While it’s a great idea to showcase in one single place iPhone-optimized web applications, this attempt proves once again why Cocoa still reigns over web apps: it just doesn’t feel right on the iPhone. It’s constantly loading stuff, scrolling is weird, too many taps, pop ups – it’s not natural.
OpenAppMkt lists web apps optimized for the iPhone, too bad they’re not optimized for the iPhone screen – the app itself and the apps you can “install” look all blurry on the Retina Display. Maybe that’s what you get by not having a walled garden: lack of support.
Furthermore, as Gruber also notices over at Daring Fireball:
“Interesting, but the fact that they clearly tried so hard to make it look good but that it still has janky scrolling and other visual rough edges says a lot about the technology’s shortcomings vs. Cocoa Touch.”
and about HTML5 as way to “route around” Apple’s limitations:
“But it’s not “routing around” anything. iOS’s support for mobile web apps — totally open, no gatekeeping — is by design. This isn’t a loophole around the App Store. It’s a fully supported software platform.”
Anyway, give it a try – especially if you still running an older iPhone model. For anyone else, just go download the Youtube mobile web app, it’s really great.
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