Many tech pundits have suggested, in defense of third-party applications on that Barack Obama of a mobile device known as iPhone, that its fabled killer app won’t come from Apple. Steve Jobs told the world last January that there would be no such support, then amended the pronouncement this week, asserting that, since the iPhone runs a fully functional web browser, that oh, of course you could write custom apps for the iPhone because you can write custom web apps.
Thusly we find ourselves. Already, we see people writing speculative web apps for the iPhone—not that speculation is necessarily a bad thing in this case, as the runtime environment is pretty much established (320×480, AJAX standards-compliant, touch interface), right?
Right. There’s no doubt that with this early activity already taking place before the device is even available, it is almost foregone that a strong community will build within the coming months. The iPhone will get its fair share of third party software, despite this awkward path to development. And somewhere in there will be the killer app, the real reason to get an iPhone. With one exception:
You won’t need an iPhone for it. If In fact, all you’ll need is something with at least a 320×480 touchscreen that can render standards-compliant pages. And while these devs may be targeting the specifics of Apple’s WebKit renderer, there’s nothing there that a little tweaking won’t fix.
Oops. If Apple had gone the SDK route and allowed iPhone development in Cocoa, the iPhone could have its first killer app all to itself. Perhaps this may yet happen. As it stands, though, anything that runs on the iPhone can also run on a Meizu, an FIC, or anything else with the specs to handle it.
Not that I’m complaining. It’s good for the market. It’s merely a bit ironic that a proprietary move on Apple’s part should result in the leveling of its own field.
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Comment by Gail Woodard 11.12.08 @ 9:51 pm