No need for an iPhone
There has been so much buzz around the iPhone for the past months and I’ve been looking forward to it too, but being in the UK I’m not going to be able to get it for about a year so I’ve not got my hopes up too much.
Plus I just downloaded google maps for my phone and remembered that I had turned off 3G, my Sony K800i has 90% of the features of the iphone plus a few extra ones and it’s in my hand today, so I’m sure I can live without it.
The announcement last week about the iPhone “SDK” being safari has been purely good news for me, being a web developer already I’ve instantly became an iPhone developer as well. Thanks to Ruby on Rails I can whip up an app and as long as it nice and standards compliant (which all of my designs are anyway) it should work like a treat.
I’ve heard and read about a lot of apple developers bitching and moaning that there is not a full-on SDK for the iPhone but quite frankly i think they are being incredibly shortsighted. Lets look at an example and compare the two:
- Apple brings out the iPhone SDK and apple developers can produce an application that only runs on the iPhone, which if it doesn’t flop, will have about 6 million users in a years time, they will have the power to crash the phone, delete whole address books and even bring viruses or spyware onto the platform.
- Apple doesn’t bring out an SDK but includes full on safari on the iPhone, a developer can produce a piece of software that not only works on the iPhone but also every Desktop PCs, macs , Nintendo Wii and many other internet enabled devices plus any other new phones that are released by any other manufacturers which have a more fully functional web browser.
Plus if they put in the time and effort to use unobtrusive javascript then their web apps will also work great on hundreds of millions of existing 3G and GPRS enabled phones that exist today.
I think it’s pretty obvious which is the better choice for a developer who actually wants to make some money!
Another benefit of doing web development over creating packaged, downloadable applications is that you control all of the source code all of the time, your IP never leaves you server (unless you are dumb enough to write all of your business logic into your javascript) and you can update your code base as often as you like without ever having to worry that some lazy user has not got the latest update.
At Greenvoice we release small updates on an almost daily basis and we never have to worry about supporting legacy code and if we made a mistake along the way then so what we can fix it at any time and roll out an update to 100% of our users as soon as the fix is complete.
One argument that I’m sure a number of developers would come back with is that there are nowhere near enough tools or control over the system and that you need an internet connection for these things to work, but as it happens google, adobe, mozilla and microsoft are all working on ways of solving these issues with frameworks like apollo and gears plus the next generation of web browsers are heading in the same direction.
For me web development has so many attractive elements compared to traditional software development that i cant see myself doing anything else. So if the apple developer community is going to keep moaning and groaning then fine, leave all of the opportunities in web development to me, I’d be more than happy to have your money!
The reason for all of the bitching and complaining is because Apple told developers absolutely nothing new. They already knew there was a full-on safari app on the phone and they could make web apps for it. What they wanted was the ability to hit a button on the homepage and go straight to the app, such as what is with Google maps. They’re just slightly angered that they have to go through so much headway to get to their apps.
Don’t think I’m dissing web apps though, I’m a RoR guy too.
Adam on June 17, 2007 5:21 am
It’s not really any different to any other phone, it takes me about 5 clicks to get to my gmail or bookmarks on my phone.
The phone market is completely different to the mac’s market too, there are soooo many more n00bs, not jsut geeks using this thing and I think apple understands that, they are just making it incredibly easy for 95% of the users of the phone.
They are all gunna buy the iPhone anyone, it’s still going to be one amazing piece of hardware!
Andrew on June 17, 2007 9:40 am
I agree with your iPhone SDK reasoning. makes sense. This typ of platform consolidation is a good thing, the last thing we need is *yet another* proprietary platform to learn. Might as well use a popular platform that already is mature and with a wide developer base. good post!
Dan on June 17, 2007 3:44 pm
I can agree with some of your statements above, but I don’t think you thought about Google magic as a result of Apple partnership.
I won’t speculate much in public , but I think , if it is as I expected to be, will change the world, indeed.
Zec on June 19, 2007 9:42 am