Hi guys,
Just read that Apple's new iPhone are making available docs to allow web 2.0 developers to interact directly with iphone applications
Apple CEO Steve Jobs said on Monday that the company will in fact allow independent developers to create some applications for its iPhone, which hits stores on June 29, Macworld reported........developers won't be able to create actual applications for the iPhone, but instead may develop Web 2.0 applications for the Safari Web browser included on the device, which in turn can interact with the iPhone's built-in applications.
For anyone who works in music...this is very interesting news - everyone sorta expected it to be a locked-down system.
If anyone has found docs/helper information on how to build an "Iphone compatible drupal site"...please post up here. The announcement was just made yesterday, so I assume it will be a while before the backup documentation is made available.
Dub
Comments
Real internet
iPhone is built on Safari WebKit. You don't need anything to make it compatible, it's the real Internet.
The best you can do right now is learn how to make regular Dashboard widgets, which will prep you for the iPhone structure.
interesting...
Thanks Boris,
That does make a lot of sense.
That must be very disappointing for fans/programmers of VOIP and games - or maybe AT&T want to force iphoners to use them instead for that.....hmmm...
You know, unless I'm missing something here, I'm really struggling to work out what exactly is revolutionary about the iphone. Design wise, it's not much different to other touch screen phones like the Samsung and sexy looking prada and feature wise, it's seems to be missing a lot of key functionality.
Locked-down devices like the iPhone, in Europe, are usually given away for almost free with a network contract. Having said that, I suppose a lot of people will buy still them, because it has the apple logo on it.
When I read the 'open code' and 'revolutionary phone' headlines I obviously got the message wrong..
What they're really saying is that Safari is the SDK for the iphone....in other words, the 'little programmes' Steve Jobs referred to are actually safari widgets and the open code will probably be just a bunch of javascript specific to the iphone OS.
Thanks again for the heads up Boris. What you and Moshe said tallies with a lot of the online discussions about the topic.
Suddenly my Ericsson 850i has gotten very sexy again !
Dub
WebKit as the Platform
Having just completed my first round of testing of a port of my site using iPhone, Android and Nokia emulators, seeing Webkit (and perhaps Opera Mini 4.0/Mobile Firefox) as a platform for Drupal greatly simplifies the task. My sense is that the phone specific API work is very promising, but I think most Drupalers just want their current sites to run mobile. We need a short list of Must Haves for Drupal Mobile (mobile theme, ajax remote, screen footprint, incremental loads, js/css/image management), with the API integration as Should Haves, for expressing those cool features in module specific implementations (GPS/GPX to gmap, video/audio/image upload, call initiation, native map integration, iCal sync...). Just my 2 cents.
we don't know
all anyone knows is what steve said. web developers will apparently be able to make the phone intitiate a call (nice!) and start an email (i.e. mailto links will work. oh, the progress!). we have no idea if the web app can be available offline, have persistent storage, etc.
Check these movies...
They look pretty revolutionary.
Check out all 4 movies.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/
Thanks,
David
http://www.FloridaPets.org
still lost..
Hi David,
Thanks. Yeah, I saw those on apple.
But I'm still struggling to see what's revolutionary about it. Are touch-screen phones new to the USA?
I almost bought a prada phone recently, which has been out for quite a while, but, I thought I'd wait a while to see what the iphone is like.
TMaybe they're holding back on the full feature list until the USA launch day in June..to add drama and excitement to the release....or they're already working on iPhone 2.0 (pun intended) for the european launch.
Dub
Quick one..
Here's an example of the, allegedly, first iphone app. (It works up to to a point in Opera.)
Dub
Just a Touch Screen - Not
Granted once you get past the Jobs Reality Distortion field it is easy to come away with a second take on the iPhone as just another touch screen device. However I would suggest that the Gesture based interface is a far cry from the simple Touch Screen interface.
To see how the two compare you might want to run the following YouTube videos showing a "touch screen" iPhone competitor side by side trying to parallel one of the iPhone ads:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/13883/
Then check out the HD iPhone ads on the Apple site. There is a lot more to the iPhone than just simple touch, the underlying OS X OS and the amazingly intuitive flow of the multi touch gesture interface add up to something totally new.
Seems like it should be pretty simple to brew up an iPhone Drupal module to turn any given custom Drupal node into an iPhone App, this would have an amazing effect on the recognition of and distribution of Drupal itself, given that Apple figures to sell something like 10 million units the first year, and many of those people would be ripe to find a way to develop their own iPhone apps.
...
HI Maui1,
I laughed out loud at that comparison on the mac site you linked. It was so unprofessional and so partisan, if I was a reader of that magazine, I would be insulted.
Recommend you have a look at the prada phone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7WGSQ7HBlM
The prada lg interface is pretty cool, intuitive and I haven't seen anything on the iphone demos to wow me any more than the prada has already.
It's been out for a few months in Europe and while it's quite expensive, it will work out at about half the price of an apple iphone, with the locked-in iphone at&t contracts and extra data charges included.
That said, I tend to agree with you about the advent of mobile surfing finally arriving and Drupal should be able to handle content delivery to those devices fairly simply.
dub
iphone application list
Hi guys,
for anyone who is interested, a site listing iPhone applications has sprung up already..you need safari to view it, but, I was able to view some of them in opera.
http://iphoneapplicationlist.com/
As an aside, it reminds me a lot of the http://www.netvibes.com type widgets (modules).
Dub
ouch
Dub, thanks for the link. The Prada phone is much, much worse than I had imagined. Even though the iPhone is far from perfect, compared to it, the Prada's interface is a train-wreck. No wonder in the video the owner spends all of his time in the file browser… he doesn't actually want you to see what the rest of the phone is like! Good lord, the email interface looks bad.
Read this http://www.torgo.com/blog/2007/05/prada-phone-browser.html for a reality check about the browser.
I purchased an iphone on Friday after having the chance to play with it at the Apple store, I was struck by how easy it is to read and browse web sites. Given the density of the screen (160dpi), text feels much sharper to read. Clicking on links works. Drupal sites work as is.
Being at the stores on opening day was an interesting experience. The crowd was very diverse. Not at all what I expected. People from all walks of life, not just geeks.
iPhone Development Camp SF
Too late to attend, but some great early efforts at working with the iPhone from the web/ajax side. One of the emerging Gurus has a great blog at:
http://joehewitt.com/
Also see a great little article in the Ajaxian Blog about Joes work, and a great example set of css and javascript files to create a fully functional iPhone interface for any web app.
http://ajaxian.com/archives/iphone-native-looking-skin
Now if someone could help me turn these into a Drupal Theme for iPhone use, I would gladly dip into my lunch money to pay for a few beers ;-)
It's true the iPhone can be
It's true the iPhone can be treated like any good web standards based browser, but there are ways to create iPhone specific sites that make better use of it's user interface.
Apple have posted some instructions for web developers:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/designingcontent.html
Though I'm not convinced it's worth the effort yet, unless you have iPhone specific content or expect a large proportion of iPhone users on your site.
Bill /<.
Bill />.
i agree
I agree. from a european perspective, it looks like the iPhone version 2 might be out before christmas, but, I think it will have to be a serious upgrade from the USA version that was launched in June to catch a large market. It seems the mobile-computing/smartphone handset market is more mature here than the other side of the pond.
I'm coming from a music perspective and Nokia buying Peter Gabriels digital music warehouse (od2.com) is far more exciting - because Nokia are more into the open source side of things than apple...
Apple appear to be trying to lock their iphone customers into a corner, so they can only use 1 network, they can't install any software other than apple software and generally follow a very restrictive approach...which maybe due to security worries or it maybe down to just milking it financially for as much as they can, but, either way, I'm not so sure the Telco regulators and consumer groups will look too favourably on the Iphone europe launch - if they follow the same model as the USA and I'm not so sure europeans like that locked-down approach.
On the flip side, screen sizes are increasing (for all handsets) which makes it easier to create prettier mobile themes, so I suppose it's all good.
It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months. If the rumours are correct, the battery problem with the iphone (you have to send the iphone to apple for a few days to get it fixed and pay a fee as well) will kick in around the same time as the iphone is launched in Europe.
Dub
native looking skin = bad news
Speaking from the perspective of an iPhone owner, I'm distinctly turned off by the native looking skin. It emulates the bookmarking side of the iPhone, it's ugliest part (and woefully in need of a revision). The beauty of the iPhone is that it can zoom in and out of sites. Sure, you may want a little more speed, but that skin dumbs down the iPhone browser, making it no better than the LG or the previous generation. I find it easy to read, the NYT site in all its glory on the iPhone, as it is now, not in a radically reduced version. If I went to a web site and it locked me into that skin just because I was using my mobile browser (which accounts for some 20% of my browsing these days) I wouldn't go back twice.
I agree with your points but...
Granted many sites are quite easy to browse with the iPhone, however many drupal sites I try to browse are not. Font size and link size even on NYT could still use some iPhone tweaking, and this is especially the case with many other sites. I end up having to do multiple zooms to to get links to a usable size.
I think there is a role for iPhone optimized sites and have been experimenting with the iwPhone theme for wordpress (hoping someone might port it to Drupal). see: http://iwphone.contentrobot.com/
i think the dif is..
I build native objective C apps for Iphone and I do DRUPAL. if you want to use the native features of the iPhone, such as the accelerameter, Geolocation, datadictionary... stuff like that, then you need to do it native or with something like phonegap.
If you are doing a web applicaiton, then you can start a phone call with a URL. I have an app that does it that way as well.
Someone mentioned above about SIP applications. I think you would need to do it natively anyway, unless your doing a call back kind of app. But there are jason calls that you can use to grab data from a Drupal site. the services module has already been used, and I am getting ready to experiment with the views datasource module.
i am getting ready to start working on android pretty soon.