Derrick
ლ(ಠ_ಠ )ლ
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2010
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Steve Jobs and Apple announced the new iPhone SDK and product roadmap today, and it’s got me wondering about the iPhone as a platform.
Remember WAP? Yes, good old ‘wireless application protocol’ or ‘wait and pray’? At the time it was toted as the enabler of the mobile web. It would free us from our computers, and it would enable us all to live in a sci-fi like cyberspace reminiscent of William Gibson.
It turned out to be more Philip K. Dick.
WAP was too slow, and people had to dial in via an analogue call. But I think the biggest problem was that once you were connected you still couldn’t actually find any sites that were WAP compatible.
Then Apple released the iPhone. Suddenly in a few short months we saw everything from Facebook to Google to BBC podcast pages to Salesforce.com and more providing iPhone sites or apps. There are hundreds of web apps for the iPhone, and thousands of sites serving up customised pages if you’re surfing on an iPhone or iPod Touch.
Apple has done in a few months what WAP couldnt’ do in years: get people and organisations to adapt their site for a specific device. This sentiment was also mentioned in Macbreak Weekly 79.
All of these thoughts were prompted by a fight difference of opinion I had with a colleague yesterday. We’re planning a new multichannel, multimedia offering, and were debating our various platform options. He categorised the iPhone as a mobile phone, I adamantly argued it to be a computer.
Perhaps it’s a mobile when upright, but a computer in landscape mode?
The true answer is probably something of both. It’s a mobile when it wants to be, but it’s a computer as well. It seems to have the processing power of a computer, but the mobility of a cellphone.
Whether you like it or not doesn’t seem to matter. What matters is that it matters to the people building sites.
Remember WAP? Yes, good old ‘wireless application protocol’ or ‘wait and pray’? At the time it was toted as the enabler of the mobile web. It would free us from our computers, and it would enable us all to live in a sci-fi like cyberspace reminiscent of William Gibson.
It turned out to be more Philip K. Dick.
WAP was too slow, and people had to dial in via an analogue call. But I think the biggest problem was that once you were connected you still couldn’t actually find any sites that were WAP compatible.
Then Apple released the iPhone. Suddenly in a few short months we saw everything from Facebook to Google to BBC podcast pages to Salesforce.com and more providing iPhone sites or apps. There are hundreds of web apps for the iPhone, and thousands of sites serving up customised pages if you’re surfing on an iPhone or iPod Touch.
Apple has done in a few months what WAP couldnt’ do in years: get people and organisations to adapt their site for a specific device. This sentiment was also mentioned in Macbreak Weekly 79.
All of these thoughts were prompted by a fight difference of opinion I had with a colleague yesterday. We’re planning a new multichannel, multimedia offering, and were debating our various platform options. He categorised the iPhone as a mobile phone, I adamantly argued it to be a computer.
Perhaps it’s a mobile when upright, but a computer in landscape mode?
The true answer is probably something of both. It’s a mobile when it wants to be, but it’s a computer as well. It seems to have the processing power of a computer, but the mobility of a cellphone.
Whether you like it or not doesn’t seem to matter. What matters is that it matters to the people building sites.