Ars Technica reports that while the iPhone SDK will be staying web based for the foreseeable future, the iPhone’s Safari may be getting offline storage ala Google Gears. Perhaps, even icons on the home page.
While some will still complain that there are things you can’t write in Ajax or other web based code, I think this would be a great step in the right direction for the iPhone. There are certain advantages to having web-based applications…and I am a true believer that eventually all our smaller apps are going to be located in the cloud.
I sincerely hope this rumor has some truth to it. I know there will be those that will never be happy unless the iPhone has a native SDK – but even then, I’m sure they’d find something to complain about.
What do you think? Good idea? Bad idea?
2 thoughts on “RUMOR: iPhone’s Safari to get Offline Storage…maybe more…”
ajax without a (networked) storage model is NOT web2.0 …
if apple is going to withhold a native cocoa sdk, then there is no other no choice but to offer the real deal on state-full persistence.
and goodness know, the recent anemic overhaul of dotNET needs every possible enhancement of its useage model that it can get!
how is it that apple didnt see the connection between the social media experience in itunes (eg imix) & and the generalized use of dotNet as an sns platform for displaying/sharing content that was created with its own aclaimed iLife suite?! …
the existence of youtube/digg/facebook etc are all testment of just how out of touch are apple’s media tools group and its network applications group!
only microsoft doesnt get the sns thing than apple!
“it’s the network, stupid!”
of course it should be no suprise that apple has not been able to respond to obvious (web) shift in the environment … steve jobs cut R&D in half when he returned — so apple lost access to almost every technology that it would need for long-term strategic advantage (albeit with a series of masterstoke defensive parries eg ipod).
to wit: powertalk. If apple had not axed this innovative (office-oriented) collaboration-oriented messaging infrastructure in classic Mac OS, it would have almost a decade to incubate socially orineted collaboration messaging platforms that have the foundaion for c2c blockbusters in web2.0 …
i am not going to even dwell on the profounf irony of apple re-introducing am ‘iPad’ slate-oriented, touch-based PDA in the near future … nearly a decade of pda innovation has been lost in since apple axed the Newton (not to mention the fact that the founders of Palm came from the cancelled newton project!).
the point here – about apple scambling to finish-up its ajax offering, by adding a network storage system – is that apple would have been poised to lead … instead of follow … in a large range of new multi-billion market spaces (such as sns) if it had continued its investment in *real* innovation of new functionality, especially networked/collaboration …
it would have vastly greater choices other than the ractive mode of producing just slicker packaging: that is the _systems integrator_ mentaility (ie a CE model); it is NOT a model for being a category builder (eg DTP, GUI, plug and play, PDA, multimedia; and host of other paradigms that were pioneered by apple when it was still a REAL computer company instead of just a 21st century, cyber version of Proctor & Gamble!).
but i suppose we have to be grateful for the few crumbs from the table that apple deigns to spare us.