280 North’s Atlas Bridges The Gap Between Web Apps And Native iPhone Applications

Back when the iPhone first launched and the App Store was still a twinkle in Apple's eye, the only way to get your goods onto the platform was to develop them as an iPhone-optimized web page - otherwise known as an iPhone Web App. Unable to make use of much of iPhone's functionality (like the GPS, camera, etc.), Web Apps were quickly considered the inferior option when Apple unshackled the iPhone SDK, opening the doors for the standalone Objective-C apps which have since flooded through the App Store. It was great news for Objective-C developers and consumers looking for rich applications - but not so much for those who'd grown accustomed to developing for the web. At the recent Future of Web Apps conference in Miami, Y-Combinator-backed 280 North announced Atlas , a drag-and-drop visual editor for building desktop web applications with Cappuccino , 280 North's Javascript-based framework. Near the tail end of the presentation, 280 North co-founder Francisco Tolmasky gave the audience a sneak peek of one of Atlas' best features: iPhone support. The real trick? Atlas can wrap up iPhone Web Apps like native applications, granting them access to a significant portion of the iPhone API and allowing them to be sold through the App Store.