The most interesting thing to me about the iPad announcement a couple weeks ago has nothing to do with the device itself (at least, not directly). In my opinion, it’s that in the two or so weeks since the announcement, the amount of interest surrounding Mobile HTML5 apps has increased tremendously. Going into it, I would’ve expected the opposite to happen: people would’ve been jumping further into the native app bandwagon. But that just wasn’t the case.
Looking back on it, here’s why I think it happened. One reason is obvious, but I think it might be more subtle than just the obvious answer:
- The obvious answer: Lack of Flash. The lack of Flash on iPhone and iPad has caused quite a lot of anger from developers and users alike. The fact that Steve Jobs brought up a web page with a big non-working Flash object during his demo didn’t help things. HTML5 bridges this gap with its video support. But I don’t think this fully explains it.
- Less obvious answer #1: I think a lot of developers are still feeling pretty burned by some of the less than gracious tactics by Apple and their approval process and heavy-handedness. For a while it looked like things are getting better and then they went and did things like lock down geolocation for ads. I think developers are looking for an excuse to head towards HTML5 and the web.
- Less obvious answer #2: The new form factor of iPad means that every developer has a brand new resolution and screen size for which we need to develop. This might not be a huge deal for many developers, but it’s a big time-sink for the best developers. Add in the fact that Android seems to be gaining steam and you’ll see that it’s not even close to a “write-once, run-anywhere” environment. You may not be able to control everything about a mobile web app, but for the most part you won’t have the same overhead as writing native apps specifically for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, etc.
I’m a big believer in the web, and I think the web will win just as it did on the desktop (and I think Google is showing how great the web can be with Google Voice for iPhone and Google Buzz web apps). It might take a few years, but I think it’ll happen.
