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Firefox Mobile Threatens Mobile App Stores, Says Mozilla
Barence writes "Mozilla claims that its new Firefox Mobile browser could be the beginning of the end for the hugely popular app stores created by Apple and its ilk. Mozilla claims Firefox Mobile will have the fastest Javascript engine of any mobile browser, and that will allow developers to write apps once for the web, instead of multiple versions for the different mobile platforms. 'As developers get more frustrated with quality assurance, the amount of handsets they have to buy, whether their security updates will get past the iPhone approval process ... I think they'll move to the web,' Mozilla's mobile VP, Jay Sullivan, told PC Pro. 'In the interim period, apps will be very successful. Over time, the web will win because it always does.'"
Or perhaps the local storage features present in html5.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
First of all, you can be 100% certain that unless Mozilla's made some kind of specific arrangement with Apple, this will not be allowed on the App Store. It's plainly and obviously against the SDK terms.
Second...how many times have people complained that web apps are totally inadequate substitutes for native apps, for many types of application? I mean, sure, you can make an RSS reader, or a Twitter client, but what about (for instance) Myst? That's now an iPhone app, weighing in at over 500MB, if I recall correctly. Do you really think that's going to be a viable app to distribute as a web app?
Third, unless you're going to have some sort of subscription thingy worked out, how are you going to make money on web apps without intrusive ads? Again, consider Myst. No one is going to accept ads suddenly popping up when they try to link from Myst Island to Channelwood. And I doubt that people will want to pay a monthly fee to access a single-player game, either.
Fourth, if you're writing a plain web app, however fancily mobile-enhanced, how are you going to make use of the cool features of different phones? The iPhone has a camera, accelerometers, GPS, and multitouch. I admit I'm not terribly well-versed in the features of other smartphones, but a) do they all have these? b) can you access them from web apps? and c) can you access them all in the same way from web apps?
I'm betting the answers to these are all, to greater or lesser extent, "no."
Mozilla can dream about "killing the App Store." But if it ever happens, it's not going to be Firefox Mobile that does it.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
This sounds like Steve Jobs before he announced that the iPhone would be supporting native apps and not just web apps. It already had a pretty fast, capable browser, and there were hardly any apps for it. Within a week of shipping an SDK, there were hundreds.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
It's a little shortsighted to use "always" to describe the web's winning streak for two reasons:
1) The web has not always won. Despite Google's Office suite, Microsoft continues to dominate the office space and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. So at least in one market, thick clients have continued to win out over thin clients.
2) The web is just not that old. Claiming that the web will win because it has always won is a weak appeal to tradition made especially weak by the fact that the web is realistically 13-15 years old.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
step 1.5: Change SSH password.