Bencredible

I think Apple had it right back in the iPhone 1.0 days: Apps are web sites. Conventional wisdom would say that I’m wrong, I mean look at the popularity of the App store. However, iPhone apps are just that: applications for the iPhone (and sometimes the iPod Touch.)  What about all the other devices out there?

In an ideal world I could develop an application for the web and have it deploy to any mobile device from an iPhone to a Blackberry to a Windows Mobile device. The web browsers in these devices are actually quite powerful. Take a look at Google Latitude to see what I mean.

The problem is that since we have native apps there is little to no reason to develop a standard to pull the device hardware forward to the web browser. If I want to develop an application that can utilize the tilt sensors in an iPhone and a Blackberry I would have to write different code for each. That’s not the ideal solution. Each device should be able to present its hardware to the browser in a standard way that anyone can take advantage of. And nearly all hardware should be available from the on-board sensors, GPS, phone, ambient light sensor, etc., etc.

Looking at 99% of the iPhone apps out there I see little to no work that could not be done in the browser should they be able to take advantage of all the hardware. The final piece of the puzzle is an offline mode for apps that require heavy animations for weather and whatnot that allow the app to run even when there is no bandwidth. A giant cache folder as it were.

This is a bit of an idealistic view of how things should run. Apple already tried it once and failed. I don’t think they were wrong, I just think they were early without enough tools. Hopefully someone will try again but this time make it a standard that will work on any device with a webkit browser at its core.

There is one aspect that I have not figured out how to run in a browser: 3d games.  I have yet to figure out a workaround for those.

What do you think?  Am I crazy or could this someday be the future of mobile computing?

A while back I made a post on TechnologyEvangelist.com talking about how I was a Technoholic. I came to this conclusion because I buy a lot of technology right as it comes out, which is probably the worst time to buy.

The Palm Pre release is imminent and as such I started thinking about how I would acquire one.  Then I started wondering why.  I have an iPhone, I really like my iPhone and I have no need for a Pre.  The Sprint network does not work in my house and I’m still in an AT&T contract.  What benefit would a Palm Pre bring me?

As I pondered this I realized that I’m not a technoholic but rather an infoholic.  The reason I buy this technology is because I like to know first hand what it is and isn’t good at, how it performs in real life situations and if I can suggest it to other people.  I become the go-to guy for all things tech because *I* have the information on the technology.  Not just information based on reviews and other users opinions, first hand opinions.  I love having the info, but I’m too stupid to monetize that information.  Information is power, duh!

Reviews and opinions are great although usually too shallow.  When people talk about the iPhone keyboard and they mention how much it sucks, but they don’t mention that after you learn to use it you can type very quickly on it, although rarely one handed and rarely in a car.  They forget to mention that because it is virtual they can do a lot more in that space than they could with a physical keyboard.  These details are usually left out of the reviews and instead all we get to read is, “keyboard sucks”.  So here I am, eager for the real life scoop on the products, paying for all of them out-of-pocket and not making anything in return.  Seems to be a bad habit of mine.

In the end it comes down to wanting the most information possible and I have found that to be an expensive habit.  When it comes to the Palm Pre I may just have to leave it to my friends at TreoCentral.com to review it for me and just trust that the tools I’m using today and good enough.

As a final note, I hope Apple learns a bit about the cool factor that Palm is bringing to the table such as wireless power, unified address books from Exchange to Facebook, community networking, background apps and understanding that an incoming phone call or SMS message shouldn’t abruptly stop whatever it is I’m doing!