iPhone's Web 2.0 apps an incomplete answer

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 13 June 2007 11:28

Your IT - Mobility

Some commentators are getting their knickers in a knot over the "news" that third parties will be able to create JavaScript-based applications for the iPhone. We think this has been apparent since Apple first revealed the forthcoming device in January.

Given that the iPhone included Safari - a full-function browser - the absence of JavaScript was pretty much unthinkable. So many web sites require JavaScript to deliver "the full user experience" that Apple would have been roundly and rightly criticised if it failed to support this technology.

What is new is that Apple has announced that these applications will be able to access iPhone services including placing phone calls and sending emails.

Scott Forstall, Apple's vice president for iPhone software, explained the iPhone look and feel is also available to such applications. Apple's internal IT team built an iPhone front end to the corporate LDAP directory in less than 600 lines of code, he said. It looks like the iPhone's built-in contacts application, and it taps iPhone services to place calls, send email, retrieve associated images, or look up addresses on Google Maps.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said applications created this way "don't compromise its [the iPhone's] reliability or security," adding "This is a very modern way to build applications." No SDK is required, developers simply use existing Web 2.0 tools. It also means the applications can be distributed and updated simply by placing them on a web site.

Even if they do look and behave exactly like native iPhone applications, there's still one major snag: until such time as technology like Google Gears is ported to the iPhone (and it's not even available for the desktop version of Safari yet), web apps running on the handset won't work offline. The combination of Wi-Fi and GPRS/EDGE mean you'll get decent coverage, but there are still places such as planes where you won't get a signal but you might want to use a third-party app (if only a game) on the iPhone. And there's also the question of data charges on anything other than an unlimited plan.

Even though Apple's announcement does mean developers have a relatively quick and easy path to the iPhone, we believe Apple will eventually provide a mechanism for getting native third-party apps onto the new device, even if it is access is limited to a fairly small number of trusted partners.