Remember Facebook’s Apps launch? It seems it already has its first follower: Apple. At the WWDC today in San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced, among many things, that the iPhone will support apps created by third-parties which comply with the ‘Web 2.0 Internet standard’ (whatever that is – I didn’t know we had any).
This basically means that third parties developers will be able to access the iPhone’s internal API — which includes the ability to make a phone call, send an e-mail, and displaying a location in Google Maps — and create and application which ‘looks and behaves like the applications built into iPhone,’ and all this without compromising reliability and security (which was one of the main concerns Apple doing this).
For Web 2.0 startups, services, and developers, this is like the Facebook announcement all over again - and hopefully there will be more to follow. Apple has heard their OS X developers, they’ve seen the impact Web 2.0 has created over the world, and they’ve acknowledged Facebook’s Apps and the excitement it has caused over users — and as a result, they’re putting all this together and making and branding the iPhone as the ultimate ‘Web 2.0 device.’
Opinion
To be honest, I’m excited. Usually, the big players (and Apple has been one of the worst) fail to acknowledge the ‘little things’ and let their users build upon them – instead, they create closed boundaries and systems where going “underground” is the only way to do cool things. Not any more it seems. I’ve been fairly skeptical of the iPhone and how it’s been marketed, but I have to admit, if it does support the general idea of ‘cool’ and does as it promises, I will not only get one myself but make sure everyone I live and breathe around has one. iPhone, the ultimate Web 2.0 device? Touché.
