Here we go again. Apple announces a pre-existing technology and people start proclaiming how revolutionary that it is. The latest keynote officially once and for all highlights the fact Apple have stopped innovating. Sorry to say it, but the era in which Steve Jobs steered Apple to the top through innovation is well and truly over.
The whole premise of apps sharing data in realtime is something that people have been doing for some time in web applications in particular for sometime now. Throw in Node.js, Socket.io and some HTML and I've created an app that works in real-time on multiple devices and I've recreated what Apple's new functionality does. This isn't new, lets not misguide ourselves into thinking this is a new technological marvel. Native apps have theoretically been able to do this for ages now, Apple have just made it easier for native apps to talk to other apps easier.
"I can see a future where developers build a single version of their app that runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS X (and hopefully Linux, Android, and Windows OSes, although let’s leave that discussion for another time)" The future is already here in that regard. You can achieve this through web applications. Sure, you don't get the same performance as a native app, but it is definitely already possible. There are already solutions out there like Multimedia Fusion and Flash that allow you to build an app in a non-native language, then compile it for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Android and more. I would call this write once, run everywhere.
The whole premise of apps sharing data in realtime is something that people have been doing for some time in web applications in particular for sometime now. Throw in Node.js, Socket.io and some HTML and I've created an app that works in real-time on multiple devices and I've recreated what Apple's new functionality does. This isn't new, lets not misguide ourselves into thinking this is a new technological marvel. Native apps have theoretically been able to do this for ages now, Apple have just made it easier for native apps to talk to other apps easier.
"I can see a future where developers build a single version of their app that runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS X (and hopefully Linux, Android, and Windows OSes, although let’s leave that discussion for another time)" The future is already here in that regard. You can achieve this through web applications. Sure, you don't get the same performance as a native app, but it is definitely already possible. There are already solutions out there like Multimedia Fusion and Flash that allow you to build an app in a non-native language, then compile it for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Android and more. I would call this write once, run everywhere.