

Google – you can change the game, damn it - JarekS
http://blog.smartupz.com/2010/04/google-you-can-change-game-damn-it.html

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WilliamLP
And that brings us back again to the fact that JS, CSS, HTML5 and Canvas make
up a horrendously bad development platform for the kind of apps you see on the
iPhone, or even Flash. It's not impossible, if you have brilliant developers
and many millions of dollars of resources like Google does, but it's much much
more difficult.

Ironically, a main disadvantage it has is _extreme_ dependence and
incompatibility among different browsers, and dealing with this can easily
swamp the development cycle. Even performance differences across different
versions of JS can make massive differences to an application. This situation
shows not even a hint that it could improve in the future. Developing for
iPhone, you write the app once and it will work the same on everyone's
hardware.

I've been modded down on forums for a couple of years consistently for
pointing this out, yet you sure don't see many developers actually building
complex apps using JavaScript platforms, despite the lip service given to it.

~~~
kilps
That's why the article argues that Google should be releasing tools to make
this development easier - a framework can deal with a lot of the
inconsistencies between browsers.

~~~
flatline
A framework would be a start, but overall a very incomplete solution that's
nowhere near as nice as the well-defined playground that is the iPhone/iPad
and their corresponding app stores. JQuery and friends brought cross-browser
web development, with animations, ajax, etc., into the realm of possibility
for many people where it would have been completely impractical to do before.
Even still, getting cross-browser apps to run when everything is written
cleanly results in a lot of piled-on hacks.

The biggest problem though is a lack of a well-organized app store:
centralized distribution, the arguable benefits of a review process, and most
significantly the monetization framework that it provides.

~~~
JarekS
BTW - great idea for startup. Create a framework to monetize web apps/software
as a service similar to the one provided by the AppStore and Apple
ecosystem...

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
This is the vision we have for Cloudomatic.

~~~
JarekS
I was on your website but all I can see is the SaaS directory. Do you plan on
introducing some kind of payment framework?

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
:-)

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some1else
Let's not forget Apple first intended the apps to be Web based. Or well, at
least it pushed the idea until AppStore was done.

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moted
Palm is already doing this with their WebOS platform. Of course nobody cares
because nobody buys Palm anymore.

~~~
wanderr
When Palm announced this, I thought it was a brilliant move. It took our team
less than half the time to develop our WebOS app as our other native apps, and
it's more stable than when they were first released. The downside is mostly
performance. WebOS apps are built upon so many layers of abstraction and
interpretation, they are significantly slower than native apps on the same
hardware.

That doesn't matter if everything your app does is trivial and not intensive,
but it's pretty limiting. Chances are, our next version will have to use the
native APIs that games are now beginning to use, if we can get access to them.
I'm sure that if Google did the same thing, we'd end up in the same boat.

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dunstad
The browser seems to be where Google is strongest, and I think they know that.
Look at Maps, Translate, Gmail, Documents, even their plans for the Chrome OS.
I think they combat Apple on other platforms more to antagonize them, leaving
their main efforts for the web.

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loup-vaillant
I must say I am very sceptical about web applications. Not because of their
performance. But because of their (major) privacy and data control problems.

I think that will make most web applications obsolete within the decade.
Things like Gmail, Facebook, Google Docs, Blogger, and YouTube will be wiped
out by plug computers (provided they are made as easy to use as web apps).

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netcan
Skeptical for two reasons:

(1) Webapps for the iphone where the first apps for the iphone. Apart form the
head start, the lip service, the momentum, there are already many good reasons
to prefer to develop these over native apps. Yet, iphone apps are developed,
bought, sold, used. That's pretty good indication that there is some advantage
here.

(2) Google doesn't have a business model around this. I would argue that they
aren't proven in developing new business models. The 'get more people
browsing' has its limits, even for Google. Microsoft had an empire to create
from an OS standard. What does Google really have to gain? I know they are
active in this space and putting a lot of money into it but, there is a limit
to how far they can go without getting a return.

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jbond
Everyone is going to flame me for this but what the hell - Dude, please..
spell and grammar check before you post stuff on your blog. There is no way
you are going to be taken seriously if your content reads like a C-average
high school essay.

~~~
JarekS
I need some help with this - English is my second language. Can you point me
to the biggest mistakes? Please?

~~~
jbond
Can do: "Apple was almost completely destroyed but it’s" .. "Apple was almost
completely destroyed by its" - proofreading would catch "but/by". "It's" is a
contraction for "it is". No apostrophe is needed.

"between today market situation and the past" .. "between today's market
situation and the past" - "Today" is used as a possessive so it owns the
"market situation". Ownership (in many cases) necessitates an apostrophe+"s".
This is John's car. Tomorrow is Kate's birthday. It's a nuance that an ESL
student can easily miss.

In fact, rereading your entire post I see many things that are rules that can
easily be overlooked by ESL students.

Also, dashes ("-") should not be used for pauses unless they are being used
for dramatic effect (someone will correct me on this and that's OK.) In every
place where you used it (I count 4) it should either be replaced with a comma
or eliminated.

"Apple announced it’s newest baby – game-changing device" .. "Apple announced
its newest baby, a game-changing device"

"During the “PC war” there was a common platform for all the PC Clones – it
was Microsoft DOS/Windows." .. "During the “PC war” Microsoft DOS/Windows was
the common platform for all the PC clones."

"And here we are today – Apple is not afraid of competitors" .. "So here we
are today. Apple is not afraid of competitors"

"we know it can be done – JQTouch anyone?" - OK

"write native apps for Android – instead they should reward" .. "write native
apps for Android. Instead they should reward"

Just keep writing and practicing your skills.

~~~
JarekS
Thank you very much for that!

~~~
anthonyb
English is a very hard language to learn, so don't feel bad. There aren't many
simple, clear rules, and it's all weird edge cases and homonyms and you have
to figure out which is which from context. Everyone has to figure it out
through trial and error - including native English speakers.

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s3graham
I think they're pushing there but performance and apis aren't there yet.

JIT on android is on the way; adding the apis to access standard hardware bits
will surely follow.

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aswanson
Google needs to expose the USB port in android. That would allow a plethora of
add-on third party devices that the iPhone would never be capable of
supporting.

~~~
catch23
I don't think the android can output 500mA of power needed by most devices...
you probably can't even power a usb mouse.

~~~
aswanson
Then just support messaging instead of power, initially, until battery tech
catches up.

~~~
catch23
erm, you know that battery tech hasn't changed much in the last 20 something
years right? With USB 3.0 supporting 1 amp devices, I think we'll be seeing
more power hungry usb devices than ones that can run on a battery pack.
Bluetooth was engineered for the "USB" of mobile devices... I don't think
there's a single battery powered platform that makes heavy use of usb for
these obvious reasons.

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goodness
It seems like Adobe is already filling this niche, but it has the potential to
be better than HTML/JS in couple ways. First of all, you're supposed to be
able to deploy native apps to the iPhone/iPod/iPad in CS5. Second, you can
develop with the Flex IDE (or whatever Adobe is calling it now), which has a
GUI builder, a visual CSS editor, and lots of other nice stuff.

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jsz0
A good first step for Google would be to list web apps in the Android Market.
I don't expect them to drop everything and focus on web apps but they could at
least level the playing field. This should probably also include some way to
offer paid web apps. No clue how that would work but it's going to be an issue
that has to get resolved.

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misuba
Besides putting weight behind HTML5 as a means of making native (not native-
quality, but _native_ ) Android apps, Google should be working with Adobe (and
RunRev and Unity3D and whoever) too. Frankly, Flash isn't the closed platform
that should frighten them anymore.

~~~
goodness
Google is working with Adobe. For example, the flash player is now coming
bundled with Chrome:

[http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2010/03/improved_flash_pl...](http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2010/03/improved_flash_player_support.html)

I also mentioned this above, but the CS5 release of the Flash IDE (due out in
a couple days) is supposed to support deploying _native_ iPhone/iPod/iPad
apps. Given that Android phones already support some level of flash, this
could make flash a pretty attractive option for developing cross platform
apps.

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c00p3r
They already did it with their Android. It's gaining momentum with each new
device available.

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yanw
PastryKit: <http://daringfireball.net/2009/12/pastrykit>

