Thoughts on the iPhone SDK and web apps
Yesterdays Apple Hot News was that there will be an iPhone SDK available in February. That one took me by surprise. I've been pretty vocal about saying that I thought Apple was smart in only supporting Web app development on the phone.
I can definitely think of a few apps that would be great to have native on the phone, mostly so they can integrate with the other native apps - like an LDAP directory client that could be used with the contacts list.
But I still think that for most applications the browser is the interface, and that's particularly true on the phone where even when you don't have WiFi you still have cellular connectivity.
Opinions?
Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, software, development
There are definitely some apps that Apple left out, most notably an eBook reader, so it's good to see that the SDK is going to be a definite. (Although, frankly, the dev community has done excellent work so far in providing these apps even without the SDK).
The browser as the interface just can't be sufficient because of the many remaining areas (subways, airplanes, the interior of many buildings) where there is neither wifi nor cellular connectivity.
Web apps (as the exclusive platform) would be just fine if we truly did live in an always-connected world. But that's not the case, yet!
Good point about connectivity, though I suspect that we'll see Apple implement something similar to Google Gears for Safari, allowing offline state saving for web apps.
A true SDK makes the iPhone an even more awesome contender for a unified mobile platform. I'd love to see a SIP based VOIP client on the phone to unify my voice communication needs. That isn't something that will be easily provided via a web app. Having previously come from the Palm, S60 and Windows Mobile platforms I can attest to the poor state of most mobile software. However, the OS X community has some amazing developers and I trust we'll see some really well engineered and usable apps.