Recently, there have been public tussles between companies I used to work for. Apple has blocked Google's Latitude and Voice products from being in the iPhone App Store, for reasons they haven't disclosed, though it is speculated because they compete with built-in applications or carrier plans.
The iPhone App Store has gathered so much buzz recently, that it has obscured the underlying effect of the change that is happening due to the iPhone and its imitators. An iPhone is not so much a phone, as a good Web browser in your pocket that works everywhere. By incorporating the excellent Webkit browser, iPhone tipped the pocket net experience from email-like to fully web-like. As I said at its launch, even Steve Jobs can't ignore the Web.
As iPhones, iPods, Androids, Palm Pre Chrome, Safari and some Nokia phones now run Webkit browsers, the growing part of the Web browser usage is in a browser that supports HTML5 and the geolocation, video, vector graphics and local storage APIs that that implies. So Google Voice's website UI can work on iPhone, Android et al and make calls, as can other web applications that make calls.
The real platform that everyone can build on is still the web, and attempts to enclose or limit it will continue to fail. The Open Web Foundation, which I'm proud to be a member of, is working to keep this true and make it easier to grow new web standards and agreements.
I'm very seriously considering foregoing the iPhone app for my own company, and instead focusing on full web compatibility. Any app produced could be done the Google method, just using the webkit API methods to pull from the web so you get the App Store juice. What Google has done with Latitude and the other HTML 5 tie-ins has been very impressive!
ReplyDeleteAgain and again I hear of applications being blocked from the App Store for stupid, often commercial reasons. If consumers apparantly accept Apple’s blatant censorship of the App Store, why would they not accept blatant blocking of web applications on the iPhone?
ReplyDeleteI don’t really understand how consumers let them get away with this and keep pouring the praise on the iPhone and Apple. If Microsoft would do such things there would be hell to pay. And as nice as the iPhone seems, I for sure won’t be getting one. I’d rather have an open (Java based) platform.
I agree wholeheartedly - when the iPhone came out I was very excited by its web options because it meant that a phone could be used for the same purposes my PC could, and that anything I'd use on the web on my PC would be usable on the phone.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately because of Apple's desire to hold the market and stiffle competition they've blown the App thing out of proportion, and its become yet another platform that developers have to work to support, both with pages specifically designed for the iPhone at the expense of other phone browsers, and with Apps that are tied 100% to the device.
The idea that we could have this utopia of platform independence with the internet is still there, but when companies are more concerned with making sure their product sells more than other products, and will resort to castrating Apps for their own device in an attempt to do this its hard to see how we can make progress.
The heart of the matter is that the Internet wants to be open. By that I mean we (for the most part) want this to happen to spur innovation. Any hardware providers that attempt to blockade the nature of the beast make themselves prime targets for ridicule and to be run over by the need for open efficiency.
ReplyDeleteI feel a little bad for Apple but am happy I'll be able to make wireless phone calls via google voice and skype soon :)
So how can I best nuke the OS on my phone and use a different provider, Android for iPhone?