Is the iPhone Destroying the Web?

Bad for the internet? Puulease. If anything, companies who cater specifically to iPhone users with special portals do so because they can offer far more (on the mobile front) than they can for your Samsung / SE / Nokia "full-featured" browsers.

I hope Apple is keeping all these companies in mind for promoting their device. Mobile browsing is shifting and Webkit is / will be at the front.

Of every mobile handset that I have ever owned, the iPhone is the only one to stand out allowing me to browse my favorite sites as though I were on a desktop computer.

Webkit isn’t based on Konqueror, it’s based on KHTML.

If anything I would say that the iPhone is good for the internet, it is much better to have a real browser in phones instead of a WAP browser. I would say that the iPhone is actually helping to unify the internet because if other phone companies start to put real html web browsers in phones then no longer will companies have to make WAP version of their web pages.

The iPhone rocks! I just bought one like a week ago.. I love it!

@DEREK

Amen

@THE INTERNET

Guys, do me one favor… if there is ANYTHING that drives me nuts it’s “Made for Mobile” conversions of some of my favorite sites. I mean don’t get me wrong, some of the made for iPhone apps I love. Moviesapp.com, Gasapp.com = Love.

HOWEVER on the darker side of this are the bank of America’s and UneasySilence (the shame :( ). Because it’s taken 5 years of painfully bad mobile web browsers to finally get a web browser to render a page on my phone as it does on my desktop. Now it seems everyone is iPhoneing versions … but I don’t want a mobile version, ususally I have a wifi signal and want the full blown bandwidth sucking glory.

Here is my suggestion

Create a link on the “iPhone version” or if an iPhone is DETECTED PERIOD… give me a link that reads “browse using full/mobile version”. I click this link, it sets a cookie, from that point forward check for this cookie, if I opt out of the mobile give me the full, if I opt into the mobile version while I’m on EDGE, give me the mobile.

It seems like a usability step that everyone has just ignored :(

kill the iphone

There are a number of articles floating about the web likening the wave of iPhone only apps to the browser wars of old. Back then, web developers were kicking and screaming that the browsers play nice with web standards so they wouldn’t have to code two or more versions of a site, or they’d take advantage of the differences and make significantly different versions for each. Now with the iPhone, they’re doing it WILLINGLY. And worse, it’s for ONE browser on ONE hardware platform.

Once the novelty of the iPhone wears off, will developers still maintain these versions indefinitely like their normal versions, or will they fall into disrepair?

Its just not the browsing but webkit based browsing experience has opened the whole new arena of platform independent applications. Now the application writers dont even have to bother about the underneath platform, just write an application which can use webkit as renderer & you are done with it. It is conceptually same as Adobe’s AIR for desktop. And when u have this concept combined with capabilities of internet what gr8 mobile users can have… We have examples of such initial application in form of Moviesapp.com & also to some extent meebo.com( though meebo was there from quite q while on net).
My point is that a full browser in form of safari has made the browsing experience more spicy & further people can have web-based applications which will be independent of the platform of the device.
Hats off to all the webkit developers who have made this possible!!!

I’m with Gruber on this one: “There’s an enormous difference between “built-for-IE4” and “built-for-iPhone” web sites, and Gilbertson himself points it out: the techniques for developing web sites optimized for the iPhone are based on standards. Optimizing for iPhone is, in a way, an accessibility issue.”

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2007/august#mon-20-gilbertson

I gotta say no way, it’s only helping it out. In many ways, the new “burst” culture that gives us quick and snappy information is only playing more to mobile but most people spend more time on a computer than they do on their phones participating in non-talking activities such as SMS and web surfing.

Search will get better as the technology improves, but mobile phones will always remain about connecting people, whether that be through phone calls, SMS, emailing from your phone or from your facebook app on the phone.