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The iPhone obsession

quirksmode.org

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Re: The iPhone obsession

#21

Post by sykora »

chime wrote: post #2

First time I heard Quirksmode curse like a sailor. Regardless, the reason I can't develop for a Nokia, Blackberry, or HTC is because I don't have a Nokia, Blackberry, or HTC. I have an iPhone. It's pretty easy to develop webapps for it because if it looks good in desktop Safari, it will probably look good in iPhone Safari. I don't even know the browsers that other phones have. I know Opera Mini is on many phones and…

Users who use platform X and browser Y where your app doesn't work will simply switch to another app which does the same thing that was written by someone who _does_ care about all browsers.

Those users won't complain to you, they'll just switch.

Your loss.

Re: The iPhone obsession

#22

Post by michael_dorfman »

randallsquared wrote: post #19
michael_dorfman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Or is this sarcasm. Here in Norway, Nokia has the largest share of the mobile phone market overall, and their smartphones are quite nice (and popular). At the moment, I'm trying to decide between buying an iPhone and a Nokia N97.

Wouldn't the N900 be a better match for the iPhone?

Maybe. But I'm not looking to match the iPhone. I'm just looking for a good phone. I currently have an HTC S710, and I like the full QWERTY keyboard, so that's a factor in favor of the N97. But, on the other hand, there are a lot of iPhone apps out there. So, I'm still on the fence.

Re: The iPhone obsession

#23

Post by robin_reala »

randallsquared wrote: post #19
michael_dorfman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Or is this sarcasm. Here in Norway, Nokia has the largest share of the mobile phone market overall, and their smartphones are quite nice (and popular). At the moment, I'm trying to decide between buying an iPhone and a Nokia N97.

Wouldn't the N900 be a better match for the iPhone?

Not really. N900 is tech oriented, not consumer oriented. N97 is squarely aimed at the consumer market as per the iPhone, and has the Ovi store for applications.

Re: The iPhone obsession

#24

Post by csbrooks »

colinplamondon wrote: post #5

It's not about the iPhone, it's about Webkit. He seems to forget the fact that hardware sales doesn't translate into actual internet usage. The internet outside of iPhone, Android, and Palm is so terrible that barely anyone even bothers to use it. What do those three platforms have in common? Webkit!

Ok, so say you want to make a website that works reasonably well on all the major "smartphone" platforms that use WebKit. And furthermore, say you don't have the budget to get your hands on all of them, or even to go through a testing service.

Is there a WebKit-based browser that you can download where, if it looks good there, it should look ok on all these phones?

EDIT: Oops, I think edd's post below answers my question.

Re: The iPhone obsession

#25

Post by pohl »

edd wrote: post #18
colinplamondon wrote: post #5

It's not about the iPhone, it's about Webkit. He seems to forget the fact that hardware sales doesn't translate into actual internet usage. The internet outside of iPhone, Android, and Palm is so terrible that barely anyone even bothers to use it. What do those three platforms have in common? Webkit!

Yes but in PPK's words: There is no “WebKit on mobile!” - http://www.quirksmode.org/webkit.html

The table does give that impression. Would it still give that impression if the width of each column were proportional to how many active, web-surfing users there are for each device/version pair listed? I'm sure the iPhone 2.x column, for example, would be a narrow sliver.

Re: The iPhone obsession

#26

Post by jsz0 »

Wouldn't it be hard to target Nokia/RIM/etc? They have dozens of handsets. Different screen resolutions and even different rendering engines. Apple just made it easier by keeping the render/resolution consistent for the last 3 years. The other factor is Nokia/RIM/Microsoft really lagged behind Apple, Palm and Android in offering a modern standards compliant browser on their handsets. I think the assumption is people buying a Windows Mobile phone for example don't really care much about the web. (or they would have bought a phone with a modern browser) Why go out of your way to please them? We know iPhone/Touch uses really like the mobile web.

Re: The iPhone obsession

#27

Post by andrewl-hn »

Here's a list of popular smartphone OSes:

- S60

- WinMo

- iPhone

- Android

- Blackberry

iPhone and Android are pretty much covered with good WebKit implementation. Check in one of those and most likely your page will work in the other.

PPK claims that S60 WebKit is much inferior, but there's Opera Mobile 10 for S60 and for WinMo.

Blackberry doesn't have a good browser at the moment (although they are likely to get one). Opera is making an optimized version of Mini for it, though.

Practically all other phones run Opera Mini too. Version 5 uses the same engine as Mobile but it has a much lesser JavaScript capabilities. Personally I prefer it to the default S60 Webkit on Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic.

At the moment it's all seem not that complicated to me: check in Apple WebKit (Android/iPhone), Opera Mobile and Mini, and hope that other browsers will catch up eventually.

Mini can be run in Java emulator, and desktop Opera browser has a "small-screen" rendering mode (should work like Opera Mobile). Same goes with desktop Safari and iPhone.

Re: The iPhone obsession

#28

Post by awolf »

"First, so what? No, let me rephrase that: So fucking what? Since when does web development mean leaving 50% of your mobile users out in the cold? Since when is “I only support browsers with a large market share” a valid argument? (Answer: since we have an iPhone up our ass.)"

A device has more than 3x its market-share in traffic-share and we are supposed to ignore that? That doesn't seem realistic. This gap between market-share and traffic-share speak volumes about how far behind the other platforms are in UX.

Maybe developers aren't just obsessed with the iPhone: maybe they just don't want to develop for something that makes thier work look like shit.

Re: The iPhone obsession

#29

Post by KirinDave »

garply wrote: post #10
DannoHung wrote: post #6

Who are all these people with Nokia's? I have never met one.

Nokia, as far as I'm aware, is the biggest cell phone company in the world. Here in China, when I see someone pull out a cell phone, it's a decent bet that it will be a Nokia.

And those phones have a web experience worth targeting? I understand that Nokia has a lot of phones out there, but the vast majority seem only tangentially related to the discussion of smartphone apps.

It's fairly easy to kick together a "mobile" version of a site. Just use these simple CSS rules:

    img  { display: none; }
    body { hideous-eyebleach: true; }
For many phones, just having 0 style, 0 images and a few text fields is enough. Their browsers are barely capable of mediating an experience beyond that (let alone displaying it). These don't really represent a valid target for this discussion, I think.

Re: The iPhone obsession

#30

Post by jbox »

pieter wrote: post #11

Lots of mobile browsers have iPhone in their UA strings to work around browser detects that obsessed web developers have set up. Do all traffic market share reporters work around that problem? Most probably do, but we can’t be sure. Which browsers do that?

None.

Having worked on mobile web applications that serve a wide range of devices, I can honestly say that this is not the case.

I would challange ppk to cite examples of this behaviour.

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