Should Developers Deploy Rejected iPhone Apps on Mobile Safari?
* Flash works across every browser, every platform. HTML/CSS standards and implementation differs across every browser, on every OS. Firefox on Linux looks different than Firefox on Mac and Firefox on Windows. It's a mess. It will be even more of a nightmare with HTML 5's features, since the IE team isn't planning on fully implementing HTML 5 and CSS 3. And we can't just abandon IE users -- adoption rates show that user's don't really upgrade to the latest, most modern browsers until 1-2 years after its release. So, to appeal to the widest market base, there's no sense in stopping everything and making an HTML 5 product now.
* Adobe/Flex offers a good library and a true MVC platform. True, this can be achieved with MVCs like Symfony (huge overhead) and jQuery, but ActionScript can be compiled down to bytecode and has JIT features. No browser javascript engine, although they've been improving and speeding up quite remarkably, provide this, except for one experimental Mozilla engine.
* Security: rubbish
Grooveshark is excited for HTML 5 and it's on the mind of a lot of devs, but it will have to wait a while.
The above excerpt is by a Grooveshark developer in response to a query about converting Grooveshark into a fully functional HTML5 service, as opposed to it being flash-based right now.
Grooveshark is an online music streaming service that I've grown to love because it streams songs on-demand ad supported. And it's legit. Its premium version allows you unlimited listens sans ads. The website interface, while very good, is built entirely on flash.
Apple rejected Grooveshark's iPhone app because, presumably, they consider it a rival of their iTunes store.
I always wondered why they didn't have an HTML5 version of their site as an option because Safari's WebKit fully supports the implementation. Considering significant growth in that sector with, iPads and iPhones, I believe sites such as Grooveshark should invest development hours.
I can understand some of his reasons, except for this point:
And we can't just abandon IE users -- adoption rates show that user's don't really upgrade to the latest, most modern browsers until 1-2 years after its release. So, to appeal to the widest market base, there's no sense in stopping everything and making an HTML 5 product now.
You don't have to make it HTML5 only right now; you could have a Flash version as well as the HTML5 version of it.
With Jobs' statement on Apple being "open about the web" surely developers should aim to make systems that are browser friendly if shunned by the app store.
