I don't need a special UI for my iPhone, thanks

With the Safari browser and the iPhone's sweet touch screen functionality, I can look at any web page and do what I would do on a laptop. Granted, browsing on the AT&T Edge network can try your patience, but when connected to wi-fi (and soon 3G), the browsing speed is perfectly reasonable.

So, it bothers me somewhat when I land on a site and they serve up an "optimized" UI for mobile devices (try MSNBC from your phone). Typically, there is less functionality available to you and in the MSNBC's case, it won't let you switch to the standard UI from a mobile device. I have the same issue with Twitter where the mobile UI doesn't have the functions and details seen on the standard UI such as Reply, Delete, and how it was sent (Twirl, MessageDance, etc.).



If I choose the "Standard" UI option for Twitter on my iPhone, it works perfectly fine. Sure, maybe it's small but two quick taps on the screen and it zooms in.

There was a lot of buzz yesterday about the availability of FF to Go which is an optimized FriendFeed UI for mobile devices. It lacks several of the features found in the standard UI, most notably search. Standard FriendFeed looks and works great on my iPhone.

At MessageDance, we believe in the future that the iPhone has brought us. Web companies don't need to develop special UIs for mobile devices because the browsing abilities on ALL devices will move towards what the iPhone offers today. The same is true for companies that build resident application clients for mobile devices. Why not just take advantage the native applications on the device? All you need is a good browser to access an application and an email client to use as an integration layer. Wi-fi is becoming ubiquitous so being connected all of the time seems less like a dream. Execution is critical; develop your applications accordingly.