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Some iPhone apps should not be written in Cocoa

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Re: Some iPhone apps should not be written in Cocoa

#11

Post by ibsulon »

ibsulon wrote: post #10
byteCoder wrote: post #5

A new religious war is breaking out before my eyes: web apps vs. native apps on the iPhone. The reality is that there are lots of native iPhone apps that should be web apps. Right now, the web apps don't quite pay as well. I believe what we're ultimately seeing is the rise of the native/web hybrid application. These are a class of web-like applications that can run in disconnected mode: * views use HTML/CSS stored lo…

That's the approach I am looking at. Consider a workout program for one reason for this approach. Many gyms are in basements and places where reception is crummy. The application should be able to run in these places, and offload to the webapp when necessary. Consider travel applications. An American going to Europe will not want to spend the money to use your web application. (We've already heard about the incredibl…

Forgot one thing -- don't forget about the iPod touch market. Webapps are useless for those in many cases.

Re: Some iPhone apps should not be written in Cocoa

#12

Post by jrockway »

stillmotion wrote: post #2

I don't think this guy understands how simply amazing Cocoa is. Yes, maybe a designer couldn't learn Objective-C, but my goodness is it a beautifully designed framework. Everything he lists is simple and stupid when you understand how to build iPhone applications. "want slightly different buttons in a snap? Just photoshop it and you’re off" HTML and CSS? It's pretty easy to develop a beautiful UI in Photoshop and sim…

The article misses one key point in favor of web-based applications -- you don't need Apple's permission to write one. Writing an iPhone app consists of agreeing to an EULA to get the SDK, then writing the app with proprietary APIs and arbitrary restrictions (you can't call this function; you can't use a language that allows code modification at runtime[1]), and then finally gambling on whether or not Apple will approve it. If they don't like it, all your work is wasted.

If you write a web app, you have none of these problems, and you don't have to share your revenue with Apple.

[1] As anyone knows, this is not technically possible. Are config files or preference settings "code"? Why not? And what about languages that allow putting shellcode on the heap and overwriting the saved instruction pointer with its address... like, say, Objective-C?

Re: Some iPhone apps should not be written in Cocoa

#14

Post by tocomment »

Nice ideas and all, but most developers still benefit from being able to charge on the app store, plus the marketing Apple is doing for you (less and less, but it's still better than a web app no one goes to, and google ignores for 6 months.)

BTW, I'm going to be disappointed if I don't see the $5000/week people keep mentioning once I get up to speed on iPhone programming :-~

Re: Some iPhone apps should not be written in Cocoa

#15

Post by tocomment »

GHFigs wrote: post #4

Apple's been saying that all along. http://developer.apple.com/webapps/ The old "web apps are the SDK" line wasn't greeted with open arms by many, but I think Apple's done much to promote iPhone-tailored web apps as a viable alternative to Cocoa Touch for the very simple reason that there are more web developers than there are Cocoa developers. They've even tried to make it reasonably transparent to the user, as web…

Now if they'd just provide javascript hooks for the location, acceleratometer, sounds, etc. (Yes, I've seen PhoneGap)
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