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Comment by SquareWheel | Hacker News Reader

I really want Web Intents to take off. It's like assigning programs to certain file extensions, but instead assigning intents to web services. So you could take a photo, edit the image, and share it to your social network of choice. The websites would use a common API, they don't need to program exceptions for each-other like we do with iOS apps. Android does it a lot better, but this could really work on the web.

Hopefully Google and Mozilla will put enough resources behind this that it becomes standardized on, and maybe even Microsoft will get on board.

Apple, well, probably not.

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Not sure why the Apple punch was necessary? You do see that this is a commit on WebKit, right?

Well they still haven't enabled HTML form file upload which makes uploading through a web app difficult if not impossible.

This discussion isn't wholly centered on mobile though - the OP mentions Mozzila, Msft, Google and Apple - I think we're equally talking desktop browsers.

And while I agree that file upload is a major, glaring omission and a constant source of pain, I still hope it's not permanent.

The difference between desktop and mobile is arbitrary. A cell phone is a very small computer that also has specialized hardware for making phone calls (which my laptop also has). Yes there may be some considerations for space and workflow on different devices but RFC 1867 has been around for almost 20 years. Its not something new and revolutionary, its something that most people expect to do from within a browser.

at some point powerful webapps disrupt the app store market

I'm missing the conclusion to that sentence. During 2011, the app store generated $3.4bn in revenue. Given Apples 30% cut, they'd see about $1bn revenue there, out of a total revenue of $108bn in fiscal 2011 [2]. That makes the app store about ~0.95% of Apples total revenue, compared to iPhone hardware sales, generating $47bn or 43% of Apples total revenue [3]. Now, you might argue that the app store accounts for some percent in that in that people buy iPhones to be able to play Angry Birds and whatnot, but from what I can tell, the most popular apps on iPhone are equally available on Android [4]. Pair this with the fact that iOS Safari seems to be the most capable mobile browser out there (or at the very least, in the top 2) [5] and I'm saying there's no published reason Apple would fight web intents or more powerful web apps in general.

Of course, I'm open to other interpretations.

[1] http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/12/ios-revenues-vs-andro...

[2] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/18Apple-Reports-Four...

[3] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/1856667914x0xS11...

[4] http://www.pcworld.com/article/226531/apples_popular_apps_no...

[5] http://www.quirksmode.org/mobile/

App store apps give Apple lock-in to the iOS platform. Even if an app is available for Android, I would need to buy it again, which means I have friction to switch platforms. If everything is a web app, I can switch at will.

There are two big obstacles I see for web apps to take over:

* Poor interoperability between apps (solved by WebIntents)

* Monetization (though services like GitHub and Flickr do this well, and there are providers like http://chargify.com/ to make it easy for developers)

It's not the app revenue, it's the locked content stream. Open web apps would be able to sell content directly, as they never signed the app store contract. Long term Apple's growth model requires content sales. Hardware sales only grew 7% over last year if I remember their filing correctly.

Actually I think you're about a factor 10 off there, hardware sales FY11 was $99bn, compared to $57bn in FY10, which is a growth year over year of about 72%, while content saw growth of about 28% from $4.9bn to $6.3bn. As for total impact on revenue, hardware sales made up 91% of total revenue in '11, compared to 88% in '10.

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