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Comment by kingsley_20 | Hacker News Reader

I just wish Apple would just post some real guidelines about what think about this general tactic. In the absence of that, I'd love to hear some stories from developers who've done this and gotten their apps approved/ rejected.

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Regarding PhoneGap specifically, which the book seems geared toward, for a short period of time Apple believed, erroneously, that the iPhone PhoneGap code was exposing unapproved APIs to developers, and were rejecting apps that used the platform. At that time, I think some devs were obfuscating PhoneGap and submitting the same apps, which were approved, so even then Apple were not objecting to anything actually in the iPhone PhoneGap code.

Apple have been in touch with PhoneGap devs since and clarified the matter; there's a good blog post here regarding that: http://nachbaur.com/blog/updates-on-apple-phonegap

Since then Apple have had a much more informed stance towards PhoneGap and have approved lots of apps using the framework (there's a list on the PhoneGap site).

*full disclosure - I work for Nitobi, who sponsor PhoneGap's development. Though the original link suggests using PhoneGap in its preface, there are competing platforms, such as Rhodes and Appcelerator, that also get through to the App Store.

I'm friends with Andre at Nitobi, and he assured me that things are cool and apps are getting approved. I was still hoping that there was some kind of Apple statement about this. The blog post was very reassuring, thanks!

The book is about developing Web Apps (tailored/optimized for the iPhone) and so no approval process is required.

Edit:

Please see my reply to the comment below.

Also, this is from the preface of the book:

Fortunately, there is an alternative. You can build a web app using open source, standards based web technologies (jQuery and jQTouch, in particular), release it as a web app, and debug and test it under load with real users. Once you are ready to rock, you can use PhoneGap to convert your web app to a native iPhone app and submit to the App Store. If it is ultimately rejected, you aren’t dead in your tracks because you can still offer the web app. If it is approved, great! You can then start adding features that enhance your web app by taking advantage of the unique hardware features available on the device. Sounds like the best of both worlds, right?

So, the step to wrap your app with something like PhoneGap is only needed if you want to sell your app on the AppStore. You can try to submit and then, if it is approved, you may add more hardware dependant features (which aren't covered at all by this book).

It says "Hook into advanced iPhone features (e.g. accelerometer, geolocation, vibration, and sound) with JavaScript".

You can do that via Javascript running through an app (Phonegap is great for this), but can't do that via a web app.

Have you read at least the titles of the chapters of the book?

Or the official Apple documentation (http://developer.apple.com/safari/)?

http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/samplecode/iPhoneO...

http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/Appl...

Edit: where in the book did you see how to use geolocation, vibration or any other feature which is not available with a web app developed for mobilesafari?

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