Apple announced third-party apps for the iPhone. Sounds a LOT like Adobe’s new AIR. Delivers HTML and JavaScript apps down to the phone via Safari. What’s interesting is what Steve Jobs left out.
No Java. So, can’t run Kyte.tv’s application. Can’t run the Google Maps application I’m using on my Nokia. Can’t run something cool coming soon from eBay that I’m testing out. Can’t run Radar.net. Etc. Etc.
No .NET apps. Er, no Silverlight apps. So, your favorite app from the Windows Mobile Smartphone you were hoping to give away won’t work.
Will it allow Flash to load? Walt Mossberg just got an iPhone. I wonder what happens when he goes to Google’s Finance site? Does the chart show up? I doubt it.
By the way the folks who sent me the Nokia N95, Pure Mobile, say they’ll have unlocked iPhones for sale via the Internet (that’s counter to what we were told before). They doubt they’ll be able to meet the demand. They say they’ve seen demand for this phone that’s off the scale for any other mobile product launch they’ve been involved in.
UPDATE: here’s a video of Steve Jobs on stage today talking about iPhone and what developers can do for it. He keeps pointing out that it has the full Safari engine. That gives us hope that Flash will run fine on it, but probably not “native, non-browser” technologies like Java and Silverlight. It’d be nice to have someone who actually has an iPhone to verify this, though.
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