iPhone apps developed in web browser unlikely to be worth using

Blanket statements when dealing with hundreds of thousands of apps can be a dangerous proposition, but here’s one that’s likely to hold up far more often than not: iPhone apps developed via a plain old web browser aren’t going to be worth using, at least not when there are so many other apps developed with real tools to choose from. This is not a crack on the abilities of those opting to use a web browser interface to crank out iPhone apps, but rather a condemnation of the web browser itself. Before Apple officially launched third party apps, the first year of iPhone history was littered with apps which could only be used through the device’s built in web browser, and those web app universally turned out to be inferior to the “real” apps which officially graced the iPhone platform once the App Store launched. And while App Store apps developed in a web browser are likely to be more sophisticated than those apps that had to be used through a web browser, they’re likely to suffer from the same limitations centered around the fact that the web browser is at this point very much a product of a rapidly fading phase of the internet.

While most computer users still use a web browser for most of their internet activity, higher level internet functionality – particularly on the mobile side – has begun shifting to dedicated apps, with mobile web browsers typically used for little more than reading articles and web searches. And desktop computing is showing early signs of following suit, with the Mac twitter client Tweetie (and Windows equivalents) suggesting that the tasks performed via standalone apps on mobile devices in here in 2010 are likely to also be performed via standalone apps on desktop computers within a year or two. So with the web browser increasingly being displaced by dedicated apps for higher level internet usage, it doesn’t take a lot to connect the dots as to why using twentieth century technology as a tool for developing twenty-first century products is likely to end up with a result that feels like it’s a decade behind the times.