Update, 7-2: Glide Digital managed to get their MP3 and video streaming and PDF reading functions working on iPhones, making them the first site we've seen able to stream users' own home collections of media to the iPhone. Read more here.
Original story, 7-1: Existing Web 2.0 applications aren't working well with iPhone because of its lack of streaming media, Java, Flash, and even full AJAX support, I found in testing various popular applications today.
Introducing Web 2.0 and Safari as the main platform for iPhone application developers, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, "Developers and users alike are going to be very surprised and pleased at how great these applications look and work on iPhone. Our innovative approach, using Web 2.0-based standards, lets developers create amazing new applications while keeping the iPhone secure and reliable."
But the iPhone's standards seem decidedly nonstandard - even in Web 2.0 apps designed specially for the iPhone.
For instance, in the Web 2.0-based office suite iZoHo, you can't actually enter or edit any text, as the iPhone doesn't trigger its virtual keyboard when users click in a WYSIWYG Editor control. We ran into the same problem with Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet, though those sites aren't designed for the iPhone. The new, flashier AJAX-based Yahoo! Mail interface also doesn't work, though the old-school Yahoo! Mail page does.
The Web 2.0-based IM client Meebo.com runs into another problem: the iPhone seems to send a different "return" key code than desktop browsers. The result: while Meebo.com loads, you can't send any IMs.
The iPhone's lack of IM is spurring creativity around the Web. David Cann's iChat for iPhone widget does seem to send messages to AIM contacts, but it says it's limited to 10 minute sessions and it was experiencing "intermittent service" while I was writing this. I sent a message to my editor Lance Ulanoff and it got through.
Web-based file access apps like Orb and Glide fare a bit better: You can view photos and forward documents. But you can't view or play any music or video files because the iPhone doesn't support the streaming audio and video formats those sites provide, and you can't download documents and photos to your iPhone because, well, you can't save any files on the iPhone. Donald Leka, a spokesman for Glide, said they'd have a special iPhone version coming on July 11. RemoTV, another audio and video streaming application, will also come out with an iPhone version later this month, representatives said.
Best of all are apps that present an extremely simple interface, like Google Calendar. But you can view those on any phone.
One annoying interface issue that seems to happen so far with many iPhone applications is that they open in a very zoomed-out version, so the first thing you have to do is zoom the screen and drag. Even if a site is optimized for the iPhone's 320x480 screen, you can easily scroll away from it into the blank area of a larger virtual page.
Add to this the periodic crashes I've experienced with Safari on the iPhone (most recently while reading a Yahoo! Web mail page and while trying to play iChess, and you have a rocky Web 2.0 experience so far.
The iPhone Application List is currently collecting dozens of humbler apps for the iPhone, mostly small-screen portals into various kinds of Web information; Gizmodo has picked their own favorites. But even some of those, such as David Cann's Digg interface had rendering problems on my iPhone: once I went to the second level of the Digg menu in that app, article titles ran off the right hand side of the screen and an inappropriate blue highlight remained on the left.
And this is all just about interactivity. As I report in our full review on PCMag.com, the Flash animations, Flash video, Java applets and streaming media built into many Web sites don't render at all on the iPhone. One fortunate exception: Apple's own movie trailers page, which streams its many movie trailers beautifully clearly, even including automatic rotation into widescreen mode.
Face it: developers were kneecapped by Jobs' announcement that they won't be able to write any native applications for the iPhone. If the phone doesn't even support the desktop-quality of AJAX that Jobs promised, then Apple is rendering the developer community quadriplegic.
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July 2, 2007 10:23 AM
Anything that runs flash is not going to work right, thats a known fact, but in this case Jobs was speaking right, since while its used and overused at this point... Flash is NOT a web standard but a proprietary format created by Macromedia and now owned by Adobe.
People have to honestly stop considering Flash a standard, as it is not and has never BEEN a standard ever in its entire existence, and wont be unless Adobe opens their license to it, which they will never since so many people pay adobe to use it.
July 2, 2007 10:57 AM
This will take care of a website designed for iPhone being zoomed out really far. Just put it in the and iPhone will render it correctly.
July 2, 2007 12:20 PM
It means nothing that Flash is proprietary. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but Youtube uses flash to stream it's videos. How are they streaming video then?
July 2, 2007 1:05 PM
Apple had Youtube convert its flash FLV videos to h.264 for access on the iphone.
But I still agree with you--flash is plainly an accepted web standard. Besides, it's not like Apple doesn't push its own proprietary "standards" on everyone it can, either.
July 2, 2007 7:15 PM
Nintendo (well, Opera) managed to support Flash on the Wii, what's Apple's excuse for completely and utterly not supporting it?
July 2, 2007 8:35 PM
"Existing Web 2.0 applications aren't working well with iPhone because of its lack of streaming media, Java, Flash, and even full AJAX support"
Indeed, I got similar results when I went online around 6:45 pm local time Friday. :-)
But as I wrote on my blog yesterday (http://petersmagnusson.com), it's not really just an issue of feature set. It's a fundamental issue in that Apple simply does not understand the new internet.
When Apple summarizes what's cool about the iPhone, they focus on stuff like contacts, visual voice mail, email; this is all old desktop/mainframe stuff. The current generation of netters don't call people, they don't write memos, they barely send email. They chat, link, vote, blog, flame, take pictures, edit video commentary, etc. And NONE of those more modern forms of communication are included as first-class citizens on the iPhone.
July 3, 2007 2:42 PM
Great article. I did some of the same tests, got the same results, and had THE EXACT OPPOSITE conclusion. I guess it is all a matter of perspective. I was coming at the problem from the alterative to accessing my web 2.0 applications on my HTC TyTN (Opera and Pocket IE). Compared to this experience, I believe the iPhone is by far the best platform for mobile web 2.0 productivity. My full rationale is here:
http://blog.2glue.com/productivity/2007/07/mobile-web-20-p.html
July 4, 2007 3:08 PM
all these missing features,especially flash, are missing by intention:
they just do not want all that free stuff on the iphone. they just DO NOT WANT you be able to chat / IM freely. you HAVE TO SMS instead.
you still HAVE TO BUY games instead of freely playing cool flash games.
prove me wrong, but its all about making money.
July 5, 2007 6:56 AM
Exactly as was said before, it is all a ploy for more consumer dollars to be spent.
(even now as I write this comment from my iphone)
From a business point of veiw, it makes complete business sense. Apple gets your money upfront, they get it each month, and they get it in future unknowns (software releases for iphone that aren't completed as yet) as well as let's not forget that while they are offering the youtube widget on the phone (which is only available to subscribers... According to some persons who did not have an edge plan they were not able to access the youtube widget) which is bringing in even more money, you're not going to be able to have certain liberties.
Not while unbeknownst to you, you're paying for them anyway...
August 15, 2007 11:16 AM
"Flash is NOT a web standard ..."
True, but anything that is being used by the majority of the content devleopers is a de facto standard.
"It's a fundamental issue in that Apple simply does not understand the new internet."
And it is also a fundamental issue that what works on a desktop in Web 2.0 does not work well on a device with constrained resources, network access, and processing power. It is not that Apple doesn't understand Web 2.0, they are simply being pragmatic about using the standards (h.264) that are appropriate for the device. The bigger issue is that the people hawking Web 2.0 don't understand the constraints associated with mobile devices.
"Nintendo (well, Opera) managed to support Flash on the Wii, what's Apple's excuse for completely and utterly not supporting it?"
Flash is pretty bulky (just ask Adobe), and FlashLite does not support all of the feature set of Flash. Why don't you ask Opera how they did it rather than fault Apple?
With all of the complaints about what the iPhone isn't, has anyone taken into consideration that it's a brand new device (just like the first iPod) and as such has a long evolutionary process to go through? Do any of the people complaining about its deficiencies have any experience developing for the mobile device environment?
Not being an apologist, but nobody held a gun to anyone's head to buy the iPhone. If you bought it because of the hype (or thought that it would somehow transfer its perceived "kewlness" to the owner), then look in the mirror and say "shame on me, I was suckered" rather than gush all of your buyers remorse for the world to see.
November 1, 2007 4:05 PM
I bought the iPhone for my wife. She loves it!! I am the MAN! She could care less about all the chatter of what it doesn't do right now. Maybe later she will ask about voice dialing, capturing video or turn by turn directions on the map feature. Hopefully by then some of these patches will be in place. It's going to be a long affair.
January 4, 2008 5:30 PM
If you, Apple, are going to advertise you have the real internet on a phone, it must be compatible with Flash, Java, etc...
Most disappointing. I am not impressed becuase my Palm based Treo 650 CAN run flash, java etc...
JK