
An iPhone App Market That Doesn't Require Jailbreaking... Which Apple Can't Stop - peter123
http://techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20100730/00083610420.shtml
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bradleyland
It's not exactly like this is a secret. Steve Jobs talked about the "openness"
of the web as a platform explicitly at WWDC.

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WilliamLP
> First, it's good to get more people realizing that HTML is already pretty
> damn good at creating app-style experiences,

That would be good if it were true. It's not.

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donohoe
Actually it is. "app-style experience" is the easy part - but there's more
examples of bad then good.

The failing is when HTML/JS needs to do 'heavy lifting' that native code does
better (such as large memory based tasks, 3d rendering for now, animations,
heavy math, or hooking into hardware).

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WilliamLP
If there are many more examples of bad than good, and for JS apps, this is a
dramatic understatement, this is a great pragmatic definition of it not being
good for apps.

For example, I've never played a JS/Canvas game for the sake of it being a
good game. Has anyone? I see a lot of frameworks, and a lot of demos to
advocate for the platform, but no good games. Why is this? At this point, the
novelty of the platform is no longer an excuse. It has been a forum darling
for several years now.

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joneath
Sadly this is true. Canvas is still very much in its infancy. I see two main
issues with Canvas for games right now.

First, canvas really needs to be hardware accelerated (someone already does
this, Microsoft?). Having a few objects move around should barely take any CPU
but with Canvas today it can be anywhere from 10%-20%.

Second, their needs to be game engines/abstractions on top of Canvas. Most
developers don't want to have to write there own render/clear loop with all
the utility functions to do movement, render shapes, texture elements, and
keep object state. I know their are a few out there now but they are no where
near the quality needed. This second step will not happen until my first point
(HW acceleration) is in place.

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gizmomagico
Writing you a snarky reply about your misuse of "their" and "there" and
erasing it was somewhat cathartic. But not enough, so I had to write this.
_Please_ make sure that you can use some of the most basic building blocks of
your native language.

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kingofspain
Wasn't this originally going to be the only way to release apps for iPhones?
Later they caved in & allowed native. I didn't get an iPhone until a couple of
years after all this though so my history may be off somewhat.

Point being, if true, this was no 'secret' - it was originally plan A.

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JunkDNA
No, you're exactly right. In fact, when the iPhone was first released, all the
pundits and bloggers were practically screaming that it was so unfair that
Apple didn't allow developers to write native apps and that HTML web apps were
a poor substitute for what you could do natively. They pointed to how Google
got to write a custom app for maps, and how it was unfair to competitors who
would be locked out.

It was like that for the entire first year of the iPhone. Then, once the app
store was announced, it's like all the bloggers and pundits suffered
coordinated, selective amnesia. The irritating thing about this article is
that the tone suggests this is somehow something Apple would be upset about,
when in fact, Apple promotes HTML apps as an alternative to the restrictions
of the app store.

The success of the App Store is 80% linked to the fact that it's a
frictionless purchasing environment. I can buy an app from some random person
for 99 cents and not have to worry that he/she has my credit card number.
Furthermore, you're likely to think twice as you go to purchase a 99 cent fart
joke app and you're entering your credit card number into a web form. That
feels like you're spending money. But punching your password into iTunes
_rarely_ (if ever) feels like spending money. Apple is excellent at separating
consumers from their money. Developers of App Store apps get to use "the hand
of Jobs" to ply your cash from your wallet.

I suspect that if Apple allowed web apps to bill against itunes accounts,
you'd see a huge explosion of pay iPhone-optimized web apps that would
otherwise go into the App Store. With a little bit of Safari integration, you
could allow developers to put little "buy now" buttons on their web apps and
it would feel just like an app store purchase. I doubt Apple would ever roll
out such a feature, since it sounds like it would be minimal benefit but have
a fair number of headaches.

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lecha
Good start, OpenAppMkt. Keep it up.

Without going into flamewar about native vs. HTML5, HTML5 apps have their pros
and cons. But they still need a commercial distribution channel. People should
be able to buy HTML5 apps as simply as they buy native apps.

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timmorgan
The OpenAppMkt app has a nice interface for being HTML only -- wonder how they
got the fixed position buttons on the bottom while allowing scrolling in the
body of the page?

As far as I knew, that was impossible due to Safari Mobile on the iPhone not
supporting fixed position elements.

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voidfiles
Most likely they are using JS to secure the position, and yes you are right
Mobile Safari doesn't support position:fixed;

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quizbiz
Is there a good tutorial to be found about making an HTML5 app?

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statictype
<http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/>

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voidfiles
It's about control of distribution. Apple clearly is cool with HTML5, that
isn't new. Everyone is also right that Apple clearly dominates distribution,
but it's not an absolute lock. The only way you can ever wrestle control away
from Apple is if someone creates an alternative, which is what OpenAppMkt has
started. Just because it's not huge now, or it's not dominate now, doesn't
mean that it can't become a player in the future.

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joe-mccann
Apple could "stop" this very easily. Don't allow access to native hardware
APIs through the browser via JavaScript; thus, making "webapps" inferior to
"native apps" based on capabilities of interacting with the hardware.

Phonegap, FTW.

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powrtoch
I've often wondered just how many people have ever used the "add to home
screen" button, or even really noticed it. I assumed for a long time that the
"+" icon just added a bookmark to mobile Safari.

Note that HN is clearly not a good sample group to poll this.

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blocke
So we're showing off the power of HTML5 by locking it to iPhone only... Nice.

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napierzaza
People hate the App store regardless of the iPhones HTML app capacity because
they want what the App store offers without the compromise that Apple makes
them take.

They want centralized marketing, distribution, security and payment handling
which the HTML option doesn't have. They could build a website selling these
apps if they wanted, but that would be work outside of developing, which they
don't want to do.

Everyone wants to be on the App Store because that's where you go for apps.
You don't Google for "html iPad App RSS reader". So no one is going to install
your app.

With the recent security issues with Android phones (this will happen with
Apple apps too, but maybe to a smaller degree) Apple's controls are looking
nicer and nicer.

Sour grapes.

Also, what's with the title "which Apple can't stop". You're thumbing your
nose at Apple with a feature they developed and encouraged?

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yumraj
Regarding: _With the recent security issues with Android phones (this will
happen with Apple apps too, but maybe to a smaller degree) Apple's controls
are looking nicer and nicer._

I respectfully disagree. App approval process has nothing, repeat _nothing_ ,
to do with security. As an example I can create a time-bomb app, which does
nothing nasty for 6 months and then once it is deployed on several Apple
devices it begins to do whatever it was programmed to do.

There is no way an app approval process can handle that or catch that. That
requires disassembly and careful analysis of the source or disassembled code.

That apps on Apple's devices are more secure is an illusion.

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forgottenpaswrd
"That apps on Apple's devices are more secure is an illusion."

Yeah, and careful sandboxing of each app and control of the functions you use
has nothing to do with security either.

Apple knows what functions you use and when, and the data you send receive
using them. They know the format, nothing else is needed. That's one of the
reason they only let you use documented calls.

For me its easy to make a software that monitors that activity,so with so many
people smarter than me, I can not imagine that Apple has not done it. I know
they have automated tools for analyzing Apps proposals, so I'm confident they
monitor live the apps activity.

