Great article but when I read the article title I thought the game was sold outside of the app store. Is there a centralized online store for selling web apps that live on the home screen and act like native apps?
In case it wasn't clear, his game isn't just a web app that lives on the home screen as a bookmark. It uses the Titanium Appcelerator, which is a thin native wrapper around a Webkit view. The app logic is written in JavaScript, rendering is done using HTML/CSS and/or SVG or so. FWIW, this actually obeys the arbitrary App Store rules: C, Objective-C, C++ and JavaScript (if run in Apple's supplied runtime) are allowed.
Thanks! I wonder what is keeping Apple from trying to cash in on some of these apps as well. Looks like there is a submission process and possibly a review process for these apps as well.
Because it's not a storefront to sell apps, it's just a catalog, and the developer of the webapp needs to take care of anything like that on their own. The submission/review for these is basically a cursory look to see if it's actually an iPhone webapp, categorized correctly, etc., not much more. How would Apple try to cash in on these when most of them are free or tied to a service that I assume a lot of developers created the webapp for in the first place, rather than have to fork over 30%/pay the $99 iOS Developer Program fee/deal with review hassles with Apple?
Because it's not a storefront to sell apps, it's just a catalog, and the developer of the webapp needs to take care of anything like that on their own.
I understand that it is a catalog and not a store. I didn't mean to imply that the exact webpage you linked was a storefront.
How would Apple try to cash in on these when most of them are free or tied to a service that I assume a lot of developers created the webapp for in the first place, rather than have to fork over 30%/pay the $99 iOS Developer Program fee/deal with review hassles with Apple?
Other than the OP I have seen other complete applications built on top of web technologies. I can believe that there are some web devs who would be willing to have their app reviewed and do the revenue share if it meant they didn't have to worry about setting up a store front and handling payments.
Comments
Great article but when I read the article title I thought the game was sold outside of the app store. Is there a centralized online store for selling web apps that live on the home screen and act like native apps?
In case it wasn't clear, his game isn't just a web app that lives on the home screen as a bookmark. It uses the Titanium Appcelerator, which is a thin native wrapper around a Webkit view. The app logic is written in JavaScript, rendering is done using HTML/CSS and/or SVG or so. FWIW, this actually obeys the arbitrary App Store rules: C, Objective-C, C++ and JavaScript (if run in Apple's supplied runtime) are allowed.
Oh, I realized that after I read the article. I just misinterpreted the title.
No centralized store, but Apple maintains a catalog of webapps for iOS: http://www.apple.com/webapps/
Thanks! I wonder what is keeping Apple from trying to cash in on some of these apps as well. Looks like there is a submission process and possibly a review process for these apps as well.
Because it's not a storefront to sell apps, it's just a catalog, and the developer of the webapp needs to take care of anything like that on their own. The submission/review for these is basically a cursory look to see if it's actually an iPhone webapp, categorized correctly, etc., not much more. How would Apple try to cash in on these when most of them are free or tied to a service that I assume a lot of developers created the webapp for in the first place, rather than have to fork over 30%/pay the $99 iOS Developer Program fee/deal with review hassles with Apple?
Because it's not a storefront to sell apps, it's just a catalog, and the developer of the webapp needs to take care of anything like that on their own.
I understand that it is a catalog and not a store. I didn't mean to imply that the exact webpage you linked was a storefront.
How would Apple try to cash in on these when most of them are free or tied to a service that I assume a lot of developers created the webapp for in the first place, rather than have to fork over 30%/pay the $99 iOS Developer Program fee/deal with review hassles with Apple?
Other than the OP I have seen other complete applications built on top of web technologies. I can believe that there are some web devs who would be willing to have their app reviewed and do the revenue share if it meant they didn't have to worry about setting up a store front and handling payments.