Apple’s iPhone is the latest attempt to bring about radical improvements to mobile internet. In principle, the internet on mobile devices is a marriage made in heaven, with email, entertainment, train times, news headlines, maps and guides all just a click away. But the growth of this service has been slow and stuttering. Now, however, the iPhone is set to revolutionise mobile internet usage and development.
Apple’s iPhone is geared towards improving mobile web. First, Apple’s focus is on ease of use. The RIM BlackBerry made mobile email usable for non-geeks, with such impressive results that the devices are nicknamed CrackBerrys. The iPhone could have a similar impact on the mobile web. Second, Apple seems determined not to let the carriers call all the shots with respect to how its device functions. Third, the iPhone’s web browser is Safari, based on the same code used on the OS X desktop. The intention is to give the device excellent web access.
Yet the most intriguing aspect of the iPhone is Apple’s decision to exclude plug-ins from the iPhone web browser. No Flash, no Java, and for that matter, no Silverlight. Apple is telling web developers to use only HTML and JavaScript, or Ajax as it is sometimes called, to build rich web applications.
If the iPhone succeeds, that is a blow for Adobe in its attempt to establish Flash on the mobile internet, and for Sun as it tries to consolidate the use of Java. This could change in future iPhone releases, yet Apple managed to persuade Google to start encoding YouTube videos in the H.264 codec, enabling the iPhone to support YouTube without Flash, which suggests a considerable effort to avoid Flash dependency.
This may have a disproportionate impact on web developers. While the iPhone will only have a small proportion of the mobile phone market, I suspect it will account for some of the heaviest users of the mobile web. Sites that wish to be iPhone-friendly have to avoid Flash or Java, just as Google already does. That said, there is also the question of offline support, which is critically important for mobile web applications, since the internet connection is intermittent. This is pure speculation, but it would not surprise me if Apple embraced Google Gears in some future release, since it adds offline support within the Ajax model.
Whether it succeeds or fails, Apple is disrupting the mobile industry, and bearing in mind the disappointment of the mobile internet to date, that must be a good thing. The immediate consequence for web authors is simple. Keep away from plug-ins, and everything will work fine.
