Posts tagged Web Apps
Confusing: Developers Who Complain Apple’s iPhone is Closed AND Think HTML5 is the Future
Mar 15th
TechCrunch links to noted developer Tim Bray who’s taking a position as “Developer Advocate” at Google for Android but who announces it while taking a swipe at Apple’s iPhone and the closed nature of the App Store:
The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.
Which is completely and utterly wrong, of course. That’s Apple’s vision of the mobile, curated App Store which they intend to be a family friendly, corporately liable software repository. Apple’s vision of the mobile internet is Mobile Safari and its WebKit rendering engine and other technological underpinnings, most of which are open source and heavily supported by Apple.
You can, now, today, get porn on the iPhone via Mobile Safari. You can get Google Voice. You can pretty much get anything and everything without any interference from or need for approval by Apple. It’s the definition of the Winer-ian vendor-less platform Bray quotes. Never mind:
I’m going to have to get savvier about HTML5-based applications, because a lot of smart people think the future’s there, that the “native app” notion will soon seem quaint.
And HTML5 (which allows web-based apps to behave more like native apps) is something Apple has been pushing very hard as well (from promotion at Apple’s Developer Tech Talk World Tour to WebKit.org itself). And again, now, today, you can code and run some of the best, most robust HTML5 applications for mobile to run well on iPhone Safari — and other WebKit-based mobile browsers.
We’ve said many times Safari is Apple’s open app store, and Apple even includes it beside Mac and iPhone on developer.apple.com. That’s what confuses us about comments like Bray’s and TechCrunch’s mention of former Facebook for iPhone developer Joe Hewitt (who has since said the iPad is “everything he’s wished for”).
It’s awesome for Bray and Google and Android and developers, and we congratulate and wish all of them well on his new position. But it’s important to point out that while Apple’s App Store might be “closed”, Mobile Safari is wide open; if you’re a web developer it’s delivering as well or better than anyone else on the promise of of that platform today.
Confusing: Developers Who Complain Apple’s iPhone is Closed AND Think HTML5 is the Future is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Find My iPhone Now Working on iPhone Safari, iTunes Preview Categories Now Working on Web
Feb 19th
Apple has changed MobileMe’s me.com site, previously inaccessible from iPhone or iPod touch Safari, to not only allow access to Find My iPhone, but to offer help in setting up accounts and getting additional apps. iTunes Preview, meanwhile, has duplicated even more of the media and app browsing experience on the web by adding support for categories.
First up, when you used to go to http://www.me.com on your iPhone, you used to see an intercept page telling you to set up the services on your iPhone and that was it. Now the new page (above) has a link to setting up those services, a direct link to Find my iPhone, and links for getting Apple’s free Gallery and iDisk App Store apps.
Obviously, Find My iPhone from an iPhone or iPod touch (or iPad, as we presume that’s what Apple is setting all this up for) is the Big News here. The link itself is a bit clunky still and the Find My iPhone page hasn’t been optimized for the iPhone, but having it available online and mobile is huge.
Next, TUAW shows how Apple has once again expanded iTunes Preview — the web browser-based front for the iTunes store — adding full on category pages to the previous app and music rollout. Another piece in the rumored iTunes.com cloud-based puzzle?
Let us know what you think of these changes!
[Thanks Jason for the tip!]
Find My iPhone Now Working on iPhone Safari, iTunes Preview Categories Now Working on Web is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Adobe Says 7 Million iPhone OS Users Tried to Download Flash — Would Hulu App Fix That?
Feb 10th
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that, according to Adobe 7 million iPhone and iPod touch users attempted to download Flash in December, well over the 3 million who tried back in June. We wonder how many of those were for Hulu, and whether rumors of a Hulu app for iPad would change them significantly?
Engadget feels that both Apple and Adobe’s competition (competing smartphone platforms that will soon include Flash 10.1, and competing video and rich-content delivery systems from HTML5 to Silverlight which now streams H.264 to the iPhone) are the only ones who will benefit.
We figure technology might as well, as Flash is forced to make less resource intensive, more security and privacy-friendly plugins and Apple and others are forced to make and push alternatives.
Case in point, Hulu. Techcrunch and 9to5mac hear a a Hulu app might still be in progress and set to launch in March in time for the iPad. Their videos are already H.264 so no conversion is required, but they make money off their advertising, which is entirely Flash-based now, and would need to either be replaced with HTML5 for a web app, or Cocoa touch for a native App Store app.
Either way, we’re still waiting..
Adobe Says 7 Million iPhone OS Users Tried to Download Flash — Would Hulu App Fix That? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
How Does Google Voice WebApp on iPhone Compare to Native Android App?
Jan 27th
Earlier today Google unveiled their new Google Voice WebApp for iPhone. Sure you can place calls, send text messages, get your voice mail, and access all of your account settings but TiPb was curious how it would stack up to the real-deal native app on Google’s own Android platform.
For the full scoop and screenshots, follow me after the break!
If you are a Google Voice user, the first thing you will want to do is add Google’s crafty little icons for each part of Google Voice directly to your iPhone Home Screen. Doing so gives you quick access to contacts, the dialer, the voicemail/SMS inbox, and create new SMS pages. Once you select the icon of your choice, Safari pulls up the iPhone optimized WebApp and you’re good to go. So, for example, tapping the Google Voice icon will bring you straight to the dialer just as you’d expect — fast and simple.
Next up we have contacts and that too is laid out very nicely. You get your top called or messaged contacts along with your complete contact list and a search button to search through your contacts. It is important to note you must have your contacts in your Gmail account to access them as this WebApp can not access the contacts stored on your phone.
Going into the inbox you will see not only your SMS messages but your voice mail as well. When you select a voice mail it shows a transcript of the message that was left for you (or I should say it tries it’s best to do so). You have three choices for voice mail — have a transcript sent to via email, via SMS, or open it directly in the WebApp.
So what we have here is a very good effort on Google’s part to work with their hands tied behind their back due to Apple rejecting the Google Voice App Store application. Is it as good as the native Android Google Voice app? Not even close.
At the end of the day even though it is a great WebApp, it’s still just a WebApp. It can’t access your local iPhone contacts, only your online Google Contacts. The bigger issue, however — and one even a native App Store Google Voice app would suffer from — is that’s it is not integrated into the OS the way it is on Android.
If it was, you could receive calls and SMS from your Google Voice number right on your iPhone. On Android, your Google Voice number can become your phone number. No WebApp, or iPhone app, can currently provide that level of integration and there’s no sign Apple has any interest in ever allowing one to.
So, on the bright side, the Google Voice WebApp is close to as good as an App Store app could be.
Below are some screen shots of the native Android Google Voice application.
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
How Does Google Voice WebApp on iPhone Compare to Native Android App?
Google Unleashes Google Voice WebApp for iPhone
Jan 26th
Google has released the long-awaited Google Voice WebApp for iPhone (and Palm webOS), something they said they’d be doing in the wake of their exclusion from the iTunes App Store.
Similar to Google’s other, marvelous WebApps like Gmail, it leverages the advanced web technologies built into iPhone Safari to provide an optimized UI through which make calls from your Google Voice number and send SMS. Or so we hear… TiPb HQ has been trying to try it, but it’s been “fail city” according to Dieter, with lots of network request errors. (At least on the iPhone, his Palm Pre is doing better).
“It’s a very pretty “Network Request Failed” pop up dialog box. Quite impressive,” he says. (See it after the jump.)
According to TechCrunch, however:
It is built on HTML5 with most of the functionality of the original iPhone app, except that it cannot access the local contact list in your iPhone’s address book. It lets you manage a separate Google Voice contact list which is kept in the cloud instead. Google Voice voice routes your calls through its servers and acts as a new hub through which you can manage calls and forward them to various phones. You can also manage your settings and various phone numbers. The HTML5 makes it very fast, allows for local caching of data, and supports the voice tags necessary to play the audio voicemails through the browser.
You can access it via http://m.google.com/voice. If you’re a Google Voice user, let us know how it works for you, and how it compares to a native app like GV Mobile for Jailbreak.
Video after the break!
And Dieter’s error screen:
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
Google Unleashes Google Voice WebApp for iPhone
Google Reader Mobile-Optimized WebApp Updated for iPhone
Jan 16th
Our sibling site PreCentral.net pointed out that the Google Reader Blog has announced some updates for their mobile optimized site. While they show it off on the iPhone’s Safari, it’ll work fine on any WebKit browser:
The interface is improved overall, and the laundry list of new features includes:
- Support for “liking”, tagging, and sorting feeds by oldest and newest
- A More/Less feature to reduce clutter
- Updates to the header bringing it into line with the likes of Gmail and Calendar
- The addition of a new drop-down menu
- A new “Recommended Sources” section
Wow, Google is showing no signs of slowing down the pace of WebApp innovation. If you’re a Google Reader user, give it a try and let us know what you think!
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
Google Reader Mobile-Optimized WebApp Updated for iPhone
First-Person Tetris Gives the Classic Game a New Twist
Jan 15th
The game is free to play and all you need is a web browser to take up the new challenge. The simplicity of the concept and style fit very well with the minimalist aesthetic of the original game, yet cleverly extends it to present a whole new take on the classic.
And if your mind isn’t scrambled enough by the regular First-Person version, check out the even tougher “Night Mode” and let us know how long you can keep playing. Because in Soviet Russia, Tetris rotates you!
[via
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