Engadget.com has launched a beta version of Engadget for Apple iPhone and iPod touch users:
For obvious reasons, we’re not really big believers in optimizing Engadget for individual devices or platforms. Despite the unrelenting number of requests for an iPhone-optimized version of Engadget, we thought we’d let Apple stand by its whole “the real internet in your pocket” thing. And then we ran the numbers. We could hardly believe it.
So far in 2008, the iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod touch account for some 95.8% of all mobile views on the site. We’re not even kidding. It’s pretty hard to argue with something like that, so we’re rolling out a new beta version of Engadget optimized for the iPhone at i.engadget.com.
Full article, with screenshots, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MacVicta” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Note: As many of you know, the Mobile Safari (iPhone, iPod touch) versions of MacDailyNews and iPodDailyNews are currently in the shop for repairs. We hope to have them back online ASAP as 98.8% of all mobile page views on our sites come from iPhone (83.7%) and iPod touch (15.1%) users. Thank you for your patience.
Could they please give us the entire headline on the first page – I only want to click what I want to read. Poor first version – I like the RSS versions better (works well with MacDailyNews as well)
The marketing folks are starting to awaken… standby!
Isn’t it amazing how fast people adopt something when IT JUST WORKS REALLY REALLY WELL !!!
I can’t believe how well my iPod touch surfs the net. It truly is a computer in the palm of your hand.
Err… MDN. You forgot one word in your take:
BLOODBATH.
The mobile version of MDN is like a godsend when it actually works. Frankly, if I weren’t a huge Mac/Apple fan, I’d probably be so frustrated by the mouse-over popups and entry popups of the regular site, that I’d delete the bookmark to MDN (has anyone else noticed that this is like – the ONLY site that’s able to fool Safari’s popup blocker?). The mobile version of MDN alleviates these (on the iPhone at least).
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
i call BS!
that would mean 4.2% of the views came from something else.
…..not that many people could manage to surf on a crackberry or winmobile phone!
Note to website managers: Unlike all the other garbage smartphones, the iPhone has a REAL browser! We don’t need (nor want) sites reformatted. At least do what Google does and install a button that allows us to view it as a full normal web page.
“that would mean 4.2% of the views came from something else.”
Statistically, that’s the approximate number of hardcore masochists.
For example, Steve Ballmer has a black leather hood with zippers over the eyes and mouth and Bluetooth built in.
The safety phrase is “reboot me.”
MDN had an iPhone friendly webpage? Since when?
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”big surprise” style=”border:0;” />
On my site it is 80% for the last 30 days and 85% since 8/1.
@Nick Fury
The image of Ballmer with an S&M;suit on, sweaty flab hanging out all over, is now burned into my imagination forever, you bastich. Thanks.
On topic, I’m not a frequent, or even occasional, reader of Engadget. Are they driven much by Apple articles and information? I mean, this statistic seems difficult to believe, despite statistics from analysts showing how much more iPhone users use their phones to surf the net than people with other phones THAT HAVE A FULL QWERTY KEYBOARD!
Also, question for tech geeks out there – How does a website administrator know what browser or platform is being used to view his/her site? That’s a complete mystery to me.
MDN iPhone Page? What What?
Someone gimme the addy, quick. MDN is useless without Adblock, so I would love a mobile version… which I assume isn’t so ad-laden.
Snatch
jesus h christ have you outsourced your mdn mobile site “repairs” to MICROSOFT. even with the otherwise warm oozing goodness of safari on my iphone, i am SICK of having to wait for the ad-loading lags and clearly corrupted scripting “pauses” of your main site via iphone safari. the mere fact that your apple-centric site loads faster on my delinquent motorola q (windows mobile 6) is an immense pile of smelly horse ca-ca. bye bye macdaily news, engadget for iphone is now my default bookmark (you queer).
To aka Christian:
“The image of Ballmer with an S&M suit on . . .”
Hey! I just wrote about the hood. You filled in the rest! But I did hear that his red ball lights up.
Answer to aka Christian (about browser platform):
157.150.191.11 – – [20/Aug/2008:16:42:25 -0400] “GET /index.php/weblog/comments/18222/ HTTP/1.1” 200 25357 “http://macdailynews.com/index.php/” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Safari/525.21”
The text above represents one single line in the web log of a web site in the above case, it would presumably represent a single request for this page from MDN site, coming from someone at the IP address 157.150.191.11. The log entry contains a lot of information about the visitor, depending on how logging was set up. In our case, it is clear that the visitor is using Safari on Windows XP (no Macs for me at work…).
In addition to the (rather limited) information in this example, log can also capture the screen resolution of the visitor (ex. 1600 x 1280), colour depth (16-bit, 24-bit, etc), host/domain name, etc. Every time visitor’s computer requests a file from a web server (a HTML page, JPEG image, MOV video, anything), a new line is added to this log.
Software tools, such as Webalizer, are used to analyze these logs and present information in tabular or graphic form.
If a website is properly designed, using web standards and doesn’t try to use fixed sizes, there’s no need to do anything special for any properly designed and standards-compliant device.
And to add a bit more; über-geeky types can modify their browsers to mimic others. For example, you can tell your Safari to appear as if it is Explorer 6 (in order to fool all those banking sites that proclaim that they only work with Micro$hit’s browser). As you can see, when you visit a site, you tell that web server a lot more than you think; fortunately, nothing of any value to any sinister person (or entity).
I love MDN, truly I do… But you guys are really frustrating. I loved the MDN Mobile site and then it went away. I then subscribed to your RSS feed using NetNewsWire Mobile but your RSS feeds are completely useless…You only give the first sentence. Everyone else including Engadget give the subscriber a couple of paragraphs at least.
I understand the need for ad revenue and page views but you guys can’t be such huge ad whores. It takes away from the usability of the site. Just my $0.02
Thanks for the info, Predrag. Mystery solved.
Predrag,
To clarify a small point on your otherwise excellent info…
Screen size and colour depth can only be captured using Javascript-based logging like Google Analytics. The log entry sample you provided is what’s passed to the server by the browser, and browsers don’t send screen size and colour depth in their headers.
Weblogs can also tell the server what page the user is coming from.
@ aka Christian,
Take a look at Google Analytics. You can get that info and a boat-load more for free from Google. (Of course, they’re undoubtedly looking at your stats, too.)
Or you can easily roll your own using html and some javascript.
Not unexpected if you think about it, but…
The Blackberry, being the businessmans phone for so long, should have 96% for the WSJ and the FT.
BUT DO THEY?!?!?
I bet not.
Why iPhone specific versions of websites? I thought part of the reason to include a full version of Safari was to avoid this sort of thing.
MOBILE MDN PLEASE!!!
“So far in 2008, the iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod touch account for some 95.8% of all mobile views on the site”
DUH!
Who else would be visiting a site about the iPhone and iPod touch? Sure people with other handhelds *may* check it out to see what all the fuss is about, but come on. Are they saying they are shocked that the majority were iPhone/iPod touch users?