“Perhaps it’s playing well in the mainstream press, but here at WWDC, Apple’s ‘you can write great apps for the iPhone: they’re called ‘web sites’’ – message went over like a lead balloon,” John Gruber writes for Daring Fireball.
Gruber writes, “It’s insulting, because it’s not a way to write iPhone apps, and you can’t bullshit developers. It’s a matter of spin. What Apple should have announced is something like this: “We know that you want to write your own apps for iPhone, and we’d like to see that too. We love the apps you write for the Mac, and we’d love to see what you might be able to come up with for iPhone. We’re thinking about it, and working on ways that we might make that happen, but we don’t have anything to announce today. The good news, though, is that because iPhone has a real Safari web browser, you can write web-based apps that work great on iPhone.”
Gruber writes, “That wasn’t what the developers here at WWDC wanted to hear, but at least it wouldn’t have been insulting.”
Another reason why Apple developed and released Safari for Windows, according to Gruber, “is simply money. Safari is a free download, but it’s already one of Apple’s most profitable software products.”
It’s not widely publicized, but those integrated search bars in web browser toolbars are revenue generators. When you do a Google search from Safari’s toolbar, Google pays Apple a portion of the ad revenue from the resulting page,” Gruber explains. “My somewhat-informed understanding is that Apple is currently generating about $2 million per month from Safari’s Google integration. That’s $25 million per year. If Safari for Windows is even moderately successful, it’s easy to see how that might grow to $100 million per year or more.”
Full article, with more about Leopard, Jobs’ scant list of “top secrets,” that the new Dock that only works visually at the bottom of the screen, and more, here.