What would you do if you were Apple?

I'd make sure Mobile Safari were up to snuff. Palm w/ WebOS has already made the bet that in the long term, the web is the OS. People will always buy iPhones, with all the money I've poured into the industrial design, so no worries there, and while we've hit also 20% market penetration world wide, it has surprised even me, and I realize that smart phones were around before me, and that I've roused more than one sleeping giant. I think, initially, web apps was my long term plan. In the original announcement, that /was/ the goal. The 'app' should be just a special webpage and the browser is just the engine.

It's unavoidable, actually. How many apps are in the app store? Now, how many web pages are there? One of those is numbers is much, much bigger. As the media-rich, javascript-heavy web becomes more and more of what users do on a full computer, Mobile Safari is, at least, going to have to play catch-up with the rest of the internet.

So while, in today's market, your usage of your phone, your facebook, your rememberthemilk, your twitter each has their own iPhone app(s) in the app store, the web page probably has more features because it is a larger market.

I would take the app store and remove the distinction between a web app and a native app, turning web apps into first class citizens, allowing people to buy a web app for $.99 for Facebook-ing. I would slacken the app store approval process for web apps to encourage development on that platform, and I'd make sure that licensing were such that developers could sell an iPhone web app while having the same javascript on their full website.

What would I do? I'd continue to make money by selling hardware, which is exactly what Apple does now. Sure, ITMS, App Store provide nice revenue too, but the bulk still comes from hardware.

I was thinking about this precise issue this morning, because I was pondering that PastryKit post that was posted here recently and wondering if it would be in Apple's best interest to release that framework.

I think a lot of it comes down to competitors in the hardware space. If Android really takes off, and it starts supporting web apps that work really nicely - the way we are talking about, in ways that are similar to apps built in Obj-C or Java that are running natively on the phones - then if I were Apple, I'd ensure that web apps were just as slick on the iPhone as they are on any competitor's hardware.

Otherwise, for purely evil and competitive reasons, I'd probably ensure that web apps always had limitations compared to the native apps, unless I found a way to monetize the web apps too (for example, by creating an easy payment mechanism for use by web apps that ties in with iTunes, where I take a cut).

However, I think that Google is going to pile on the pressure to make web apps super slick (they are already doing so).

The IPhone is the first decent, easy-to-use, handheld computer. I've found prior interfaces to be really annoying by comparison, e.g. Blackberry. Unlike in the desktop arena, Apple are poised to be the dominant player in the next platform. It's theirs to lose.

If I were Apple, I would make Javascript APIs to iTunes payment system.