First iPhone Web Apps Appear

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First iPhone Web Apps Appear

Less than two full days after Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone would work with third-party Web 2.0 applications, the first iPhone web apps have appeared. One, created by David Cann, is an iPhone interface for popular social content site Digg. The interface appears within a mockup image of the iPhone, and lets users “flick” to scroll up and down. Another app, OneTrip Shopping, is a grocery list program built by Neven Mrgan that allows users to sort through various types of food and sundry items, and add them to an editable list. As we reported yesterday, developer reaction to the announcement of Web-based third party apps for iPhone has been mixed.

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Comments

1

Gee, if only there were a platform to host these nice little apps. What could it be? Oh yeah, dot-mac! Move over iWeb, make way for iPhone Apps

Posted by C. Lee Smith on June 13, 2007 at 11:39 AM (PST)

2

@C. Lee Smith

Uhh, no. You think Digg runs on .Mac? Digg runs on Digg’s servers. The platform is whatever you run your stuff on.

On another note…

And that French developer in the other article is clueless. Hello! The iPhone is a phone. It will be connected to the Internet ALL THE TIME because it is a phone. That’s the point of EDGE + WiFi, duh!

It’s like buying a cell phone and worrying about it not being able to make calls half the time…maybe if you’re living in the Amazon, but no one buys a cell phone without expecting 99.9999% connectivity.

Some developers are so busy feeling insulted they’ve given their minds up to cluelessness. Must be all those rage hormones.

Posted by Paul on June 13, 2007 at 2:17 PM (PST)

3

Paul is right. Here’s a prediction—the FAA will permit cell phone use on planes, but not for voice, only for online use. If that happens, you can connect to your Safari iPhone applications all the time. If it doesn’t happen, there’s always Google Gears.

Posted by technolawyer on June 13, 2007 at 6:21 PM (PST)

4

For the estimated (analyst estimates, not mine) 48% of iPhone buyers who will live in California and New York, within wonderful wireless coverage zones—kudos for your over-reaching generalizations about ubiquitous coverage. The parochial ‘Silicon-Valley-centric’ reality-distortial field has extended beyond Steve Jobs’ perspiration aura and affected you as well.

For the rest of the country, living in a world in which the whole point behind the ‘fewer dropped calls’ angle of Cingular’s 2006-07 advertising did not fall on infertile ears, there are very real issues with web-dependent thin client app solutions that are not allowed to access device resources directly.

But, alas, like the Harley mantra goes—“if I have to explain it, you wouldn’t understand”...

Posted by Michael Compeau on June 14, 2007 at 8:37 AM (PST)

5

Another “mixed” developer perspective [rant]:

The iPhone runs an embedded version of a UNIX OS. UNIX, like all computing devices, has endless possibilities. I can do whatever I very well please when I install Linux on my iPaq (Like log into my desktop from the living room and turn on my music remotely).

Apple’s choice to restrict 3rd party development by 100% for the iPhone (Building a webapp that happens to work with iPhone’s edition of Safari is not what I consider developing for the iPhone) means that I can only do what they tell me I can do. If I have any grand ideas, if *anybody in the world* has any grand ideas about what needs an iPhone might suit, tough. Apple makes the calls.

It’s like buying a screw driver and being told you’re only allowed to use it to change your license plates.

Digital devices are generically useful for an infinite array of applications (That’s why they’re mainstream). Programmers learn to write code that’s *dynamic,* a huge and imperative concept in development

When they put in R&D to figure out how to make them less useful (Locked) and undynamic, it ticks me off, especially because I end up paying them to do the extra work to limit my freedom (*cough* DRM *cough*). If I want to do something else… I have to go build my own iPhone from scratch first. That’s not dynamic.

The iPhone looked really cool at the WWDC, until I realized you would only be able to do half a dozen hard-coded things with it, period, splat, squat, zilch, the end. I won’t be buying one.

SigmaX

Posted by SigmaX on June 27, 2007 at 10:50 AM (PST)

6

I don’t know how Apple forgot to include a to-do list.

Luckily, Toodledo has an iPhone optimized version of their task manager so you can update your to-dos while on the go.

http://www.toodledo.com/slim

Posted by Jake on July 11, 2007 at 1:01 PM (PST)

7

@SigmaX

But the iPaq is an bulky, ugly piece of crap. Give Apple time.. the widget dashboard could become a very nice platform for real third party application development; a healthy compromise between third party innovation and Apple’s desire to control the iPhone environment.

Posted by ende on July 12, 2007 at 10:32 AM (PST)

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