Having your own iPhone app for your website or blog is becoming an increasingly common way to promote and extend your brand. However, actually creating that application and getting it into the App Store can be a lengthy and expensive process, especially if you have little development experience. Today PointAbout is launching a new product called AppMakr, which is designed to make creating your own iPhone app simple and inexpensive.
AppMakr is a streamlined system that creates a native iPhone application out of your existing RSS feeds. You can customize elements of the app and the artwork and then submit it directly to the App Store. You can even embed ads from places like AdMob directly into the app.
AppMakr made this demo video showing off how fast it was to create an app for Mac|Life.
Yet for all his hanging out with copywriters and industrial designers and musicians -- and despite his anticorporate attire -- make no mistake: Jobs is all about business. He may not pay attention to customer research, but he works slavishly to make products customers will buy.
He's a visionary, but he's grounded in reality too, closely monitoring Apple's various operational and market metrics. He isn't motivated by money, says friend Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. Rather, Jobs is understandably driven by a visceral ardor for Apple, his first love (to which he returned after being spurned -- proof that you can go home again) and the vehicle through which he can be both an arbiter of cool and a force for changing the world.
The financial results have been nothing short of astounding -- for Apple and for Jobs. The company was worth about $5 billion in 2000, just before Jobs unleashed Apple's groundbreaking "digital lifestyle" strategy, understood at the time by few critics. Today, at about $170 billion, Apple is slightly more valuable than Google.
Its market share in personal computers was plummeting back then, and the cash drain was so severe that bankruptcy was a possibility. Now Apple has $34 billion in cash and marketable securities, surpassing the total market cap of rival Dell. Macintoshes make up 9% of the PC market in the U.S. today, but that share is increasingly beside the point.
With 275 retail stores in nine countries, a 73% share of the U.S. MP3 player market, and the undisputed leadership position in innovation when it comes to mobile phones, Apple and its CEO are no one's idea of underdogs anymore.
In 2006 Disney paid $7.5 billion to acquire Pixar, the computer animation film studio Jobs had nurtured and controlled. Jobs, in turn, became a Disney director and the blue-chip company's largest shareholder. His net worth, solely based on his stakes in Apple and Disney, is about $5 billion. Other executives have had stellar decades but none can compare with Steve's.
With Jobs back at the helm of his company, plenty of challenges lie ahead. Will the Goliath role suit him nearly as well as playing David clearly has? How will he respond to the competition he has awakened, particularly in smartphones, even as the personal computer fades in relative importance? Has he fashioned an organization that can succeed him? Can he possibly be as dominant in the decade to come as the one that is ending?
The "decade" of Steve actually began in 1997, when he returned to Apple after having been ousted a dozen years earlier. That was a year of triage, of a humbling investment from Microsoft, of paring Apple's product line to a bare minimum of four computers.
How's this for a gripping corporate story line: Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.
Sound too far-fetched to be true? Perhaps. Yet it happens to be the real-life story of Steve Jobs and his outsize impact on everything he touches.
The past decade in business belongs to Jobs. What makes that simple statement even more remarkable is that barely a year ago it seemed likely that any review of his accomplishments would be valedictory. But by deeds and accounts, Jobs is back.
It's as if his signature "one more thing" line now applies to him as well. After a six-month leave of absence in the early part of this year, during which he received a liver transplant, he is once again commanding a 34,000-strong corporate army that is as powerful, awe-inspiring, creative, secretive, bullying, arrogant -- and yes, profitable -- as at any time since he and his chum Steve Wozniak founded Apple in 1976.
Superlatives have attached themselves to Jobs since he was a young man. Now that he's 54, merely listing his achievements is sufficient explanation of why he's Fortune's CEO of the Decade (though the superlatives continue). In the past 10 years alone he has radically and lucratively reordered three markets -- music, movies, and mobile telephones -- and his impact on his original industry, computing, has only grown.
Remaking any one business is a career-defining achievement; four is unheard-of. Think about that for a moment. Henry Ford altered the course of the nascent auto industry. PanAm's Juan Trippe invented the global airline. Conrad Hilton internationalized American hospitality.
In all instances, and many more like them, these entrepreneurs turned captains of industry defined a single market that had previously not been dominated by anyone. The industries that Jobs has turned topsy-turvy already existed when he focused on them.
He is the rare businessman with legitimate worldwide celebrity. (His quirks and predilections are such common knowledge that they were knowingly parodied on an episode of "The Simpsons.") He pals around with U2's Bono.
Consumers who have never picked up an annual report or even a business magazine gush about his design taste, his elegant retail stores, and his outside-the-box approach to advertising. ("Think different," indeed.)
It's often noted that he's a showman, a born salesman, a magician who creates a famed reality-distortion field, a tyrannical perfectionist. It's totally accurate, of course, and the descriptions contribute to his legend.
By the following year Steve's regime had kicked into gear. Jobs completed the hiring of a new management team, which included several executives from his previous company, Next. Those top players would form the nucleus of the Jobs brain trust for nearly 10 years.
Then came the first Macintosh after Jobs' return, the iMac, a breakthrough all-in-one computer and monitor that heralded Apple's return to health. The success of the pricey iMac, coupled with drastic cost cutting, allowed Jobs to build a cash cushion. By repairing Apple's balance sheet, he prepared the company for big investments to come, a shrewd business move if ever there was one.
Jobs laid the foundation for Apple's leap from stable to stratospheric when things looked darkest. In 2000, Apple missed its financial targets in a September earnings announcement, sending its stock price plummeting in subsequent months to the equivalent of $7 in today's prices. Yet Jobs by this time had set in motion the key elements of Apple's rejuvenation.
Over the course of 2001, as global markets fell and the world headed into recession, Apple launched the iTunes music software (in January), the Mac OS X operating system (March), the first Apple retail stores (May), and the first iPod (November), a 5GB model that Apple bragged would hold 1,000 songs.
The market didn't catch on quickly to the significance of those events. iTunes was just music-playing software embedded into Macs and lacked an online store that sold music. The new operating system, though impressive, powered a niche product. The iPod was a snazzy MP3 player in an established market.
As the company's stock languished, takeover rumors appeared from time to time. What was never reported was that Jobs seriously contemplated taking the company private with the help of newly formed buyout group Silver Lake Partners. An Apple buyout would have been the deal of the century, but according to people familiar with the talks, Jobs ultimately shut them down.
That was actually the second serious proposal to buy Apple. In 1997, Jobs' friend Ellison, later an Apple board member, lined up financing to take over the company on the assumption that Jobs would run it. In a recent interview Ellison said Jobs didn't like the idea of being "second-guessed" if it looked as if he'd returned simply to make money. "He explained to me that with the moral high ground, he thought he could make decisions more easily and more gracefully," says Ellison.
For those paying attention after Jobs' return, the CEO was telegraphing Apple's trajectory. "I would rather compete with Sony than compete in another product category with Microsoft," he told Time in early 2002. "We're the only company that owns the whole widget -- the hardware, the software, and the operating system. We can take full responsibility for the user experience. We can do things that the other guy can't do."
Jobs was convinced that the masses would turn to Apple, but only if he could speak directly to them -- and not just to faithful Macintosh users, a club that included mainly artists and students. The strategy of building company-owned retail stores, so integral to Apple today, was derided at the time as a risky cash drain.
"He did this with a nervous board," says Bill Campbell, a former Apple executive who went on to become chairman of Intuit and an Apple board member. "He knew that this is what customers wanted." What's striking looking back is how little there was to sell in the original Apple stores. Jobs knew how he'd fill them.
Jobs made it his business to know everything about Apple. "He's involved in details you wouldn't think a CEO would be involved in," says Ken Segall, a former Chiat/Day creative director who has worked with Apple on and off for years. Jobs commissioned the iconic "Think different" campaign, says Segall, well before any of Apple's new products were introduced -- or even described to the ad team. "He'd say, 'The third word in the fourth paragraph isn't right. You might want to think about that one.' "
The rare pairing of micromanagement with big-picture vision is a Jobs hallmark. Early in his return to Apple, he recognized that gorgeous design was a differentiator for Apple in a computer industry gripped by the successful blandness of Dell, Microsoft, and Intel.
"I cannot count the number of clients who have marched in and said, 'Give me the next iPod,' " writes Tim Brown, CEO of product-design consultant Ideo, in his new book "Change by Design." "But it's probably close to the number of designers I've heard respond -- under their breath -- 'Give me the next Steve Jobs.'"
Jobs also has a knack for pouncing at the right moment. The music industry had failed repeatedly to develop its own digital-music sales site before Apple came along with iTunes, which was by then prepared to become a store for buying music.
Jobs cleverly made his pact with the record labels when iTunes worked only on Macs, which in 2002 had a personal-computing market share in the low single digits. Apple's humble position -- before iTunes became compatible with Windows, expanding its potential market share to nearly all PCs -- was a virtue. This made iTunes an experiment rather than a destructive paradigm shift.
"I don't understand how Apple could ruin the record business in one year on Mac," said Doug Morris, the head of Universal Music, according to "Appetite for Self-Destruction," a new book about the record industry's ills by Rolling Stone writer Steve Knopper. "Why shouldn't we try this?" Writes Knopper: "By the time Steve Jobs came around, he was the last resort. He was merely smart enough to know it. He played tough, but not any tougher than any lawyer for a major label who had negotiated an artist contract in recent decades."
A key Jobs business tool is his mastery of the message. He rehearses over and over every line he and others utter in public about Apple, which authorizes only a small number of executives to speak publicly on a given topic.
Key to the Jobs approach is careful consideration of what he and Apple say -- and don't say. Harvard professor David Yoffie estimated that in the months between announcing and selling the first iPhone in 2007, Apple received $400 million in free advertising by not making any public statements, thereby whipping the media into a frenzy.
Jobs himself is careful to avoid overexposure, preferring to speak only when he has products to promote. He didn't disclose his 2004 cancer surgery until after it occurred, and then only in an employee e-mail that was strategically released to news outlets. Similarly, he told the world of his recent leave in another employee missive, with no additional comment from him or anyone else at Apple.
Nobody in Jobs' sphere speaks without the permission of the company's media relations team, which reports directly to Jobs. Apple declined to make Jobs available for an interview for this article. It did bless the participation of some people in Apple's orbit to speak about him, while nixing requests for others.
The secrecy has rankled corporate governance experts, who insist the health of such an indispensable CEO warrants greater disclosure.
Jobs was initially mum as well about a stock options backdating scandal that embroiled the company's former finance chief and general counsel. In an eventual SEC filing, Apple said Jobs was aware that the company had adjusted option grant dates so that the grants were more profitable for employees. Jobs apologized for the backdating, calling the episode "completely out of character for Apple."
Jobs manages the money, the message, the deals, the design, and more. Consider the case fairly made that the long-ago enfant terrible of the computer industry has built up impressive business chops and that his company is peerless. But if nothing else, his recent illness is a reminder that Steve Jobs is mortal. When he's gone, how long will his company thrive without him?
Apple's future.
This past September, when Steve Jobs made his triumphant return to the public eye, he thanked precisely one Apple executive by name: Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer.
At an event to introduce a new line of iPods, Jobs first informed a crowd of journalists, analysts, and Apple developers that he now possessed the liver of a "twentysomething liver donor who had died in a car crash." Then he thanked Cook and the rest of the management team for "ably" running Apple in his absence. Cook, in turn, led a standing ovation for Jobs, his arms raised over his head from the front row of a San Francisco auditorium.
With Jobs back at work, the conversation has been postponed as to whether Cook, or anyone else, is prepared to fill Jobs' shoes. "At Apple the hierarchy is determined by who Steve calls," says a former Apple executive. "There's a lot of value in 'Steve said.'"
Larry Ellison, a CEO known to dislike the topic of succession, says of his friend, "He's irreplaceable. He's built a fabulous brand. He's got a wealth of products. Whenever he leaves, I hope he retires in good health and he's sailing off in his yacht in the Mediterranean. But they're going to miss him terribly, because it's a consumer products company. The product cycle is so fast."
There are signs that Jobs has inculcated the troops enough to last awhile without him. "The organization has been thoroughly trained to think like Steve," says someone with contacts among the Apple executive team. "That's why the six months went so smoothly. People could envision, 'This is what Steve would do.'"
Jobs, in fact, inspires far beyond Apple. Larry Pag
The evolution of music is, in essence, a study of how human culture, tastes and technology have evolved over the course of thousands of years. From ancient Indian music to Beethoven to Lady GaGa, music has embraced new instruments and scientific advances in the search for the perfect harmony and melody.
While most of society thinks of music in terms of voices, pianos and woodwinds, perhaps the world should get ready for the rise of a new instrument: the iPhone. While composing computer-generated music is nothing new, the iPhone’s unique mobile capabilities, accelerometer, compass, GPS and hardware have already made it a musical instrument (e.g. the Smule Ocarina iPhone App). But that’s nothing compared to what’s in store for us in the future; a recent concert at Stanford University pushed the limits and our perception of what is possible with music.
On Thursday, December 3, a small group of students and faculty performed as the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO). Wearing gloves that act as speakers and only wielding iPhones as instruments, the orchestra put on a show before a packed room. i, MoPhO was an exploration of not only musical melodies, but of how far mobile technology has come.
The musical tones were unique, and while some harmonies didn’t match, others blew the audience away. They did things that no orchestra on Earth can do, such as “passing” musical sounds to one another and using the iPhone’s directional capabilities to provide a truly surround sound musical experience. While it was clear that iPhones won’t be replacing the London Philharmonic Orchestra anytime soon, it was also apparent that this small team from Stanford was just scratching the surface of the possibilities of mobile phone and musical technology.
I had the distinct honor of attending, and while I did not record all of the compositions, I did record HD video of five of the pieces. I have included each, along with the name of the compositions, below. Please let us know what you think of this concert and, more importantly, the convergence of music and technology in the comments.
After trying dozens of programs to backup and transfer my ipod touch music,apps and photos to my computer i had almost given up finding the right software and to tell the truth i've been getting pretty tired of downloading and deleting software after finding out it only did part of what i wanted it to do or to find out that i can only transfer something like 100 songs then i have to upgrade and buy the full version to be able to transfer the rest, i can finally say to you that you can now throw away all those applications you've downloaded.
You only need one program and it truly is free with no catch whatsoever and what little nugget of software gold am i speaking of? Im talking about Sharepod, im completely in love with this tiny little app, it's gone above and veyond all the others i've tried and i really dont need itunes anymore except for my apps, watching videos and listening and buying music, the important stuff like backup, transfering all or part of my library to my computer, restoring and adding and editing playlists among other things.
Check it out and im positive you'll agree that it's the best freeware ipod and iphone software out there by far.
SharePod is easy to use and works! Heres some of the main features:
Add & remove music and videos from your iPod
Add, remove and edit playlists
Add & remove album art
View and backup photos
Copy music, videos and playlists from your iPod to PC
Import music/videos into your iTunes library, including playlists and ratings
Tag editing
Drag n' drop to and from Explorer
Simple, clean interface
Quick to load and use with no unnessary complicated features
Support for iPhone and iTouch (Thanks to Nikias Bassen, Paul Sladen, Jonathan Beck, and Christophe Fergeau for making this possible)
Nano 5G support
And whats more, SharePod is completely free! SharePod was designed from the start to be lightweight, quick and responsive, it has all (well hopefully most...!) of the features you need and none of the features you dont.
Apple has agreed to purchase the innovative, streaming music service LaLa, according to multiple reports (updated). LaLa fills a big hole in Apple’s digital music strategy and could bring streaming down music from the cloud into iTunes-ready devices everywhere.
Integrating Lala’s ad-free music service — which stores music collections online and sells streaming songs at a deep discount — would mark the first major step forward for iTunes since its music download store launched in 2003.
Lala recently announced a deal to play free songs on Google, but Apple is reportedly particularly interested in the engineers who built Lala’s “payment and fulfillment system[, which] could save Apple millions of dollars a year,” according to a CNET source. Lala sells music fans pre-paid chunks of music credits, rather than individual songs — an approach could help iTunes cut down on its credit card transaction costs and sell songs as streams and as downloads.
The deal is pretty much done, according to the New York Times and All Things Digital. Lala did not respond for request for comment.
This Lala acquisition could also help iTunes increase its revenue-per-user. Steve Jobs admitted in 2007 that the average iTunes user had only bought an average of 22 songs. By contrast, Lala CEO Bill Nguyen told us in October that its paying customers spend an average of $67 on Lala music, which is available both as 10-cent streams and normally-priced downloads (buying a stream is a down payment on the download).
Lala sells batches of credits for songs, saving it money on transaction fees.
LaLa also has technology that copies users’ iTunes music collections into the cloud servers, so that users can play back the songs on internet-connected devices. This feature would ease an Apple transition from locally-stored to cloud-based music.
That’s attractive to Apple because the iPhone and iPod Touch use flash memory, which is limited in its capacity compared to the hard drives in earlier iPods. In addition, that scarce memory gets shared with video, photos, apps and data associated with apps, whereas the hard drives in iPods were used mostly or even exclusively for music.
And as a bonus, Lala can play the last few hundred songs from a cache when there’s no internet connection which lets it play cloud-based music in subways, highways and remote locations.
This wouldn’t be the first music start-up Apple has purchased. In 2000, it bought a music player application called SoundJam MP. It formed the core of the first version of iTunes, and its developers helped build subsequent versions of that software. Nor would it be the first time Nguyen has sold a company. In 1999, he sold his first company, OneBox, to Phone.com for $800 million — one reason he was able to experiment so much with Lala’s business model before arriving at its current iteration.
If this deal goes through, the next version of iTunes could introduce more music fans to the idea of buying cheap music streamed from the cloud and listening to a huge catalog on a device with limited memory.
Well, I’m sure you’ve all heard of all the iPhone by now, undoubtedly one of the most hyped tech products of the last year. Never have we seen so many applications, resources, hacks, and so much news coverage for one little device. This list is a valiant attempt at bringing together the best of the “iPhone web.”
iPhone Apps
Apple hasn’t yet released an iPhone SDK (software development kit) to developers, instead, they’ve opted to promote the use of the device’s full-featured Safari browser, and have encouraged web developers to develop web apps specifically for the iPhone.
Texterity- Innovative way to view magazines (specifically formatted for the iPhone).
Bejeweled- Version of the popular mobile-phone game, “Bejeweled” optimized for the iPhone.
Newsgator Mobile for iPhone- Full-featured, mobile version of Newsgator’s online offering. Great for users of the MacRSS client, NetNewsWire, which automatically syncs to the service.
Dailymotion for iPhone- Youtube’s already built-in, what about the other video-sites? Another video-sharing site, Dailymotion, is offering an iPhone formatted version of their site.
iPhoneiGTD- App for access of projects being tracked via the Mac client iGTD. The only catch is that your iGTD data needs to be synced with .Mac in the first place.
TeleMoose- A front-end for Amazon.com optimized for the iPhone.
Google Reader- An interface for popular web-based RSS reader, Google Reader, nicely optimized for the iPhone.
iZoho- An iPhone front-end for the web-based office suite Zoho. The iPhone version lets you do everything you might do on your computer, including viewing and editing docs, spreadsheets, and presentations.
Gas.app- Enter your zip code and this app will find you the cheapest gas in town (USA only).
MyMetar- A “weather bookmarking service” which allows you to bookmark your local METARs, TAFs, and radar images.
iPhoneTravel- Searches directory travel.ian.com just in case you need to book flights, hotels, and cruises from your iPhone.
iBookmark- Lets you manage and sync del.ico.us bookmarks with your iPhone.
Youtube- An iPhone-optimized Youtube browser, just in case the “desktop” version isn’t working for you.
GoMovies- An easy and quick way to search for movie showtimes and other movie-related info right from your iPhone.
iChess- Bored? Cure your chess craving with iChess, a simple, chess app for your iPhone.
Leaflets- A suite of iPhone apps: Search, Feeds, Newsvine, App-List, Upcoming, Flickr, del.icio.us, and Le Tour de France, organized in a desktop-like fashion.
Listingly- A list making application with a great UI. Integrated word recognition and the ability to print lists make this an indispensable resource, especially for making shopping lists on the go.
iPling- A “social expansion engine” allows you to findothers with similar interests. The app even provides a way for users to meet up in real-life after the anonymous exchange of text-messages.
NYTimes River- Cuts out the clutter on the NYTimes website, just delivering the news in an easily readable format.
CheapMF- Out shopping? Not sure about prices? CheapMF can help. It’s a utility that searches Amazon.com for prices on specified products in order to help you make educated shopping decisions.
iTouch- A simple, addictive game which tests your reflexes, just touch some dots on the screen.
Avalanche- An addictive puzzle game in which the goal is to clear the screen of blocks by picking three or more inter-connected blocks of the same color.
Expense View- Allows you to import your spending data into your iPhone on-the-go.You can then access your data at home and see exactly how you’ve been spending your money. It’s even equipped with graphs and categories for the organized spender.
iPhone recipes- Cooking resource 101 Cookbooks has assembled an iPhone interface for searching through recipes.
iActu- Newsstand like interface for reading news headlines from various Newspapers.
iTweet- The third twitter app on this list, with an intuitive, streamlined interface.
Ta-da List 37signals, simple, intuitive to-do list app.
Movies Another app for looking up movie showtimes and other related info on your iPhone.
iTipr- Excellent application for calculating appropriate tip amounts.
Seeqpod- Search for playable music on the internet and then play it back on your iPhone. Beejive- Another chat application, Beejive, is a solid contender in the iPhone chat app market. The app supports several chat protocols including, AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Gtalk, ICQ, and Jabber. While everything seems to be in working order for me, please note the app’s still in it’s early alpha development stage.
TestiPhone- Web-based simulator for quickly testing your iPhone applications.
JiWire- A utility to find free Wi-Fi hotspots by location, worldwide.
FastApp- An iPhone “dashboard” that displays the latest additions to iPhoneApplicationList.com
WordBreaker- A word-game in which you you attempt to guess your computer’s secret word before it guesses yours, in a hangman-like logic format.
iPhone Central- The guys from Macworld have put together a blog solely dedicated to the iPhone, with all the authority that goes with the Macworld name. They even have an iPhone version.
Ars Technica- Apple Ars Technica’s Apple coverage, plenty of iPhone coverage to be found.
Podcasts
iCali- Cali Lewis’ (from GeekBrief.tv) in her iPhone-centric podcast.
ApplePhone Show- A weekly audio podcast covering the iPhone, hosted by industry leaders Scott Bourne, Chris Breen and Andy Ihnatko.
MacBreak Weekly- The popular weekly Mac podcast with hosts Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Scott Bourne and Alex Lindsay is bound to cover the iPhone more than enough.
TWiT Another one of Leo Laporte’s successful tech podcasts, again, bound to even further inform you of the latest iPhone developments.
Hacks
Hack the iPhone- A comprehensive site containing all the info you need to hack your iPhone.
iPhone Hacks- An assembly of the latest iPhone hacks in blog form.
Applehound- Consistently updated listing of iPhone bugs, ready for hacking.
Apple’s iPhone App Store may be a resounding success. But Google says app stores are a dead end.
Sour grapes? Maybe. It’s no coincidence that Google has placed its money on web-based applications, for its mobile Android operating system as well as its forthcoming Chrome OS.
Vic Gundotra, Google’s engineering vice president and developer evangelist, said on Friday at the Mobilebeat conference in San Francisco that the future of the mobile industry lies in web-based applications, rather than native software coded to run on specific smartphone operating systems.
“Many, many applications can be delivered through the browser and what that does for our costs is stunning,” Gundotra was quoted in a Financial Times report. “We believe the web has won and over the next several years, the browser, for economic reasons almost, will become the platform that matters and certainly that’s where Google is investing.”
Ever since Java emerged in the 1990s, the tech industry has debated whether software would shift from native programs sitting on a hard drive (like Microsoft Office) toward web-based applications accessible through a browser (like Google Docs). Developed by Sun Microsystems, Java is a cross-platform environment that many web-based applications use today, albeit “in the cloud” — on central servers — rather than in the browser. One big benefit of cloud-based, web-centric applications is that users can access the apps and their personal data from any computer using a browser.
However, while Google’s internet software suite is certainly popular, web-based apps are far from winning, said Michael Gartenberg, technology strategist of Interpret. He noted that Apple’s App Store, which serves 65,000 third-party apps and has attracted over 1.5 billion downloads and 100,000 developers, is a testament for strong consumer and developer interest in native applications.
“It’s odd that Google feels the need to position as one versus the other,” Gartenberg said. “That’s last century thinking.”
Gartenberg pointed out that many iPhone apps are native and web-based at the same time. That’s because a lot of the apps download or share data via the internet. And it’s beneficial for the apps to be native, because that way they’re programmed to specifically take advantage of the iPhone’s processor, graphic accelerator and other hardware features.
“It’s not about web applications or desktop applications but integrating the internet in the cloud into these applications that are on both my phone and the PC,” Gartenberg said. “Ultimately, it’s about offering the best of both worlds to create the best experience for consumers — not forcing them to choose one or the other.”
Gartenberg highlighted social networking service Twitter as an example. The Twitter service exists on the internet, and yet most users prefer reading their feeds and posting tweets with a native application rather than visiting Twitter.com in a browser, Gartenberg said.
Raven Zachary, an analyst and president of iPhone strategist firm Small Society, also disagreed with Google’s assessment. He said that the App Store makes it clear that native apps are proving a better experience for consumers. When Apple released the original iPhone in 2007, the company offered no software developer kit for the smartphone and told developers to make web-based apps. However, web-based apps proved unpopular among developers, and the iPhone didn’t explode in popularity until its App Store and the second-generation iPhone 3G launched in 2008.
“It’s pretty clear that native apps and on-phone distribution are by far the most efficient and compelling ways to have consumer apps,” Zachary said.
And speaking technically, Zachary pointed out that there will always be fundamental challenges with coding apps purely for the web: Not all hardware will be optimized to run the software. Different phones possess different screen resolutions, for example, meaning some apps would load better on certain phones than others. And other than that, a web-based app can’t take full advantage of a specific phone’s powers if it’s coded to work in a cross-platform environment.
Loren Brichter, developer of the popular iPhone Twitter application Tweetie, can vouch for the technical challenges lying ahead for web-based mobile programming. He said he’s been trying to code apps using the Palm Pre’s webOS software development kit, which involves programming in JavaScript and CSS.
“The Pre’s SDK is painful to work with because JavaScript is so clumsy,” Brichter said.
He added that web technology is not improving quickly enough to fulfill Google’s prophecy of web apps winning in the near future.
“The progress of web technologies is going so slow,” Brichter said. “With HTML5, they can’t even decide on a video format…. It’s just moving at a snail’s pace.”
What do you think about the future of mobile? Web apps winning? App stores surviving? Both native and web co-existing? Vote in the poll below.
It’s easy to forget how good something is until it’s gone. I guess this is also the case with the king of pop, whose musical career weren’t exactly flying in the past decade, but now that Michael’s passed away, everyone remembers him for the good, old, unforgettable hits he’d given us in the 80ies. And, apparently, everyone is buying them, because, based on preliminary sales numbers from Nielsen SoundScan, 2.6 million Michael Jackson (his work with Jackson 5 and the Jacksons included) digital downloads were sold in just one week. The week before his death, 48,000 Michael Jackson songs were sold, which makes this week’s numbers a staggering jump. But for an even better idea of how big these numbers are, suffice to say that no artist has ever sold more than one million digital songs in one week. Furthermore, eight Michael Jackson albums have found themselves in the top 10 bestseller list, and 25 of his songs are in the top 75-position Hot Digital Songs chart. Topping the album charts was “Number Ones” with 108,000 copies sold, with “The Essential Michael Jackson” following with 102,000 copies. “Thriller,” Jackson’s most popular studio album, is third with 101,000. When it comes to individual songs, “Thriller” was sold 167,000, which earned it the second place, behind Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.” In the week before Michael’s death, 5,000 copies of “Thriller” were sold, which makes this week’s results an incredible 3,551 percent increase.
Apple has agreed to purchase the innovative, streaming music service LaLa, according to multiple reports (updated). LaLa fills a big hole in Apple’s digital music strategy and could bring streaming down music from the cloud into iTunes-ready devices everywhere.
