Almost two years ago, I wrote:
And don’t even get me started on the user-agent-sniffing JavaScript-laden photocast.mac.com URLs that only work in Safari and iPhoto. (Did you know they work in iPhoto? If you paste that URL directly into iPhoto, it fetches the page and the server returns a 302 redirect to the real feed. No HTML, no JavaScript. But only if the user-agent is iPhoto/6.0. So not kidding.) I don’t attribute it to malice; I don’t think Apple is trying to “break to web” or anything so grandiose. It simply never occurred to them to do this any other way. They view the web as an annoyingly inadequate infrastructure on which to build their latest proprietary network, in much the same way that old-school web designers view HTML as an annoyingly inadequate page layout language. Learning how the web works and going with its natural flow? It simply never occurred to them.
Last week, in a stroke of breathtaking arrogance, Apple redefined “web apps” to mean sites designed for a single hardware platform:
Web apps don’t just extend the functionality of iPhone and iPod touch, they do it in style. Since web apps are websites designed specifically for the 3.5-inch screen, you’ll find the viewing experience amazing.
(Yes, yes, I realize the whole gallery of web apps is just a smokescreen designed to fake you out and test your faith and hide the fact that they’re going to open up their platform to native development ANY MINUTE NOW. Because HOW COULD THEY NOT, and so on and so forth. I believe the phrase you’re looking for is “Oh, good grief.”)
I swear to God, I’m so tired of being right all the time. It was fun for a while, but now it’s just depressing.
Hot damn…Coin Flip (http://www.apple.com/webapps/entertainment/coinflip_benku.html). I’ll be spending my $400 now :)
Comment by Justin Rudd — Tuesday, October 16, 2007 @ 11:44 pm
It’s that, or it’s that “web apps designed to work well on Safari on iPhone or iPod touch” is long.
It’s good that there’s a mobile browser that has all the features - mostly - and thus can run modern web apps. But I already expected that, and I also expected a real SDK to appear, for real applications. It’s still nothing less than pathetic that they dare call it their SDK when any “app” that “runs in it” is so clearly a second class citizen.
Comment by Jesper — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 2:57 am
“The key to happiness is lowered expectations.”
Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 4:27 am
For someone who said “bye apple” [1] (also 2 years ago), you seem strangely obsessed with them [2]
[1] http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/05/30/bye-apple
[2] http://diveintomark.org/tag/apple
Comment by Mark — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 5:38 am
If you had (say) a girlfriend for a decade or so, then one day realized they’re not The One, you might still be obsessed with their screw-ups for quite a while after the breakup. ;)
Comment by Lanny Heidbreder — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 6:17 am
@#5
so, because someone has decided not to use a certain company’s products then you shouldn’t cover that companies activities in an area you are interested in and generally cover?
lol :)
quick better go tell all the people who criticise microsoft’s activities and/or drm
Comment by ed — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 6:54 am
“The key to happiness is lowered expectations.”
Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis
Remember that when looking for a spouse.
DJ, please queue Jimmy Soul: Happy for the rest of your life.
Comment by Edward McCain — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 8:05 am
@#3, I believe the term you’re looking for is “mobile web apps.”
Comment by David — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 8:22 am
It is filed appropriately: Filed under apple, rant
That is all this is…a rant. Apple didn’t redefine anything of the sort.
Comment by Robert — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 9:04 am
Get over yourself already.
Comment by Bruno — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 9:44 am
OMG, call the whaaambulance!
On the other hand, so did Facebook.
Comment by Dave — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 10:47 am
Looks like the “real” SDK is set to appear ANY MINUTE NOW (in February, at least): http://www.apple.com/hotnews/
Comment by Evan DiBiase — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 11:45 am
Being right all the time is certainly a drag. You’ll be glad to hear that at least this time, you’re not:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/
Oh, wait, you didn’t really say what you were right about. Feel free to redefine your argument to make yourself right again, and don’t forget to stroke yourself with breathtaking arrogance.
Comment by Hostile Monkey — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 11:48 am
Hostile Monkey, that would be Steve Jobs backpeddling about as quickly as he can. They’re getting whooped by the Nokia campaigns (note his jab), and are having to actually lose a teensy amount of control over the product. Losing control has never been a strongsuit of Jobs’ since the whole firing-debacle.
And as for redefining ‘WebApp’, what else is new? Most of the things Apple ‘innovates’ are old ideas that they declare (to the eager and apparently previously computer illit Mac audience) to be ‘new’ and ‘innovative’…and people swallow it. I mean c’mon, ‘Spaces’? It’s virtual desktops, they’ve been around on UNIX since the 80’s… Time Machine is suspiciously close to an old feature of Windows Server editions, etc. I’m just tired of seeing them crap all over their own 3rd party developers who were already working on the same things, give them no credit for all their efforts and act for all the world as though their monolith of innovation created all of this wonder.
Comment by Andrew — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
Well, that is certainly excellent news. I’ll ignore the little misdirection against Nokia, because I have no dog in that fight, and get straight to the meat of it: “protecting users from malicious programs” is code for “cryptographically enforcing restrictions on applications to protect our and our partners’ business model.” Shorter version: no Skype.
Comment by Mark — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 12:24 pm
Andrew, it’s called marketing, and if you’re going to invoke the straw man, this monkey may be forced to set pull out one of his own so they can do battle in some kind of straw arena.
Or something.
Anyway, if you really think this is a sudden “ZOMG! Some bloggers are revolting and we got some bad press that nobody really cares about! Quick! Let’s release an SDK” from Jobs, you may either have no idea how development platforms work, or you have a serious hate-on for Apple.
But hey, we’ll see what happens, eh?
The Hostile Monkey’s money’s on a few hats being eaten. Luckily, he owns no hat himself.
He has a few crows lying around, though.
Comment by Hostile Monkey — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 12:28 pm
Pilgrim-bashing is in style, is it?
Mark may have a bit of monomania from time to time, but he’s dead-on here. Apple’s been downright strange about apps on the iPhone. I’m glad to see that it should all end in February, but gee whiz they’ve been bizarre in the meantime.
That said, I’m a little curious how a company ought to handle a situation in which they want to provide a service directly to their customers, and only their customers. They don’t want to make it open to the web in general, and they want the experience tailored to their own hardware or whatever. So far all that seems reasonable, right? Whether or not they should make it available to the web in general is a debate over business strategies, not technical approaches.
So given all of that, why should they eschew using existing HTTP infrastructure? I think Apple’s biggest mistakes were (1) not providing *more* API hooks, and (2) calling them “web apps” rather than “proprietary apps that are delivered via HTTP”. Would that have satisfied you, Mark? Or must the apps have been open or not exist at all?
Comment by Phillip Winn — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 12:30 pm
Mark, the Hostile Monkey welcomes your gentlemanly response, and withdraws his previously cast aspersions.
And yeah, no Skype. Translation: “This iPhone was brought to you through development time paid for by projected profits”.
Comment by Hostile Monkey — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 12:31 pm
You could try being wrong sometimes.’
:)
Comment by Leigh — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
Apple has been “strange” about apps on the iPhone and iTouch for one purpose. Money. An that is a good thing. You want inovative companies to make money so they can continnue to be inovative. I have the iPhone and I love it.
Comment by G-Money — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
All this presumes, of course, that anything like a majority of iPhone users (or even _potential_ iPhone users) really care about third-party apps or any perceived Apple redefinition of “web app.” Given the sales figures for the iPhone, I’m thinking that’s probably not the case.
And yeah, Mark…why the ongoing Apple obsession, after telling them “Thanks for the memories” last May. Run short of memories, mabye?
Comment by B — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 12:57 pm
Except now Steve Jobs announced that a SDK for the iPhone and iPod touch will available in February.
Comment by matt evans — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
Wait till February, defeatists. Then General Jobs will give his report and you’ll all see how wrong you are.
Comment by Shii — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 2:21 pm
I understand Mark’s points, as well as the more general free software/hardware point of view about how platform vendors should be open, but this attitude that Apple is somehow hostile to consumers is more than a little silly.
I mean, iPhone hackers make up somewhere south of what, .01% of users? The iPhone’s UI, features, pricing and design make it easily the most pro-consumer phone on the market in terms of giving consumers what they want in an easy-to-use, well designed and comparatively affordable package. This is all much ado about nothing.
Comment by Jemaleddin — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 2:29 pm
Programmers make up an insignificant portion of computing users. It would be laughable to then suggest that the ability of anyone to write programs for PC has no benefit to non-programmers. But yet that is exactly what you do.
Comment by Patrick — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 2:49 pm
Patrick:
No, that is exactly *not* what I did. The iPhone, much as everyone wants it to be, is not a general-purpose computer, nor is it intended as such, which Apple has made abundantly clear. Mark (and you, I take it) may be arguing that it could be or that it should be, but it isn’t.
So here’s a question for you: if the SDK comes out in February and there are *real* iPhone apps in the wild in March, what do you think the percentage of iPhones with 3rd Party apps installed will be? I’m going to say less than 5%.
Comment by Jemaleddin — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 3:36 pm
We are talking about whether it is a good thing (for users) to not have the freedom to install third party application when it is trivially possible — on the part of Apple — to do so (and not the current state of running 3rd party apps on the IPhone which is pretty apparent). The answer to this is as obvious as it is for general PCs.
It seems you are trying to say:
1. A ‘general purpose computer’ = computer able to run third party apps.
2. The question of user freedom is unnecessary for non-general purpose computers.
3. Iphone does not run third party apps.
4. Therefore the Iphone is not a general purpose computer.
5. Therefore user freedom is unnecessary for the Iphone.
(1) and (4) are vacuous. (2) is false. (5) does not follow.
That depends on the restrictions and how difficult they make it to install software. If it doesn’t require signing by Apple and is reasonably easy to install then I would expect the majority of people who are capable of installing third party application to do so (Most people are interested in installing Apollo for instance, and shouldn’t need Apple’s blessing to do so). But even if it was only 5% it still wouldn’t be a ‘good’ for users to deny them freedom to run applications of their choosing.
Comment by Patrick — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 4:21 pm
Well, as you’re still not interested in addressing what I *am* saying in favor of what you want me to say, I’ll leave you to argue with other people. Cheers!
Comment by Jemaleddin — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 4:40 pm
Is redefining “web apps” better or worse than when Microsoft decided to redefine “.net”?
Comment by anders pearson — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 6:32 pm
You’re breaking my heart. They didn’t redefine an existing term. They made it mean something.
Deal with it.
Oh, and when you are actually right about something, you’ll feel much less irritated.
Comment by munan — Wednesday, October 17, 2007 @ 7:14 pm