So, Mr. Jobs and his henchmen have an Ad, saying.. “This is the internet on your iPhone”.. and they show people using Safari to browse the tubes. So.. why do people need to write apps for the iPhone using HTML/Ajax/CSS? This seems to be the question most mac developers are asking.. but I am not.

“Web Services are the future” we’ve been hearing this.. since.. 1993? I believe the iPhone and it’s ability to render standards based HTML will usher in a new era for web services. The cell phone carriers are going to love it too, as every “application” on the phone needs to connect to the internet.. which obviously means.. more data plans will be sold.

I for one welcome our new paradigm. Not only does it make it easier for someone like me to write an app for the iPhone, it makes it easier for me to write an app for any phone. Opera Mini runs on pretty much everything, and it’s standards compliant.. so my app is instantly cross platform.

My questions/qualms are not with the idea of how apps will be written, but how will they be packaged, and monetized.

If I’m writing web pages that are calling PHP/Ruby/Python/.Net/Java pages via javascript… all I need to have on the iPhone is the HTML file.. which can call the CSS and JS files directly from my server.. which basically means.. all my apps are “hosted” on my server. Obviously, I can’t charge or license out the HTML file, so I’ll need to write my own user auth system, and licensing system? And, we only have 3 weeks to write and test something like this? I’m convinced, iPhone 1.0 would have ‘Beta’ written all over it, if it was a google product. Apple took too long to decide or reveal how apps will be written for the phone.. and honestly it shows they rushed the announcement for WWDC. I hope it’s not a new trend.