Thread: BBC News iPhone apps now available - what about Maemo?
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Milhouse is offline Milhouse
2010-07-23 , 14:57
Posts: 3,401 | Thanked: 1,255 times | Joined on Nov 2005 @ London, UK
#9
Originally Posted by attila77 View Post
The real question is if that battle really is worth fighting. The app-for-a-site really is trying to reinvent the web, and so far it is not much more than a bubble, done only to give an image of 'technological advancedness', when in fact, you're reinventing the wheel. You cannot win that fight - there are just too many sites that are 'important' and are changing way too quickly. As soon as novelty wears of and sofware development reality kicks in, someone will realize IE/FFox quirks were a pain, but re-developing and maintaining your site in half a dozen technologies, and, worse even, optimizing it for various versions, screen sizes and input methods is a Mission Impossible compared to that.
I totally agree, although to be honest if a web site has a feed - RSS or whatever - then it's app just becomes a consumer of that feed and represents the information in an (arguably) easier to access format in which case maintaining that feed shouldn't add much complexity or overhead, certainly it should not for a site like the BBC.

And while we all know we can access sites like the BBC in all it's glory on our N900s using MicroB, being able to do so doesn't bring any kudos to the platform in the same way that a multitude of silly and pointless apps does.

These Apps that re-represent web site content in a dumbed down format are without question a major selling point to the average consumer of high-end devices and it's an area where the N900 is losing out massively, since few high-profile developers are developing for it (or Symbian).

Whether we think apps (that replace web sites) have a place on Nokia devices or not is a moot point - Nokia needs them if it's going to avoid becoming the next Palm Inc.