re: no-brainers: (1) Allow a WebApp to have a button that says “add to home screen”

I don’t know about older versions, but safari on my new ipod touch (3.1.1) does just that. “add to home screen” is one of the choices when bookmarking a web page. If you have the correctly named png in your web root, you can even have your own icon display.

Dan

Site: http://iui-js.appspot.com/index.gtpl
Blog Entry: http://code.msgilligan.com/2009/09/iui-on-google-app-engine-using-gaelyk.html

Depending upon the nature of your application, I would definitely recommend using an Open Source web-based development solution (like iUI or jQTouch) and something like PhoneGap to deploy native apps to the devices. Keep the UI code and the code that uses native features as separate as possible. This will give you the most flexibility.

Another nice thing about PhoneGap is that it gives you the choice of a wide variety of iPhone-optimized web frameworks (there is a list here: http://phonegap.pbworks.com/ — iUI included, of course) I’m not that familiar with Rhomobile and Appcelerator — do they allow you a choice of web framework? (I see in the Rhomobile FAQ that it includes a styling library based on iUI, cool!)

Another thing to keep in mind is that the locally-cached with local storage WebApp will likely become more viable on the iPhone in the future. WebApps were Apple’s initial idea for the iPhone and I would not be surprised if Apple decides (perhaps in response to competition) to take steps to improve the iPhone’s support of these apps. Two no-brainers: (1) Allow a WebApp to have a button that says “add to home screen” and (2) Allow WebApps to be listed in the App Store. They could also offer JavaScript access to more hardware features. Don’t hold your breath waiting for it, but don’t be surprised when/if it happens.

Granted Apple’s current leadership position in native apps makes this a low priority for them, but they will respond to the competition’s offerings.

Titanium and Titanium Mobile are OSS, released under the uber liberal Apache 2.0 license. As Jeff said, our source is available on Github if you want to check it out.

I don’t think focusing on developing the technology and seeking to make money from its development is a bad thing. Appcelerator’s plan has long been to get revenue from value-add services, training, and support. Having a business model and some investment dollars behind the platform should give you some confidence in its long term viability. Plus my kids are really cute – you wouldn’t want them to starve, would you? Got to pay those bills somehow…

Everyone has done a good job pointing out some of the subtleties between the projects mentioned so I won’t rehash that here.

I just wanted to chime with a general point, which is that everything is going mobile. Whatever approach you choose for your mobile development, you better get started or you’re going to get left behind.

Regarding “licensing clarification”, Rhodes is available under standard GPL dual licensing: if you open source your app, you owe us nothing. If you don’t open source your app you need to purchase a commercial license: $500 for unlimited users. I personally believe that GPL is the essence of fairness: if you believe in open source then open source your own creations as well. But some people need MIT license, and I’m glad to see that there’s an option for them.