Monday, June 22nd, 2009
The Closing of the Mobile Web
Today, the concept of the ‘mobile web’ becomes more and more a reality. Every carrier and every phone maker, striving to make smarter, more efficient devices, in a continued effort to lessen the gap between traditional ‘web browsing’ and new mobile web interfacing. To date, four major players have introduced their own “App Stores,” each with their share of titles and subtle nuances that make each store uniquely tuned to that device’s specialties.
HOWEVER, only one player has really triumphed in the market, and that, as we all know, is Apple and their iPhone App Store. First to market and making the process relatively simple and painless for developers to access their developer kit and submit apps, it seems Apple is doing everything the right way. Maybe? Or Maybe not? In the past few months the amount of acclaim has been met with just as much criticism of an increasing amount of inconsistency involved in the ‘approval’ of apps submitted by developers.
Now, we’ve talked about this here before, but again it comes to the forefront, as Apple’s inconsistency is not brought on only by itself, but it now appears their network (remember these guys? The one responsible for limiting many of the new iPhone 3GS features due to a lack of network preparedness in the US?) is pulling some strings as well. Now I understand that they’re running a business, but hey, you’re running a business that opened itself up as a major player in the whole ‘internet’ game. There’s a thing called Net Neutrality and by opening your devices up to use the ‘internet’ and by allowing developers to create applications that utilize this ‘internet’ you can’t just pick and choose what you let happen and what you don’t (outside of the realm of clearly malicious apps, viruses and things like that, of course). That’s not how it works.
There are folks inside the AT&T world who are claiming it stems from an issue of their network being overloaded and that it is in no way an attempt to ‘close’ the mobile web, but this kind of inconsistent behavior has been going on since before the rash increase in iPhone users, and honestly, doesn’t appear to be just a network issue.
Always a hot issue, will it ever be resolved? Who knows? Its just a little frustrating/discouraging to see the worlds most innovative and forward thinking device maker be so restricting and ‘closed’ both by its ‘approval standards’ and network restrictions. Feels a little opposite what they’re trying to do with the technology.
