5 ms·

Hmm. Wouldn't it be great if the whole nasty 3.3.1 business turned out to be a moot point, because web apps were what mattered? People who work on browsers an

by pg 16y ago

Hmm. Wouldn't it be great if the whole nasty 3.3.1 business turned out to be a moot point, because web apps were what mattered? People who work on browsers and libraries for them are in a position to make this happen if they want-- to make the Web win as the platform even if the iPad wins as the device. All you have to do is make other browsers fabulously powerful for web apps. If there start to be a lot of things you can do on e.g. Chrome that you can't do on Safari, Safari will be pushed to follow suit. In fact maybe it will be Chrome and not Android that saves us from Apple's locked-down future. It's certainly a more straightforward problem. Android can only win through partnerships with handset makers, while Chrome can evolve at its own rate.

percept 16y ago
YCRFS 7? :)
JarekS 16y ago
ChromeOS and recent acquisition of Palm will have a big impact on the web app ecosystem. Things like jQtouch ( checkout how our HTLM/jQtouch app looks on iPhone and Andorid HTC Desire http://blog.smartupz.com/2010/05/htc-desire-and-iphone-smartupz-mobile.html http://blog.smartupz.com/2010/05/htc-desire-and-iphone-smart... ) will only speed up the process of turning web apps/web sites into fully touch enabled apps. I don't want to brag or anything but our app was designed to be touch friendly (the UI has big buttons etc.) and we made this decision before the iPad was announced :) http://blog.smartupz.com/2009/12/islate-aka-apple-itablet-my-predictions.html http://blog.smartupz.com/2009/12/islate-aka-apple-itablet-my...
dustingetz 16y ago
seems a pretty obvious outcome, but only for apps/webapps that are content-oriented, not for apps that actually use custom mobile device hardware. like gps, sms, multitouch. in the meantime, my android browser doesn't seem to be caching websites aggressively enough, because it seems to take up to several seconds to load the (few) bookmarks i have. so native content-oriented apps are faster, for now.
- iseff 16y ago
  There are certainly features that are better suited for native apps, but the ones you stated aren't necessarily them. For example, GPS is doable on both Android and iPhone OS. Multitouch is also doable (check out Google Maps on the web on iPhone for an example here). Accelerometer, native graphics, etc are the key features I think about that are not well suited for web apps. My startup, AppStoreHQ (http://www.appstorehq.com http://www.appstorehq.com), is a huge believer of mobile web apps, and we even have a private alpha going on for monetizing your mobile web app (check out an example like fortysquires: http://fortysquires.com http://fortysquires.com ).
  - raganwald 16y ago
    Another example of multi-touch is Naughts and Crosses, one of the two demos I made for the iGesture jQuery plugin: http://github.com/raganwald/iGesture http://github.com/raganwald/iGesture After drawing some naughts and crosses, you can rotate the board by placing two fingers on the screen and rotating them 45 degrees or more. It's all Javascript and jQuery.
  - mcav 16y ago
    Accelerometer would work just fine, if iPhone OS exposed a javascript event for it. (Not even all that CPU-intensive either.)
  - vorador 16y ago
    Ain't you afraid of running into legal trouble because of your startup's name ?
- pg 16y ago
  It will be in the interest of every other device manufacturer to expose such things to web apps, and that will pressure Apple to follow suit.
  - johnrob 16y ago
    Every time I propose that the web will win out on devices, the argument of inaccessible mobile hardware always comes up. The best counter argument is justin.tv - that runs in a browser, and clearly has no problem finding your camera. Why couldn't a solution arise on mobile devices too? Thinking even more generally, what makes a mobile device so different than a PC? Why would the evolution we've seen on PCs play out any differently on handsets?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
metachor 16y ago
When the iPhone came out, I distinctly remember Apple saying that web apps were the future and the iPhone with mobile Safari was ready to bring that future now. Flash-forward after a year of developers crying to write native apps, and the iPhone SDK and App Store were born, to give the developers what they asked for. It turns out there are political limitations to writing native apps for the App Store... so now those same devs are finding the bed they wanted a bit uncomfortable to sleep in, and blame Apple who wanted them to write web apps in the first place. I really don't see this "locked-down future" that people whinge about. Apple is still leading the open web app platform charge with WebKit, which powers both Safari and Chrome, as well as their work evangelizing HTML5 technologies to the general public.
- orangecat 16y ago
  I distinctly remember Apple saying that web apps were the future and the iPhone with mobile Safari was ready to bring that future now. It wasn't, and still isn't. There are and will always be large classes of apps for which Javascript in a browser isn't a reasonable approach. It turns out there are political limitations to writing native apps for the App Store... so now those same devs are finding the bed they wanted a bit uncomfortable to sleep in, and blame Apple who wanted them to write web apps in the first place. I think what Apple originally wanted was a pure console model. They and hand-picked partners would get to write native apps, and everybody else would make do with web apps.
  - dmoney 16y ago
    There are and will always be large classes of apps for which Javascript in a browser isn't a reasonable approach. Why wouldn't JavaScript and browsers continue to evolve until that isn't the case?
    - ajg1977 16y ago
      Clearly they will, assuming you are willing to wait a few generations of hardware for them to become powerful enough. I think there's now a Javascript port of Quake 2 that's just about playable on a modern PC. That game's 13 years old.
joe_the_user 16y ago
Hey, I know a really "easy" solution to this "problem" for Steve Jobs: organize media sites to selectively block ipad users. It might not make the users happy but that hasn't bothered Jobs so far. With enough Apple fan boys, you can justify anything - flash would be just the start. It would be like the worst Microsoft behavior from the 90's but since Apple isn't a horizontal monopoly, it has fewer legal barriers to its behavior.

by pg 16y ago

percept 16y ago

YCRFS 7? :)

JarekS 16y ago

ChromeOS and recent acquisition of Palm will have a big impact on the web app ecosystem. Things like jQtouch ( checkout how our HTLM/jQtouch app looks on iPhone and Andorid HTC Desire http://blog.smartupz.com/2010/05/htc-desire-and-iphone-smartupz-mobile.html http://blog.smartupz.com/2010/05/htc-desire-and-iphone-smart... ) will only speed up the process of turning web apps/web sites into fully touch enabled apps. I don't want to brag or anything but our app was designed to be touch friendly (the UI has big buttons etc.) and we made this decision before the iPad was announced :) http://blog.smartupz.com/2009/12/islate-aka-apple-itablet-my-predictions.html http://blog.smartupz.com/2009/12/islate-aka-apple-itablet-my...

dustingetz 16y ago

seems a pretty obvious outcome, but only for apps/webapps that are content-oriented, not for apps that actually use custom mobile device hardware. like gps, sms, multitouch. in the meantime, my android browser doesn't seem to be caching websites aggressively enough, because it seems to take up to several seconds to load the (few) bookmarks i have. so native content-oriented apps are faster, for now.

iseff 16y ago
There are certainly features that are better suited for native apps, but the ones you stated aren't necessarily them. For example, GPS is doable on both Android and iPhone OS. Multitouch is also doable (check out Google Maps on the web on iPhone for an example here). Accelerometer, native graphics, etc are the key features I think about that are not well suited for web apps. My startup, AppStoreHQ (http://www.appstorehq.com http://www.appstorehq.com), is a huge believer of mobile web apps, and we even have a private alpha going on for monetizing your mobile web app (check out an example like fortysquires: http://fortysquires.com http://fortysquires.com ).
- raganwald 16y ago
  Another example of multi-touch is Naughts and Crosses, one of the two demos I made for the iGesture jQuery plugin: http://github.com/raganwald/iGesture http://github.com/raganwald/iGesture After drawing some naughts and crosses, you can rotate the board by placing two fingers on the screen and rotating them 45 degrees or more. It's all Javascript and jQuery.
- mcav 16y ago
  Accelerometer would work just fine, if iPhone OS exposed a javascript event for it. (Not even all that CPU-intensive either.)
- vorador 16y ago
  Ain't you afraid of running into legal trouble because of your startup's name ?
pg 16y ago
It will be in the interest of every other device manufacturer to expose such things to web apps, and that will pressure Apple to follow suit.
- johnrob 16y ago
  Every time I propose that the web will win out on devices, the argument of inaccessible mobile hardware always comes up. The best counter argument is justin.tv - that runs in a browser, and clearly has no problem finding your camera. Why couldn't a solution arise on mobile devices too? Thinking even more generally, what makes a mobile device so different than a PC? Why would the evolution we've seen on PCs play out any differently on handsets?

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

metachor 16y ago

When the iPhone came out, I distinctly remember Apple saying that web apps were the future and the iPhone with mobile Safari was ready to bring that future now. Flash-forward after a year of developers crying to write native apps, and the iPhone SDK and App Store were born, to give the developers what they asked for. It turns out there are political limitations to writing native apps for the App Store... so now those same devs are finding the bed they wanted a bit uncomfortable to sleep in, and blame Apple who wanted them to write web apps in the first place. I really don't see this "locked-down future" that people whinge about. Apple is still leading the open web app platform charge with WebKit, which powers both Safari and Chrome, as well as their work evangelizing HTML5 technologies to the general public.

orangecat 16y ago
I distinctly remember Apple saying that web apps were the future and the iPhone with mobile Safari was ready to bring that future now. It wasn't, and still isn't. There are and will always be large classes of apps for which Javascript in a browser isn't a reasonable approach. It turns out there are political limitations to writing native apps for the App Store... so now those same devs are finding the bed they wanted a bit uncomfortable to sleep in, and blame Apple who wanted them to write web apps in the first place. I think what Apple originally wanted was a pure console model. They and hand-picked partners would get to write native apps, and everybody else would make do with web apps.
- dmoney 16y ago
  There are and will always be large classes of apps for which Javascript in a browser isn't a reasonable approach. Why wouldn't JavaScript and browsers continue to evolve until that isn't the case?
  - ajg1977 16y ago
    Clearly they will, assuming you are willing to wait a few generations of hardware for them to become powerful enough. I think there's now a Javascript port of Quake 2 that's just about playable on a modern PC. That game's 13 years old.

joe_the_user 16y ago

Hey, I know a really "easy" solution to this "problem" for Steve Jobs: organize media sites to selectively block ipad users. It might not make the users happy but that hasn't bothered Jobs so far. With enough Apple fan boys, you can justify anything - flash would be just the start. It would be like the worst Microsoft behavior from the 90's but since Apple isn't a horizontal monopoly, it has fewer legal barriers to its behavior.