By now it’s an accepted fact that Apple is working to kill any and all native third-party application not sanctioned by Mr. Steve Jobs himself. However, that doesn’t mean that third-party applications aren’t in the cards for the iPhone. Apple’s made it clear that they want third-party iPhone application developers to concentrate on web-based applications – web-apps.
Ars Technica has learned from insider sources that Apple is working on adding offline storage capabilities to the iPhone Safari browser. Similar to Google Gears’ ability to allow users to run web-based applications locally from the browser while offline, Apple’s offline storage solution could prove to be a boon for iPhone developers. Ars Technica’s source says this feature will be focused on the iPhone and that “the entire purpose of all this work is to make the iPhone ‘SDK’ (WebKit) more usable.” However, developers will be limited to applications that run on CSS, HTML, and AJAX – “limited” being the keyword here.
With Apple aiming to release this iPhone SDK update sometime in January, we’re looking forward Macworld 2008 to hear more details. Hopefully, Stevie Jobs will see fit to at least open up some Javascript support and allow developers to make use of homescreen icons. We’ll just have to wait and see.
[Via: Ars Technica]