More Apple/Android Junk?

I have so many things I’d like to write about – topics having nothing whatsoever to do with Apple or Android, like IoC, ARM assembly, rational NoSQL, and of course pragmatic software architecture – but various mobile issues keep mentally demanding that I hop up on a soapbox about them for a bit. I have to get this out of the way.

Mobile computing is absolutely the most important realm for this industry over the coming decade, so pay attention to what is happening because it really, really matters.

CIBC – Leader and Innovator, or Me-Too Wannabe?

The CIBC Platinum Card

CIBC, a large Canadian bank, just launched a nationwide advertising campaign to promote their newly released iPhone banking application. You can see the video on YouTube.

It's notable that CIBC isn't targeting iPhone-only venues with these ads, which they could easily and cost-effectively do, but instead they are promoting this during primetime Olympics coverage. They're putting it front and center on their website.

If you caught the commercial you might have mistook it for an Apple ad, given that the strongest takeaway is a subtle "there's an app for that" message, followed by the implicit declaration that iPhone customers – a small minority of CIBC customers – are the elite, their walled garden needing its own special flowers.

Maybe Apple subsidized the ads and the product itself. It’s a little surprising for a large and profitable bank to look for ad subsidies, but it’s the only conclusion I can draw.

It’s either that or CIBC has an Apple fanboy wreaking havoc from the executive level.

In any case, big deal: CIBC makes an app for the iPhone (first bank in Canada to do so, they proudly boast). Just serving customers, right?

Consider that CIBC has never offered a rich-client Windows application for banking, which is a statement that is true for every Canadian bank as far as I know.

They will let you download data to Quicken or Money or what have you, on whatever platform you’d like, but if you want to bank electronically as an end-user the cross-platform web browser is and has always been your electronic banking tool, even when it limited them to a very simplistic interface.

They knew not to fall into the ActiveX quagmire like, say, South Korea. The banks have always supported just about any modern client equally.

Think about that for a bit: They have never directly supported the rich interface of the overwhelmingly dominant client platform for PCs.

And for very good reasons.

Yet now they have special, premiere support for one far-from-dominant Smartphone.

Given that history of device and platform treatment, it’s natural to presume that they have some fantastic and compelling reason for making this change: Maybe they’re using amazing 3D graphics of money flow or something on the device. Maybe a breathtaking augmented reality experience that allows you to visualize your debt load increasing when the camera is pointed at that new must-have device you really want at the electronics superstore, a virtual banker sternly shaking his head no.

There must be something that they just couldn't do without "going native", right?

Nope.

Their iPhone app features shockingly basic functionality. The single place where it could use something even remotely client-rich – to get the user's location to find the nearest branch – they screw it up and force you to type your location in.

This Is What Web Apps Are Made For

This Is An HTML5 App on the iPhone

This application was made for HTML 5, which humorously would easily allow them to use the Geolocation API to get the user's current location for richer and more intuitive mapping.

And let’s give credit where it is definitely due: The iPhone features excellent web app support, arguably best of class, likely because that was originally the only way to create applications for the device.

Jobs’ original vision was that the phone would offer a native Apple experience enhanced by a rich and robust web application ecosystem. That was the phone that they originally delivered.

That web richness allows you to make apps that look and act just like an iphone application with some simple targeted styles and scripting, offering rich and robust functionality and features.  It also allows you to avoid going hat-in-hand through Apple's app review process for every update, as is demanded when you publish via the App Store.

So imagine a world where CIBC decided that they didn’t need to kneel in worship before Apple, trying to suck some Apple-idolizing droppings from the dirty ground, and they’d release this as an HTML 5 app.

It would feature the same look and feel, could easily support all of the same functionality (without breaking a sweat). It would almost certainly be far more maintainable, and could function like a minimized version of the web app they already have for PCs, without necessarily demanding new public-facing web service APIs.

Win all around, right? Well that’s just the start.

If CIBC did it the correct way – as an HTML 5 app – it would also work on Android devices (including crazy features like local databases and geolocation and all of the snazzy dynamics), such as the hot new Milestone coming to Telus, and the anticipated Acer Liquid and Sony X10 coming to Rogers, and more importantly – this is the land of RIM – it would work on the newly revamped Blackberry webkit browser coming shortly, which is worthwhile given that Blackberry remains atop Apple in the “smartphone” category, especially here in Canada.

Remember that Apple far from dominates the Smartphone category, and competition is only getting fiercer. Canada has never been as iPhone-crazed as the US, and a number of compelling non-iPhone smartphones are just hitting our shores.

So if they went the HTML 5 route, they could offer a rich experience on all capable devices, easily stylable and feature-scaling to optimize the platform experience. Anything would be better than the WAPishly rudimentary "everyone else" dumpbin interface they currently support for every other mobile device.

Didn’t They Listen To Steve Jobs?

Juxtapose Steve Jobs telling us that the iPad doesn't need Flash because HTML 5 makes it irrelevant – a premature statement, but the time will come when his words will seem prophetic – with organizations like CIBC porting absolutely rudimentary web functionality into native apps, wasting time and resources and cash, primarily benefiting Apple, while undermining marketplace choice.

Very backwards move, CIBC. It doesn't make you look hip and on-the-ball, but instead makes you look like Apple-salesmen hoping for your little bit of me-tooism hipster credibility.

Given how boastful CIBC is about being the first bank to feature an iPhone interface, it would be delightful to see another Canadian bank, such as my old workplace RBC, take the high road and come out with rich and robust mobile web apps that don’t favour one walled garden without cause.

They could show it running just as richly on a Blackberry, gaining benefit from the glow of Canadian patriotism.

A Place for Web Apps and a Place for Native Apps

While Jobs is quick to declare the end of Flash in pitching the iPad, the reality is that there are serious gaps in what HTML 5 web apps are capable of.

Graphical games, for instance, aren’t a web app reality without either adding Flash to the equation or going native (e.g. OpenGL on Android or the iPhone). Some day down the road it will be possible, but that isn’t reasonably the case right now, aside from some tech demos that make a high-end desktop grind to a halt.

Apps that exploit special features and functions of the hardware generally can’t be web apps either, at least until the feature is so common and prolific that it gets baked into the shared standards, as geolocation has. I’m sure at some future point we’ll have “camera” and “webcam” and “DSP” APIs to access from JavaScript, but for now those are native app domains.

Mr. Jobs’ statement could more honestly be worded as “Flash isn’t necessary when you have HTML....and apps from the Apple App Store”.

Platform specific apps are needed for a lot of solutions. That goes without saying.

Still, porting absolutely rudimentary functionality to native apps is a backwards repeat of mistakes made in the past, walling the garden off for no logical reason.

CIBC is hardly alone in making this foolish, foolish move, but given that they seem to be so proud of this mistake they deserve particular criticism.

So You Own An iPhone and You Don’t See The Problem

My Youngest Doesn't Have an iPhone...yet

Even if you own an iPhone, and you happily imagine a world where your children’s children will have iPhones, you should still view moves like CIBCs with intense cynicism.

Not only are they limiting your choice unnecessarily if you ever decide to consider alternatives (as everyone should always be doing), even if you’ve declared fealty to Apple forever and ever the movements of organizations like CIBC are diminishing Apple’s need to be competitive.

Recall what happened to Internet Explorer after so much of the web (outside of Canadian banks, notably) decided that they would treat IE users as first class citizens, everyone else ignorable chumps. Once that lock-in was established Microsoft had little incentive to work on their browser and they took their users for granted. We’re still trying to pull ourselves out of that mistake.

Apple isn’t Microsoft, but by the end of 2010 they will likely exceed Microsoft’s market capitalization, which is absolutely shocking. Corporate sludge is inevitable at some point. If something happens to Steve Jobs, for instance, and they recruit Ballmer to run the place, you might decide to consider alternatives only to find that you're tied to the platform in a thousand seemingly minor but cumulative ways.

Competition is good. Building up the walled-garden of the iPhone undermines competition, and encourages a foolish Windowsification of the mobile world.