Apple promises, and has come closest so far in delivering the “real internet” on a mobile device. The whole point of MobileSafari is that you don’t need a crummy, crippled version (WAP-like), and yet another different format to maintain — just the “real internet”.
Personally, I find it very annoying when Amazon and Facebook hijack my iPhone browser and force it to show the (very poor) iPhone version, when I’d much rather have the same, fully functional page I use on my desktop (and use just as easily on my iPhone).
Apple understands this and gives us the real, standards compliant, Apple store on the PC and on the iPhone, ditto the Apple WebApp directory.
Now, if what you consider Amazon iPhone and Facebook iPhone to be WebApps, then I suppose that’s fine, but I would rather get the real page on the page, and if I want the WebApp, let me pick and webclip that myself, thanks.
Dear Apple… | The Macalope: An Apple blog - CNET Blogs
The online Apple Store really should have a spiffy iPhone interface like Facebook and Amazon.
Much love,
The Macalope
My problem with stuff like the FaceBook app is that, with iPhone, I was promised the “real internet”, yet people keep trying to repackage that for iPhone and so now I have to click twice as much on FaceBook, Amazon, etc. to get back to the real internet version I was promised to begin with.
I understand CSS enables platform targeting, but CSS-compliance already allow standards based designs to work on a wide range anyway.
Hey, leave my ‘net alone.
(I should note that I do like web apps targeted to do specific things, like mimic word processor functions or play games, just not ones that take existing content and merely reshape it in a platform specific way).
Selling iPhones 101: You can use Facebook
Not unlike popsicles, there are many ways to sell phones. You can talk about how they clear planes for takeoff, speak about how Visual Voicemail is the single greatest innovation in the history of the world, save yourself from awkward social situations with the significant others boss, or even post to your ballerina blog from the stage during a performance. You might even point out how the phone gets the real Internet—not the mobile Internet or watered-down Internet—but the actual Internet without Flash or Java. These are all fine and good strategies, but if you really want your phones to fly off the shelves like carrier pigeons, you point out how it can get you onto Facebook from anywhere during prime time television.
You gotta figure any Web 2.0 startup is at least filled with adolescent hands-in-the-cookie-jar types who love to peep and sneak at all sorts of data. I can’t even imagine what probably went on (or still does go on?) at Google (”Hey, check out what (insert Zealot Senator) is Googling now…!”) but when Microsoft begins to valuate you at $15 Billion, that puts an almost sun-like spotlight right on your corporate practices, now doesn’t it?
Scoop: Facebook employees know what profiles you look at”
My friend got a call from her friend at Facebook, asking why she kept looking at his profile,” says a privacy-conscious source at a major tech company. Turns out Facebook employees can and do check out anyones profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed — a major privacy violation. If youve been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obamas intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, its considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.
