sullust.org

We’ve been hearing for the last few years with all the Web 2.0/Ajax developments that a day will come when the fat application that sits on your computer will be a thing of the past, and all apps will be run through the browser and hosted on some remote machine. Each new whiz bang web app that comes along gets touted as one more toll of the death knell for the client side application. But then it never happens. And then it never happens. And people say “well it’s just not ready yet” and then it keeps not happening. That’s because your desktop is crazy fast and people can do all kinds of fancy crap on your desktop that they just can’t do when they have to render within the confines of a browser. Desktop apps are just too fancy to be replaced by web apps. But you know what aren’t fancy? PDA apps. Those are stripped down tiny pieces of junk with barely any UI at all. If ever there is a platform that will loose the fat client app first it’s the PDA (or now PDA phone) market.

In comes Apple with their iPhone. Now Apple (or more specifically el-Steve’o) has never been afraid to ditch technologies before they’re really at the end of their life (or introduce technologies before they’re really ready [see: DVD RAM]). They tossed the floppy a couple of years before they should advisably have done so, they ditched any non-usb/non-firewire interface (then they ditched firewire for all practical purposes). I bet you like VGA and normal DVI cables. Tough noogies, they’re not good enough for apple. And they went exclusively widescreen years before Dell even thought about it. The point of all this is that Apple is willing to break ground even when it’s a stupid move, and I think that’s what they’re doing with the iPhone. They’re saying that (at least for PDA’s) the fat client paradigm is dead and it’s time to go to web only apps. For a device that is effectively useless when it’s cut off from a data network that even makes some sense. While I would love it if the iPhone had support for native apps, it doesn’t surprise me that Apple told us all that they have this great new idea and you should do it…. well… you have to do it, because it’s the only option they’re giving you.

If they get to establish Safari as the browser for which all web based apps are design against (see: Safari on Windows) in the bargain, well, that’s nice too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Posts.