I can’t wait until everybody’s iPhone blows up in their hand. Then the billions of iPhone-related blog posts would be somewhat interesting. What a bunch of sheep…

[/rant]

People aren’t stupid. The pent up desire for these things is not pure marketing. It’s product development at its core, showcased by great marketing on top of that.

You posited sarcastically in the rant you linked to that “apparently lines have become a symbol of marketing success in this world.” To that I say “Of course they are!” Rare is the product that is so exciting as to create lines in the first place. The iPhone is three years in the making from a product development standpoint and 10 years in the making from a consumer desire standpoint. Is it any wonder then why it’s getting so much attention? The only shocker should perhaps be just how well it’s living up to expectations so far.

How come the industry’s focus on web standards and accessibility seems to have been lost in the hype of developing “iPhone apps” that are just web apps restricted to a single browser vendor? Sounds to me like the same thing as developing “IE apps”.

I’d love to be proven wrong on this, is there something I’m missing here?

I would like an iPhone now please.

One of which was that with Safari on an iPhone we could do some things user experience wise we can’t easily do on any other mobile browser – yet. Having said that, we plan to support other browsers in the future and as browsers like Opera mature on mobile devices that support should be easier. Right now, though, we couldn’t do what we wanted without limiting that support.

An example: by using Safari’s CSS3 support we can do things like multiple backgrounds that lets us *vastly* reduce the weigh of the pages.

This is just a starting point. The majority of the code for the Leaflets is web standards-based and once devices and browsers get better you’ll see more support there.

What I find most interesting about the iPhone launch is that the lines were more or less unnecessary. Apple was smart enough to estimate and meet demand. Almost everyone who went to an Apple store on launch weekend walked away with an iPhone. We can thank Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for creating this idea that if you want to own a new piece of hardware fast, you need to line up a day in advance. That’s asinine.

However, couldn’t the techniques of progress enhancement and graceful degradation be used for users of other mobile browsers? Developers could treat other mobile browsers the way we began treating IE4 and Netscape 4 at a cetain point. Provide the content and basic functionality, but not all of the user experience bells and whistles.

The only problem with that approach (now that I think of it) is that when people began disregarding those old browsers, they were just that: old and obsolete browsers. All of the people out there today with Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc smartphones are not using obsolete technology, they are using very current technology that they will likely be sticking with for a while.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, if “iPhone applications” are really just mobile phone targeted web applications, why can’t other smartphone users benefit from the increased attention on those types of applications?

Finally, I don’t mean to pick on Leaflets in particular, cause I think it’s a pretty cool concept. These thoughts have just been kicking around in my head since Jobs announced the iPhone “SDK” or lack thereof.

In addition to what Keith said, there’s another important reason why I think our Leaflets are an example of responsibly choosing to target a particular device: Leaflets don’t provide NEW content.

That is to say: every Leaflets app is a parred-down, iPhone friendly version of something you can already get elsewhere. The problem with the “elsewhere” version is that they’re aimed at desktop computers. Desktop computers have bigger screens, Flash pug-ins, and much faster connections to the Internet. They all WORK on an iPhone, but most of them don’t work as well as you’d like.

The point is: we’re not building a new app and making it ONLY run on an iPhone. Rather, we’re taking apps that already exist and making them run better on an iPhone. We’re not taking the full Newsvine away from you. Or the full Flickr. Or Upcoming. Rather, we’re just providing an alternative. If you don’t like our alternative, go to newsvine.com or flickr.com and get the full thing. If you do like our alternative, head over to Leaflets.

I would personally object to any app that is created ONLY for the iPhone. But having apps that works great in most all browsers and devices (Newsvine, Flickr, etc.) and an alternative interface (Leaflets) that is designed to work really well on one extremely popular device (iPhone) seems perfectly just to me.

On the one hand, it’s easy to make an argument in favor of progressive enhancement and making sure your iPhone app is also accessible to non-iPhone mobile browsers.

On the other hand, the iPhone has ushered in a new form of mobile web — a real web, in handheld form. It is a cultural change in the realm of mobile browsers, in that it basically kills competitors by challenging them to compete in a better way; a standards-compliant, standards-supporting way. In other words, it forces competitors to make their browsers understand real websites, not just WAP sites or, in those now-famous terms, “the baby internet”.

Since the Leaflets aren’t providing content themselves, rather, providing an alternative viewing method to existing content found elsewhere, I personally liken them to the Accessible Odeon website that was around a few years ago when the Odeon’s own site was an inaccessible pile of poo. One guy, a simple movie-loving web developer with an understanding for accessibility, chose to create a version of the Odeon site that ripped the content from them and presented it in an accessible (and FAR more usable) manner.

The Leaflets are similar in that they simply present existing content from sites in a more accessible manner — but only to a relatively specific audience, that audience being “people with a modern mobile browser” (I reckon Opera Mini / Opera Mobile wouldn’t be too hard to support as well, if not now then soon).

The benefit of the leaflets isn’t so much in being iPhone optimized, but in being “slow network speeds and small device screens”-optimized. They still require a real browser, it just happens to be that the iPhone is the only great option right now when it comes to mobile browsers with still a relatively large screen (Opera Mini and Opera Mobile are very impressive and capable too, but there are no mobiles with a screen the size of the iPhone’s).

Whew. Long-ish comment. :)