Latitude, on most mobile devices, is rather cool. It shows you where you and your friends are locally. On most devices, it's a native app and can run in the background. On the iPhone, Apple have demanded that it's a web app, meaning that it must be the primary running application, rather than a background app.
After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone
If you needed more evidence that Apple are a bunch of cunting fucktwats, it's right here.
Comments
Latitude was never going to work well on the iPhone, since no app, native or otherwise, can run in the background.
Once you take into account the fact that it's never going to work as well as on other platforms, I actually think being a webapp works better for an application like this on the iPhone; it doesn't need controls beyond what are available in webkit, it's use absolutely requires being connected to the internet anyway and it means google can roll out upgrades much quicker and more easily than trying to get new versions of an app approved for the iTunes store. The obvious downside is potentially longer start-up times while the webapp is downloaded.
Apple's reasoning for the request is a bit odd (and when I say 'odd' I mean 'batshit crazy and inconsistent') but that's pretty much par for the course with iPhone app approval, and google don't seem to mind so much - they've run with it and made the best use they could of the platform.
Technically irrelevant, but quoted for funny:
