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Apple's philosophy is that a well-designed, tightly integrated product will always be superior to one designed with loosely-coupled interchangeable components. That's the reason they didn't give up on Macintosh throughout the '90s, when everyone else was going to Windows. By this reasoning, Apple doesn't see web apps as a threat to native apps. Because of limitations in web technologies (today), they are less capable than native apps. Apple is so confident of this that they see no problem with improving the capability of web apps: adding touch event handling, location services, offline access. If they wanted to discourage web app development, they would not provide these APIs. Yes, Apple doesn't make any money when somebody installs a web app, but it doesn't cost them anything either. Some businesses would consider every web app sale to be lost revenue on a hypothetical native app, but that reasoning is shaky. Intentionally crippling their product to undermine web apps would only put them in a worse position should a killer web app (that runs better on Android) came along. To date, Apple has done more to promote native apps, for obvious financial and technical reasons. But they have also supported web apps, and done nothing to inhibit them. I don't think there are any "hardships lurking"; the limitations are out in the open, and reasonable. |
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Few things.. one, a native iphone app will be A LOT more powerful than a web app that is setup for mobile. To encourage native I phone apps, apple is not allowing Flash on the Iphone platform. This prevents anyone from creating their own apple store. Iphone native advantages: Powerful API, Natively Installed, Disconnected, Does not require internet Apple store can be used to help you promote your product. Disatavtage is that you are STUCK on apple. Web apps - advantages. Can support multiple devices Can make updates anytime by updating your code on your server Can build your own payment model including ads, and subscriptions Web app disatvantage: Very hard to get exposure for your app, and limitations on what can be achieved. For example, games are really hard to build using HTML alone. |
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You might want to re-post this question at Stack Apps or the Apple Stack. Although every developer should be interested in the startup aspect of his or her product, not every startup person has the expertise to field this question. The devs over there might prove more helpful. |
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Considering native applications allow things like in app payments and subscriptions which make Apple exorbitant amounts of money, I would say Apple do not secretly want any web based apps at all. |
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