Back when the iPhone was first announced, there was no SDK, you'll remember. Jobs said that developers could just make web apps, and that they
would be good enough. Of course, he was wrong -- given what you can do with your iPhone now compared to what you could do with your iPhone then, even Steve would be happy to say that yes, there is a native app for that. But let's not toss the projects out with the development platform, so to speak. Neven Mrgan, one of the devs
over at Panic, has released
Pie Guy, a free and surprisingly full-featured game for the iPhone that exists only as a Javascript web app. To play it, just point your iPhone 3GS (the page says you need one of those, and while I was able to play it on my 1G, it was too clunky to enjoy) to
mrgan.com/pieguy, add that page to your homescreen, and there you go.
In case you haven't guessed from the pic above (or the name), the game itself is a straightforward Pac-Man clone. But what's most interesting here is the example this game sets. Think about it: a full featured, automatically updated game release, delivered straight to the iPhone without any
approval required by Apple. The revenue model might need some work, but maybe we dismissed this whole "web app" idea a little too quickly. For devs looking to go around the App Store's process, maybe there's a solution here. Boy,
Flash sure would help with that, wouldn't it?
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rafael Bugajewski said 11:06AM on 11-26-2009
It’s a great idea and nice demo, but it works so clunky on my iPhone 3G, it isn’t even playable.
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PK said 2:05PM on 11-26-2009
That's not surprising, actually - both Mike's post above and Neven's Tumblr post state that the app is meant to be played on an iPhone 3GS, not an iPhone 3G or first-gen iPhone...
Michael said 10:14AM on 11-27-2009
Please. Let's not use the 'F' word. I would hate to see Flash on the iPhone.
The game works pretty good on my 3GS, but not something I would normally play anyway, so...
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punkassjim said 12:43PM on 11-26-2009
I love how often you guys "quote" Steve Jobs as saying things he never actually said (without the quotation marks, but then going on to say something like "of course, he was wrong," as if it were a direct quotation). Can I get a citation, please? I don't see one in your self-link.
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brian said 3:28PM on 11-26-2009
"We have been trying to come up with a solution to expand the capabilities of the iPhone so developers can write great apps for it, but keep the iPhone secure. And we've come up with a very. Sweet. Solution. Let me tell you about it. An innovative new way to create applications for mobile devices... it's all based on the fact that we have the full Safari engine in the iPhone. And so you can write amazing Web 2.0 and AJAX apps that look and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone, and these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, check email, look up a location on Gmaps... don't worry about distribution, just put 'em on an internet server. They're easy to update, just update it on your server. They're secure, and they run securely sandboxed on the iPhone. And guess what, there's no SDK you need! You've got everything you need if you can write modern web apps..."
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/11/steve-jobs-live-from-wwdc-2007/
brian said 12:56AM on 11-28-2009
Speaking of the self-link, it's a funny read. Some right, some wrong.
"And let's not forget -- it wouldn't only be the quality-oriented Mac coders writing apps for the iPhone. We'd see an onslaught of complicated crap, written by amateurs, ruining the beauty of the iPhone experience."
Dead on. But...
"How many users in the iPhone target-demographic actually install and use third-party apps on their handsets, smartphone or otherwise? How many of those apps aren't already on the iPhone, and how many are really that important?"
If predicting the future were easy, everyone would do it. :-)
punkassjim said 1:39AM on 11-29-2009
The thing you quoted is decidedly different from what TUAW said Steve Jobs said. He never, ever said "that'll be good enough." No one who works for Apple ever said that. No one who works for apple ever said "there won't be an SDK," either, yet several of their bloggers have said things like "so-and-so was wrong."
Govt Baby said 10:33AM on 12-07-2009
Yes-
He did not say verbatim that the web app development path was "good enough". But the gist of what he said was that it was. Which is what the article implies. Stop being silly for the sake of being silly.
Ben Y. said 1:05PM on 11-26-2009
It is pretty obvious that Apple was playing its cards very close to the chest about the upcoming App Store and native Apps. I don't think Jobs or anyone else "in the know" at Apple was doing anything more than misinformation by saying web apps would be the delivery mechanism.
Look at how massively Apple leapfrogged the industry in terms of App development, deployment, payment. That kind of thing didn't just happen in a year or two ...
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Jaden said 1:37PM on 11-26-2009
I made my first web recently. It is just a Tic-Tac-Toe game, but I'm really proud of it. Try it out:
http://iwebapp.site90.net/Tic-Tac-Toe/
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Rockey04 said 1:47PM on 11-26-2009
Also, if you want to try it on a normal web browser (not the iPhone), just add "/mobile" to the end:
http://iwebapp.site90.net/Tic-Tac-Toe/
tony d said 1:51PM on 11-26-2009
Cool, nice job. Maybe more people will do web apps now. In fact does Apple have a list on their site for web apps ?
Rockey04 said 1:54PM on 11-26-2009
@tony d
Yeah, they do!
It is here: http://www.apple.com/webapps/
Also, if you care, here is another web app I made. It is just to keep track of a score:
http://iwebapp.site90.net/Score/mobile/
Sikosis said 6:16PM on 11-26-2009
Looks nice but it's pretty unplayable ... was able to move left and right some of the time but never up and down.
A for effort and T for nice try.
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Ishan said 7:20PM on 11-26-2009
Personally the game I use to show people the potential of webapps is SpaceWar:
http://www.apple.com/webapps/games/spacewar.html
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Jason said 4:09AM on 11-27-2009
You know, Jobs wasn't wrong. I would step out on a limb and say that 60% of the App Store could be implemented as a just-as-functional Web App. The sheer capabilities of the WebKit engine and HTML5 capabilities in the iPhone is unreal. It's better than most DESKTOP BROWSERS nowadays. Not as good as fully fledged Safari, but that goes without saying.
I suppose it goes without saying that some of the more ... "media rich" applications (it's a nice way of saying a fart app with tons of fart sounds) take significantly less time to load as an application, but there's something to be said for seriously optimizing your media, and lazily-loading it.
No, a static GPS app (think: GMaps East, GMaps West) couldn't be done well as a web app unless your connection doesn't die at all on the drive.
No, Rolando would NOT be a good Web App (nor would Eliminate).
No, SSH, VNC, RDP, or any other network utility app would not make for a very good Web app.
Conservatively speaking, looking at my own list, I'd say at least half of them could make a great web app. And I'd have that much more space on my phone free if they were :P.
The iPod Touch makes a great gaming machine, and games are a GREAT reason for a dedicated application interface. With some other things that definitely fit the category of app-inclined programs. Google Earth, Air Sharing, qStatus (even if it's not as fast when not jailbroken), and of course, Skype.
The App Store is necessary, and here to stay. But there's a whole class of people that could make things better if they could do it as a webapp instead of having to learn Obj-C, Cocoa Touch, and pay $100 in order to enter.
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