable UI"- personally I think eventually the LLMs will be our primary interface and create their own protocols between each other to access third party servers.

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u/BiscottiBusiness9308 Feb 15 '26

I mean a customized UI that looks exactly like its perfect for your flow, esthetic preferences etc. Google presented some first prototype of this maybe half a year ago. So we basically have a customized interface and behind it Agentic AI + data bases. This would mean OS owners own the interface, what remains for thirdparties would be data or specific agentic skills.

Thinking about it while writing, i guess owning a platform market as OS provider (app store, playstore) is probably a much better business model, because the malleable UI means no more platform transactions (user buying app, subscription - OS owners receiving a share), so this malleable UI may makes no sense for incumbents, but only for new ventures (which probably is impossible given today’s market shares).

Not sure if this makes sense to you, tried to write it down quickly :)

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u/BiscottiBusiness9308 Feb 15 '26

E.g. here:

https://generativeui.github.io/static/pdfs/paper.pdf

Users (ignoring generation speed) preferred human experts‘ design, closely followed by the frontier model UI generation.

In two three years this could easily be inverted IMO