10 Excellent iPad Apps for the Lifelong Learner
Jeff Cobb, Mission to Learn, July 28, 2010.

I still think there's something odd about the way websites have become 'apps' in Apple's world. But that said, here is a list of "top 10" education apps for the iPad. The list sounds remarkably like a list of websites: Evernote, MobileRSS, Pulse, FreeBooks, Kindle, Dragon Dictation, Seesmic or TweetDeck, iWiki, Delicious, YouTube and iTunes. I was thinking today about how really Apple is trying to replace the web with its own version, iOS, rendered as apps. Maybe Android is trying to be that too. On the other hand, my Palm uses WebOS based on Webkit. And it seems to me that we don't have to replace HTML, Javascript, CSS and the rest to have mobile platforms.

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Re: 10 Excellent iPad Apps for the Lifelong Learner

Frank Lowney, August 1, 2010

The article cited is about native applications for the iPad. I saw no mention of web apps.

There is a clear distinction between native applications that are written in Objective-C following the iOS API and marketed exclusively through Apple's AppStore on the one hand and web applications that are written in HTML, CSS and Javascript following open standards and frameworks on the other hand.

Developers have a choice. Their choices determine the choices we have.

Generally speaking, developers choose to create native apps because they want to monetize their work or they want to create a richer experience than is currently possible with the web or both. Developers choose to create web apps because they are not interested in monetizing their work and they want to have the widest possible audience such as all mobile devices with a WebKit-based web browser.

Apple has a great deal of control over native apps because they own all the means of production and distribution. Apple has very little control over web apps because HTTP, HTML, CSS and Javascript are open standards.

With the work that Google, Apple and others have done in "cloud computing," the gap in functionality between native applications on any platform and web applications has narrowed considerably. Here's an example of a web app that I like very much, "Ibis Reader." http://ibisreader.com/

Ibis Reader will run on any platform that supports HTML 5 which includes iPad, Droid, Nexus One, iPhone and a wide range of desktop and laptop computers.

On iOS devices, once you create a "web clip" of this site, it becomes almost indistinguishable from a native app. It even works when there is no network available, thanks to HTML "Local Storage."
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Re: 10 Excellent iPad Apps for the Lifelong Learner

Stephen Downes, August 1, 2010

I didn't say they were web apps. They are websites that have been converted into native apps. The backend is probably the same, eg. the wiki engine is the same engine used for both web and Apple app, but they have written a special interface - a native app - which takes the place of the web browser.

These native apple apps are a direct assault on the browser, seeking to replace common and open standards with proprietary standards. There are reasons - arguably good reasons - why they are doing this, but it's undeniable that they are doing this. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

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