Apple's ironic web strategy
I just read a very interesting post titled "How Apple Will Destroy The Web". How's that for an attention grabber? The author makes some very valid and interesting points, however there were two paragraphs that literally jumped off the page at me.
Apple has already starting preparing people for a post-web world. The iPhone taught people that web apps are slow and awkward – native apps are where it’s at. I’m not quite enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe that Apple made us suffer through the iPhone web app era as a social experiment, but it certainly ended up proving that native apps are far superior to web apps, given the right native environment.
And then there’s that word, “app”. I used to think it was an odd misstep on Apple’s part to use industry lingo in a mainstream product. But no, Apple needed a new word to define the new way people would relate to their technology. “Application” was too literal, bulky, boring. “Program”? Even worse. But “app” is short, succinct, snappy – and, just coincidentally, the first syllable in “Apple”. Apps are the way you do stuff.
Isn't this what Adobe has been saying for the past number of years. People want engaging experiences, they want something more than static, generic sites and slugish akward web apps. AIR, Flex and Flash, those are the tools designed to deliver exactly the experience the author says Apple is looking to deliver, albeit by a slightly different path.
Apple feels native apps are superior to web based apps (which is true) and wants to do it via native, proprietory apps that lock you into a specific OS. Adobe provides a framework and options that allow you, the developer, to deliver an application to a wider audience via the web or via the desktop, you make the decision based on requirements and user needs.
It seems extremely ironic that Apple's possible strategy for the web and their app store goes completely against the grain of the entire open source/open web/HTML standards crowd. The very same crowd that is burning virtual effigies of the Flash plugin while celebrating the release of the iPad.
How ironic indeed.
