5 ms·

You left out one important point that he mentions but doesn't give enough credit to... 3) There's still a lot of features on the iPhone that you can only acces

by SamAtt 17y ago

You left out one important point that he mentions but doesn't give enough credit to... 3) There's still a lot of features on the iPhone that you can only access through native apps. He claims most of the apps he has could be web apps. But I just opened my iPhone to the Top 25 paid apps and 7 out of the top 10 could only exist as native apps (and the other three are debatable but in theory you could write them in Javascript) Here's the list... Voices: Requires access to the mic JellyCar: Requires native app for soundtrack (which is actually a big deal in the game) RedLaser: Requires access to the camera Call of Duty: Graphics require a native app All in One Gamebox: Graphics require a native app Alarm Clock Pro: Has to be able to play music library Metal Gear: Graphics require a native app

mattmaroon 17y ago
All sufficiently popular platforms trend towards games. Graphics alone makes the app store a necessity.
- dgallagher 17y ago
  When carrier bandwidth allows for it in ~5 or more years, streaming live content to cell phones might become an option (3D games over OnLive, etc). But it's likely going to be a while before carriers can support this, given the need for low latency and high-bandwidth for many games to provide a good end-user experience. Streaming live video en-masses would likely exist* far before streaming games, given you can buffer video to compensate for latency. Games couldn't be easily buffered as they require instant feedback between button-presses and what's seen on the screen. *Streaming video does indeed exist for cell phones, but not on a mass-scale, at least in the United States.
  - dangrossman 17y ago
    Unlimited live streaming television was one of the selling points of the Samsung Instinct from Sprint in the US. Six months later they cut back the free channel lineup so there's nothing interesting to watch.
- gord 17y ago
  Wouldn't the popularity and success of flash games be a counter argument? Admittedly not for 3D intensive games. But maybe flash+browser will catch up with 3D. Only a year ago RaphealJS was magic.
allenbrunson 17y ago
The fact that iPhone web apps can't access iPhone hardware comes up all the time here. It seems odd to me that nobody mentions the fact that, with not much work, it's possible to create an iPhone browser that can give a website access to most of the iPhone hardware through javascript: gps/location services, the camera, the photo library, the music library, the accelerometer, and so on. One enterprising developer wrote an iPhone browser that does just that. here it is: http://www.big5apps.com/ http://www.big5apps.com/ I can't really recommend that app, though. Most of it is open source, so you can go see for yourself that the code is terrible. The app is ugly, leaks abound, and so on. The guy really doesn't know objective-c. I became aware of it because I have a contracting client that wanted to use that app, discovered it was terrible, and paid me to write a better one. I think this is an idea that is ripe for the picking, but I can't see how, really. I have most of such a browser written. Who can think of a way to monetize this?
- wallflower 17y ago
  See also http://rhomobile.com/ http://rhomobile.com/ Rhomobile has a Ruby-on-Rails inspired framework to run a scaled down Ruby 1.9 implementation that seems to act as an internal web server, allowing iPhone/Blackberry apps to be written in Ruby and HTML templates. The code you write seems to have access to native phone capabilities like GPS. The main drawback of RhoMobile seems to be the lack of a polished feel, looking like the browser application it really is. (Wikimedia mobile uses RhoMobile for its iPhone app).
- gord 17y ago
  The demos look good, although I think the 12.99 price is going to rule it out, because at least initially its too much to pay in order to use one app. For such a critical component, youd really want something open source [and free as in beer also]... after all it needs to keep pace rapidly, be rock solid, trusted by all developers, etc. [EDIT : correction.. Big5Lite is free, not sure what non Lite has. Big5 project is opensource it seems - http://code.google.com/p/big5/ http://code.google.com/p/big5/] App developers who use it can compete while adding to this common component - it plays the role of the browser. It just happens to be a browser which gives you access to nice hardware features such as geo location, media library, contacts etc [policed by os]. Here lies the solution for some percentage of apps, between 90.0 and 99.95.

by SamAtt 17y ago

mattmaroon 17y ago

All sufficiently popular platforms trend towards games. Graphics alone makes the app store a necessity.

dgallagher 17y ago
When carrier bandwidth allows for it in ~5 or more years, streaming live content to cell phones might become an option (3D games over OnLive, etc). But it's likely going to be a while before carriers can support this, given the need for low latency and high-bandwidth for many games to provide a good end-user experience. Streaming live video en-masses would likely exist* far before streaming games, given you can buffer video to compensate for latency. Games couldn't be easily buffered as they require instant feedback between button-presses and what's seen on the screen. *Streaming video does indeed exist for cell phones, but not on a mass-scale, at least in the United States.
- dangrossman 17y ago
  Unlimited live streaming television was one of the selling points of the Samsung Instinct from Sprint in the US. Six months later they cut back the free channel lineup so there's nothing interesting to watch.
gord 17y ago
Wouldn't the popularity and success of flash games be a counter argument? Admittedly not for 3D intensive games. But maybe flash+browser will catch up with 3D. Only a year ago RaphealJS was magic.

allenbrunson 17y ago

The fact that iPhone web apps can't access iPhone hardware comes up all the time here. It seems odd to me that nobody mentions the fact that, with not much work, it's possible to create an iPhone browser that can give a website access to most of the iPhone hardware through javascript: gps/location services, the camera, the photo library, the music library, the accelerometer, and so on. One enterprising developer wrote an iPhone browser that does just that. here it is: http://www.big5apps.com/ http://www.big5apps.com/ I can't really recommend that app, though. Most of it is open source, so you can go see for yourself that the code is terrible. The app is ugly, leaks abound, and so on. The guy really doesn't know objective-c. I became aware of it because I have a contracting client that wanted to use that app, discovered it was terrible, and paid me to write a better one. I think this is an idea that is ripe for the picking, but I can't see how, really. I have most of such a browser written. Who can think of a way to monetize this?

wallflower 17y ago
See also http://rhomobile.com/ http://rhomobile.com/ Rhomobile has a Ruby-on-Rails inspired framework to run a scaled down Ruby 1.9 implementation that seems to act as an internal web server, allowing iPhone/Blackberry apps to be written in Ruby and HTML templates. The code you write seems to have access to native phone capabilities like GPS. The main drawback of RhoMobile seems to be the lack of a polished feel, looking like the browser application it really is. (Wikimedia mobile uses RhoMobile for its iPhone app).
gord 17y ago
The demos look good, although I think the 12.99 price is going to rule it out, because at least initially its too much to pay in order to use one app. For such a critical component, youd really want something open source [and free as in beer also]... after all it needs to keep pace rapidly, be rock solid, trusted by all developers, etc. [EDIT : correction.. Big5Lite is free, not sure what non Lite has. Big5 project is opensource it seems - http://code.google.com/p/big5/ http://code.google.com/p/big5/] App developers who use it can compete while adding to this common component - it plays the role of the browser. It just happens to be a browser which gives you access to nice hardware features such as geo location, media library, contacts etc [policed by os]. Here lies the solution for some percentage of apps, between 90.0 and 99.95.