John Gruber wrote an interesting article on Daring Fireball last week about iPhone web apps as an alternative to the App Store. Gruber starts by quoting Peter-Paul Koch who thinks that developers should just bypass the App Store by creating web apps instead of native apps:

In order to release an iPhone application without having to submit it to Apple’s insane App Store process, developers could just use Web technologies and create Web apps instead of native apps.

The main benefit of creating a web app is that you don’t have to deal with Apple and you can make your app do whatever you want. The main downside though is that a web app doesn’t have access to core functionalities of the iPhone. For example, the mobile version of Flickr can’t access your photo library, making it impossible to upload images to the site.

It’s funny because when the iPhone came out, Apple had a directory of web apps on its site. It seemed at the time that Apple saw web apps as a great addition to the iPhone experience. Then the jailbreakers came in and started creating third-party applications, which changed the game forever.

That’s at this time that Apple realized that they should allow developers to create native apps. I can’t find the article but I clearly remember reading something quoting Steve Jobs or Phil Schiller saying that the App Store was kind of an accident, that Apple never really intended to let developers create apps for the iPhone.

When they saw how successful the jailbreak community was, Apple quickly woke up, worked on an official SDK and created the business model that is the App Store we know today.

Along the way, Apple quietly ended the promotion of web apps because they figured that web apps don’t make money, and that they’d be better off selling apps and getting a cut of each sale rather than not getting anything at all.

Google’s take on it is simple: web apps are the future of applications! You can tell that Google put much effort into web apps and deliberately left native apps aside. For example, there is no native Gmail app. However, the Gmail web app for iPhone is nothing short of amazing. Same for the Google Voice web app.

I do believe that web apps are the future of applications for most mobile platforms out there. Unfortunately, I also believe that Apple will not let that happen on its turf. They have too much to lose. The App Store machine is on a roll and nothing can really stop it now.

While Google embraces openness, Apple cherishes its closed platform. Both companies have different objectives and it’s fine because there is plenty of room for multiple players out there.

Most of you might already be aware of it but we have an online App Store on the blog, which is pretty much an online version of Apple’s App Store. The difference is that our App Store provides a much better user experience when searching and browsing apps by making it easy for you to sort apps very quickly.

I gave a full overview of our online App Store a few weeks ago here, but feel free to go directly to http://appstore.iphonedownloadblog.com/ to see it for yourself.

The real news today is that we also have a web app for the store. If you go to http://appstore.iphonedownloadblog.com/ from your iPhone, you will be redirected to the mobile-friendly site.

The homepage will give you the 5 newest apps, the 5 latest apps on sale, and the 5 most popular apps in the App Store. From the top navigation bar, you can also go directly to the new apps, apps on sale, or tap categories to browse applications by categories. By tapping ” … “, you can search for an app by typing its name and have access to recently visited apps.

To learn more about an application, simply select it and you will be given a full description, including ratings and screenshots. To download an app, simply tap “Download”.

It’s worth mentioning that if you buy any app from our online App Store, the blog will be paid a 5% commission. See, if you buy a $1 app from us, the blog gets $0.05. That’s a nice way to contribute to the life of the blog.

A few people told me this web app wasn’t as good as I thought because the official App Store app does exactly the same. This is wrong! The official App Store app doesn’t allow you to see the very latest apps on sale and the very newest applications.

Apple has a “new” category but if you look at it closer, it shows you a selection of “new apps” that have been out for 2 weeks or more. Doesn’t look very new to me!

Same for applications on sale. There is no way in the App Store to see what the latest apps on sale this exact day are. Our online App Store and its mobile version will do just that.

I really think our online App Store and its web app are the best way to find out right now about the newest apps and latest price drops. But I might be a little partial, right.

Please leave a comment and tell me what you think about it and maybe how it could be improved. Thank you, guys!

It’s all about apps these days; but whatever happened to web apps? As Alicia says, web apps rock, but they are too often overlooked. Google iPhone-optimized websites for example offer a great user experience for many of its services. Here is a list of URLs compiled by Alex Chitu.

• Google homepage (the unified interface codenamed “Grand Prix”) – http://www.google.com/m/gp
• Google Apps homepage – http://www.google.com/m/a/YOUR_DOMAIN
• iGoogle – http://www.google.com/ig/i
• Gmail – http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/
• Google Calendar – http://www.google.com/calendar/gp
• Google Reader – http://www.google.com/reader/i/
• Google Docs – http://docs.google.com/m?iphone=true
• Google Talk – http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/m
• Google News – http://www.google.com/m/news/i

If you have more great web apps that you’d like to talk about, please say it in the comments.

Menulizard is a Web App that lets you search for restaurants by name, by state, or by zipcode and displays the location, phone number, restaurant hours, and menu for each restaurant it returns. There are other apps that do some of this, but the menu feature just really hits it home for me.

It has a very simple, straightforward interface and works just like it should. The address links you to google maps, the phone number lets you dial it, etc.

But what I like most about it is that it let’s your average Joe send them menus. This will help them grow their database organically. Too many restaurant guides on the web rely on restaurant owners or their staff to keep their database current and they just don’t succeed. To upload a menu, simply mail it to them.

I live in Connecticut and currently there aren’t any restaurants loaded for my state, but I have a whole drawer full of local menus that just take up valuable kitchen drawer space so I think I am going to pack them up this weekend and send them to MenuLizard.

They also have a trends menu that lets you see some top lists and metrics about their database.  You can look up 20 biggest menus, 20 newest menus, etc. Very interesting.

The only suggestion I have for them is to let people email them menus. They explain why faxes are really hard for them to read and I get that, but their are really good quality scanners out there today and an email attachment would work pretty well for them too. Snail mail is so last decade It would also be great if they would let people upload pictures of food to associate with menu items.

For small changes to the menu, they request an email message.

The device that set out to replace 3 devices, (phone, mp3/video player, Internet) might eventually replace everything in your pocket. Like an idiot I assumed I knew a majority of what the iPhone was capable of. But browsing the internet the other day, proved me more wrong than Bush’s policy on foreign relations.

Control your car

Meet the Delphi car control concept web app (watch video here). Capable of doing everything your ordinary key fob does, and more. It’ll start your car, roll your windows up and down, and even gather engine diagnostics for you in case you smell something burning. I haven’t heard anymore about it since they debuted it last January, so hopefully the project didn’t get shelved.

Control your home (more…)

A lot of talk has been centered around the App store and Jailbreak Apps but what i find really exciting is the web apps that are being designed and formatted for the iPhone/iTouch. No installation, no jailbreaking, no disk space is necessary.  And with the iPhone’s/iTouch’s ability to store a bookmark on the Home Screen, these apps can appear and be accessed just like any other app.

There are several different ways to locate web apps.  First, Apple has a web page that allows people to register their web apps.  I highly recommend those with RSS readers subscribe to this feed.   Some very cool apps are showing up.  Another cool way of seeing these web apps are using the Web Apps [iTunes Link] application that you can download from the Itunes App Store. It allows you to create a list of favorites and navigate to them easily (if you don’t want to have a direct bookmark icon on your desktop) and lets you see what is out and try out the apps on your iphone.

Some of these apps are just web pages reformatted for you iPhone/iTouch, but some of them really take advantage of the IPhone GUI and technology.   One that caught my eye yesterday is the Dominos Pizza Tracker.  According to the Apple page “The Domino’s Pizza Tracker takes a phone number as input and connects to Domino’s Pizza Tracker XML backend to return information regarding your order, including time of creation, cooking, and delivery status. “  I haven’t tried it yet, but i think i’ll be having Pizza tonight!