Freedom to have no access to the camera or microphone, for example?

It'll get there... You can already have access to the multi-touch stuff via javascript.

idk, I've never thought the appstore was anything but a stop gap personally, and developing for it a crazy risk.

It won't get there before the iPhone is obsolete. You really think that web apps are ever going to get access the microphone or the camera?

Also, a stop gap? I think there's an app for that.

"Mobile" is what will become obsolete. These new devices are handheld computers pretending to be phones. Someday they will embrace this reality, and inherit all of the progress that's already played out on PCs/laptops - browsers, flash, etc.

Handheld computers (with and without a phone) have been around forever. Apple has changed the game from that open reality to this and have been quite successful with it. You have it backwards.

Hand held computers capable of rendering standard web pages have not been around for very long, unless I'm overlooking something.

Moore's law. Even desktop computers capable of rendering today's web pages haven't been around forever. But a web browser is just an app -- and all platforms have them now. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

>> "You really think that web apps are ever going to get access the microphone or the camera?"

Definitely, if other phones or devices have such capabilities, and a killer webapp comes out that uses them.

If I was Apple I'd just shut the App store down to get rid of all the ungrateful developers. Sorry, but it's their show. They get to decide if you can play, and what the rules are. If you don't like it, don't play with them.

Seems like Apple thinks the same restriction applies. If you use parenscript or coffeescript (or GWT) to generate your JavaScript, you are technically violating the contract you signed with Apple.

Of course, if you didn't sign that, then you can do whatever you want.

If they started actively censoring/blocking websites that they determine haven't written javascript by hand, then that would be theonion.com territory (And the end of their sales) :)

> then that would be theonion.com territory

As opposed to where they are right now? Enforcing what higher level language you write in before it gets compiled down to machine code?

The web = open

Native apps that run directly on their hardware = closed - you play by their rules or not at all.

shrug pretty clear difference IMHO.

Yup, freedom to have: no access to hardware, no ability to do anything computationally intensive, no filesystem access, no storage, no disconnected access, ...

There is storage--and the ability to run offline--thanks to HTML5, and the same web apps will work the same (more-or-less) on Android and webOS (Palm) phones. You get a SQL db (up to 5MB), plus a persistent key-value store and a window-local "session" key-value store that isn't persistent.

But yeah, no camera/GPS/microphone/etc.

You can now get location from Javascript APIs in the safari browser following the iPhone 3.0 release.

http://blog.bemoko.com/2009/06/17/iphone-30-geolocation-java...

How well does that work for gaming? I like playing around with Unity3D; I have a hard time thinking that HTML5 is going to give the same experience.

Actually...

http://learningwebgl.com/blog/

=)