John Battelle is is worried about the App Store’s closed nature:
But so far, what I’ve noticed most about apps in AppWorld is that they are, for the most part, all about themselves. They’re not connected to the greater web, and they don’t encourage you to move seamlessly from one app to another, depending on your intent.
I replied:
Many of the best apps in the App Store serve as rich clients to web apps. It’s not an either/or proposition.
Many of the other apps are games (which have a rich history of being released on closed platforms) or little utilities that work better as widgets than websites.
And don’t forget that the iPhone was the first phone to have a non-godawful mobile browser.
The apps I use most are clients for internet services: Mail, Tweetie, Maps, Instapaper, and Yelp.
What’s interesting is that in most cases, the iPhone versions of popular web apps have a much better user experience than their desktop browser counterparts.
This is true because:
- iPhone apps never forget who I am. Websites always do.
- I always have these apps in my pants, ready to use.
- Apps can use the full range of touch gestures, plus GPS, camera, accelerometers, etc. This is especially important for apps about location and map zooming.
- The iPhone’s screen is both small and a known size. There’s no room for feature bloat and UI cruft. Designers can stick to a grid instead of sweating different resolutions.
- When web services have good APIs, third party developers can design front ends that are better than what the designers at the mothership come up with (cough *Twitter* cough).
While screenshots can’t fully convey how good they feel, look at Tweetie and MobileRSS, third party apps for Twitter and Google Reader:
The designers at Twitter.com and Google Reader should be ashamed that third party designers can create a far better experience in far fewer pixels.
So, back to my original point, the open web and iPhone apps aren’t at odds; they’re two great tastes that taste great together.
More important, the iPhone has opened up a world beyond the hoary point and click interface, and software engineers should thank Steve Jobs in prayer every night for creating a platform where users love buying software.
See also: Watts Martin calling out Tim Bray for conflating Apps with the Internet.