Apple currently holds one trump card with Safari on IOS devices though. By restricting HTML5 Audio controls, and rendering engine speed, it prevents games and music web apps from being viable inside the browser.
If you bring up the fabled "linux desktop" I'm gonna start laughing. Though I am impressed at what the folks at Ubuntu are doing.
Also, when the iphone was first released Apple had no developer kit (API's). You could download guidelines on how to write a proper web app for the phone. But developers barked (and why not - look at the result) and here we are.
Actually Apple sort of fell into the app markets. They got damn lucky. Of if you want to believe that Steve Job's is divine, he's manipulated the whole transition from web app => dev kit => app store.
I'm glad to see us move fill circle. But you know we haven't. You could always design specific web apps for ios. Just log into the (free) Safari dev center and download the guild lines. How do you think smaller companies who can't afford a distribution agreement with Apple (did you know you can privately distribute your own apps? Of course you have to pay.. ;) ) did it? We wrote the apps in html5/js/css3 (based specifically on Safari) and host them on our own network (intranet & vpn).
Linux as Android is killing MS in mobile.
The work to do a web app even barely comparable to a native app, in terms of responsiveness, is outrageously larger than just firing up Xcode.
I've only ever used two web apps that don't suck- Asana and Flowdock.
What I think you mean is they lost a big portion of their early adopter community, and that's not the same thing as what sustains them.
I'm also amazed at how often the myth that one day we'll all be using really crappy Html5 apps continues. Html5 compared to native apps done by an average developer just plain sucks, no amount of 'HTML5 web apps == AWESOME!' pretending and wishing will ever change that.
We'll have HTML6 in, what, 2025 maybe? So maybe all the wishes will come true then.
Going to HTML as your presentation layer doesn't suddenly and magically increase (or decrease) the sucktitude factor of the developers involved.
BUT for companies who don't have the resources (or don't want them) is a nice way to get into the ios market. Of course, if you serious you better roll out xcode.
But there are plenty of applications where the html5 wep app makes sense. Like a company hosting it on their intranet (we do.. marketing data mostly). FT (print media) is another. Actually, I bet FT they had an easier time writing the web app then they did their ios app (which sucked.. I had it). And I wonder why the NYT, WSJ (etc, etc) haven't dropped their ambitions and move to an html5 web app.
As a side note.. most of the print media company apps suck. I mean they are just terrible. I can think of only a few that are ok: USA Today, the Economist. I mean just look at the reviews of the NYT app. It's a joke. Want a bigger joke, go look at the Ars Technica app. My god.. a tech journal can't even get it right.
What it is, is a way to prevent developers trying to rort the system and doing an end run around their fee structure.
When this first came out, the ones screaming the loudest were the guys who had "free" apps ($0 to Apple) who then built into their apps an "okay, you've been using it for 5 minutes, now pay us $3 ($0 to Apple)" 'one-off subscription'.
E.g. you used to be able to get all the benefits of a paid app without paying Apple anything, simply by relabelling the "paid" app as an app with a "one-off subscription".
Apple closed that loop-hole. Hence one particular side of the screaming. You don't actually need to ascribe these actions to some kind of evil Microsoftian conspiracy, it's jsut closing a loophole that some people were using to cheat the system.
The other side of this coin is the arrangements between authors and publishers, where the authors have had a long time 70% of net agreement. If the author gets 70% and Apple gets 30%... this leaves 0% for the middle-man. So they weren't happy.
I would be completely fine with Apple's App Store restrictions if iOS devices weren't locked down like they are. Even Microsoft never dreamed of the kind of Orwellian nightmare that Apple is spinning around the computing industry.
It doesn't seem to me like it's attrition-due-to-Microsoft's-practices that have led to their downfall ... it's because of the advantages of free / open-source on the back end and because of other-platform (web/mobile) disruption on the front end.
Funny to see that your post has been grayed out, even though it's logical and makes a point. I would expect people who disagree to reply instead of downvoting. And yes, even though your topic is controversial, it passes the guidelines criteria.
Meanwhile web browsing from iDevices surpassed that from Linux…
Isn't this pretty much what Apple wanted in the first place?
It must be frustrating for the WebKit team when their engineering advancements are taken for granted and attributed to Chrome — the perceived bastion of web freedom — while they themselves are simultaneously criticized for assisting in a conspiracy against "the web" whenever they fail to make enough cutting-edge performance improvements.
The chrome team makes more commits than the Apple webkit team. I know number of commits don't mean much but the chrome team is mostly reponsible for adding websocket, the file api, web workers and more. Also don't forget webkit itself is based on KDE's KHTML.
There are lots of people who dont believe this, but as a healthcare designer i really think that apples model is way too greedy and crippling.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Health-Care-IT/75-Percent-of-Physic...
Relevant link: http://blog.millermedeiros.com/2011/01/ipad-is-the-new-ie6/
It's more than 14 months since Jobs wrote the blog blasting Flash and espousing HTML5 and Safari still has all these egregious issues. I think HTML5 is not a priority for Apple except to pay lip service to it when someone asks for Flash support. After all, it will threaten their lock-in with the App-store and the tithes on Apps and content and makes Apple the middleman. They have achieved what Comcast could only dream of, tax content sold over the internet.
but http://m.ft.com is clean, nice and fast. personally i often find the mobile version of sites nicer (in a similar way to the print view is often the best way to read a page)
edit: ugh you need to spoof your browser to access http://m.ft.com on the desktop.
Any thoughts? Just curious what our chances of rejection are for something like this in the current "climate".
I know, the HN audience doesn't care. But amid all the discussion of platform strategy, the FT staff deserve a salute. There is a reason this paper doesn't need Apple.
It makes even more sense to focus on a web app when your company already has a web site. You likely already have the expertise on staff to create a good web app, and any new features or techniques you develop can be easily used in both places.
Think of the future, not the present.
