In an attempt to appease the iPhone critics who would like to see Apple allow third party applications to be developed for the iPhone, Apple announced that the iPhone will support Web based applications.
Developers can create Web 2.0 applications which look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and which can seamlessly access iPhone’s services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps. Third-party applications created using Web 2.0 standards can extend iPhone’s capabilities without compromising its reliability or security.
That means you can make web-based applications that can have phone call hyperlinks, email hyperlinks, and Google Map address location hyperlinks. I highly doubt that any web based application will be allowed to integrate with the iPhone’s contact list or calendar.
If you were hoping to someday install a better input method such as FITALY or a T9 predictive keyboard or handwriting recognition… Or something that could open Office documents or PDF attachments… or an MMS program… or a GPS navigation program… or a voice recognition/dialing program… that type of thing will probably be quite impossible. Some web-based instant messaging programs should certainly be do-able though! So that is certainly good news.
Originally published on Pocketnow on June 12, 2007. More Smartphone News articles from the Pocketnow archive.