I picked up my wifes iPhone today and wasn’t at all surprised to look at the AppStore icon and see a bazillion updates showing in the badge icon. To explain, I will pick up Emily’s laptop and find Software Update bouncing for its life. “Look at me! Please, it’s been months!” Em doesn’t seem to notice this: “I don’t look down there.” Huh :) If the leaping icon doesn’t do the trick, a badge on an icon that is never touched won’t do the trick.
This is why I am bullish on that Web thing on the phone. Emily is using an old Facebook.app, but imagine if she was going to a Facebook website that had access to APIs for the camera and address book. With these APIs, Joe could build everything that he has done on the native app, yet auto update my wife since this is all just behind a URL!
PhoneGap is there to allow you to take your Web app and throw it in the App Store so people can find it there. You can also access native APIs too through PhoneGap, but hopefully Apple opens up more and more to Mobile Safari itself.
I hope that the AppStore will offer a “keep up to date” option so it can auto download new versions for me. I wish that other products did that too, especially browser nightlies. I want WebKit and Firefox (Minefield) nightlies to keep updating themselves.
The big question: Location API. HTML 5 has it. WebKit is notoriously good for implementing these APIs, but Location is a key feature for apps and the AppStore. Hmm.
