I very much hope not. It would be a pain to have a dozen or more applications carefully crafted for the iPhone, only to be used as a gateway to some site or another. It may make sense to have a Flickr client, a bank app or a blogging tool1, but I do not really think more is better in this case.
There are a lot of great, customized web interfaces for the iPhone. All services that require the user to be connected to the Internet would live much better in Safari (caveats to follow) because, let us not forget, sanctioned iPhone apps will not be free, even if the developer would want otherwise.
Caveats on the Internet connection claim above :
- Bank applications might require a level of security different from what Safari is able to provide.
- A RSS reader with offline storage would make flying, roaming and living in countries where data plans are prohibitively priced more bearable.
On the other hand:
- Facebook without the ‘net? It must be lonely when your friends are not reachable.
- Twitter? You know, they support SMS posting/receiving of messages.
I hope this is not going to be an issue. After all, developing an application takes time and resources that may be better spent otherwise.
Oh, and if you write iPhone applications, please remember incoming calls shut down your app. Auto-save often in the background, I would be much happier if I did not need to retype my blog entry in between calls. And you would be happier keeping my money in your pocket, too.
- Oh yes, how happy I would be! [↩]
