Speaking to attendees of the MobileBeat 2009 conference in San Francisco yesterday, Google Engineering vice president Vic Gundotra predicted that the Web would prevail as the dominant mobile application development platform despite the huge success of Apple's App Store (via Financial Times). According to Gundotra the harsh economics of maintaining multiple platform-specific copies of applications is pushing development to the Web.
"We believe the web has won and over the next several years, the browser, for economic reasons almost, will become the platform that matters and certainly thats where Google is investing."
At least partially supporting Gundotra's viewpoint were fellow panelists from Palm and Nokia.
Readers will remember that Apple initially only officially allowed developers to create web-based applications for the iPhone and iPod touch, but extended access to native applications a year later with iPhone OS 2.0 and the launch of the App Store.
For technical support of his claims, Mr. Gundotra points to HTML5, which is allowing for CSS animations as well as the use of geolocation and accelerometers. Of course, such technologies currently do not address the needs of more complex games that require access to mobile-based 3D services such as OpenGL ES.
Interestingly, both Google (Chrome OS) and Palm (WebOS), and previously even Nokia, have taken advantage of Apple-backed WebKit as the basis of their latest Web-centric operating systems.
iOS 18 is expected to be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history. Below, we recap rumored features and changes for the iPhone. iOS 18 is rumored to include new generative AI features for Siri and many apps, and Apple plans to add RCS support to the Messages app for an improved texting experience between iPhones and Android devices. The update is also expected to introduce a more...
Wednesday April 17, 2024 9:58 am PDT by Juli Clover
Game emulator apps have come and gone since Apple announced App Store support for them on April 5, but now popular game emulator Delta from developer Riley Testut is available for download. Testut is known as the developer behind GBA4iOS, an open-source emulator that was available for a brief time more than a decade ago. GBA4iOS led to Delta, an emulator that has been available outside of...
Tuesday April 16, 2024 11:33 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The first approved Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator for the iPhone and iPad was made available on the App Store today following Apple's rule change. The emulator is called Bimmy, and it was developed by Tom Salvo. On the App Store, Bimmy is described as a tool for testing and playing public domain/"homebrew" games created for the NES, but the app allows you to load ROMs for any...
Apple today said it removed Game Boy emulator iGBA from the App Store for violating the company's App Review Guidelines related to spam (section 4.3) and copyright (section 5.2), but it did not provide any specific details. iGBA was a copycat version of developer Riley Testut's open-source GBA4iOS app. The emulator rose to the top of the App Store charts following its release this weekend,...
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Last September, Apple's iPhone 15 Pro models debuted with a new customizable Action button, offering faster access to a handful of functions, as well as the ability to assign Shortcuts. Apple is poised to include the feature on all upcoming iPhone 16 models, so we asked iPhone 15 Pro users what their experience has been with the additional button so far. The Action button replaces the switch ...
A week after Apple updated its App Review Guidelines to permit retro game console emulators, a Game Boy emulator for the iPhone called iGBA has appeared in the App Store worldwide. The emulator is already one of the top free apps on the App Store charts. It was not entirely clear if Apple would allow emulators to work with all and any games, but iGBA is able to load any Game Boy ROMs that...
