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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

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.

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.