Posts tagged with: webapps

This is part of a series of posts about the Apple iPhone and the future of the mobile Web. With regard to the upcoming release of an iPhone SDK for native, third-party apps: keep in mind that Web apps are growing in popularity and functionality.  Many predict web apps will one day render the desktop tower more or less obsolete.  As apps like Google Mail/Reader/Docs/Calendar, Basecamp, Todoist and the rest become more ubiquitous, online file storage like .Mac and box.net become cheaper/easier/faster, and bandwidth pipes become less of an issue, the day will come when files and applications are all run online, and users log in through a thin client OR EVEN A MOBILE DEVICE to establish their identity and to operate the data and applications.  Google is banking on this.  You can bet that Microsoft is working to create Web-app versions of their software.  Apple seemed to be on the same page with the original, abandoned Safari SDK, and with the Google Maps and Search integration on the iPhone. What happened? Some have suggested that the problems involved got too complicated just to fix them instead of working around them. I don't know if that's true, but...

In my last post I wrote about mobile application design and how form should disappear in the face of function.  The implementation of MobileSafari on the iPhone comes so very close to giving developers a toolkit to accomplish this with pizazz, but there are a couple issues holding it back from its full potential:

The "dev kit" that Apple offers doesn't allow access to the phone's features. This was covered in my last post. Lack of access to the camera, microphone, speaker, alerts etc. hinder iPhone apps from being fully effective. MobileSafari's support for Web standards is subpar.  The implementation of the Web standards that Apple touted as an application development platform are disappointing.  Javascript behavior is slow and unreliable, and even some CSS properties do not behave according to the Web standards that Apple touted as the future of the iPhone.

This may have come as a surprise to Apple.As far as I know they have never said outright that the Safari browser and its Mobile counterpart can behave like two different animals, but as someone who spends a lot of time with both, I know it to be true. This is something that I had considered worth...

When I imagine a "digital lifestyle", it is long on "lifestyle" and short on "digital". I picture a level of integration between tech (iPhone, home computer, web applications and services), life (home, family, travel, friends) and the digital tracings of my life (photos, video, music, design, blog/microblog/ tumblelog) that allows me to enjoy what I'm doing without thinking about transferring from real life to digital.  It just happens, at least it does in my mind's eye. The advent of the iPhone had made it seem like the "digital lifestyle" was ready to integrate in this way.  Unfortunately, the actual product and process has fallen short of this mark. Apple's announcement that they are releasing a "real" iPhone SDK for native third-party applications is good news for the iPhone.  Applications so far, whether they were Safari Web apps or hacked native apps, have been restricted to a fairly primitive set of features. The main reason for this: no integration with the features that should make the iPhone a mobile wonder: camera, microphone, speaker, accelerometer on the hardware side, and Address Book, Calculator and Clock on the software side.

A good mobile app should be as transparent as...

Enough people have expressed interest in a desktop browser version of iTweet (examples: one, two, three) that I started putting one together tonight. Twitter's recent dropping of the hyperlinks in @replies is fixed by just a few lines of code in iTweet... so if you like using @replies, here you go. A lot of iTweet's functions are built around convenience for the iPhone, so expect this version to change a lot as I modify it for the desktop browser. Eliminating the constraints of bandwidth and Mobile Safari's funkiness, lots more is possible. On the other hand, without Safari's wonderful CSS3 support, this version doesn't have all the lovely rounded corners of the iPhone version. Anyways, it's a work in progress, but seeing how everyone misses the linked @replies I thought I'd just publish this early so people can use it. Enjoy. Click here to give it a try.So far I have only clicked around this version a bit in Firefox and Safari on the Mac before I blew through the API limit on both my accounts. I will test and debug it for other browsers soon. I welcome your opinions and feature requests for the desktop...