I'm somewhat conflicted about the claim that there's no apps. It seems that the JooJoo was meant to be one of the first devices to think of the browser as the only necessary gateway to your apps. If we take the browser and web apps into consideration the JooJoo has access to thousands of apps.
I personally think it's wrong to suggest that a "native" app is the only form of app for a device. We were moving forward so nicely until the iPhone and iPad showed up. It feels that we're moving backwards, back into the land of the fat clients and desktop. Sad.
That's an extraordinary claim, given that it's more likely that the secretive & perfectionist Apple might have merely been quietly finishing and documenting the SDK, only using the web apps story to placate developers and buy time.
Misdirection is a part of their secretive nature. They don't telegraph their punches. Instead, we hear Jobs say that they can't think of what one would do with a tablet beyond reading on the toilet and that people don't read anymore.
Web apps, in my opinion and experience, don't compare to the native apps of the iPad/iPhone. Native apps look better, feel better, and perform better than web apps on the iPhone/iPad.
This idea that the browser will be the window to all apps is silly and unfortunate. If it does work out, people are forced to write applications with three parts:
* HTML
* CSS
* Javascript
* Any serverside language
Instead of a single language that they're very familiar with. While I don't agree with Apple's choice to choke the amount of languages I really dislike this idea that the future of applications is 4 languages, 3 of which you don't have a choice with.
I agree, if you had to write in 4 languages that would be terrible. Fortunately there are frameworks like NOLOH, http://www.noloh.com that allow you to develop in ONE language for the web, instead of the 4 you mention.
Being forced into 1 language (PHP) is not the answer. I find it also quite disingenuous to say "allow you to develop in ONE language for the web" when you really mean "develop in a PHP framework".
It is ONE language. NOLOH extends PHP, and you only develop in NOLOH. NOLOH has it's own syntax that's different than PHP. We accomplish this through the use of extensive syntactical sugars. You can read a little bit about this in our developer zone at http://dev.noloh.com.
You don't code any HTML, JavaScript, or deal with the client as you would with any other framework, whether it's PHP or not.
You only write code in NOLOH on the server and don't have to worry about anything else. In this regard it operates very much like it's own language, but to appeal to search engines we have to phrase it as a PHP Framework.
Clearly our phrasing and presentation was confusing to you as I'm sure you simply took a cursory glance, rather than create a sandbox, or watch our numerous videos on our YouTube channel. This is clearly something we need to work on since most people will only take cursory glances.
How do you feel about Javascript? Objective-J? Why not try using Node.js for the server and Cappuccino for the client? That's a webapp with need of only one-ish(does Javascript and Objective-J count as one language?) language.
From what I remember the iphone was originally not intended to have an SDK or an app store. Thanks to everyone demanding an SDK and jailbreakers (possibly) you now have the monster that is the app store and a lot of bellyaching going on. :P
Luckily you can still develop for the web and the browser will be happy to access your app. No app store needed. :)
I personally think it's wrong to suggest that a "native" app is the only form of app for a device. We were moving forward so nicely until the iPhone and iPad showed up. It feels that we're moving backwards, back into the land of the fat clients and desktop. Sad.