I use an app to check on the skiing conditions at local slopes. I click on the icon on the iPhone, the app pops up and I see some data. When I'm on a desktop, I do exactly the same thing, except the app I click on is a web page. While Apple claims 140, 000+ apps available for their phone, and others in the space do the same, a good number of these apps are really just thin clients backed by the same sort of data that usually goes to populating a web page.
This prompts an obvious question: how many 'apps' are really just thin clients backed by web servers similar to those for traditional browsers? An initial answer to this might be constructed out of a break down of app categories (games, for example, are less likely to fit this model).
In addition, as we hear more and more about crawling the deep web, what are the rules of engagement for crawling the data services that back these thin client, browser-like apps?
The title of the book on my desk:"Developing Hybrid applications for the iPhone. Using HTML, CSS and JavaScript to Build Dynamic Apps for the iPhone"
Posted by: Alexey Maykov | February 11, 2010 at 05:18 PM
Most of these "apps" are glorified web pages. I refuse to believe that so many people have learnt Objective-C so quickly.
Posted by: Alexey Maykov | February 11, 2010 at 05:21 PM