13 ms·

PPK: "Apple is not evil. iPhone developers are stupid."

169 points by samstokes 17y ago

Tichy 17y ago
I flagged this without even looking at the article. Is that bad?
- potatolicious 17y ago
  Yes.
- Deestan 17y ago
  Not really, the title was pretty linkbait.
shykes 17y ago
The app store is a huge distribution channel for developers. Making a web app solves the technical aspects of distribution, but then it's up to you to put your app under the nose of several million people.
patio11 17y ago
Fuck [iPhone developers] those condescending, ignorant, self-important, stupid, blind, fearful pricks. Fuck them real hard. Where it hurts. And fucking them real hard where it hurts is exactly what Apple is doing right now. We choose the world we want to live in, and I don't want to live in a world where writing like this is unremarkable. It adds nothing to the overall argument and coarsens us to no purpose. I am sympathetic to the general gist of "developers would be better off working without a gatekeeper", and have said much the same myself this weekend, but those who Apple chooses to win do benefit enormously from a built-in, captive audience who is exposed to Apple's annointed developers. There is no comparable method of exposure for mobile web application developers. There is also the non-trivial benefit of actually getting paid money to consider. You can certainly make money on the wide-open Internet, but the tactics you use for it and the apps you make are wholly different from what works on the iPhone. (What I wouldn't give for my customers being able to buy my software in two clicks, but alas...)
- unalone 17y ago
  You can charge money for a webapp. You just have to use PayPal rather than Apple's built-in procedure. That's fair, right? It's just as fair as buying any other application would be. I just installed two webapps on my iPod and they're quickly becoming my most-used icons.
- steveklabnik 17y ago
  Your attribution is wrong. He's not talking about iPhone developers, he's talking about the people in the sentence before it: After ten years I am fucking tired of the “Web development is not real programming” bullshit that the arrogant bastards in “real programming” are spouting because they’re too frightened to learn something new. Now, the Venn diagram may have some overlap, but still.
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    The author seems to be suffering from a lot of insecurity and anger issues - and I mean that in the most non-judgmental way possible. I think it's pretty clear that most of HN works on web technologies, and personally I haven't really seen this condescending divide between 'web programming' and 'real programming' - which at the end of the day seems to be about the same thing really. I do however object to his calling the entire iPhone developer community out as stupid and arrogant. How arrogant is it to presume that everyone of the many iPhone developers who have complaints about the current approval system is, in his words, stupid? If anything the author is the arrogant, misinformed, and dare I say, stupid one here. I'm torn about whether or not to flag this. While this has generated some good discussion on HN, I don't think we should really cater to troll material like this. If you cannot communicate your opinions in an intelligent, civil way, and cannot deal with your fellow developers with some decorum, then please don't say anything at all.
    - steveklabnik 17y ago
      I've certainly seen "web programming" vs "real programming" thing before. Must just be different scenes.
- 17y ago
pohl 17y ago
Let's say that I want to implement a swipe-to-delete feature like the one in the Mail app. What JavaScript event should I listen for?
- rmaccloy 17y ago
  touchmove, apparently: http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2008/07/10/touching-and-gesturing-on-the-iphone/ http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2008/07/10/touching-and-gesturin...
ulf 17y ago
While he basically raises some valid points, he ignores two critical ones: 1) With the appstore being the one authority to get apps on your iPhone, you will automatically get much less traction using the web 2) The appstore makes it VERY easy for the devs to actually get paid. If you launch your app web-only, you have to incorporate the whole payment process yourself, which sucks. Catch 22...
- edd 17y ago
  Your first point is so valid. Having created a webapp for the iPhone myself there really are few places I can go to put my webapp on a stage that anyone cares about. If someone knows of any I honestly would love to know where they are.
  - patio11 17y ago
    Organic SEO. (Lots of work. Requires savvy. Not guaranteed. Stupendous ROI if you do it right.)
    - jimboyoungblood 17y ago
      Example(s)?
      - qeorge 17y ago
        Its hard to give examples of successful SEO, because you don't want extra competition in your niche. As a result, all we (SEOs) can offer for free is general advice on how to do it yourself. That said, I've been wanting to write a free guide to SEO aimed at HN-like companies, because I think its important. However, the response from HackerNews to anything involving SEO is so harsh, I've felt it would be a waste of my time. If that's not the case, please let me know.
      - patio11 17y ago
        I get about 60~70% of my new users from organic SEO. (I have not run that calculation in a while -- it may be higher now. It was certainly a lot higher in October.) Almost every successful startup you've heard of which publishes lots of content has an SEO strategy. Slideshare, Scribd (good golly were they aggressive with it -- good thing they got big before they got smacked), Yelp, etc etc.
jcl 17y ago
"It also supports JavaScript geolocation, which is (I hope) only the first step towards true device APIs that will give JavaScript developers access to phone functionality such as the camera, text messaging, the address book, and more. I’m assuming Apple is working on all that because it’s the next logical step." One could also argue that Apple benefits most in the short term by crippling web apps, since the App Store represents a revenue stream and is the main selling point of all their recent advertising.
- clawrencewenham 17y ago
  I'm gonna call bullshit on the general conspiracy theory, here. Mobile Safari is the best mobile browser, period. And WebKit is the engine for the next best. Adding camera, accelerometer, address-book integration etc. needs to wait for W3C standards to emerge and stabilize before they can be put into Mobile Safari. What might prove interesting is if a standard for payment mechanisms emerges, so that a web app can take payments mediated through the iTMS.
c1sc0 17y ago
The essence of the AppStore hovers around marketing & distribution, not technology. Apple set up a great distribution channel, making it super-easy for developers to get paid & they are throwing in some free promotion to boot. In the end, it's about money: can you afford the opportunity cost of not being present on the AppStore & make money right now? What's the cost of promoting your WebKit app going to be? Apple convinced people that it is ok to pay a little money for simple apps that run on their mobile phone. That was Apple's genius move, not the technology that makes iPhone apps tick. If you simply follow the money the whole AppStore debacle becomes a lot clearer.
wouterinho 17y ago
PPK is an idealist. Applications need to make money. Web applications on the iPhone are slow and have less functionality so they make less money.
jfager 17y ago
I know this is really only applicable for a few cities, but speaking for myself: as a consumer, I don't want webapps right now. AT&T's network sucks hard in NYC, and even if it didn't, a very large portion of the time I spend with apps on my phone is when I'm killing time on the subway. Offline is important, and while we're starting to solve that with some of the browser tech he pointed to, it really isn't there yet in a form that's competitive with native apps.
- Padraig 17y ago
  Offline works perfectly on Mobile Safari. http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/SafariJSDatabaseGuide/OfflineApplicationCache/OfflineApplicationCache.html http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/iPho...
  - jfager 17y ago
    I mean offline as an experience, not as a caching problem, which in my case means games and other apps that rely on the full capabilities of the hardware. I thought that would be obvious from the context as a native app that needs online access isn't much better on the subway than a webapp.
pc 17y ago
Worthless linkbait, and misses the point entirely. Namely: how many iPhone developers are making decent revenue from a web app? Mobile Safari could be the most powerful web experience in the world, but without a simple, trusted payment mechanism, it'll be largely ignored by "stupid" iPhone developers.
clawrencewenham 17y ago
iPhone developers are part of the problem: specifically the ones who create a zillion "shovelware" apps, some so pointless that Apple has got to the point of banning entire developers. Apple intended the review process to be basic third-party QA--something that the commercial software industry needs in general--but the noisy, trivial slush like "Dial Girlfriend" and apps that show a few P.D. pictures lifted off Google Images are tying up Apple's resources and making it a chore for users to find anything good.
- orangecat 17y ago
  That's the inevitable result of the approval process. Make a sophisticated app with lots of functionality, and there's a greatly increased chance that Apple will find something wrong with it. On the other hand a one button fart app will go right through.
Tawheed 17y ago
Sounds like there is an incredible market opportunity here for someone to create the "App Store Platform" for the Web.
asciilifeform 17y ago
> developers could just use Web technologies and create Web apps instead of native apps Audio. QED (Not to mention the iPod Touch, often used out of wireless range.)
mitko 17y ago
At least the correct way to refer to Steve Jobs is "He", not "he".
natch 17y ago
A native app with a web UI can present content even when there is no network connection... My respect for quirksmode just fell, a lot. The willful ignorance he shows in his article is staggering. And the rude delivery doesn't help either.
- Padraig 17y ago
  Wilful ignorance indeed! You don't need a native web app to present content without a network connection. You just need to use the HTML 5 offline application cache thats been in Mobile Safari since iPhone OS 2.1
  - natch 17y ago
    Heh, thanks for the well-deserved and well-delivered smackdown. I'll concede that point, but obviously there are others that have been mentioned.
BigZaphod 17y ago
But instead, iPhone developers are eagerly bending over begging Apple for more because of their myopic obsession with bad APIs, the twin geekgasms of both objecty stuff and C, bloated SDKs, impossible layout mechanisms, and all the rest of the archaic nonsense we’re going to have to rid the mobile Web of in the next few years. It's pretty clear he's never developed with Objective-C, Cocoa/UIKit, etc. if he's calling it a bloated and bad API. UIKit in particular is fresh, clean, and very nice overall, IMO. (I spent years in Javascript/HTML/CSS, moved to the iPhone for awhile and worked on some major projects, and recently started developing an app on Cocoa for OSX - which is a lot more crusty than the iPhone.) I also find it somewhat ironic that he talks about "impossible layout mechanisms" whereas almost every time I've been involved with a webapp I've hit upon some tricky layout requirement that is a pain in the ass because of CSS' builtin assumptions. This part reads like satire...
storborg 17y ago
This article could be written much less offensively as, "The appcache in iPhone OS > 2.1 means web apps don't have to be second-class citizens." As it is, it makes some strong assertions but fails to actually educate developers. That said, I agree with most of the points in this article, but I think the biggest reason why the App Store will continue to be the authority for iPhone apps is simple: it's a total pain to enter credit card payment information on your phone. Until someone changes that, nobody will want to pay $0.99 for even a spectacularly good web app. Perhaps the solution is to use a more common payment system, like Amazon or Paypal credentials.
joe_the_user 17y ago
Wow, It seems like everyone looks stupid now. Apple for the annoying process of the app store and developers for wanting 99 cents/each for a "silly puzzle game that would have to be free on the web". Now, what would happen if you had a big walled-garden where each user paid a fixed-fee for unlimited access to everything and each developer was paid per-use and by rating? Sooner or later, this model (all-you can eat content for a fixed fee with some of the fee going to content developers) will replace the "free" web and app-store models. The web is close to this already but the fees aren't shunted quite enough to content developers.
- clawrencewenham 17y ago
  And this worked so well for music subscriptions too, didn't it?
gojomo 17y ago
It also supports JavaScript geolocation, which is (I hope) only the first step towards true device APIs that will give JavaScript developers access to phone functionality such as the camera, text messaging, the address book, and more. I’m assuming Apple is working on all that because it’s the next logical step. I was sympathetic to Apple's original line about iPhone apps -- that web apps were iPhone apps -- under this same assumption, that over time MobileSafari would get all these capabilities and more. But those have been slow to materialize, and now Apple is making a bunch of money via the App Store. Why add things to MobileSafari that remove Apple's cut of sales? Or otherwise splinter the billing/in-app-purchasing system? Or confusingly 'duplicate functionality'? The assumption that Apple is a "true believer" in web apps becoming as capable as App Store apps may no longer be safe. Going strictly by Apple's self-interest, it would be equally valid to predict that Apple may, over time, add various kinds of policy or remote-driven cripple-switches to MobileSafari -- so the web isn't a back-door offering 'inappropriate content' or otherwise competing with the App Store. Of course Google is a "true believer" in web apps. Any bets on when we'll see a Chrome browser for the iPhone?
pvandehaar 17y ago
Summary: "Webapps are almost as good as Native Apps in many ways." The author reveals no advantages of webapps over a good AppStore that allows 3rd-party software sources. He is simply angry that he doesn't get enough attention as a web developer, not especially different from the complaint of a three year old child, though with the language of a nine year old.
- gord 17y ago
  We can criticize the delivery.. but given the popularity of the thread, I think the OP is making a valid point. I have written location-aware iPhone native apps, and if I had an open-source alternative to Big5 then, I probably would have used that. In my case it would have saved me quite a lot of overhead in terms of moving from Linux to a full mac development platform. Not having to learn a new syntax and api for iPhone might have been handy... and then I would have avoided having to jump through the code-signing hoops that tend to break when you upgrade software versions. So.. that's quite a bit of overhead for an app which only uses the geo-location feature of the hardware. I do enjoy the Mac platform, XCode etc. I'm not apple bashing here, but making a comparison.
jbc25 17y ago
What a ridiculous article. The downsides of web apps on the iPhone are painfully obvious and have been pointed out by the other commenters. Anyone who has tried to use web apps on the iPhone knows they are not ideal.
- tjogin 17y ago
  Yeah, obvious trolling. Had this come from someone unknown it wouldn't had gotten any attention.
khangtoh 17y ago
Payment should be easily taken care of, paypalx, etc... The only shortcoming is just the speed compared to native apps and of course the missing features that you can't really access through safari.
wallflower 17y ago
> After ten years I am f*ing tired of the "Web development is not real programming" bullshit that the arrogant bastards in "real programming" are spouting because they’re too frightened to learn something new. As someone who tinkered with browser-specific Javascript in the ugly, pre-jQuery early days of DHTML and failed to see where Javascript and HTML and CSS were headed (retreating into the safe world of Java for years - completely missing the ascendance of XHTML/jQuery/CSS - rendering my web skills of the Netscape 4.x era), I agree.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
tcarnell 17y ago
We're almost there, one step removed and we'll have it. Let's replace 'stupid' for 'greedy'. Then --> more fool the iPhone users that are paying billions of dollars for average/poor applications that could be replaced by FREE, high quality web apps. Apple have found a way to make a forture selling what is already freely available - a neat trick. Isn't it incredible that anybody would pay for a 'dictionary application' these days - whatever the platform?

169 points by samstokes 17y ago

Tichy 17y ago

I flagged this without even looking at the article. Is that bad?

potatolicious 17y ago
Yes.
Deestan 17y ago
Not really, the title was pretty linkbait.

shykes 17y ago

The app store is a huge distribution channel for developers. Making a web app solves the technical aspects of distribution, but then it's up to you to put your app under the nose of several million people.

patio11 17y ago

Fuck [iPhone developers] those condescending, ignorant, self-important, stupid, blind, fearful pricks. Fuck them real hard. Where it hurts. And fucking them real hard where it hurts is exactly what Apple is doing right now. We choose the world we want to live in, and I don't want to live in a world where writing like this is unremarkable. It adds nothing to the overall argument and coarsens us to no purpose. I am sympathetic to the general gist of "developers would be better off working without a gatekeeper", and have said much the same myself this weekend, but those who Apple chooses to win do benefit enormously from a built-in, captive audience who is exposed to Apple's annointed developers. There is no comparable method of exposure for mobile web application developers. There is also the non-trivial benefit of actually getting paid money to consider. You can certainly make money on the wide-open Internet, but the tactics you use for it and the apps you make are wholly different from what works on the iPhone. (What I wouldn't give for my customers being able to buy my software in two clicks, but alas...)

unalone 17y ago
You can charge money for a webapp. You just have to use PayPal rather than Apple's built-in procedure. That's fair, right? It's just as fair as buying any other application would be. I just installed two webapps on my iPod and they're quickly becoming my most-used icons.
steveklabnik 17y ago
Your attribution is wrong. He's not talking about iPhone developers, he's talking about the people in the sentence before it: After ten years I am fucking tired of the “Web development is not real programming” bullshit that the arrogant bastards in “real programming” are spouting because they’re too frightened to learn something new. Now, the Venn diagram may have some overlap, but still.
- potatolicious 17y ago
  The author seems to be suffering from a lot of insecurity and anger issues - and I mean that in the most non-judgmental way possible. I think it's pretty clear that most of HN works on web technologies, and personally I haven't really seen this condescending divide between 'web programming' and 'real programming' - which at the end of the day seems to be about the same thing really. I do however object to his calling the entire iPhone developer community out as stupid and arrogant. How arrogant is it to presume that everyone of the many iPhone developers who have complaints about the current approval system is, in his words, stupid? If anything the author is the arrogant, misinformed, and dare I say, stupid one here. I'm torn about whether or not to flag this. While this has generated some good discussion on HN, I don't think we should really cater to troll material like this. If you cannot communicate your opinions in an intelligent, civil way, and cannot deal with your fellow developers with some decorum, then please don't say anything at all.
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    I've certainly seen "web programming" vs "real programming" thing before. Must just be different scenes.
17y ago

pohl 17y ago

Let's say that I want to implement a swipe-to-delete feature like the one in the Mail app. What JavaScript event should I listen for?

rmaccloy 17y ago
touchmove, apparently: http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2008/07/10/touching-and-gesturing-on-the-iphone/ http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2008/07/10/touching-and-gesturin...

ulf 17y ago

While he basically raises some valid points, he ignores two critical ones: 1) With the appstore being the one authority to get apps on your iPhone, you will automatically get much less traction using the web 2) The appstore makes it VERY easy for the devs to actually get paid. If you launch your app web-only, you have to incorporate the whole payment process yourself, which sucks. Catch 22...

edd 17y ago
Your first point is so valid. Having created a webapp for the iPhone myself there really are few places I can go to put my webapp on a stage that anyone cares about. If someone knows of any I honestly would love to know where they are.
- patio11 17y ago
  Organic SEO. (Lots of work. Requires savvy. Not guaranteed. Stupendous ROI if you do it right.)
  - jimboyoungblood 17y ago
    Example(s)?
    - qeorge 17y ago
      Its hard to give examples of successful SEO, because you don't want extra competition in your niche. As a result, all we (SEOs) can offer for free is general advice on how to do it yourself. That said, I've been wanting to write a free guide to SEO aimed at HN-like companies, because I think its important. However, the response from HackerNews to anything involving SEO is so harsh, I've felt it would be a waste of my time. If that's not the case, please let me know.
    - patio11 17y ago
      I get about 60~70% of my new users from organic SEO. (I have not run that calculation in a while -- it may be higher now. It was certainly a lot higher in October.) Almost every successful startup you've heard of which publishes lots of content has an SEO strategy. Slideshare, Scribd (good golly were they aggressive with it -- good thing they got big before they got smacked), Yelp, etc etc.

jcl 17y ago

"It also supports JavaScript geolocation, which is (I hope) only the first step towards true device APIs that will give JavaScript developers access to phone functionality such as the camera, text messaging, the address book, and more. I’m assuming Apple is working on all that because it’s the next logical step." One could also argue that Apple benefits most in the short term by crippling web apps, since the App Store represents a revenue stream and is the main selling point of all their recent advertising.

clawrencewenham 17y ago
I'm gonna call bullshit on the general conspiracy theory, here. Mobile Safari is the best mobile browser, period. And WebKit is the engine for the next best. Adding camera, accelerometer, address-book integration etc. needs to wait for W3C standards to emerge and stabilize before they can be put into Mobile Safari. What might prove interesting is if a standard for payment mechanisms emerges, so that a web app can take payments mediated through the iTMS.

c1sc0 17y ago

The essence of the AppStore hovers around marketing & distribution, not technology. Apple set up a great distribution channel, making it super-easy for developers to get paid & they are throwing in some free promotion to boot. In the end, it's about money: can you afford the opportunity cost of not being present on the AppStore & make money right now? What's the cost of promoting your WebKit app going to be? Apple convinced people that it is ok to pay a little money for simple apps that run on their mobile phone. That was Apple's genius move, not the technology that makes iPhone apps tick. If you simply follow the money the whole AppStore debacle becomes a lot clearer.

wouterinho 17y ago

PPK is an idealist. Applications need to make money. Web applications on the iPhone are slow and have less functionality so they make less money.

jfager 17y ago

I know this is really only applicable for a few cities, but speaking for myself: as a consumer, I don't want webapps right now. AT&T's network sucks hard in NYC, and even if it didn't, a very large portion of the time I spend with apps on my phone is when I'm killing time on the subway. Offline is important, and while we're starting to solve that with some of the browser tech he pointed to, it really isn't there yet in a form that's competitive with native apps.

Padraig 17y ago
Offline works perfectly on Mobile Safari. http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/SafariJSDatabaseGuide/OfflineApplicationCache/OfflineApplicationCache.html http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/iPho...
- jfager 17y ago
  I mean offline as an experience, not as a caching problem, which in my case means games and other apps that rely on the full capabilities of the hardware. I thought that would be obvious from the context as a native app that needs online access isn't much better on the subway than a webapp.

pc 17y ago

Worthless linkbait, and misses the point entirely. Namely: how many iPhone developers are making decent revenue from a web app? Mobile Safari could be the most powerful web experience in the world, but without a simple, trusted payment mechanism, it'll be largely ignored by "stupid" iPhone developers.

clawrencewenham 17y ago

iPhone developers are part of the problem: specifically the ones who create a zillion "shovelware" apps, some so pointless that Apple has got to the point of banning entire developers. Apple intended the review process to be basic third-party QA--something that the commercial software industry needs in general--but the noisy, trivial slush like "Dial Girlfriend" and apps that show a few P.D. pictures lifted off Google Images are tying up Apple's resources and making it a chore for users to find anything good.

orangecat 17y ago
That's the inevitable result of the approval process. Make a sophisticated app with lots of functionality, and there's a greatly increased chance that Apple will find something wrong with it. On the other hand a one button fart app will go right through.

Tawheed 17y ago

Sounds like there is an incredible market opportunity here for someone to create the "App Store Platform" for the Web.

asciilifeform 17y ago

> developers could just use Web technologies and create Web apps instead of native apps Audio. QED (Not to mention the iPod Touch, often used out of wireless range.)

mitko 17y ago

At least the correct way to refer to Steve Jobs is "He", not "he".

natch 17y ago

A native app with a web UI can present content even when there is no network connection... My respect for quirksmode just fell, a lot. The willful ignorance he shows in his article is staggering. And the rude delivery doesn't help either.

Padraig 17y ago
Wilful ignorance indeed! You don't need a native web app to present content without a network connection. You just need to use the HTML 5 offline application cache thats been in Mobile Safari since iPhone OS 2.1
- natch 17y ago
  Heh, thanks for the well-deserved and well-delivered smackdown. I'll concede that point, but obviously there are others that have been mentioned.

BigZaphod 17y ago

But instead, iPhone developers are eagerly bending over begging Apple for more because of their myopic obsession with bad APIs, the twin geekgasms of both objecty stuff and C, bloated SDKs, impossible layout mechanisms, and all the rest of the archaic nonsense we’re going to have to rid the mobile Web of in the next few years. It's pretty clear he's never developed with Objective-C, Cocoa/UIKit, etc. if he's calling it a bloated and bad API. UIKit in particular is fresh, clean, and very nice overall, IMO. (I spent years in Javascript/HTML/CSS, moved to the iPhone for awhile and worked on some major projects, and recently started developing an app on Cocoa for OSX - which is a lot more crusty than the iPhone.) I also find it somewhat ironic that he talks about "impossible layout mechanisms" whereas almost every time I've been involved with a webapp I've hit upon some tricky layout requirement that is a pain in the ass because of CSS' builtin assumptions. This part reads like satire...

storborg 17y ago

This article could be written much less offensively as, "The appcache in iPhone OS > 2.1 means web apps don't have to be second-class citizens." As it is, it makes some strong assertions but fails to actually educate developers. That said, I agree with most of the points in this article, but I think the biggest reason why the App Store will continue to be the authority for iPhone apps is simple: it's a total pain to enter credit card payment information on your phone. Until someone changes that, nobody will want to pay $0.99 for even a spectacularly good web app. Perhaps the solution is to use a more common payment system, like Amazon or Paypal credentials.

joe_the_user 17y ago

Wow, It seems like everyone looks stupid now. Apple for the annoying process of the app store and developers for wanting 99 cents/each for a "silly puzzle game that would have to be free on the web". Now, what would happen if you had a big walled-garden where each user paid a fixed-fee for unlimited access to everything and each developer was paid per-use and by rating? Sooner or later, this model (all-you can eat content for a fixed fee with some of the fee going to content developers) will replace the "free" web and app-store models. The web is close to this already but the fees aren't shunted quite enough to content developers.

clawrencewenham 17y ago
And this worked so well for music subscriptions too, didn't it?

gojomo 17y ago

It also supports JavaScript geolocation, which is (I hope) only the first step towards true device APIs that will give JavaScript developers access to phone functionality such as the camera, text messaging, the address book, and more. I’m assuming Apple is working on all that because it’s the next logical step. I was sympathetic to Apple's original line about iPhone apps -- that web apps were iPhone apps -- under this same assumption, that over time MobileSafari would get all these capabilities and more. But those have been slow to materialize, and now Apple is making a bunch of money via the App Store. Why add things to MobileSafari that remove Apple's cut of sales? Or otherwise splinter the billing/in-app-purchasing system? Or confusingly 'duplicate functionality'? The assumption that Apple is a "true believer" in web apps becoming as capable as App Store apps may no longer be safe. Going strictly by Apple's self-interest, it would be equally valid to predict that Apple may, over time, add various kinds of policy or remote-driven cripple-switches to MobileSafari -- so the web isn't a back-door offering 'inappropriate content' or otherwise competing with the App Store. Of course Google is a "true believer" in web apps. Any bets on when we'll see a Chrome browser for the iPhone?

pvandehaar 17y ago

Summary: "Webapps are almost as good as Native Apps in many ways." The author reveals no advantages of webapps over a good AppStore that allows 3rd-party software sources. He is simply angry that he doesn't get enough attention as a web developer, not especially different from the complaint of a three year old child, though with the language of a nine year old.

gord 17y ago
We can criticize the delivery.. but given the popularity of the thread, I think the OP is making a valid point. I have written location-aware iPhone native apps, and if I had an open-source alternative to Big5 then, I probably would have used that. In my case it would have saved me quite a lot of overhead in terms of moving from Linux to a full mac development platform. Not having to learn a new syntax and api for iPhone might have been handy... and then I would have avoided having to jump through the code-signing hoops that tend to break when you upgrade software versions. So.. that's quite a bit of overhead for an app which only uses the geo-location feature of the hardware. I do enjoy the Mac platform, XCode etc. I'm not apple bashing here, but making a comparison.

jbc25 17y ago

What a ridiculous article. The downsides of web apps on the iPhone are painfully obvious and have been pointed out by the other commenters. Anyone who has tried to use web apps on the iPhone knows they are not ideal.

tjogin 17y ago
Yeah, obvious trolling. Had this come from someone unknown it wouldn't had gotten any attention.

khangtoh 17y ago

Payment should be easily taken care of, paypalx, etc... The only shortcoming is just the speed compared to native apps and of course the missing features that you can't really access through safari.

wallflower 17y ago

> After ten years I am f*ing tired of the "Web development is not real programming" bullshit that the arrogant bastards in "real programming" are spouting because they’re too frightened to learn something new. As someone who tinkered with browser-specific Javascript in the ugly, pre-jQuery early days of DHTML and failed to see where Javascript and HTML and CSS were headed (retreating into the safe world of Java for years - completely missing the ascendance of XHTML/jQuery/CSS - rendering my web skills of the Netscape 4.x era), I agree.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

tcarnell 17y ago

We're almost there, one step removed and we'll have it. Let's replace 'stupid' for 'greedy'. Then --> more fool the iPhone users that are paying billions of dollars for average/poor applications that could be replaced by FREE, high quality web apps. Apple have found a way to make a forture selling what is already freely available - a neat trick. Isn't it incredible that anybody would pay for a 'dictionary application' these days - whatever the platform?