Wednesday, September 16, 2009

I Would Simply Like To Support iPhone But I Cannot

Update
Before other silly flame/blame will start, I have already twitted that my next laptop will be a netbook. Here the related tweet.


let me summarize the story: at that time I had a girlfriend with an iPhone so I though why on earth shouldn't I buy an Android instead? If I need some test online I'll have both to test it, and I've rarely been that wrong.

Wanna Develop for iPhone? Buy a Mac

As marketing strategy sounds "cool" except I do not want to develop iPhone application, the present and the future is online, why on earth should I learn another programming language from the scratch, Objective-C, to develop something that will be relatively soon replaceable via WebKit and a good host?

Wanna Develop Web for iPhone? Buy a Mac

Again!!! Unbelievable, there is not such a thing: online iPhone tester, everything I found Googling was about a silly image with an iframe just to test the iPhone size ... are you kidding me?
It's like put IE inside an iframe inside an "Android frame" ... where is webkit? Where is the real JS engine? Where is the real render engine?

Wanna Develop for Apple Devices? Buy Apple

OK, I got your point, so now I am stuck with an Android contract and moreover I "love" my Android and it's about a year I am using it writing at light speed thanks to hidden keyboard, and using for whatever Web purpose thanks to its WebKit which is maybe not perfect but it works like a charm, generally speaking.
I do not want to buy a Mac only to test iPhone Web engine via Xcode, I'd love to have better reasons for a Mac, and I don't want to buy an iPhone only to test it online.
That will mean another contract to surf the Net as well ... and why on earth should I do this while I am simply trying to support iPhone?

I Would Simply Like To Support iPhone But I Cannot

Now I am a single developer, but I cannot imagine all other engineers, JavaScript hackers, W3C "slaves", cross-browser maniacs, unable to develop a web application for iPhone. With this strategy Apple is missing the possibility to fix a wider range of problems related to iPhone WebKit dedicated build and moreover it is avoiding iPhone Web support for "silly developers" like me that in this case was only trying to fix a common problem, the css position fixed property, but I am unable to make it works in an iPhone while every other A-Grade browser is supported, Android included, and here is the example!

As Summary

People like Peter-Paul Koch have the privilege to try any kind of mobile device in order to test compatibility. Unfortunately for Mobile Devices Vendors Peter-Paul alone will never be able to cover every kind of test. Even Microsoft releases time bombed images for Virtual Machines in order to test other versions of Internet Explorer. The Android OS is Open Source and it is possible to test it almost via whatever platform, same is for other browsers but not the iPhone. I know you do not mind but you are missing my contribute and support for projects a la sessionStorage, Formaldehyde, the incoming position-fixed, vice-versa or noSWFUpload ... and again, I am only one out of million of web developers.

Please think about it,
Best Regards

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