Apple’s Web Apps - um… these are good why?

As you may have noticed, Apple has released a listing of their supported Web-apps for the iPhone. As highlighted by Engadget, these are “nothing more than a dressed up version of Apple’s bookmark list”. As a result, these iPhone Web-apps are totally useless if you’re not connected! “Essentially, Apple has neatly brought together a selection of company-approved apps that should function fine in Safari, but alas, there’s absolutely no new functionality.”

One of the key design premises of the iPhone appears to be that you will always be connected to the Internet - either via Wireless or Edge. And, that on the rare occasions that you are not connected, you will only want basic iPod or Calendar functionality. I really don’t understand this apparent short-sightedness… On-board, independent Apps are crucial to a complete and satisfying user experience.

While it may be true in some metropolitan areas of the States that you can nearly always be connected, this is certainly no more than a pipe-dream in most other places, and will be for the foreseeable future. Even in the States, there are a number of places where you will loose any connectivity - in remote parts of the country for example, or most notably, in a plane! So, if you travel (particularly to less developed countries), your poor old iPhone will loose a good deal of its value proposition, possibly for the majority of the time you are away.

Enter the world of hacked-capabilities, and suddenly you can use 3rd-party on-board Apps, even when totally disconnected. Fantastic! (Check out Chris Breen’s excellent Video on what some of the Apps can do if you’re wondering what the fuss is about…) Suddenly, the iPhone can be as useful as my Treo was, whether I’m connected or not. Well… almost.

Remarkably, having just moved over to using the iPhone recently from a Palm Treo 650, I am now actually missing some functionality that I had before. For example, by default, there is no ToDoList App on the iPhone. (Steve, how on earth did you sign that off?) The AppTapp installer application allows you to add third-party applications to the iPhone (currently only up to firmware 1.0.2 but this will change soon I suspect), one of which is a Mobile TodoList. However, this App doesn’t Sync with the TodoList in iCal or Outlook yet so as good as it is, it’s only of limited value at this stage. Another key Application that I haven’t yet been able to substitute is a Billable-Hours Tracking App, which currently means I still have to carry the Treo in my bag!

Why can’t Apple get their heads around 3rd-party Apps for the iPhone? Clearly they are worried about control of the platform (and yes, whether they like it or not, it IS now a platform) and quality of coding: i.e. stability and reliability of the phone. But they know how to deal with this stuff!?! Just like games for the iPod, they could insist that Applications are only distributed via the iTunes Store. They could easily enforce Quality Control and take a cut of the sale price on the way through. What’s the big deal?

As I said in my previous article, I believe Apple must release an official Apple iPhone software development kit (given away for free, and including all the necessary tools to build compelling apps), if they truly want to realise the vision of the iPhone being the “revolutionary new mobile phone” they claim it to be. Fortunately, rumours suggest that some form of compromise by Apple may already be in the pipeline. Let’s hope Apple can relent at least on this one… Providing a truly unlocked iPhone outside the US is perhaps… asking too much.

Originally from TechGripe! by Brett Ryland (12 October 2007).