It’s official after lots of rumors Apple unveiled the “/webapps directory“.
Part fun. Part function.
[…]
The Internet and multi-touch.
With web apps, the power of the Internet meets the brilliance of multi-touch. And suddenly, iPhone and iPod touch can do that much more.
The Internet and multi-touch.
With web apps, the power of the Internet meets the brilliance of multi-touch. And suddenly, iPhone and iPod touch can do that much more.
Flick through lists of news articles on Digg. Play games like Sudoku and Bejeweled with the touch of a finger. View movie times, train schedules, and blogs.
Web apps don’t just extend the functionality of iPhone and iPod touch, they do it in style. Since web apps are websites designed specifically for the 3.5-inch screen, you’ll find the viewing experience amazing.
UPDATE (First impressions): The webapps collection is not yet that much crowded but it features yet a pretty useful variaty of apps from the usual “suspects2.0″, Facebook, digg (reddit where are thou?), a few feed readers and others, to the most crowded (as you may imagine) enterteinment directory and a pretty collection of useful utilities and search tools (events, travel info, local attractions, local business). From the available images all this apps show to have been “redesigned” to prefectly fit the iPhone screen and take full advantage of the touch interface. It’s pretty clear this selection makes an inviting appetizer for all the so-called-social geeks out there (if the iPhoniness-per-se wouldn’t have been proven yet enough attractive).
But the real interesting news come to the Developer side; the Web Development for iPhone section spells out a clear message:
Developers can create Web 2.0 applications that look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and provide seamless integration with iPhone applications and services including making a phone call, sending an email, and displaying a location in Google Maps. Third-party applications created using web standards can extend iPhone’s capabilities without compromising its reliability or security. Accessory developers can create products that attach to the dock connector, the stereo headphone minijack, and carrying cases.
So you can expect a flourishing of third-party applications that will feel as the native ones (althought built on html, css and javascript) and you won’t worry about screwing up your iPhone installing a broken and messy third-party app, which makes it a well argumented (yet questionable) decision on what to open and what not to.
I took a look at the sample iPhone webapp - Puzzler and you can see the aformentioned claim holds still: Puzzler is a web standards based application that you can fairly run in Firefox without any issues and you can verify it’s just a few (about two hundred) lines of javascript code and nearly nothing html and css (the application is actually very simple on the “presentation” side) - random thought: a nice companion to the Puzzler webapp would be a Conway’s Game of Life simulator.
Much of the success of a mobile platform depends on a right balance between the will to “play well” with others players and the ability to attract and keep customers; iPhone’s user interface proved to be very effective on the “attract-customers” ability, now that the opening to third-party applications has happened the jury is finally out, and we will se if the degree of openess adopted by Apple is enough to catch on developers and users and go beyond its gadget’s coolness.
