Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/4538063192/

So, I guess before I go into the main topic, I’ll start off by saying I was wrong about the iPad. Well, not wrong in the technical sense. The build issues Adam Frucci raised are still significant enough to dissuade me from purchasing it, at least for now, but 2 million sales in just 2 months is quite an accomplishment. So yeah, I’ll eat my words. The iPad is a success. If anything, I probably underestimated the power of the app store. The best days are probably ahead of the iPad, what with the expected video camera breathing new life into new applications.

But I’m not writing just to praise the iPad, but to riff about the app store. The walled garden ghetto du jour.

To me the app store harkens back to the AOL days, when people were new to the Internet trolled around the different “channels” and assumed the Internet started and ended there. In retrospect, it sounds silly right? LOL. AOL. But at the time it served a good purpose. For one, rudimentary browsers and Internet standards meant web sites generally couldn’t or didn’t deliver the same content in as an interesting or creative way as AOL was able to. Additionally, curating content by channels helped people to navigate content; especially during an age where Internet search was ineffective or useless.

Of course, we know how this story ends. Browser and web coding technology evolved. Search evolved. And suddenly everything you found within the AOL walled garden could now be found on the Internet, except now it was even better and there was that much more to see. Why let AOL control the experience?

Fast forward, oh 15 years or so. And we see a similar environment with mobile. WEP sites provide the bare necessities for the majority that don’t own smartphones. And for those with smartphones, viewing a page designed for a desktop still doesn’t feel all that great when you’re constantly pinching in and out on a 3.5” screen. Now, iPhone optimized websites are actually pretty cool… but the iPhone population is still a distinct minority. And iPhone optimized sites feel distinctly templated (which is neither good nor bad).

So in comes the app store. It allows you to find cool things more easily, and the apps themselves deliver a better user experience. But the catalog of apps largely consists of stuff that you’d typically use the Internet for if you were on a desktop. A weather app? Check. The latest news? Check. Stock quotes? Check. Plants vs. Zombies? Check.

Unfortunately, the mobile Internet isn’t able to deliver the same type of experience. Yet. Eventually it will, and the importance of app stores will fade. HTML5 and mobile browser innovation should take us a long way there. Flash and similar tech, I think will have a role as well. Maybe moreso than we think. Flash is still too resource heavy* to be truly effective for mobile, but with the mobile processor arms race underway, the hardware should eventually catch up. (*Sidebar: Actually, “Flash is still too sucky” on mobile would be the more accurate phrasing. While I think Apple’s being selfishly dogmatic by not supporting Flash on the iPhone, or especially the iPad, I will admit every version of mobile Flash that I’ve used or seen has sucked.)

The app store will always have some purpose, the same way the cloud isn’t going to replace all your desktop programs anytime soon; games and specialty apps that require access to specific hardware, require a unique interface or persistent connection, or are just too heavy to run through browsers. Some paid apps will also probably stay in app store form, depending on how easy mobile payments turn out to be. But eventually we’ll get to a point where developers won’t have to worry about when porting their app onto various platforms and users won’t have to worry about when a much anticipated iPhone app will port over to Android, and vice versa. Just build it once for the web and BOOM. Finit.

We’ll get there.