iPhone and custom application: the missing link
I took a look at the WWDC video tonight, and I have to admit that I would have expected something more juicy, but maybe I’m simply greedy and I can’t wait to have Leopard installed. My focus today, however, will not fall on the CoverFlow, the new Desktop or the new iChat, but I will analyze the last part of Steve Jobs’ speech: the iPhone and the “custom applications“.
Jobs presented the possibility to develop applications for the iPhone: -great- I thought immediately! The fact is that these applications are simple Web 2.0 applications, and the integration  that was shown, is simply the capability of the iPhone to react to some elements, like phone numbers or email addresses.
I cannot create something that really integrates with an iPhone SDK, something that would allow me to interact with some API. This is nothing new, nothing interesting, at least not from my point of view… to skin a web application to make it available on a small screen with the look and feel of the other iPhone apps… well, it’s a trick, it is NOT a way of creating applications for iPhone.For those who had tried the functionalities of the IE installed on Windows Mobile this will be another world (I mean, you will use the browser this time, a REAL browser) but it will not change the fact that on the iPhone the custom applications will not be available; I will not be able to write something capable of hooking my SMS Inbox to filter the SMS coming from someone, or I will forgot to have a skype app on it!More than this, this “fantastic solution” requires a constant connection to internet… I don’t know you, but my carrier (O2) ask me 3£/MB, and they don’t offer a flat rate! We are talking about tons of money!!!!! Wait… I forgot… the first version of iPhone (if I’m not mistaken) won’t be 3G…You can tell me that there is the wireless… but it’s a mobile device we are talking about, and you should be able to connect from every single place, not only from the places where there is a wireless network! Uhm… I’m not entirely satisfied… no!Â